G. F. C. Rogers (Auth.) - The Nature of Engineering - A Philosophy of Technology-Macmillan Education UK (1983)

The Nature of Engineering
Dedication
This book is dedi cated to the increasing number of you ng women who
a r e studying f or a degree in engineering . They are intelligent
be i ngs who will not be put of f by the continual r eference t o man:
they will appre ciate t hat i t would have been ridic ulously pedantic
t o refer repeatedly t o homo sapi ens , 'he or she ', a nd ' ~en or women'.
The Nature of Engineering
A philosophy of technology
G. F. C. Rogers
Professor Emeritus
University of Bristol
© G F C Rogers 1983
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means ,
without permission.
Published by
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ISBN 978-1-349-06685-8 ISB N 978-1-349-06683-4 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-06683-4
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Contents
1 INTRODUCTI ON 1
2 TH E HIS TORY OF TECHNOLOGY AND SCI ENCE 7

Craft 10 000 BC to AD 500 8
Nat ur a l Philos ophy 3000 BC to AD 1400 10
Sc ienc e 1400 t o 1700 14
Tech nics 500 t o 1 850 16
Sc i e nce 1700 t o 1850 21
Dev elopme nt of Engineer ing Education 25
Some Cha r a c t e r i s t i cs of Sc i e nce an d Technology 28
3 SCI ENTI FI C AND TECHNOLOGI CAL EXPLA NATION 32

What is Mea nt by Explana t ion? 32
Sc i e nt i f i c Exp l an a tion 34
Hi s torica l Exp l ana t i on 41
Technological Exp l anat i on 42
Eng i ne er i ng , Te chnol ogy a nd E ngi nee ~ing Sci e nce 51
4 CREATI VI TY AND ENGINEERING DESIGN 57

Engineeri ng as an Ar t? 57
The Creat ive Process 61
Engi neering Design 64
5 CHO I CE OF TECHNOLOGI CAL FUT UPE S 68

Ethi ca l Pr obl ems Aris ing fr om Technol og ical Act ivi t y 68
A Code of Ethi cs for Engi nee r s? 76
Broad Ca t eg or i es of Technology 78
6 CO NTROL OF TECH NOLOGY 89

Tech nol og i ca l De cision-making 89
Risk Assess ment 92
Soc i a l Contro l of Technology 96
7 A SUMM ING UP - AND SPECULATI ON 100

Preface
This e s s ay is a co ntribut ion to t he cur r ent debate a bout the impact

of t e ch nology on our l ives , th e ethical problems arising therefr om,
a nd the ways in whi ch soc i e ty can exercise con t ro l . In a de moc r acy ,
s uc h co nt r ol is unlikely t o be e f f ect ive unles s t he public , Ci vi l
Serv ice and politician s ha ve a c l ear id Ea as to the nat ur 8 cf
e ng ineeri ng and the co ndi t ions under whi ch t e chn ologi es de ve lop an d
make their i mpact .
In r ecent years en gi ne er i ng s tud ent s ha ve been encouraged t o
think abou t these mat t e rs by the r equiremen ts for members hip of t he
Council of Engineering Instit ut ions . All uni ver s iti es and po ly-
technics i n clude a sub ject called ' The Enginee r i n Soc iety ' in t heir
degree cou rses. It i s hoped t ha t th i s book will be found useful as
supp lementa ry readi ng fo r thes e studen ts.
The book contrasts th e history of te chnology with t ha t of sc ience
and attempts t o h ighlight th e essent ial features of technology i n
relation to oth er forms of knowledge . For t h i s reason it has been
subt itled ' A Phi losophy of Techno logy '. The reasons why engin-
eering spawns e t h i c a l prob lems in t his century are examined , and
the pros and co ns of advanced techno logy vis-~-vis ' al t er na ti ve'
technology a r e d iscussed . The book conc ludes with a description
of recent v i ews on decision-mak ing i n t he t e chnologi ca l sphere .
I am most grateful t o co l leagues wi t h whom I have discussed
parts of the book , and i n pa r t icular to my wife and David Block ley
who have be en kind enough t o read the co mpl ete manuscrip t and make
helpfu l s ugg es t ions . Gil l i an Davis deserve s a special ment ion for
her ski l l a t de ciph er i ng my appal l i ng ha ndwr iting and for her
e f f ic ien t t ypin g.
G. F.C . Rogers
1982
1 Introduction
We live i n an a ge of the s pecialist: an age in whi ch spe cialised

ac t i vi t y is pursued by spe cialists for the appl a us e of spe cialists .
Even within ea ch r e lat ive ly narrow branch of knowledge, whether it
be Engl ish liter ature, Chr i s t ian theology, phys ica l science or
mech ani ca l engine er i ng , the s pec i a l i s t s can se l dom talk mean ing-
f ul l y t o one an other . The Ang lo-Saxon scho lar has just as much
d i f f icul t y i n co mmun icating with the cr i t ic of the modern novel as
the thermodyn a micist has in c onv ey i ng hi s ideas to the stress
a nalys t . I t is not a ma t ter of 'two cultures' but of a myriad of
c ul t ures , a l l of whi ch are in comprehensible t o the ma jority of
manki nd .
While no one can h ope t o understan d the work of mor e than a few
of these specialists, many of us can and should try to understand
the fr amework of ideas within which each broad group operates.
Thi s i s es pe c ia l l y nece ssary when the s pe c ia l i s ts a re engineers or
te chn ologists be cause their power t o influen ce the way in whi ch we
live has rea ch ed an awesome level. Within th ree decades they
have made av ai l able nu clear energy, space exploration, world-wide
te l evision vi a sat e l l it es , the mi cr och i p an d r oboti cs, and now
there is the prospe ct of gen eti c manipulati on. Finding ways of
harnessing the power of technology for the gr e a t er benefit of man-
kind, a nd of mod era t i ng the socia l s tress es aris i ne f rom t he ever-
increasing r a t e of te chn ological chang e, poses unp aralleled problems
f or humanity . There i s little hope of accomplishing either of
thes e things unless both the publi c and government understand the
natur e of engineering and the ways in which technologies are born
and deve lop .
Be f ore proceeding, it is ne cessary t o s ay something about the
d i s tinc t ion between 'engineer' and 'technologist'. 'Engineer' is
derived from the Latin ingeniatorem meaning one who is ingenious at
de vising . It was ori ginally used to refer t o those who specialised
in the co ns t r uc t i on of military equipment and fortifications, and in
the early days there was no c l ear distinction between engineer and
architect . We will use the term engineer in the modern s ens e as
being a professi onal man with sufficient theoretical knowledge and
practical exper ience to enable him to take responsibility for
technical projects and be a driving for ce for te chnical innovation.
This is how the term is used on the continent of Europe. It is
usual to indicate the broad field of endeavour within which the
engineer work s by a ddi ng such adjectives as civil, mechanical,
ele ctrical, aeronautical, chemical, and so on . The professional
institutions are also ca t e gor i s e d in this way . We shall ignore
the loose usage in the U. K. where 'engineer' has a much wider
2 The Nature of Engineering
connotation: from a semi-skilled machinist to a chief designer;

from John Smith on the shop floor or the railways to Sir Frank
Whittle who fathered the jet engine and Lord Hinton who organised
the construction of our first nuclear power stations.
An engineer in the professional sense needs not only an adequate
knowledge of technical matters, but also some familiarity Hith
aspects of economics, accountancy and law, together with consider-
able organisational ability. Indeed, if he is running a small
consultancy practice - in structural engineering say - the economic
and legal aspects are central to the conduct of his business. The
technical matters of which an engineer should have cognisance com-
prise the 'technology' of his sphere of activity. It follows
that the engineer is a somewhat broader individual than the tech-
nologist. An engineer in charge of the whole or part of a project
may'use the services of a number of different types of technologist
just as he will use the services of many types of craftsman.
In one sense, however, the term 'technology' may seem broader
than 'engineering'. This is because there are technologies which
do not fall within the well-known categories of engineering. These
are associated with what are called the process industries: paper-
making, food processing, drug manufacture and so on. The word
'technology' has its roots in the Greek 'techne' meaning art or
skill and 'logia' meaning science or study. The term is therefore
normally applied to any area of study which has a scientific com-
ponent but which also includes a body of practical knowledge not
yet susceptible to theoretical analysis. In colloquial language,
a technology always contains a strong element of 'know-how'. Using
technology as a collective noun, we may take it to mean the study
and reasoned account of technical processes. The essential feature
of such processes is that they enable man to transform the physical
world around himself. He does it by:
(a) increasing the efficiency of his body via tools covering the
whole spectrum from small hand tools to automatic machine tools,
by giving it mobility through transport systems, and by housing
it in greater comfort than nature provides;
(b) increasing the efficiency of his senses via instruments which
enable repeatable measurements to be made and which amplify sight
and sound or measure phenomena not directly perceivable by the
senses; and
(c) increasing the efficiency of his intellect via aids to memory,
intelligence and communication such as printing, photography, com-
puting machines and telecommunication systems.
This book is an attempt to make explicit the main ways in which
engineering knowledge differs from other branches of knowledge, and
we shall be concentrating mainly on the technical aspects of an
engineer's task. For this particular purpose, therefore, there is
no reason to treat engineer and technologist as other than
synonymous terms. Much of what is said will in any case apply also
to technologies which fall outside engineering. vfuen discussing
other aspects of an engineer's work, such as his role as decision-
maker, we shall use the term more precisely. The book has been
sub-titled 'A Philosophy of Technology' and we must now briefly
consider the sense in which we are using the term 'philosophy'.
One of the distinguishing characteristics of homo sapiens is his
extraordinary ability to reflect upon what he is doing and to
Introduction 3
derive considerable pleasure and satisfaction in the process.

