5o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



nology are, first of all, different. Science is defined by its point of 

 view; the man of science takes his stand at the handle of the fan, and 

 looks out along the sticks to an undefined periphery. Technology is 

 defined by its practical end ; the technologist, moving over the periphery, 

 chooses and shapes the sticks which are to meet at the pivot that he has 

 always held in view. The advice to "let the facts lead us where they 

 will, over the hills and dales of physiology, into the deep borings of 

 anatomy, or upward into the ethereal reaches of psychology" is ad- 

 mirable advice to offer the technologist; but its phrasing shows that it 

 would be fatal if accepted by the man of science. For suppose that the 

 man of science should accept it ! Then the technologist, asking physi- 

 ology for a detail of the landscape, might receive a sample of ore; or 

 asking anatomy for the dip of the strata, might receive a cloud-photo- 

 graph : things well enough in their own place but, out of place, turning 

 his ignorance into sheer confusion. It is only in so far as he can rely 

 upon the physiologist to keep his physiological point of view, and the 

 psychologist his psychological, that the technologist is able to move 

 freely from the one science to the other in pursuit of his practical end. 



It follows from this primary difference that no technology is properly 

 characterized as the application of a special science. Every technology 

 is itself a special discipline, indebted (to be sure) to many sciences and 

 to many other sources than science, but adding matter and method of 

 its own, and rounding up all that it handles into a single whole. It is 

 therefore no more in order to speak to-day, say, of an "applied psy- 

 chology," than it would be to call engineering by its older name of " ap- 

 plied mechanics"; and the sooner we recognize that, in this particular 

 sense, technology is independent of science, that the technologist lives 

 and moves in a world of his own, has his own problems and methods, is 

 charged with a special message to his generation, the sooner shall we 

 exchange our present bickering for the harmony that we desire. 



Science and technology are, in the second place, closely related; the 

 nature of the relationship has been sketched in preceding paragraphs. 

 If we look at this relation from without, from the side of maintenance 

 and material aids, then the advantage lies with technology, and science 

 is the beneficiary. The scientific man, accordingly, should rejoice at 

 every technological advance, seeing that it ensures by just so much the 

 material future of science. "How many men," asked Kepler in the old 

 time, "how many men would be able to make astronomy their business, 

 if men did not cherish the hope to read the future in the skies?" — and, 

 with change of terms, the story is told again of us moderns. If, con- 

 trariwise, we look at the relation from within, then, as this paper has 

 tried to show, technology appears as the beneficiary of science. The 

 technologist should accordingly rejoice at every scientific advance, see- 

 ing that it means just so much more of observed fact which he may some 



