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Introduction
Althoughtechnologyand science have many features in commonnot least in the minds of many people who link them together when viewed as present-day bodies of practicetheir goals and how they judge success tend to differ. This article describes about technology and science with people can change into modern technology if it is safe.
Science
Initsmostbasicform, science is driven by curiosity and speculation about the natural world without thought of any immediate application. It aims to produce theories which can be tested experimentally in the public domain and which are valued according to criteria such as simplicity, elegance, comprehensiveness, and range of explanatory power. By no means all that goes on under the name of science has this "blue-sky", unconstrained quality; so-called strategic science, for example, is focused more on yielding knowledge that might assist the subsequent development of, as yet unidentified, winning products and processes in the market-place.
Technology
Technology,ontheother hand, has the goal of creating and improving artefacts and systems to satisfy human wants or aspirations. Success is judged in terms of considerations such as efficiency of performance, reliability, durability, cost of production, ecological impact, and end-of-life disposability. It has sometimes been said that whereas the output from science is a published paper for all to read and criticize, that from technology is a patent conferring sole ownership of the invention on the holder.
Formanycenturiestechnological advances of great significance were made without benefit of knowledge from science. The notable achievements of Asian technology by the end of the first millennium AD in fields such as iron production, printing, and hydraulic engineering, including dams, canals, and irrigation systems, are well documented. In southern Asia, at a later period, the high quality of Indian textile products, especially painted and printed cotton goods, set standards which were an incentive to technological developments in Britain.
Waterwheels,canallocks, barbed wire (without which the American West could not have been opened up), food preservation, fermentation and many metallurgical processes are other instances where technology ran ahead of science. The relationship underwent change especially in the late 19th century with the growth of the chemical and electrical power industries; in these, scientific knowledge was of direct use in the solving of problems and the development of products, although it was rarely sufficient on its own. At a later date the communications and electronics industries provided further testimony to the effectiveness of a closer relationship between science and technology, as indeed did the experience of World War II and subsequent more local military conflicts.
Bythesecondhalfof the 20th century, much modern technology was intimately related to scientific knowledge, and science itself had become increasingly linked to technology through its dependence upon complex instrumentation to explore the natural world. A technological innovation such as nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, a diagnostic technique widely used in medicine, could not have been developed without scientific knowledge of the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei. The symbiotic and synergistic relationship between modern technology and modern science has led some to use the term technoscience to describe what they see as now an essentially merged, even hybrid, enterprise.
Whethermergedornot today, in the past science and technology have often followed independent paths. Furthermore, in so far as any relationship was acknowledged, it was most frequently seen as hierarchical, with technology practice trailing dependently in the wake of scientific theory. This notion that technology was merely applied science enjoyed wide currency in Euro-American circles, and beyond, throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries. Today there would be little support for it. A more widely accepted model of the relationship is that of two different but interdependent communities of practice which overlap and intermesh in their activities. However, the scientific knowledge constructed by scientists in their search for understanding of natural phenomena is not always in a form which enables it to be used directly and effectively in technological tasks. It often has to be reworked and translated into a form which relates better to the design parameters involved.
People can switch into new technology and science, if it is safe. It also leads to modern life.