Philosophy is the name given to the process of reflecting upon an
intellectual activity, when the process is carried out in a
reasonably systematic manner. The philosophy of a branch of
knowledge, such as religion, history, art or science, is normally
an attempt to understand the principles of the mode of thinking
involved and to see how that branch fits into the whole corpus of
human knowledge. Part of the pleasure derived comes from the
feeling of security that the possession of a map always gives -
whether it is a geographical map or a map of knowledge. To
understand the principles of a mode of thought, we have to clarify
and organise the general concepts used in that mode. Ordinary
language is vague and imprecise; as indeed it must be to encompass
the tremendous range and variety of human experience . When
selecting and focusing on particular cross-sections of experience,
however, we are able to develop sharper and more precise tools of
expression by distinguishing clearly the different meanings that
a word has in different contexts. Another part of the pleasurable
feeling comes from the higher level of understanding that this
affords, and the intellectual excitement of discovering hidden pre-
suppositions of which one was previously unaware. This can lead
one to suppose that by philosophising about a subject one might be
able to pursue the subject itself more effectively afterwards.
Certainly a clear idea as to the status of engineering knowledge
and the place of engineering in society is necessary for those who
allocate research funds and who have to decide between the com-
peting claims of engineering and science. It might help govern-
ments also, in their difficult task of deciding which of several
major technical projects to support . Lastly, it might encourage
enterprising youtn to see engineering as a career of vital
importance to the well-being of society .
When approaching the philosophy of technology, the first
question which springs to mind is why is there so much philosophy
of s cience and s o little philosophy of technology? Philosophers
have always hoped that the philosophy of science might in some way
help scientists to improve their performance. It may be that
philosophers have been discouraged from examining technology by
the feeling that engineers are less likely to take note of their
efforts because engineers have a practical end in view and are less
concerned with theoretical understanding for its own sake than the
scientist.
Perhaps another reason for the neglect of technology by phil-
osophers can be found in the following aphorism:
A scientist looks at the world and tries to explain what
he sees: an engineer looks at the world and tries to
supply what he sees is missing.
Like all dichotomies, this presents a very simplistic view of the
true state of affairs. Scientists playa large part in changing
the face of the world, and engineers often try to explain phenomena.
In practice, therefore, there is no clear distinction of this kind
between the roles of the scientist and engineer. If we substitute
'science' for 'a scientist' and 'technology' for 'an engineer' the
aphorism might have a grain of truth . This overcomes the diffi-
c ul t y that sometimes scientists act as engineers and vice versa.
The thought behind the aphorism does explain why philosophers
have paid much mor e a tten t ion to s c ience t han t o technology or

e ngineering . For many ce nt ur i es s c ience has been a re cognised
body of t hought wi th it s own methods fo r a cquir ing knowledge a nd
est abli shing the t ru th of its propos i t ions . Thes e methods, and
the pre suppositi ons b ehind them, ha ve thrown up pr oblems whi ch are
of obv i ous i nte r est to ph i losophers . What are t he imp l icat ions of
science f or the theory of kn owledge (ep i stemology)? What i s the
nat ure of sci en tific explanat ion , and how does i t d i f fer fro m ot her
va r i e t i es such as historical explanation? What i s t h e l ogi cal
s tatus of sci en t i f ic l aws and sci en t i f ic proof? Are sci en t i f i c
propos iti ons c a pable of proof or are t h ey mere ly falsi f iab le
statements? And s o on .
The aphorism al s o e xp l a i ns why ph i losoph ers s e l dom seem t o use
e xamples fr om scient ific activity when tackling problems of moral
phi l os oph y or ethics : i f s c ien ce i s simply concern ed with e x-
plaining na ture - explaining what ex ists - e th ical pr ob lems do no t
a r ise . Sc i ent i s t s t hems elves, howe ver, ha ve b een very conc er ned
with e t h ica l problems b e caus e of co ur s e science is inextri cably
linked wi th engi neering whose rai son d '~tre is ' s upply i ng wha t is
mis s ing ' an d t her eby chang i ng t h e way i n whi ch we li ve. 11ed i ca l
sc ien ce generally , and ge ne t i cs i n particular , are r ife with
ethical prob lems at t he present t i me. Thi s i s because they are
essent ially pract i cal sciences whos e appli cation has obvious s oc i a l
co ns eq uenc es i nvo l v i n g co ns i de r a t ion of human va l ues .
One may agree then that i t is na tu r a l for ph ilosophers t o have
be come interes ted i n s c ience . Perhaps our aphorism als o suggests
r easons why t her e has been no cor r es pondi ng i nter est i n t e chnology .
If tech nology i s merely con cer ne d wi th t he ar bi t rar y produc tion of
a r t ifacts , as an d when an engine e r s ees s omething 'is missing ' ,
it c an hard ly throw up interes ting philos ophi cal questions.
Ce r tai nly it poses psycho l og ical prob l e ms - f or example, the or igi n
a nd nat ur e of inven tion and cr ea t i vi t y - bu t pe r hap s not s t r ict l y
phi losoph ical pr oblems. However , i f the fundamental purpose of
techn ol ogy i s t o c hange the way in whi ch we l i ve - whether because
it changes the means of produci ng ord inary goods ( r epl a c i ng humans
by machines) or be cause it i nt r oduces nove l goods with f a r - reach i ng
soc1 al co ns e quen ces (the motor car) - surely it should at least
throw up ethica l problems of interes t to phi~osophers. One obvious
prob lem is t he rela t ions h ip b etween col l ect i ve e th ics and persona l
ethics. Te chnology provi de s a ri ch source of ex ampl es of co llec-
tive e th i cal prob lem s , i f by co l lect ive e thics we mepn t he mora l
stance adopt ed by a s ociety. For exa mpl e , how s hou ld a wea l t hy
so cie~ y v iew the maintenance of r esources for future genera t ions ,
its e ff ect on the envir onment, risk an d the value of a n individual' s
life, or the problems of the de veloping co unt r i es? I t i s t he
inc r easing p ower of t e chnology, maki ng it possible f or us t o
regul a t e ev e nts whi ch hitherto were regarded f atalis ti cally, which
throws up these e t hica l problems. Whatever e lse i t contains , any
phi los ophy of t e chn ology mus t sure ly concern its elf wi th ethics .
But of course t e ch nology does no t mer e l y invo l ve the arbit r ar y
production of artif a cts: of lit t l e more t ha n toys t o kee p modern
ma n f r om worrying about the cosmi c questions 'Who are we?', ' Why
are we he re?' and 'What should we do ? ' . Viewe d from t he stone a ge
onwards , technology has played an imp ortant r o l e in the de velopment
of man a s a species and it is a vital part of our cultural heritage.
Introduction 5
Moreover, technology is not just a matter of invention and manipu-

