542 TECHNOLOGY 



brings us to consider the distinction between pure and applied science 

 and also the definition of the place we must assign to technology in 

 the general scheme of knowledge, a definition involving the proper 

 classification of science in the widest sense, a subject which has 

 occupied the attention of many learned minds. 



Our very word science itself, that is, knowledge so systematized 

 that prediction and verification by measurement, experiment, obser- 

 vation, etc., are possible, is in Germany limited by the name of exact 

 science, and is included in a larger idea, Wissenschaft, which seems to 

 embrace ordered knowledge of every kind; for example, the accepted 

 principles which govern the search for historical and philosophical 

 truth. The German idea of Wissenschaft includes at once the highest 

 aims of the "exact, the historical, and the philosophical lines of 

 thought." "That superior kind of knowledge, dignified by the title 

 of Science, must," says one writer, "have generality as opposed to 

 particularity, system as opposed to random arrangement, verifica- 

 tion as opposed to looseness of assumption." 



In view of what has gone before, there is no need, I imagine, 

 further to substantiate the claims of technology to a rank amongst the 

 sciences. We have tried to show that its material is scientific, that it 

 is itself in all departments a scientific method of dealing with nature, 

 and, in one department, an actual investigation into nature; but we 

 shall see that its place in a general classification of science is rather 

 a composite one. 



Pure science has been defined as "the knowledge of ... powers, 

 causes, or laws, considered apart or as pure from all applications." 

 It involves a research into facts by which we learn to understand 

 their nature and to recognize their laws, and its description naturally 

 includes a history of the facts or experiments by means of which it 

 has been made manifest. In one sense every one of these experi- 

 ments is an application of already known laws of science to some- 

 thing of the nature of a machine a case exactly parallel, in out- 

 ward seeming, with what is done in the ordinary departments of 

 technology. Yet, with a true instinct, it is not called technology, 

 and why? Because the aim is different. Even if the ultimate aim be 

 utility, it is not primarily so. The first and immediate aim is to 

 subserve no practical purpose, but to dig deep into nature's garden 

 and find the roots which, down in the dark, are working out their 

 wonders. 



These experiments may be called applications of pure science, but we 

 will not give them the name of applied science or technology, which 

 clearly involves the idea of utility. Whether this is necessarily a higher 

 or a lower ideal, we will not at present consider, for we have shown 

 that we have a claim to both ideals; but we will simply admit, nay 

 more we will emphasize the fact, that the technologist, in the ordin- 



