Technology as Applied Science

Abstract

The application of the scientific method and of scientific theories of the attainment of practical goals poses interesting philosophical problems, such as the nature of technological knowledge, the alleged validating power of action, the relation of technological rule to scientific law, and the effects of technological forecast on human behavior. These problems have been neglected by most philosophers, probably because the peculiarities of modern technology, and particularly the differences between it and pure science, are realized infrequently and cannot be realized as long as technologies are mistaken for crafts and regarded as theory-free. The present paper deals with those problems and is therefore an essay in the nearly non-existent philosophy of technology.