lative skill: it is something more than craft. The development
of abstract concepts plays an essential part, and in sophisticated
engineering there is a vast theoretical content. It can be argued
that the type of reasoning involved must be distinguishable from
that used in science, if only because of its direct connection with
purposive design and development. There is certainly a task for a
philosophy of engineering or technology here, in delineating such
distinctions.
Some of the questions that might be raised are as follows . What
is the relation between technological rule and scientific law?
What is the logical basis of validation by practice and how is this
related to the idea that scientific statements are falsifiable rather
than verifiable? Is there a logical difference between scientific
prediction and technological forecast? Does the way in which tech-
nologies are classified differ significantly from the way the
sciences are classified? How do the presuppositions which foster
the development of technology differ from those which foster the
growth of science? Is there an historical contingency about
technology not present with science in that technologies are super-
seded in rather different ways than are scientific theories?
It seems clear then that a reasonable first step in placing
technology correctly within the corpus of human knowledge is to
examine the precise nature of the distinctions that can be drawn
between science and technology. We know that science and tech-
nology are now very closely linked: man could not have set foot on
the moon without making full use of both forms of knowledge. Many
modern technologies are based on scientific discoveries and all make
use of scien ce to some degree; while science makes a correspon-
dingly great use of technology to provide its complex research
equipment. Perhaps we can obtain a clearer view of the distinction
by going back in history to a time when this close link was not in
evidence. In doing so it is easy to jump to the conclusion that
technology predated science and that it provided an essential
stimulus for the growth of science. But are we sure that we are
still speaking of the field of thought and activity which we now
ca t egor i s e as technological? Or might we be thinking of something
which was no more than invention (often as a result of some lucky
combination of circumstances) coupled with manipulative skill, that
is, craft . Such a combination was no doubt the precursor of tech-
nology just as classification of natural phenomena was a precursor
of science. If it should appear that what can properly be called
technology did not materialise until craft began to be combined with
science, the historical approach may not contribute much to our
search for distinguishing features. Nevertheless, by telling us
something about the precursors of science and technology the
historical approach may carry us a step forward. Chapter 2 will
be devoted to this topic.
The questions posed earlier, concerning possible philosophical
points of difference between science and technology, will be taken
up in chapter 3. Furthermore, because we are interested in placing
technology correctly within the complete spectrum of human knowledge
we shall also from time to time be referring to knowledge which is
other than scientific or technological. In chapter 4 we take up
the question of creativity in engineering and examine the processes
involved in engineering design. Ethical problems raised by techno-

logical developments, and the current controversy between advanced
technology and alternate technology, receive attention in chapter 5.
Finally, in chapter 6 we discuss matters relating to decision-
making in the technological sphere and the ways in which society can
exercise control. In these last two chapters, and in the summing-
up, we shall be dealing with human' values and ideas about which
there is a wide variety of opinion. Inevitably at this stage we
shall be thinking of 'philosophy' in the colloquial sense, as when
people refer to their 'philosophy of life'.
2 The History of Technology and
Science
Cr a f t 10 000 BC t o AD 500 ; natura l philosophy 3000 BC t o

AD 140 0 ; s c ience 1400 to 1700 ; t echn i cs 500 t o 1 850;
s c i ence 1700 t o 1850; de velopmen t of en gineering ed ucation ;
some cha r a ct er i s t ic s o f scien ce and te chn ology.
From recent arch a e ol ogic al ev iden ce it appears that man has be en

using t ools for a t l east two a nd a half million year s . For most
of thi s pe r iod , howe ve r, he had t o b e co ntent with st on e cl ubs and
axes and s imp le t ools of bo ne and an t l er . Progres s seems to ha ve
awai t e d t he last of the major c l i ma t i c cha ng es , around 10 000 BC ,
when t h e i c e sheets began to retreat i n the northern hemisphe r e.
Thi s is a su i t able s t a r t i n g point f or our his t or y because then man
began to chan ge from a h unt er/ga t herer t o a f a rmer/s hephe rd . He
found t h a t t he bet ter gr a i ns could b e cul t ivated , and that s ome
an i mals wo uld br e ed in cap t ivi t y and so c ou l d be do mes t icat ed .
Thi s t r a nsit i on i nvolved a chang e i n man 's a t t i t ude to his environ-
me nt fr om somet hi n g given , t o s omet h ing whi ch co ul d be con t rol l e d
and mod i f i ed : and t h is mus t surely be t he fun damen ta l pre-
s upposi t i on upo n which a l l t e chn ology i s based .
I n say i n g this we a re not sugges t i n g th at techno logy appear e d on
t he scene a t this e arly s tage in man ' s de velopment . As our s t or y
unf olds it wi l l be cl ear t h at the ge s t a t ion pe ri od was ver y l on g ,
an d ev en l on ger than t ha t f or scienc e . What we f i nd our s e lves
describ ing f i r s t i s t he growth of craft , unt il a turn in g poin t is
rea ched around AD 500 . We fo l lcM this with a de scr ipt ion of t he
developmen t of wha t was cal led natural: phi Loeophu dur ing an over-
l a pping peri od f r om 3000 BC t o AD 1400 . We s hall argue that what
can pr ope r l y be ca l led science a rose i n abou t AD 1400 a nd we shall
co n t i n ue tha t story up t o AD 1700 . We then re vert t o AD 500 , t o
rej oin t he his t ory of cr a f t , only t o fi nd that it i s now mor e
appropriately ca l l ed techni cs . We ca r r y t h is s t or y through t o
1 850, by which t ime we s hal l fin d that t echno l ogy pr op er ha s a r r ived.
Fi na l l y , we re ver t to t he hi st or y of s cience and cont i n ue i t t o the
s ame da te . A f inal sect ion prpvides a brief review of t he his tory
of en g ineering e du c a t ion.
By the end of t h i s hi st oric a l s urvey we shall have a c l e a rer i de a
of the distinc t i ons be twe en craf t , te chni cs, t e chnol ogy , natural
philos oph y and science . His t orians gene r ally , and archaeolog is ts
in par t i cu l a r , ten d to us e t he te r m 'te chnology ' ve ry loosely . It
is as well t o r e membe r that i f we have differen t words in t he l an-
gu a ge , whi ch sup er fi cia lly s eem t o mean the s ame thin g , t here are
pr obably sub t l e d ifferenc e s of meaning whi ch are wor th r e t a i ning.
7
CRAFT 10 000 BC to AD 500
A suitable location to have in mind for the start of this history

is the Middle East. Firstly, in this region there was a happy
combination of fertile slopes and valleys for food production,
mountain ranges rich in minerals, and rivers leading to the
Mediterranean and Indian Ocean to aid communication. Secondly,
archaeologists have probably been more active in this region than
in any other. And thirdly, the development of our western civil-
isation and culture had its origin in this area.
Once farming had become an established way of life, there was a
need to store grain and the craft of making fired clay pots was
eventually established. This led to what was virtually a 'cottage
industry' turning out a variety of fired clay articles from pots -
utilitarian, ceremonial and decorative - to building bricks. Time
and again we see that a craft is invented to meet a precise and
perceived need although, once invented, other needs which can be
served by that craft soon spring into existence. It is this
interaction between need, invention, and the creation of new needs
which is responsible for the ex?onential expansion of crafts and
ultimately of technology. Other techniques, for milling grain,
spinning thread and weaving reeds, were also developed during this
early period.
When the technique for making bronze was established in about
3500 BC, all this activity could be pursued more effectively w~th
better tools, and specialisation of labour became the norm. Pro-
gress was made in building, and towns began to appear in which men
could come together to cross-fertilise their crafts and hand on
their skills more easily to the next generation. At this time
arose some remarkable men, many of whom can only be described as
engineer/architect/priests. They were capable of organising the
construction of such monumental achievements as the Karnak temple,
the pyramids, and complex irrigation schemes. By 2000 BC some of
the towns had become cities and the centres of small empires. The
introduction of iron as a tool and weapon material in about 1400 BC
(perhaps by the Hittites in Central Turkey or their near neighbours)
added impetus to these developments, as did the growth of shipping
for the exchange of raw material and finished products. By 700 Be
countries were minting coins to facilitate trade.
Of course the transition from hunter to farmer to city dweller
took place in other parts of the world also, and similar crafts
were developed in these other regions more or less simultaneously.
~fuat differences there were, depended very largely on the type of
raw material available. For example, whereas iron was wrought by
hammering in the Iliddle East, it was more often cast in China.
This was probably because Chinese iron ore had a higher phos-
phorus content which gave the metal a lower melting point. Not
surprisingly, the craft of mould-making reached a higher standard
in China than elsewhere.
In other regions, the transition from hunter went no further
than primitive farming, forms of which still exist today in South
America and New Guinea. The question arises as to why further
advances were made in some areas and not others. We shall never
know, for example, whether the process of annealing metal was dis-
covered purely by a chance observation when a piece of copper fell
The History of Technology and Science 9
accidentally into a fire, or whether some logical process of

