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The Science-Technology Relationship: A Model and a QueryAuthor(s): Barry BarnesSource: Social Studies of Science, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Feb., 1982), pp. 166-172Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/284894 .

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Notes and Letters continued)

* ABSTRACT

ThisNote draws attention o the emergence of what s generally cknowledgedto be a very atisfactory nteractive odel of the science-technology elationship.

It goes on to ask why uch a model should not be extended to describe therelationship f science with ther ub-cultures, esides that of technology.

The Science-Technology Relationship:A Model and a Query

Barry Barnes

This very brief Note seeks merely o raise questions and point out some possibleanalogiesand connections; t addressesno issues of substance, nor does it involveany attempts t proof or demonstration. ccordingly, have felt ntitled oproceedin a semi-mythological ay, using abstractions ather than actual historically-situated models and theories, nd referring o the literature paringly nd un-systematically.

The Model

I start with the major reorientation n our thinking bout the science-technologyrelationship which has occurred n recent years. We are now much ess prone tothink n terms which ubordinate echnology oscience, nd have the former work-

ing out the mplications f the atter. nstead werecognize cience nd technology obe on a par with ach other. Both sets of practitioners reatively xtend nd developtheir xisting ulture; ut both also take up and exploit omepart of the culture f

SocialStudies of Science (SAGE,Londonand Beverly ills),Vol. 12 (1982),166-72








Notesand Letters: Barnes:Science- echnology 167

TABLE 1Conceptions f the Relationship etween cience S) and Technology T)

THE INSTITUTIONS 'BAD OLD DAYS' PRESENTCOMPARED

S Discovery S InventionFORMS OF Creation of knowledgeACTIVITY T Application T Invention

Use of knowledge

MAJOR S Nature S Existing scienceRESOURCES T Science T Existing technology

CONSTRAINTS S State of nature S No single major constraintON RESULTS T State of science T No single major constraint

FORMS OF S Creative /constructive S Creative /constructiveCOGNITION T Routine/deductive T Creative /constructive

THEIR RELATIONSHIP

SGENERAL S T

IMAGE T

Hierarchical dependence Egalitarian interactive

MAIN MEDIATING Words PeopleAGENCIES

OUTCOMESa. For the development a. Predictable consequences. a. No predictable consequences.

of knowledge T deduces the implications of S T makes occasional creativeand gives them

physical use of S. S makes occasionalrepresentation. No feedback creative use of T.from T to S. Interaction

b. For the development b. S may make free creative use b. Not a separate question.of competence and of T as resource in research. Interaction as above.technique

c. For the evaluation c. S evaluates discoveries in an c. S and T, both being inventive,of knowledge and unchanging context-independent both involve evaluation incompetence way. T is evaluated according terms of ends. No a priori

to its ability to infer the reason why activity in T shouldimplications of S. Success in not be evaluated by referenceT is proper use of S; failure in to ends relevant to agents in S,T is incompetent use of S. or vice versa.








168 Social tudies f Science

the other culturewhich ends o be transferred redominantly ypersonalmobili-ty. Technology nd science ould both survive s forms f institutionalized ctivity

independently f the other, ut they re n fact nmeshed n a symbiotic elationship- a weak, mutually eneficial nteraction, hich ooks much the same whicheverway round t is considered.

This reorientation sset out in an extreme orm n Table 1. Rather handocumen-ting nd ustifying hecontents f the table, rely pon the reader o recognize hetwo models t represents. ow far he hierarchicalmodelhad credibility, ven n the'bad old days', sa moot point; but do hope that he nteractive odel ttributed othe present ay will be recognized y most readers. Although t corresponds o nospecific pinion, t is an abstraction which, believe,captures much of the basicstructure f current hinking.'

