A paradox
Perhaps you have noticed a curious phenomenon.
Many engineers and scientists identify technology with applied
science. From the charter of the first engineering society to
today, engineers talk proudly of application of science. Many such
as Robert Thurston and Charles Steinmetz happily called engineering
applied science. However, some engineers consider being identified
with applied scientists an insult, as one insists: “engineering
applies science but is not applied science.”
Why are the attitudes so different? Aeronautic
engineer Walter Vincenti, who has published extensively in scholarly
journals, suggested an answer. He observed that scholars “tend to
think of it [engineering] as applied science. Modern engineers are
seen as taking over their knowledge from scientists, and by some
occasionally dramatic but probably intellectually uninteresting
process, using this knowledge to fashion material artifacts.”[1] If
applied science meant intellectual inferiority, then technology is
definitely not applied science. But does it? Who say that it does?
Two
senses of “applied science”
Science generally means state of knowing
or possessing knowledge that is sufficiently general, clearly
conceptualized, carefully reasoned, systematically organized,
critically examined, and empirically tested. According to subject
matter, science can be analyzed into many sciences: natural sciences
such as physics or biology, engineering sciences such as
communication and control, social sciences such as economics, human
sciences such as psychology.
Practicality of topics divides between basic
and applied sciences. In the scientific and engineering community,
the difference between them is one of focus and orientation, not
intellectual quality, epistemological precedence, or historical
priority. This is made clear by the U.S. National Science
Foundation, which defines applied science as aiming at “gaining the
knowledge or understanding to meet a specific, recognized need,”
treats it equally with basic science, and pours research funds into
it [2]. Research thrives in Divisions of Engineering and Applied
Science of Caltech, Harvard, and many other universities. New
knowledge fills numerous books and journals on applied mathematics,
applied physics, applied mechanics, etcetera. The intellectual
excitement and information fertility of applied science are widely
acknowledged. It is in this proud sense that a carefully edited
report with contributions from eighty engineers and scientists from
academia, industry, and the government asserted: “Applied science
is often regarded as a synonym for ‘engineering’.”[3]
A different sense of “applied science”
underlies the attack on engineering and technology as applied
science. Here application of science is described as “more or less
mechanical” and applied science “debased,” “intellectual
parasitism,” “introducing no new knowledge,” “a humdrum uncreative
activity crucially dependent upon basic science,” and low in
“pecking order.” This disparagement of applied science is called
“the scientific ideology” or an “American ideology” by scholars who
allege that it pervades western tradition, especially the American
culture since at least mid-nineteenth century. The allegation was
introduced in the 1970s and promoted ever since by sociological
historian Edward Layton [4]. It has been widely accepted in
technology studies. What are the evidences of the allegation?
Is
applied science disdained in American culture?
Is the disdain of applied science an American
ideology? The United States spends more on applied than on pure
research. America has a culture where Thomas Edison was a national
hero and Scientific American a newsletter for patents, the
inaugural editorial of Science extolled application, and the
Land Grand Act specifically sponsored universities for applied
oriented education. The preponderant practical attitude of
Americans had struck European visitors such as Alexis de
Tocqueville, who observed in 1835: “In America the purely practical
part of the sciences is cultivated admirably, and people attend
carefully to the theoretical portion immediately necessary to
applications; in this way the Americans display a mind that is
always clear, free, original, and fertile; there is almost no one in
the United States who gives himself over to the essentially
theoretical and abstract portion of human knowledge.”[5] Even in
formal philosophy, America is known for its pragmatism distinct from
British empiricism, French rationalism, and German idealism. Such a
culture is unlikely to undervalue applied science.
Is snubbing application a prejudice of
scientists? Nobel prizes in physics have been awarded to wireless
telegraphy, automatic regulators, transistor, integrated circuit,
electronic microscope, and fast photonics, which are applied science
if anything is. Emphasis on application is even stronger in
chemistry and biology, as is evident in the coziness between
university biology departments and pharmaceutical companies. Even
the purest of pure scientists deny that applied science is devoid of
new knowledge [6].