thought was involved. ~fuat is certain is that only in areas with
good communications could such discoveries spread from one
community to another and germinate. And only in fertile areas
could some of the people be freed from food production to be
enabled to live in cities and devote their time to the development
of crafts. Such conditions existed pre-eminently in the Middle
Eas t, but were clearly lacking i ::1 the Amazonian basin .
Continuing our historical ex c.rr-s Lon , the period 1000 to 300 BC
saw a wealth of invention, particularly in Greece. The welding
of iron by hammering, the potters wheel, lathes, clocks, pumps -
all these processes or devices and many more seem to have been
invented in this period. The waterwheel, which one might regard
as the first device for harnessing the forces of nature to
supplement human and animal power, was probably invented in
Northern Greece. No doubt an important spur for these develop-
ments was the rather higher status which was accorded to craftsmen
by the Greeks than by the Asiatics. We may note, however, that
the inventions were still based on simple principles, for example,
that air expands on heating, and used relatively simple components
such as springs, screws, pulleys, levers, cogs and cams.
Around 300 BC the centre of power shifted to Rome . The Romans
brought a variety of crafts to a new pitch of perfection, but
curiously enough invented few new ones. For example, although
not the inventors of the waterwheel, the Romans improved it by
mounting the wheel vertically and using gears to increase the
speed of the millstone. Fur-therrnor-e , they carried the idea with
them throughout their Empire, and so were responsible for the spread
of this valuable source of power. It has been argued that the lack
of technical progress played a part in the decline of the Roman
Empire. Some historians have suggested that there was a lack of
incentive owing to the widespread use of slave labour, and that an
excess of manpower led provincial rulers to discourage anything
that might cauSe unemployment and social unrest. According to
Suetonius, the Emperor Vespasian (AD 69-79) was generous to an
inventor who proposed a device for transporting heavy columns to
the Capitol, but made no use of it saying 'You must let me feed my
poor commons' . Other historians have argued that the low level
of technical knowledge possessed by the administrators and civil
servants was an important cause of stagnation. Both these reasons
have an uncomfortably familiar ring in the 1980s.
What the Romans did - apart from giving the world a sophisti-
cated legal and administrative system - was to invent the pro-
fessions of civil and military engineer. These were men who
designed and planned projects which could be carried out by the
lower orders . Such 'white collar' work was socially acceptable
and actively encouraged. The engineer had to know what the
craftsmen were capable of producing, but did not himself have to
acquire the skills involved. The Romans became superb at the
building of roads, bridges, tunnels, and towns and cities with
their associated systems of water supply and drainage. It has
been estimated that 80 000 kilometres of major roads were built
throughout their Empire.
Roman engineering, and the attitude to it which prevailed at
the time, was recorded by Vitruvius in his book 'De Arohiteotura'.
Vi t r uv i us was a military en8ineer under Juliu s Caesar in the firs!

ce nt ury BC. His book gives much practi cal adv ice on the con-
struction of buildings, finding water and testing it, properties
of r ain-water, methods of levelling, the waxing and waning of the
moon, the sun's cour s e through the sky and length of day, axl e s ,
pulleys, steelyards, t illers, oa r s , sails, yo kes f or oxen, pumps
and mi l i t a r y engines. In a se ction on the training of a rch i t ect s
he states that 'a man who, without cul t ur e , a i ms at manual skill,
cannot gain a prestige corresponding to his labours, while those
wh o trust to theory and literature follow a shadow not re ality;
only those who have mastered both attain their purposes' . 'The
architect should be a man of letters to keep a record of useful
precedents; a skilful draughtsman who can represent by coloured
drawings the effect de sired; a mathematician who can us e rule and
compas s , layout works, use optics to consider the effe ct of light
and arithmetic to add up cos t s; a historian to give an a ccount
of events in his decorati ons; a diligent s t uden t of philosophy
t o ma ke him high-minded, not ar r ogant , f air-minded, without
a varice, also understanding the principles of nature and the flow
of water; not ignorant of medicine for works o f water s upp l y and
dr a i na ge ; learne d in the law for cont r a ct s , spe cifi cations and
disputes; an d, finally, familiar with astronomy and as t ronomi ca l
calculations .' Put into modern terminology, this would be quite
a reasonable ac count of what is required of an en gineer today.
With the recording of the rules-of-thumb a ccumulated for
designing man's constructions - and we may assume that Vi t r uvi us
was not alone in doing this - we could say that cr a f t had by now
developed into technics t . Although no doubt some theoreti cal
t Th is wa s a t e r m u sed by Lewi s Mumford in hi s class ic wor k

'Technics and Ci vi l isation' (Routledge, 1934).
backing was provided for a few of these rules-of-thumb , notably
by Euclidean geometry, such backing was minimal. Looking at the
various cr a f t s in as much detail as the work of a r cha eol ogi s t s
permits, it does not appear that they were developed other than by
a comb i na t i on of invention and manipulative skill . It is very
d oubtful if the craftsmen, or the engineers who made use of them
for major projects, knew why their techniques worked; or indeed
whether they ever posed that kind of question. Progress seems
much more likely to have been by chance discoveries and trial-and-
error experiments, than by the sustained use of the intellect com-
bined with experiments designed to analyse and explain the phenomena
involved. Only the latter can be dignified by the term te chnology.
Before continuing with the history of technics, let us look at what
was happening on the intellectual front while all these crafts were
being developed and methods of organising large projects by engin-
eers were being established.
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 3000 Be TO AD 1400
We know nothing of the way in which the transition from animal

noises to language took place. All we have are works of imagin-
ation such as William Golding's The Inheritors. We can enter the
history of man's thought only in about 3000 BC when the Middle
The History of Technolog y and Science 11
Eastern pr iests and admini strators began to keep records on clay

t ab l e ts . The s e s uggest t ha t rule-of - thumb arithmetic was avai l -
able f or commercial t r a ns a c tions. making s en s e of a s tronomical
e ve nts . and survey ing . Thi s arithmet ic was certainly l i t tle more
than the intellectual equivalent of a cr a f t . There i s nothing to
suggest that a t t hi s s t age man had achieved t he l evel of abstract
thought needed t o generalise these r ules- of-thumb . so mathemat ics
has ye t t o appe a r on the scene . Thi s i s no t to belitt le hi s
t r emendous achi evement very much earl ier in arrivi n g at t he concept
of numbe r . To see the co mmon denominator between fi ve trees . fi ve
s t on es and fi ve fingers was . toge t he r wi t h l ang uage itse lf . the
f i r s t step in man's in telle c tua l de velopment. Probably t he next
most helpful de velopment was t he ch ange f rom i de ogr aphic wr i t i n g
to a phone t ic a lphabet . the earl ies t e xample of which has be en
f ound i n Judah. da t e d 1700 BC .
Reco rds s ugges t tha t in our part of the world it wa s t he Gr e ek s .
a fter a bout 1000 BC. who f irst s tar t e d to th ink ab out the proper-
ties of number ( as oppo sed t o inventing rules f or mu ltiplication
an d di vis ion ) . the propert ies of triangles ( as opposed t o measuring
tri angular fields). an d the na t ure of fir e ( a s oppo sed t o using it
t o make c l a y po ts) . Some effort t o c l a ssify phenome na was ma de .
the abili ty t o handle abs tra ct c onc ept s lik e lines and po i nt s was
devel oped . an d the i deas of l ogi cal de duct ion a nd rigorous proof
were born . Thes e are a l l ne cessary condit ions for the es tab l i s h-
ment of mathemat i cs a nd sc ience as we know t hem. The ba s i c pre-
suppos ition behind all t hi s int ell ectual act ivity i s tha t the human
mind ha s some hope of unders tand ing the world a r oun d us becaus e of
the re gu lari ty exh ib i ted by natural ph enomena . The no t ion that
events mi ght be determined by c a us e and e f f ect in na ture . as
oppose d t o the capricious wi l l of sundry ~ods . must have t aken ho ld
of some men ' s minds in t h i s period . No doub t t h i s was a l l made
pos sible by the Gr ee ks ' fl air for social organisat i on - albe i t
based on s lavery - which ga ve s ome c i t i zens time for these
i ntel l e c t ua l purs uits .
Tha les of Mi l e tos . who l ived i n the seventh c ent ury Be . i s of ten
r e garded as th e f ounder of science. (This is a view with which we
ca nnot a gree f or r ea s ons wh i ch will appear l ater. ) No writings of
his ar e ex tant a nd much of what we kn ow of hi s thought c omes from
Aris t ot le wr i t i ng t hree ce nt ur ies later. One of t he ques t ions
Thale s asked hims elf was what provides the bas is of al l nature.
Hi s ans wer - water - i s not s o s i l ly as it sounds when we s t op t o
c ons i der how all- p ervasive wa ter is in our envi ronment a nd even
within our own bodies . Al t hough the mere r aising of the quest ion
was important . so too was the t ype of answer he ga ve . Thales is
c l ea r ly putting f orward somet hi ng which is in principle verifiable .
a l t ho ugh he did not him s elf r each the point of thi nki np, e xpl i c i t l y
about exp er imenta l obser va t ions an d the problems of ve r ifi cat i on .
Thales als o sugr,ested that things are f ull of gods : here he is
ma ki ng the point that the motive power f or the behaviour of matter
l i es wi t h i n matter itsel f . If Thales ha d not achieve d s omethin r,
of a break-thro ur,h in hi s way of l ooking a t the world . Aristotle
would hardly ha ve bo thered to quote him. Hi t her-t o , vre may a s s ume.
people had tried t o explain the or i p,i n and processes of nature by
postulat i ng the ex istence of exter na l gods endo wed wi th special
powers of an an t hropoMorphic k i nd .
Anaxima nd ros car ried Tha l es ' line of th i nk i n g fur ther , by