At least two ntellectual evelopments erenecessary or heemergence f an in-teractivemodel. First, cience nd technology ad both obe recognized s forms fculture: t had to be accepted that new science developspredominantly rom ldscience,newtechnology rom ld technology. n the aseof science, he endency orelate new findings olely to nature, and to give little xplicit tress o receivedknowledge, whether xisting cience or inputs from technology, onstituted nobstacle which has only recently een overcome. n the case of technology, ndueconcern with he role of science n innovation or long time tifled nterest n thefar more important role of existing technology. Fortunately, historians oftechnology re now rapidly edressing hebalance: there s no longer ny difficultyin perceiving hat new machines develop predominantly ut of old ones, andanalogouslywith nstruments, aterials, atterns nd procedures.2

The secondnecessary evelopment asmore ubtle nd far-reaching. t had to beaccepted that knowledge oes not have inherent mplications. o long as theoriesand discoverieswere hought ohave such mplications, echnology ould be seen asa routine activity wherein those implications were deduced and realized. Anytechnological nnovation ould be traced backwards, nd made out as a logicalcon-sequenceof the newest cientific heory r discovery ncountered n the ine of its

development; nd the period between heory nd innovation, he o-called lag' bet-ween fundamental esearch nd its application, could be used as a measure oftechnological nefficiency. ut again, historians f technology elped oreorientateour thinking: hey nsisted hat werecognizewhat wassurely everhard to see; thatquantum .heories f the solid state did not evoke transistors s a rational ntuition;that Marconi did not follow from Maxwell;that, n general, cientific heories onot arrive, ike calculators r quartz-watches, ith nstruction ooks attached. AsJoseph Ben-Davidhas rightly tressed, nothing s implied in a discovery eyondthe questions nswered by it, and those to which t is related by the traditions ndmental habits of the people who are its prime onsumers.'3

Scientific discoveries' have no logical implications. Nor can technologists elyupon their traditions nd mental habits' to arrive t what may be taken to be 'im-plications': technologists re not prime consumers'. Accordingly, e must xpecttechnologists ctively nd imaginatively o exploit cientific ork, ust as they fre-quently xploit he resources f their wn technological ulture.4 ognitively, hereis no fundamental istinction o be drawn between he reation f a scientific heoryand its subsequent pplication. Just s the one is the maginative evelopment ndpurposive eordering f existing nowledge, o too is the other. And so also, in ust








Notesand Letters: Barnes:Science- echnology 169

the same way, is the exploitation f technological nnovation n the context ofscience.

Thus, the current nteractive model of the science-technology elationship asemerged. And a very atisfactory odel t s, given hatno suchconstruct, oweversophisticated, an cope perfectly ith he omplexities f real relationships, r allowfor henegotiable nd essentially ontested haracter f the two concepts, science'and 'technology'.5 The utility f the model in empirical tudies s already widelyrecognized, nd its wider heuristic alue is beginning o be apparent. For example,once we think n terms f the nteraction f two contexts f inventive ctivity ac-tivity hich f ts nature emands valuation n relation o human objectives it seasy to understand ow udgement n one context may readily ecomeconditionedby objectives, nd hence criteria, rom he other. This overlap, or even total in-terpenetration, f the objectives nd judgements f technologists nd scientists,everywhere pparent n the history f either ctivity, resents much greater dif-ficulties f conceptualization hen the alternative ierarchicalmodel s employed.

The Query

For present urposes,however,my ssessment f the merits f the nteractive odelis irrelevant. need only describe t, n the hope that hereader willrecognize t and

concede the high regard n which t s widelyheld. This opens the path to the querywhich s the crux of my Note. Why hould an interactive odel of this kind not beusedas a way of conceptualizing herelationship f science with ther ub-cultures?Why, for example, should the relationship etween science and political sub-cultures, othe extent hat here s such a relationship, ot be conceptualized n thisway, or the relationship etween cience nd our everyday ommonsense ulture?

It is certainly asy to speculateupon why, s a matter f fact, his move s rarelymade. A plausiblehypothesis s that our willingness o describe sub-culture s insymmetrical nteraction with science, and our willingness o evaluate it asepistemologically omparable with cienceare intimately onnected. Technology,obviously nd impressively fficacious nd thereby n a sensevalid, is possibly heonly form of culture which can interact with science, and hence affect cience,without anger o the standing f the atter.