Groundless accusations
So where did “the scientific ideology” come
from? Scholars referred to each other about it, but were not
totally oblivious of its hearsay nature. One historian remarked:
“The origin of this notion is not entirely clear. Certainly it is
prominent in the rhetoric of the promoters of science from Francis
Bacon and the seventeenth century academicians to James Conant and
Vannevar Bush.”[7] Another admitted after two decades and numerous
references to it in the history of technology: “Little attention has
been paid to the history of this view [the scientific ideology] and
why it (and similar beliefs) has been so pervasive in American
culture.” It is significant that he does not question the alleged
pervasiveness even when his own historical research yields not
examples but counterexamples.[8]
The groundlessness of “the scientific ideology”
is apparent from the piece of text most frequently offered as its
certain and prominent evidence: Bush’s Science – the Endless
Frontier. Bush was an engineer whose own research was all
applied. His article is posted approvingly in the website of the
National Science Foundation, which takes great pain to put pure and
applied sciences on equal footing.[9] Written in 1945, it was a
report to the U.S. president recommending a specific policy: the
need to create public funding for basic research. In contrast to
general treatises, requests for funding tend to focus sharply on the
benefits of the proposed project. Omission does not imply
disapproval; asking for too much would invite rejection. To win
public support for basic research that has no apparent material
benefits is not easy now and was more difficult then. Bush was
careful to limit his objective. He did not ask funds for applied
research, which had been supported by mission oriented agencies in
the government, not to mention in the private sector for profit
motives. He argued that basic research produces new knowledge but
never suggested that it produces all knowledge so that that
technology contains no knowledge. He argued that basic science is
necessary but never suggested that it is sufficient of knowledge.
Consider Bush's sentence: “A nation which
depends upon others for its new basic scientific knowledge will be
slow in its industrial and weak in its competitive position in world
trade, regardless of its mechanical skill.” Layton quoted and
accused it for implying the “intellectual parasitism” of applied
science and denying “symbiotic relationship” between applied and
basic sciences. The accusation has no justification, because the
proposal nowhere asserts that basic research produces the only
crucial knowledge. We can compare Bush’s notion of basic
research as “pace setter” to paratroops that stake out the ground.
Suppose the military urges the creation of air born units, arguing
that without them one would lose the rapid deployment edge, no
matter how fast ground troops move. This in no way implies that
ground troops are parasitic on paratroops, which will perish if not
linked up with the main army.
Bush did not denigrate application. Neither
did other promoters of sciences as alleged. They argued for the
value of research without apparent applications, not the
disvalue of research with applications. Research requires much
human and material resource. In attracting funds, pure science is
disadvantageous because it promises no immediate return. Pure
scientists working on a shoestring are more likely to explain the
benefits of their works, as expressed in the title of Henry
Rowland’s “A plea for pure science.” It appeared in 1883, ten years
before the birth of Physical Review, when pure research was
almost nonexistent in America. To distort such desperate pleas into
a deprecation of application perverts the whole nature of science,
pure and applied.
A case of
muddled thinking
When analyzed, alleged evidence of the
prevalence of “the scientific ideology” turns out to be conceptual
muddles that interpret necessity as sufficiency,
some as all, “A is important” as B is
worthless, “A is good” as B is bad, “A has
something” as B has nothing. Applied science is stereotyped
without any attempt to study its actual practice or analyze its
technical contents. Counter examples are ignored.