s ug gest ing t hat th er e was some even Mor e pr iMordia l stuff than
water , out o f which the na t ur a l l y oc cur r i ng opp osi tes , wet and dry ,
hot and co ld , cou ld emerge . Empedoc les t hou gh t that More t han one
basi c i ngr edient wa s necessary t o exp l a in na t ure and settled on air ,
fi re , earth a nd water . Herak le i tos t ook a d ifferen t l i ne and pro-
posed t hat wha t was f undamenta l was , no t a type of mat ter , but t he
f a ct tha t ev eryth i ng i s i n a s ta te of fl ux a nd t hat no thing i s p er -
manent . (He could presumab ly be sa i d t o be the f or e f a t her of
evo lut i on a nd d i alect ica l materia l i sm. ) Onc e the i dea of a sear ch
f or t h e pri mord ial stuff o f nature was left behind , t he way was
ope n for Pyt hagor as t o t hink t hat nUMer ica l r elations might be t he
r e a lit y behind th e visib le wor ld . Hi s observat ions of s uch things
a s the re l a t ions h i p between the l en gt h of a vibrat inr. s t r inf- a nd a
musi ca l not e s trengthened th i s vi ew. Pyt har,oras and h is school
seem t o ha ve been th e f i rs t r,roup of thinker s t o i nv est i gat e t he
proper t i e s of number, a s dis t i nc t f rom usin g nuMbe r s f or pr act i ca l
pur poses , a nd mus t ha ve a f,ood c l a i m to be the fo unde rs of mat he -
mat i cs . Al t hou gh they f aile d t o invent a s ui tab l e notat i on ,
work ing as they d i d ma in l y wi t h numbers of dots and l i nes, they did
man a r,e t o l ay th e f ou ndat i ons f or ge ometr y which was t o be for ma -
l i s e d by Euc lid a h undred years l at er. Perhaps th e peak of t he
Gre ek con t r ibut ion wa s r e a che d when Le uki ppos and Demokr itos
or i g i na t ed t he v iew tha t the re a l i ty o f moti on and t he f l ux of
t hings co ul d b e e xpla i ned on l y i f t h e ult i mate bas i s of mat ter
was a tomic .
At no time i n t he his tory of t hes e s pe culati ons did any Gr eek
th inker s ugges t tha t experiments might be performed t o s ub s t ant i a t e
their views . They ob served nature as i t was around then , and
r e f l e ct e d upon wha t t hey s aw, Al though on e can ar r-ue qu i te
reas onab ly t ha t they founded the branche s of kno vrledge we c a l l
mat hematics and as t rono ny , i t wouI d be s tretch ing t he i map;inat ion
rather far t o suggest that they laid t he foundations of sc ience -
of na tura l ph i losophy yes , but of s c ience no . At t his point , i n
t he f ifth cent ury BC, Greek t hought t ook a tur n which wa s t o de l ay
t he t rue b irth o f s c i en ce for ne a r l y t wo t hou s a nd years . These
great th i nkers began to ' Jor ry about t he contrast between the
abs t rac t concepts they ha d been de ve l opin r, and t he observab le
phys ical wor l d aroun d t hen whi ch s eemed f ull o f opt i ca l i l lus i ons .
They bega n t o be co ncer ned wit h what wa s r e a lly r e a l , wi t h how we
ca n be s a i d t o know a nyt h i ng ot her than our f l eet ing i mpre s s ions ,
and wi t h th e rule s f or l ogi c al thin king. In ot he r wor ds , t hey
be came interested i n ph ilos ophy.
That we know so nu ch ab out Gree k thought i s du e t o Ar ist ot l e
writ ing i n the f ourth century BC, and for this we MUs t be r,r a t e f ul .
It was no f ault o f his t hat t he uns ubs t an t i ated vi ews a bo ut na tur e
in hi s books wer e r e garde d as t he fo unt of a l l secular wi s dom f or
cent uries . We can b l ame hi m, howeve r , f or not a l ways back i ng t he
mos t sens i bl e an d f r ui t f ul i deas: f or examp le , that he d id not
a c c e pt t he a t omi c view of ma t t e r pr opound ed by Demokr i tos .
Aristot le ' s wr i t i ngs we r e preserved by the !loor s during tile so-
cal led Da rk Ages i n Europe , and when they were r edi s covered f or
Chr i s tendo m they came unde r t h e prot ect ion of the Chr ist ian Church .
To questi on t hem became a l most a ma t ter of here s y. But t hi s i s
l e api n g ahead t oo fas t .
There was at least one hint of what might be achieved by science

proper in the work of Archimedes in the third century BC, for he
realised that experiments might be a useful way of acquiring know-
ledge. His work on the relative density of materials, and the
principles of the lever, certainly involved experinent. He was
also an inventor - of compound pulleys, hydraulic screllS, burning
~irrors - and of various engines of war which kept the Romans at
bay for several years. But historians tell us that Archimedes
regarded his mechanical contrivances as little ~ore than playthings.
His chief interest lay in geo~etry, and his determination of the
ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter he regarded
as his sreatest achieve~ent (he said it lay between 3 1° / 71 and
3 1/7). In other words, he re~ained inclined to the prevailing
view that pure thought was on an all together higher plane than
anything that smacked of craft. There is no real evidence that
he explicitly used his theoretical knowledge to i~prove his
mechanical inventions . One feels that the ingredients for the
birth of both science and technolo?,y must have been there, even if
they failed to crystallise, because that incredible polymath of the
Renaissance, Leonardo da vinci, sou?-ht for copies of the works of
Archimedes more eagerly than for those of any other Greek philos-
opher. One wonders whether the 'long night' would have been quite
so long had Aristotle, in his capacity as rapporteur, lived after
Archimedes.
~Je have now completed our brief picture of the precursors of
science and technolops without arriving at anything that we would
recognise as either. rfuat we have is, on the one hand, a natural
philosophy based on observation of nature as it is around us and
providing the foundation for mathematics and astronomy; and on the
other hand a variety of inventions, crafts and skills without any
theoretical foundation or any attempt to explain why they worked.
To continue with our s earch for the true birth of science we
must now jump many centuries. The reason is that the Romans con-
tributed little to natural philosophy and, after the fall of the
Roman Empire, Europe entered into five hundred years of barbarism
and obscurantism. The Byzantine and Arab Empires were to become
the repositories of learning until the Middle Ages, and of natural
philosophy until the Renaissance. They did so by translating into
Arabic the works of Aristotle, Euclid, Archimedes, Hero of Alex-
andria, Galen, and Ptolemy. Islam did not itself seem to con-
tribute much to the advance of natural philosophy, although it did
develop the system of Arabic numerals, acquired from India, and
pass it on to Europe in the twelfth century AD.
The next great leap forward in man's intellectual development
had to await the decline of the Scholasticism of Aquinas, the
appearance of the Renaissance in Italy (assisted by refugee
scholars from the Turkish invasion of Constantinople), and the
Reformation in Germany . One cannot pass by the Middle Ages,
however, without mentioning the flow of scholars to a centre of
learning in Spain, Toledo, where teams of Christians, Jews and
Moslems worked together to translate into Latin all the important
extant works of the early Greek and Arabian natural philosophers.
This tremendous labour of scholarship in the twelfth century pro-
vided the necessary springboard for the leap forward that was to
follow during the Renaissance three centuries later. One must
also take note of a Franciscan friar named Roger Ba c on (1214-1292)

