Borrowing perhaps from mathematics, there is a custom of speaking of science as pure science and applied. Platonism, and other classical positions in the philosophy of mathematics, did not think of the applications of mathematics as a test of the truth of its theorems. But the picture is otherwise for science and technology. It is initially tempting to say that the theories of pure science are empirical generalizations and that the applications of these theories in the makings and doings of technology, accordingly as they succeed or fail, test the theories. Qualifying factors and counter-acting causalities needing to be allowed for, falsification will not be immediate, but inexplicable and apparently irremediable technological failure is likely to be taken as falsifying a theory, and a continued and expanding pattern of technological achievement, a triumph of technology, as the superannuated trope has it, will be taken as a confirmation of a theory, from the inductivist perspective, adding in spadesful to the evidence for its truth.

That such a view of the relation of science to technology has been held is clear from an argument that has familiarly been made against Karl Popper's account of scientific method. G. J. Warnock and Hugh Mellor, amongst others, have put the following argument against Popper. Popper claims to have solved Hume's problem of induction, and to have solved it by showing that there is no such thing as induction, either as a logical principle, or as a mode of reasoning, or as a method of discovery.