Science and Technology

Science gained its authority from the successes of technology. When Daniel Dennett of Tufts wants to offer unanswerable proof of the supremacy of science, he writes, "I have yet to meet a postmodern science critic who is afraid to fly in an airplane because he doesn't trust the calculations of the thousands of aeronautical engineers and physicists that have demonstrated and exploited the principles of flight." Dennett is right: Real science is practical and demonstrable, following the inspiration of Michael Faraday, Heinrich Hertz, Thomas Edison, William Shockley, Robert Noyce, Charles Townes, and Charles Kao -- the people who built the machines of the modern age. If you can build something, you can understand it.^[1]

The problem with Dr. Dennett's argument, which I was first presented with in my course on the philosophy of the natural sciences at Mason, is that it conflates the two. Technology is not science, science is not technology. Cartesian geometry is still useful here on a round planet precisely because the theory can be wrong in a strict sense without invalidating all applications of it. Similarly, Newton's laws are still considered useful. That is, planes would fly if constructed a certain way even if we did not know why that design worked.

Having the math, the why, certainly makes plane construction easier, but it is not, strictly speaking, necessary. It would be far more costly both in life and money to build planes by trial and error, but it could be done. That is because planes are technology, not science.

People do not get on planes thinking "Oh, someone has surely done the math on this plane and proved it can fly, therefore I can trust that it is safe." Rather, they think more along the lines of "I know it looks like total nonsense, but I know these fly every day and most of them do not crash." They trust experience, not the theory.

So yes, people trust technology, on the basis of having seen it work, without trusting science. I will go further, however, I will go so far as to say that they are right to do so.

For I agree with Mr. Gilder here, to build something is to understand it. It is not enough to be able to say "One third of the time, if we follow these steps desirable result X will happen." No one would trust a technology that could only make that claim. They might not even be willing to grant it the name "technology" but would rather classify it as an "experiment." Scientists who can only make probabilistic predictions, or statistical summaries do not really understand what is going on.

Someone once said that if [s]he appeared great, it was because[s]he stood on the shoulders of giants. The scientist trying to claim absolute trust in his or her latest theory on the basis of the fact that I trust an airplane to fly should remember that [s]he too stands on the shoulders of giants. They are not asking my trust having invented the laws of aerodynamics, but rather as one standing in a very long line of scientists who have made tremendous mistakes. [S]He stands in line with Dr. Lamarck, who thought that acquired characteristics are inheritable. [S]He stands in line with those who advocated the existence of ether as a medium for the transmission of light. [S]He stands in line with those who predicated the atom as a solid billiard ball, and with those doctors who thought men and women necessarily breathe differently after studying the way women who had always worn corsets breathe. That scientist should step small, and tread lightly, fearing to be laughed at by the generations to come for his or her terrific blunders. Instead, scientists ask that I, simply because I have not studied their field, blindly trust them to be accurate. It will not happen.