who was a cont empor a r y of Thomas Aqui nas. Bacon wa s a prodir,ious
scholar - of both Arabian and Greek natural philosophy - and he
f ound himself unable to accept as authoritative the views of
nature propounded by Aristotle or implied by the Bible. He a r gued
that true knowledge of these matters co ul d be obt a i ned onl y by
ob servation and experiment. As he put it, e xperi~ent can enable
us t o judge the follie s of ~agicians just as l ogi c ca n be used to
test an argument . In takin r, thi s view Roger Bacon wa s far ahead
of hi s time and his books had little immediate effect.
SCI ENCE 1400 TO 1700
After the thirt eenth century, Europe was subjected to ec ono~ic and
social confusi on caused by famines, the Black Death, and the Hundred
Years' War. Although thi s unrest delayed further profress, it mus t
have provided fertile gr ound for 'dissidents' s t r i vi ng f or the sep-
aration of philosophy a nd theology . The mov ement was led by Duns
Sc ot us and co nt i nue d by vlilliam of Oc ca m. The l atter proclaimed
the irrati onal nature of many of the doctrines of the Church and
a t t a cked the theory of Papal supremacy . Then came the gr eat
voyages of the fifteenth century to the New World which open ed
men's mind s and be came a sour ce of great weal t h. A propor tion of
this wea l t h became concentrated in the c i t i es of Northern Italy whi ch
ga ve birth to the Renais s an ce. And so we co me to Leonardo da Vin c i
(1452-1519) - painter, sculptor, en gineer, a r chi t e c t , phy sicist,
biologist, and philos opher - a polymath of staggering bre adt h of
interest and much too good in e ach role to be called a dilettante.
Her e at last we mee t a man t o whom knowledge of prin ciples - whether
of mathematics, op t i cs , hyd r a uli cs, me ch anic s, physiology or
anatomy - was s e en as s omet hi ng with which to improve h i s art and
his crafts. Here at last we meet a man who a ctually performed
experiments. 'Those sciences are va i n a nd full of errors which
are not born from experiment, the mother of all ce r t ai nty , and which
do not end wi t h one clear experiment .' He dismis sed a strology and
alchemy as magi cal non sense, and he had a greater respect f or
Archi~edes than Aristotle. Some t hi n g recogni sable as science in
th e modern sense of the word was clearly being born in the
Renais s ance.
This brief historical sketch is bound to give the impres sion
that intellectual progress over the centuries was the work of a few
men. Of course this was not so. Roger Bacon, for example, was
preceded one-and-a-half centuries earlier by Peter Abe l ar d (1079-
1142) who, although primarily a philosopher and logic i an , did
theorise about the distinction between knowledge gained by c on-
structing things or by trial-and-error, and knowledge r,ai n ed by
reasoning. Abelard stressed that both were important. Further-
more, Roger Bacon had a teacher, Robert Grosseteste (1175-1253), who
emphasised in his writings the importance of basing natural philo-
s ophy on mathematics and experiment. From his work on opt ics ,
Grosseteste was able to sUf£est the use of lense s for magnifi cation
which foreshadowed the invention of spectacles a few decades after
hi s death. Or, to take another example, Leonardo had the benefit
of mixing and corresponding with many others of like mind who were
specialists in various fields. Furthermore, Leonardo's c i r c l e was
fortunate in living during a brief period when the Papacy itself was
liberal and humanist. One ne eds both the nan and the milieu for
an y s ubst an t i a l advan ce in knowledge . One remarkable feature of
the period wa s the way both s chol a r s and well-known craftsmen moved
from c i t y to city and from one wealthy patron to another, in s pi t e
of the hazards of travel. Without this kind of 'free-masonry' of
scholars, and the international language of Latin, progre ss would
ce r t a i nly have been much slower.
The Renaissanc e, clos ely followed by the reduction in power of
the Papacy c ons e quent upon the Reformation, paved the way for the
proliferation of the s ciences in the fifteenth and s i xt eent h cen-
turi es . Pr ogres s wa s r apid because men of scien ce befan t o
s pec ial ise r ather mor e than hitherto, as craft smen had be en doing
s i nc e the earlie st ti mes, although they would still be r egarded as
polymaths by twentieth cen t ur y standards . Picking out a f ew
prominent names a t random, we have Coper nicus (1473-1543), Tycho
Brahe (1546-16 01) and Kep l er (1571-1630) writing on as t r onomy ,
Valer i us Cordus (1575-1644) on botany, Belon (1517-1564) and
Aldrovandi (1525-1606) on zoology, von Hohenhein (later ca l l ed
Paracelsu s) (149 0-1541) on medicine, Agricola (1490-1555) on
mineralogy , van Helmont (1577-1644) on che mi s t r y , Ve s a l i us (1515-
1564) on anatomy, Ha r vey (1578-165 7) on physiol ogy, and Gilbert
(1540-1603) on ma p,ne t i s m and electricity . All thes e men also
made co nt r i but ions in fields quite other than those mentioned, and
a l l r e cogni sed the importance of writing up their results : one
wonders how many of the men of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies must have wi shed that Leonardo had found time to publish his
wor k . Publi cation was now po s sible because, as we shall s e e , the
paper mill an d printing pres s had been developed to a suitable state
by 15 00. Indeed, by then, pocket-sized editions of the works of
Ar is t ot l e were corni ng of f a press in Italy.
Dur ing the s e vent e ent h ce nt ur y a vast number of aids to scien-
ti fi c work were invented : th e s ystems of logarithms by Napier and
Bri ggs, s l i de rule by Bissaker , a dd i ng machine by Pascal, improved
t eles c op es by Huygen s and r efle cting telescop e by Newton, micr o-
met er by Gas co i gne , ba r ometer by Toricelli, vacuum pump by von
Gue r i ck e , a nd compound microscope by Hooke. Many of the scientists
of the day were certainly also excellent craft smen and inventors .
Sc i ent i f ic socie t i es were formed: the Roy al Soc i e t y in England
founded by Boyle and ot her s was given it s Cha r te r in 1662, and in
16 66 the Fr ench Academy was similarly recogni s ed. The rapid dis-
semina t ion of id e as promoted by these s o ci e t i es had a great deal
to do with the exponential increas e in scientifi c kn owledge whi ch
wa s to continue unbroken t o the present day.
The man who first tri ed to analyse what was at the back of all
thes e development s - the 'scientific method' - was Francis Bacon
(1561-1626). He s urely de serves t o be regarded a s the first
philosopher of sc i ence . Perhaps the real breakthrough was the
reali sation that one could get muc h further by c oncent r a t i ng on
the how of things rather than the why of things . Pursuing this
line of thought, and working with pendUlums and rolling balls on
inclined plane s, Gali l eo (1564-1642) was able t o es t ab l ish many
important principles of dynamics - for example, that a falling body
moves a distance proportional t o the square of the time, and that a
f orce is required to change the magnitude or direction of the
ve l ocity of a body and no t , in the absence of fr iction , to maintain

its mot i on. Galileo ' s work was brought to f ruit ion by Newton who
was born t he year Ga l i l e o died ( 1642). Newton 's theory of gravi -
t a t i on (Principia , 1687 ) was the first great synthes is , in whi ch he
s howed tha t Galile o' s terres tria l res ul ts a nd Kepler 's t he ory of
p lanetary mot ion could be deduced from the s ame few s imple l aws of
me c ha ni cs.
Here we see the first signs of what we mean by a scientific
explanation of ph en omena : a set o f hypo theses from which all known
phenomena of a part i cular ki nd can be de duc ed. This was the model
t o which all t he s ciences were t o try t o conform . A s tea dy im-
provement in the a c curacy of his mean s of measurement enab led t he
s c i e nt is t t o chec k more pre cise l y t he deduction s drawn from the
hyp othe ses . This often t hr e w up anoma lies whi ch encouraged the
search f or ref inement s to t he hypothes es, and wh i ch in turn
suggested new exper imen ts for the ir verificat ion . I n pu r s uing
th i s t y pe of programme , scientists bega n t o s t udy not jus t t he world
as i t i s , bu t arti fi ci al s i t uations that th ey creat e d in orde r to
limit the number of var iab les for the i r experiMents . They cal l ed
on the s ki l l s of cr a f t s men t o produce the appara tus t h ey ne eded
( f or exampl e , glas s bl owi ng , grinding , and poli s hing for thermo-
Meters , lenses and mirrors , a nd a ll kinds of metalwork) , and it was
natural f or theM to turn their atte nt i on from time t o t ime t o s t udy
the proc esses used by the craf t s men but little und erstood ( f or
ex ampl e , a lloying of me t a l s a nd th e production of cer ami cs ) . We
are evidently now at the po int where techn ol ogy mig ht be s e en t o
app ear. It is time t o re trace our s teps t o s ee what t he craf tSMen
had been do ing during th is long period of t r ansit i on frOM natur a l
phi losophy t o s c ience . They had no t been i dle, and r ules- of- t hunb
f or designi ng s hips , furnace s , wind a nd wat er mills , and tools of
a l l kind s , had ce r t a i n l y been i mpr ove d.
TECHNICS AD 500 TO 1850
We l e f t our earlier story at the point where we s a i d t hat the Romans

