Drawing Lines (Part III): Technology vs Science

In my last post, I drew a faint line between the Arts and the Humanities. This post attempts to draw a very similar line between Technology and Science.

I have said before that disciplines can be distinguished somewhat by looking at approach, intent, content and methodology (and perhaps output, if you substitute that for 'content' in some instances). In the Arts vs Humanities case the line is one of approach via sensory perception and resultant emotional response, intent to trigger emotional response, content that is designed to do so, and methodology of performance and display — all of which are present in the former and normally absent in the latter.

In the Technology vs Science case, the line seems clearer but is actually less clear. Technology can be distinguished from science with this guideline: it has a functional physical approach, with intent to make something as a proof-of-concept or proof-of-utility, content that is the thing made, and methodology of refining the physical presentation until the form best meets a kind of functionality — either a) the proof of concept itself, or b) the proof that the concept is useful.

There is a grey area here, of course, just as in the previous case. This grey area ranges between the bounds of what we call 'engineering' and what we call 'applied sciences'. It's relatively easy to discuss. However (and much more complicating), there is also a somewhat kaleidoscopic (from Greek kalë = 'beautiful' + eidos = 'form' or 'image' + skopein = 'to look') area which comes from the fact the 'technology' itself is a Greek word, meaning something like 'the structure of craft' or 'the study of art' or any one of a dozen other possible meanings.

You see, the Greek word technë can mean 'art', 'craft' or 'skill'; it can mean 'method' or 'making' or 'shaping'. It is a concept that has to do with the deliberate shaping of something to serve a particular function or promote a specific idea. It is, unfortunately, very much like any definition we can craft (ha) for what we referred to previously as 'the Arts'.

In recent years, the word 'technology' has been appropriated by the Sciences. But technologies existed long before science; technë precedes scientia by thousands of years. Think of the kinds of technology we've used: levers and other simple tools like the wedge and the wheel; pottery and other ceramic technologies (brick-making, glass-making); weaving and other fibre technologies (rope-making, basket-making); carpentry and woodcrafting; blacksmithing and metalworking. these are not often thought of as sciences, even though some of them may be thought of as some kind of engineering.

In many cases, once functionality has been met, the quest for more aesthetic or economic forms has continued. Brick-making becomes house-building and then architecture, before turning into urban planning.

Sometimes, new functionalities are hived off from old ones. Pottery leads to kiln design and then refractory coatings and space-shuttle protective shielding. Tile-making and glazing, glass-making and etching, eventually lead to semiconductor manufacturing.

Is this science? If anything, it is craft, that ancient and powerful Anglo-Saxon word. Humans are a crafty people; they have been so long before some of them became rational and scientific. Sometimes, it seems to me, science is only the anaemic psychobiography of the life of things and tasks. Science is like the theory of technology, although scientists prefer to think of technology as the outgrowth of science.

I look at my father's Audi and smile. "Vorsprung durch Technik," I say to myself.