Science and Technology

Abstract

Consider the ways in which technological developments have stimulated or obstructed scientific change. Some of the ways in which technological progress stimulates scientific progress are all too obvious. The simplest, perhaps, is the improvement of the life of scientists through technological progress. It frees time for education and research. Innumerable technological advances raise the standard of living in myriads of ways, and help science grow in all sorts of manners. These are the indirect ways. Then there are technological advances that open the way to new scientific experiments: the development of ever better tools of observation, the ability to go to new frontiers to look at new places, the development of new computers and computing techniques. These are some of the direct ways. Technological advances also stimulate scientific progress in the most indirect way, in the most round and about way — by arousing the quest for knowledge, by inviting scientific studies of those phenomena that constitute technological advances, such as the success of antibiotics.