had been instrumental in spreading the use of the waterwhee l through -
out Europe. To emphasise i t s importance one may note that a s lave
working f or ten hou rs could grind about 40 kg of corn , wher ea s the
Roman mi l l constructed near ArIes in Provence (having e ight water-
wheels in series in each of t wo millraces ) could grind about 28 000
kg in a ten- hour day and r e gula rly supply suff icient f lour for
ei ghty t housand pe ople. Naturally the pot en t i al of water power
was More f ul l y app r e c i ated in northern Europ e whe r e there was a
plentiful s upply of water the who le ye ar r ound, than it was i n
Greece and Italy where expens ive aqu edu cts were us ua l ly necess ary
a dj un cts .
We ca n certa inly pass qu ickly ov er the Dark Ages i n Europe which
fo l l owed the f all of t he Roman Empire , but mus t note in passing what
was happening i n the Islamic world and i n China . No ver y notable
technical developMents seem t o ha ve "be e n made by Islam , but in 1 205
al- Jaz zari produced his Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical
Devi ces . Mos t of t he devices were little more t han t oys and ex-
tra va gant gadgets , rathe r like t he devices i nven t e d by Her o of
Al exandria in the fir st c entury AD to whos e work al-Jazza ri woul d
probably ha ve had access . AI - Jazzari ' s book co nt a i ned beautifUlly
exe cut e d engineering drawings and was no doubt a source of i ns p i r a-

t i on to l a t e r inven tors . The Chinese had made much technical
progress in metal working, ceramics and block printing, but the
invention of paper was perhaps their most s i gni f i c ant cont r i but ion
because of its ultimate effe ct on the d i s seminat i on of knowledge .
The technique f or making paper was ce r t a i nly established in Chi na
before AD 150 and was used there for many centuries before it made
its way t o the Islamic world in the e i ght h century and t o Europe
in the thirteenth century . Water- clocks t oo had reach ed a high
de gree of s ophi sti ca tion in China by the e i ght h cent ur y . In the
e leventh century a Chines e engineer bui lt a va st c lock op erated by
a waterwhee l, usin g an escapement mechanism and havin r, a 35-foot
tower carrying a moving celes tial sph ere. Ch i na had its o ~m 'Dark
Ar,es ' res ult ing from dynastic war s and pl agues , but it i s not easy
to see why t here was nothing c orresponding to the Industrial Rev o-
lution in Chi na . No doubt t he cultura l c l i mate was unfa vourab le,
and certainly the failure to develop a ph oneti c alphabet must have
been a brake on pr ogress .
Returning to Europe, the 11iddle Ages saw a tremendous growth in
the number and variety of water-powered devices. They had been
steadily increasing in number even during the Dark Ages , to meet
the needs of the people crowding into the ne w walled t owns and
cities . Floating mills with wat e r whe e l s mounted on bar ges moored
to bridge piers were tried. So too were mills placed in estuaries
to us e tidal power, although they were not popular because of t he i r
intermittent operat ion over the tidal cycle . Mos t waterwheels
operated millstones, but others work ed drop hammers and bellows by
making use of caQs . By 1086, according t o Dome sday re cords, there
were 5624 water mil l s in thirty-four Engl i sh counti es s uppor t i ng
1 400 000 pe op l e . On s ome r ivers t he mi lls wer e a t a concen-
trat ion of two per kilometre . Such conc e nt r a t ions required the
c ons t r uc t ion of dams upstream to provide suffi c ient head, and dam
buildin g became a recognis ed civil e ng i nee ri ng ac ti vi ty . Many
monasteri es were in effect factori es, with water power used for
grindin g cor n , s i eving fl our, f Ul l i ng cloth a nd tanning h ide s.
Having seen the advantage of tapp i ng water power, ma n soon turned
hi s attention t o the wi nd . Windmills using s a i ls mount e d on a
horizontal a xis car r i e d on a r otatable ce nt r e pos t ( called post-
mills) appeared in the t welfth c en t ur y, and indeed Europe was
exporting s uc h devices to the Middle Eas t during the l a t e Cr usades
t o replace th e l es s efficient, vertical axis wi ndmi l ls that ex i sted
there . Compani es were formed to own group s of mill s, with the
s epa r a t i on of owne rs h i p (through s ha r e ho l ding ) a nd management t ha t
is common today. These concentration s were economi c only i f most
people used the ni l ls, and there was much soc i a l unrest when mill
owner s tried to prevent hand mi l ling at home: ce r t a i n l y we have
here a foretaste of what was to fol l ow much later during the
Industrial Revolution .
Stone quarrying, mining, weaving, iron-founding and paper-makin g
were other industri es that grew apace i n the Middle Ages . The main
environmental effect was the deforestation of Europe, both to clear
the land for agriculture and to provide wood fo r building ( ships
required 200 0 oaks per man-of-war) and charcoa l fue l for the i r on
makers. One re sult of the wood s hor t a ge was the re-estab lishment
of the brick and til e manufacturing indu stry whi c h had l a ps e d a fter
the departure of the Romans. Fortunately, coal was found in the

thirteenth century before the last forests disappeared. It was
not an unmixed blessing, however, because the first coal was ex-
tracted near the surface and had a high sulphur and bituMen content:
so noxious were the fumes that the English Parliament had to pass an
antipollution bill in 1388. The use of machinery in the textile
industry resulted in the first use of asseMbly-line methods . We
are told that the manufacture of cloth in Florence in the fourteenth
century involved twenty- six operations each performed by a
specialist.
All this a ctivity must have been stimulated and supported by
improvements in the productivity of agriculture which took place
during the relatively better climatic conditions that prevailed in
Europe between AD 850 and 1200 . Part of this improvement in pro-
ductivity was due to the vastly more widespread use of the horse,
made possible by improvements in the methods of harnessing the
animal and the invention of the nailed horse-shoe: a pair of horses
could pull about 5000 kg in mediaeval times but only 500 kg in Roman
times (the Theodosian Code of AD 438 made this a legal limit).
Other sources of improvement were the development of the heavy-
wheeled plough, and the use of three-field crop rotation . Crop
yields more than doubled from AD 1000 to 1200.
The most highly paid of the mediaeval craftsmen were the
architect-engineers who designed and supervised the building of
cathedrals, castles, bridges and military equipment. Vi l l ar d de
Honnecourt, working in the first half of the thirteenth century,
was a prominent architect-engineer whose sketchbook is extant.
He writes 'you will also find strong help in drawing figures
according to the lessons taught by the art of geometry': so here
we have a sign of theory and practice coming together. The book
includes rules-of-thumb for the solution of many building problems,
and sketches of many mechanical devices from a mechanical water-
powered saw to a perpetual motion machine. In mediaeval times
the search for a perpetual motion machine which would deliver
power was the equivalent of the ancient alchemists' search for
the philosophers' stone which would turn lead into gold. Villard's
sketchbook is similar in range of interest to Leonardo da Vinci's,
although they were separated by two-and-a-half centuries. Perhaps
the most advanced mechanical devices invented in the thirteenth
century were the weight-driven clocks. The complex astronomical
clock must be one of the first products of co-operation between
natural philosophers (in this case astronomers) and technical men
skilled in making mechanical devices. The one built by
Giovanni di Dondi in the mid-fourteenth century was the most
renowned. It used innovations such as oval wheels with inter-
nally cut teeth, and skew gears. His description of the clock
runs to 130 000 words and the drawings are so detailed that an
exact replica has been made.
Once again we have arrived at the fourteenth century where, as
we have noted, famine (1315-17) and pestilence (1347-50) brought
the mini-industrial revolution in Europe to an end . Climatic
chanp,e for the worse was no doubt the root cause of the famine.
Populations were decimated (more than halved in many areas); there
were financial crises with devaluations and many bankruptcies; and
in England the social unrest culminated in the Peasant's Revolt of
1381. There was to be no surplus of resources wi th which to

