COSMOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGY 109 



becomes in consequence a cheap and abundant starting material for 

 chemical inquiries previously impossible. In such exchanges the sym- 

 biosis of science and technology finds its clearest expression. Hertz's 

 short-range transmitters and receivers are, through technologic de- 

 velopment, transmuted into efficient radio equipment. This, in the 

 hands of scientists, leads to further explorations in which the possi- 

 bility of radar detection is first manifested. A further technologic 

 development yields practical radar devices, the newly available com- 

 ponents of which open to exploration new areas of fundamental sci- 

 entific research, e.g., microwave spectroscopy. 



SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



Their intimate symbiotic relation makes difficult a satisfactory dis- 

 tinction of science from technology. Define science as what scientists 

 do? But men like Perkin, Caro, Kelvin, and Pasteur have shuttled 

 back and forth between what is clearly science and what is no less 

 clearly technology. Define science rather in terms of results that com- 

 bine novelty with generality? A much better possibility, I think. Only 

 novelty that has some generality is scientifically interesting novelty, 

 and Poincare remarks : 



. . . scientists believe there is a hierarchy of facts . . . the most 

 interesting facts are those which may serve many times; these are the 

 facts which have a chance of coming up again. 



What then is a good experiment? It is that which informs us of 

 something besides an isolated fact; it is that which enables us to fore- 

 see, that is, that which enables us to generalize. 



Consider an example. While seeking means to reduce or eliminate 

 internal blackening in the incandescent lamp, Edison stumbled on 

 what we call the Edison eflFect. This remained an isolated curiosity 

 for some years, but ultimately was caught up in the web of the theory 

 of the electron elaborated by J. J. Thomson. Thus identified with the 

 emission of thermo-electrons, the Edison eflFect becomes a crucial 

 factor in such further advances as the Fleming valve and the de 

 Forest triode— early harbingers of a flood of electronic devices of 

 immense importance to both technology and science. The Edison 

 eflFect is science: the discovery of a new and general phenomenon. 

 Edison's far more celebrated invention of the incandescent lamp is 

 not science. Exploiting well known general relations— e.g., a current 

 heats a resistor, a body strongly heated becomes incandescent, no 