Confronted with growing insistence of numerous
engineers to describe their practice as application of science,
Layton shrugged: “it is enough to recognize that such claims [by
engineers] are ideological in nature and not to be taken as literal
descriptions.”[10] Such disregard of evidence is not uncommon in
postmodernism – “interpretive flexibility” is a central tenet in
social constructionism. A sociologist described the treatment of
scientists by her postmodern colleagues: “a certain ‘Besserwisser’
approach prevails, with the sociologists smugly overruling the
scientists. It was as if the sociologists were the self-appointed
psychoanalysts of scientists, knowing their ‘true’ motives,
unbeknownst to the scientists themselves.”[11]
Layton introduced “the scientific ideology” not
as a positive doctrine but as a target of attack. Unfortunately, it
is a wrong target. An elitist culture did exist in which “the idea
of utility has long borne the stamp of vulgarity,” as observed by
historian Leo Marx. “The intellectual world” spurned the
concept of technology until after 1918, more than half a century
after the foundation of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[12]
As late as 1959, when engineering research was wide spread, a
scholar declared that no word existed for the improver of technology
comparable to “scientist” as the improver of knowledge.[13] This
was the elitist culture that stood against the scientific culture in
C. P. Snow’s analysis of the gap between two cultures; its
definition of “intellectual” excluded not only engineers but
physicists and mathematicians.[14] Snow’s description was echoed in
2002 by Harvard’s president Lawrence Summers, who criticized “a
culture where it is unacceptable not to be able to name five plays
by Shakespeare but where it is fine to not know the difference
between a gene and chromosome.”[15] This culture – not the
scientific culture – is the breeding ground of the misnamed
“scientific ideology.”
Bush, the alleged prime advocate of "the
scientific ideology," actually advocated its negation: “In all
associations between engineers and scientists, engineering is more a
partner than a child of science.”[16] This thesis has long been a
commonplace among engineers. However, Layton proposed it in 1970s
as a novelty in technology studies, accompanied by the alleged
prevalence of “the scientific ideology” in scientific culture and
American culture at large. He argued for a valid old thesis with an
invalid new reason. The falsity of his allegation was dimmed by the
tendency of elitists to regard their small club as the whole world.
The false allegation is harmful because it
attributes bigotry to the wrong people and distorts the whole
picture. "The scientific ideology" hurts applied scientists and
engineers. Its alleged prevalence adds harm to pure scientists and
the American people who are thereby stereotyped as narrow-minded
bigots. It creates animosity among engineers and scientists. By
distorting legitimate arguments for basic science into an
objectionable prejudice, it undermines support for basic research.
Notes
- Vincenti, W. G. 1990. What Engineers
Know and How They Know It: Analytical Studies from Aeronautical
History. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, p.3.
- NSF, Science and Engineering Indicators
2002, pp.4-10. www.nsf.gov.
- Arden, B. W., ed. 1980. What Can be
Automated? Cambridge: MIT Press, p.8.
- Layton, E. T., Jr. 1976. American
Ideologies of Science and Engineering. Technology and
Culture, 17: 688-701.
- Tocqueville, A. de. 1835. Democracy
in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (2000),
Vol.2, p.434.
- On the personal level, bloated self esteem
is almost universal, as some eighty percent of Americans deem
themselves above average. Smart people are especially prone to
think themselves the best and brightest, whether they are pure
or applied scientists. However, the issue here is not bickers
in bars but the doctrinal denigration of a discipline.
- Laudan, R. ed. 1984. The Nature of
technological Knowledge. Dordrecht: Reidel, p.9.
- Kline, R. 1995. Constructing “technology”
as “applied science.” Isis, 86: 194-221.
- V. Bush, Science – an endless frontier,
www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/nsf50/vbush1945.htm.
- Layton, E. T., Jr. 1991. A historical
definition of engineering. In Critical Perspectives on
Nonacademic Science and Engineering, ed. P. T. Durbin,
Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press, pp. 60-79.
- Segerstråle, U., ed. 2000. Beyond the
Science Wars. New York: State University of New York Press,
p.6.
- Marx, L. 1997.
Technology: the emergence of a hazardous concept. Social
Research, 64: 965-88.
- Multhauf, R. P. 1959. The scientist and
the “improver of technology.” Technology and Culture 1:
38-47.
- Snow, C. P. 1963. The Two Cultures and
a Second Look. New York: Cambridge University Press.
- Symonds, W. C. 2002. Harvard.
BusinessWeek, February 18, pp. 72-8.
-
Bush, V. 1965. The engineer. In Listen to Leaders in
Engineering, A. Love and J. S. Childers, eds. (Tupper &
Love, Atlanta, 1965), pp.1-15.
Sunny Auyang
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