To say this, however, s only to say why n interactive onception s not used; Iask why t should not be used. At present, when relationship s perceived etweenscience nd (say)politics, hetendency s to presume hat cience s used by politicalsub-cultures ut that cience s tself ntouched y this use, or by ts general elation-ship to the political ontext t that point. An hierarchicalmodel is employed, ndthe possibility f interaction, nd henceof inputs nto science, s not considered.suggest hat an interactive model should always be used in such cases, that thepossibility f feedback nto science should always be investigated s a matter froutine, nd that ero feedback hould be treated merely s a possible mpirical in-ding.

Consider how much can be said in favour of such a policy. First, there s thegenerally cknowledgedmerit f the interactive model as a representation f thescience-technology elationship. econdly, here s the character f the argumentswhich upport he doption of the model n that ontext. hesearguments o not re-quire the existence f any specialor distinctive eatures n the ub-cultures f science








170 Social Studiesof Science

and technology. n the contrary, t wasprecisely he mputation f such features oscientific ulture which ustained heearlier, unsatisfactory, ierarchicalmodel of

the cience-technology elationship, nd the bandonmentf that mputation hich

allowed the nteractivemodel to be justified. The interactivemodel treats cienceand technology s much more closely nalogous to other forms f culture han didits predecessor. And this n turn uggests hat he cience-technology elationship slikely o be relevantly nalogous to other elationships etween ub-cultures. inal-ly, there s the fact that the science-technologynteraction s understood n a con-siderabledegree f detail, nd that many f its principal eatures re now commoncurrency mong us. These are precisely he two characteristics hich endowrepresentations ith heuristic alue, which make them potent metaphors, ersatiletools of thought.

At present he study of science and technology s but weakly onne.ted to thestudy f the general ocial and political ontext f science:although here s someoverlap of personnel etween he fields, here does not appear to be a ready nter-change of methods nd models. Recentwork n the atter ield, however, ndicatesthat t may now independently e recapitulating hedevelopment f the former. thas for a long time been standard practice for historians o speak of the social orpoliticalusesof science: one way traffic as been assumed from cience o society',with he role of the atter eing olelyto use, or to misuse, he knowledge erivedfrom he former, o deduce ts real implications' r to attach false implications' o

it. The profane ulture f society' has been set below science, nd their elationshiphas been conceptualized ierarchically precisely s was done with echnology nthe bad old days' when t too was reckoned possible ourceof defilement. ut thecurrent rend s to call into question his symmetrical reatment, nd the ssociatedassumption hat where cience s used in a general ocial context what s involved smere use, and not interaction.

For example, great range of materials n the social uses' of eighteenth-centuryscience has recently been gathered together by Shapin, who has tellinglydemonstrated ow the uses' are relevant o an understanding f the conception,development nd evaluation f the cience tself.6 hapin notes how theories f mat-ter were deployed as strategies o further nterests hroughout he period of theEnlightenment. heories sserting heprimacy f spirit ver matter were favouredby spiritual lites nd supporters f clericalhierarchies; heories ocatingpowers nmatter tself nd denying heprimacy, r even the xistence, f spirit weredeployedby opponents of those elites nd hierarchies. hus the matter heories f, amongothers, Boyle,Newton nd Priestley ll had important ocial and politicaluses. It isboth arbitrary nd, as it happens, ncorrect, o assumethat the matter heories fthese men of science originated n ways quite unconnected with the social andpolitical uses. Boyle's a priori onviction, o important n his technical cientific

work, hat matter was inert nd lacking n inherent owers,was no mere ndividualidiosyncracy r expedient echnical ssumption; nor was Newton's view of theuniverse s rich n spirit nd poor in matter; nor was Priestley's materialism ndconsequent ffection or hephlogiston heory. f Boyle,Newton nd Priestley eremen of science, hen heir ciencewas a sub-culture hich nteracted ith hewiderculture n a way well adumbrated y the right and column of Table 1.

Thisexample sgenuinely epresentative f emerging rends n the ocial history fscience, nd of parallelmovements n sociology nd political cience.7Yet it s clearfrom ts structure, ts vocabulary, nd the work t does in reinterpreting hevery e-








172 Social tudies f Science

Author's ddress: Science Studies Unit, Edinburgh niversity,34 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh H8 9JT, Scotland, UK.

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