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Technology and Science, or “Vive La Petite Difference”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Edwin T. Layton Jr.
Edwin T. Layton Jr.*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
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Extract

Small differences can be very significant; this is as true of science and technology as it is with the sexes. To a first approximation, science and technology are strikingly similar; both deal with the world of matter and energy, and they deal with it in rather similar ways. Moreover, since the Renaissance science and technology have been growing closer to one another, in methods, organization and even in self-identification. Thus, there are some contexts in which it is quite proper to treat science and technology as the same. And this is valid in precisely the same sense that it is correct, in some contexts, to treat men and women as the same. But it is clearly fallacious to treat the sexes as identical in all respects. The same applies to science and technology.

Type
Part III. Are There Any Philosophically Interesting Questions in Technology?
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1976 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1976 , 1976 , pp. 173 - 184
Copyright
Copyright © 1977 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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