Technology and science have a deeply intertwined relationship. New technologies often emerge from scientific discoveries, while technology itself can enable new scientific breakthroughs. But does technology always follow science, or does the connection go both ways? This article explores the complex dynamic between science and technology and examines whether technological developments strictly flow from prior scientific understanding.
Introduction
Science builds our knowledge and understanding of the natural world through evidence-based observation, hypothesis testing, and establishing theories and laws about how nature works. Technology refers to the practical application of various tools, machines, materials, techniques, and processes to solve real-world problems and achieve specific goals based on scientific knowledge as well as experimentation and engineering principles.
At first glance, it seems self-evident that science comes first and technology follows; after all, you need to understand the laws of physics before you can build a bridge that won’t collapse! However, the history of technology reveals that the relationship is more complex than this linear model. Oftentimes, technologies have emerged without scientists fully understanding why they work. Experimentation and accidental discoveries have led to major tech breakthroughs, indicating that technological developments can drive science forward too.
This article will analyze examples from the history of science catalyzing technology as well as technology catalyzing science. It will make the case that although scientific understanding enables intentional technological progress in many spheres, technology and engineering can also pave the way for new scientific discoveries. The dynamic at play is cyclic, with both forces feeding into each other over time.
Science Enabling Technology
Some of history’s most influential technologies directly followed scientific breakthroughs by putting new theoretical knowledge into practice. Their inventors intentionally designed them based on established scientific principles.
Powered Flight
The Wright brothers’ achievement of the first controlled, sustained, and powered airplane flights in 1903 was built directly on aerodynamics and physics research. Scientists had been studying aerodynamics and developing equations around lift, drag, thrust, and weight in flying machines since the 1800s, before the Wright brothers applied this research to build a functioning plane.
Atomic Power
Another example is harnessing atomic power. For centuries, scientists researched atomic theory without knowing how to unleash the immense amounts of energy held in the atom’s nucleus. But in the early 20th century, Albert Einstein and others contributed theoretical understandings of relativity and the equivalence of mass and energy critical for unlocking the atom’s power potential.
Engineers then put this science into action, culminating in Chicago Pile-1 demonstrating the first artificial nuclear reactor in 1942 and the world’s first nuclear power plant opening in Obninsk, Russia, in 1954. Once again, science defined what was possible first, then technology brought it to life.
Medical Imagining
X-rays and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines are the mainstays of modern medicine, dependent on advances in physics and optics research. In 1895, Wilhelm Röntgen discovered high-energy electromagnetic radiation able to pass through soft tissue but not bone after experimenting with Crookes tubes. This radiation was termed “X-rays,” and within 5 years, the first medical X-ray imaging machine was built.
Decades later, in 1937, Isidor Rabi understood that the quantum properties of atoms’ nuclei varied when placed in magnetic fields. This ultimately let Raymond Damadian demonstrate MR body scanning in 1977 and engineer the first MRI machine in 1982 for diagnostic imaging. The technological tools leveraged brand new scientific awareness of high-energy radiation and magnetic resonance for visualizing inside the human body.
Space Exploration
Finally, humanity’s journeys into space have always followed astrophysical discoveries about the universe’s composition and phenomena. Neil DeGrasse Tyson explained that “the technology spearheading the exploration of the cosmos originates in the human mind, calculating the cosmos with physics and chemistry equations well in advance of mission planning.” From Copernicus’s descriptions of our solar system to Hubble providing evidence of exoplanets and Einstein’s general relativity enabling GPS navigation, space travel has consistently built upon scientific shoulders. The August 2022 NASA Dart mission to alter an asteroid’s path via kinetic impact followed directly from scientific modeling of asteroid trajectories through space.
Across these four examples, science defined the realm of possibility before technology caught up to make it a reality. This supports the perspective that technology relies on science first.
Technology Catalyzing Science
Nevertheless, counterexamples exist of accidental discoveries or early technologies preceding a complete scientific explanation as to why they worked. Their successful operation then drove scientific study rather than resulting from it.
Steam Engine
The steam engine is one of the technologies that ushered in the Industrial Revolution. But primitive steam engines have existed since the 1st century AD, Hero of Alexandria’s aeolipile, while scientists only understood thermodynamic principles hundreds of years later.
An aeolipile used steam power to spin a sphere but lacked practical applications. Then, in 1698, Thomas Savery built an early steam-powered water pump without incorporating heat dynamics theory developed by Sadi Carnot in 1824. Englishmen Thomas Newcomen and James Watt subsequently improved the engine’s efficiency by 1769. The Newcomen and Watt steam engines enabled mechanical work and transportation innovations across Europe over a century before scientists codified how heat engines extract energy from fuel sources. The engines’ success actually motivated scientific questions around heat and energy that thermodynamics answers.
Technology Milestone Date Scientific Milestone Date
Hero of Alexandria, Aeolipile, 1st century AD Sadi Carnot shows ideal heat engine efficiency based on heat flow 1824
Thomas Savery steam pump (1698) James Prescott Joule determines mechanical equivalent of heat 1843
Thomas Newcomen’s atmospheric engine (1712) Rudolf Clausius coins “entropy”, and developed the 2nd law of thermodynamics 1850
James Watt improves steam engine efficiency (1769) Ludwig Boltzmann links entropy to probability and disorder (1872)
Electricity
Another example is the history of electricity, magnetism, and electromagnetism interplaying. Ancient civilizations worked with naturally occurring magnets and static shocks without scientifically investigating where these forces came from.
As early as 200 BC, ancient Mesopotamians worked iron into magnetized needles for early compasses to aid navigation. The phenomenon of lightning was recorded as early as 2,000 BC, too. Yet germinal theories around electromagnetism only emerged in the early 19th century, after Hans Ørsted connected electricity and magnetism. Even today, science still debates exactly what electricity is on a subatomic scale. Technological applications leveraging electricity and magnetism preceded full theoretical understanding.
Conclusion
Given these counterexamples of useful technologies appearing before their scientific basis was well understood, the relationship between science and technology proves less linear than simplifying narratives might portray.
In cases like thermodynamics and electromagnetism, technology catalyzing science reveals that science also learns from questions posed by implementing new technologies about how nature works. Often, goals to improve a technology can motivate targeted scientific inquiries most likely to overcome adoption barriers or limitations. Cross-pollination persists between scientists and inventors across time and place.
In conclusion, framing the technology/science relationship as a one-way dependence of technology existing only thanks to prior science overlooks the cyclic dynamic at play. Technology and science enjoy a reciprocal, mutually reinforcing partnership, each repeatedly nurturing the other’s progress over history. Technologically built artifacts can reveal anomalies, challenging standing scientific assumptions and forcing updates to theory. And cutting-edge science applies expanded knowledge of boundary conditions to upgrade technology, iterating incrementally towards marvels once considered impossible.
Does technology always follow science? No. As these examples demonstrate, technological innovations significantly contribute to new scientific understanding, moving human progress onward and upward!
FAQ
Q. What are some examples of technology preceding science?
Ans: Some key examples covered included early steam engines designed over a century before thermodynamics explained how they extract work from heat energy, as well as uses of electricity and magnetism well before electromagnetism theory emerged.
Q. Can technology develop without science?
Ans: No, technology requires some empirical understanding to create artifacts solving real-world problems. But at early stages, this knowledge stems from observation and experimentation rather than advanced theoretical models. Science and technology co-evolve cyclically over time.
Q. Does science always enable new technologies intentionally?
Ans: While many modern technologies directly apply recent scientific discoveries, some emerge from serendipity and then drive research explaining how they work. Science enables intentional tech breakthroughs, but accidental discoveries during engineering also expand science.