support invention and scholarship for another century. This is
not quite true, because cannon and hand-guns were introduced in the
fourteenth century. Unfortunately engineerinr, was often fostered
by power-hungry leaders who from earliest ti~es had realised that
battles were won more by technical superiority than anything else.
The manufacture of weaponry was one craft whose development was not
restricted by the chaos of the fourteenth century.
Perhaps the technical advance which had the most impact on the
resurgence of scholarship in the Renaissance was the multiple in-
vention of movable metal type, oil-based ink, and the printing
press, by Gutenberg in the mid-fifteenth century. Movable type had
certainly been used for some centuries in the Far East, but it was
Gutenberg who perfected the process and started the printing in-
dustry in Europe. When combined with the output of the paper
mills, man at last had an economical method of mass-producing books.
The subsequent progress of science must have been as much due to
easy access to each other's work as to the availability of new
instruments and apparatus . It is not surprising that the first
book to be printed was the Bible (1456), and that this should be
closely followed by a book on military engineering De re mi~itari
by Valturio (1472). Leonardo da Vinci certainly possessed a copy
of Valturio's book. It is from this time onwards that a master
craftsman could with advantap,e be literate: for example, any mininp,
engineer would have liked to have been able to read Agricola's hand-
book De re Meta~~ica published in 1556, after his death.
The next great step forward had to await a solution to the
problem of extrdcting water from mines - particularly coal mines -
to permit the working of deeper deposits. Pumps operated by water-
wheels were inadequate. The Industrial Revolution started in
England, and if anyone can lay claim to have been its founder it
was Thomas Newcomen who developed an idea of Thomas Savery for
using condensing steam to operate a pump. The Newcomen beam
enbine started life in 1712. After steam had raised a piston,
cold water was injected to condense the steam and the resulting
partial vacuum allowed atmospheric pressure on top of the piston
to provide the power stroke. The suction pump situated down the
mine shaft was operated by a long rod attached to the rocking beam.
This engine was not superseded until James Watt saw the advantage
of using steam for the power stroke and carrying out the condensing
process in a separate component. The advantage was that the
massive cylinder and piston no longer had to be repeatedly heated
and cooled. Boulton and Watt engines (Boulton being the business
partner) were to dominate the scene from about 1765 to 1800, and
were used not only for pumping but also as winding engines for
hoisting men and coal up the mine shaft. After 1800, when the
Boulton and Watt patent expired, there was a succession of improve-
ments : notably the replacement of the beam by a connecting rod,
crank and flywheel, and the use of higher steam pressures.
These developments dovetailed perfectly with the expansion of the
iron industry, which followed the substitution of coke for charcoal
as the reducing ar,ent by Abraham Darby in 1707. Appropriately
enough, remembering the starting point of our history of craft,
Darby's first product was a pot - a cast iron cooking pot. Soon,
however, his firm was casting iron rails for COlliery trucks, and
components for mills, Boulton and Watt engines and cast iron
bridges.
Another great industry - the textile industry - received a boost
from the invention of the flying shuttle by John Kay in 1732.
Rapid expansion occurred after the water-powered mechanisation of
spinning (Harr,reaves, 1764), of carding (Arkwright, 1767), and of
the weaving looms themselves (Cartwright, 1784). Finally, steam
power replaced water power, allowing a greater concentration of
machinery in factories (still to be called mills). The intro-
duction of cotton enabled the new methods to become established in
the face of opposition from workers in the woollen industry who
quite naturally did not see the move fron cottage to factory as
an unmixed blessing.
Simultaneously there was a tremendous growth in the pottery
industry once John Astbury (1720) found that the addition of
ground flint to the cl a y would make a white body. First water-
wheels, then steam engines, were used to operate the millstones
which ground the flint. When this innovation was combined with
the discovery of kaolin ('china clay') deposits in Cornwall in the
176 0s, and Josiah \ledgewood had introduced his machines for mixing
the ingredients in consistent proportions, the pottery industry came
of age . It had begun in Staffordshire where there were suitable
deposits of ordinary clay and a plentiful supply of coal for the
kilns: that it was able to remain and expand there was due to
s i mul t a neo us improvements in methods of transport - to convey the
kaolin and flint to the potteries and the products to the ports.
The first attempt to provide industry with the necessary trans-
port facilities was the spate of canal building by Brindley and
Telford during the years 1760 to 1820. Towards the end of this
period, work on nobile s team engines for collieries had begun,
cUlminating in the opening of the Stockton and Darlinr,ton railway
in 1825 and Stephenson's Rocket in 1829. After that the clear
advantage of speed possessed by the steam locomotive meant that the
canals were to steadily lose ground to the railways.
The last fifty years of the period that we are considering, that
is 1800-1850, were enormously fruitful. We ha ve talked so far only
of the major industries, but the number of other innovations in this
period, which were to be of great significance later, was staggering.
The manufacture of the equipment for the major industries could not
have been possible without the range of increasingly accurate
machine tools introduced by Bramah and Maudsley from 1798 to 1830:
wo~k which was carried on by Whitworth, Maudsley's famous pupil.
Such was Whitworth's passion for accurate measurement that he can
rightly be called the father of metrology. As a result of these
machine tools, interchangeability of parts became possible, so
ushering in the era of mass production. /lany American inventions
were directed to this end, such as Fitch's capstan lathe and Root's
universal milling machine.
A host of earlier ideas now became economic propositions: we
have, for example, Singer's sewing machine (1851), ideas for which
had been patented since 1790. There were such diverse inventions
as Davy's safety lamp for miners, Gillot's machine-made steel pen,
Bramah's flushing toilet with the all-important U-bend, Colt's
revolver, and /1cCormick's reaping machine. Lebon and l1urdoch
introduced coal-gas lighting, and a London street was lit in this
way in 1807. Various forms of telegraphy were introduced, notably

the Cooke and Wheatstone system in use on U.K. railways by 1845,
and the American Morse system used first for business communi-
cations in the same year . The foundation of photo~raphy was laid
by Talbot and Daguerre. Great advances were made in printing
machinery by Stanhope and Koenig, the latter being the first to
use a cylinder instead of a platen. Babbage produced a proto-
type calculating machine, and Oested a laboratory-scale electric
motor and generator. Brunel, with his Great Britain (1843),
ushered in the era of the iron ship powered by steam engines
driving propellers.
Up to about 1800, almost the whole of this great Industrial
Revolution was the work of engineers and craftsmen who happened
to possess exceptional creativity and organisational ability.
Virtually all the innovators had acquired their knowledge and
skill through an apprenticeship and practical experience, not
through formal education . There was as yet little theoretical
backing for these great technical achievements so that, in the
strict sense of the word, technology had still not appeared. If
technology means anything, it must mean the study and reasoned
account of technical processes . During the period 1800-1850,
however, there is a discernible change in the way that innovations
developed and we may be forced to recognise that technics had
changed their character: something had been added to craft so that
what was happening was not mere isolated invention coupled with
manipulative skill. Before we can examine this suggestion in more
detail, to see if what can only be called technology has at last
arrived on the scene, we must carry our history of science up to
1850 also.
SCIENCE 1700 TO 1850
We have suggested that science proper, as opposed to natural

philosophy, ber,an with the Renaissance ( ~1400); and we carried
our account as far as Newton's achievement of 1687. ~fuat was
happening to the various sciences during the Industrial Revolution
between 1700 and 1850? It was in fact a period in which myster-
ious weightless fluids were being exorcised - phlof,iston, caloric,
electric fluids - as scientists struggled to find as sure a basis
for the development of their subjects as Newton had supplied for
mechanics.
Great strides were being made in mathematics during this period
by Lagrange (1738-1813), Laplace (1747-1827) and Fourier (1768-1830),
to name but three of many who made advances that were to be of con-
siderable use to physics. But, as a crude generalisation (and this
whole short account can be nothing else), developments in mathe-
matics precede their application by at least fifty years, and they
are in any case not strictly relevant to this discussion.
We can also pass quickly over developments in the sciences of
botany, zoology and physiology . Progress in the grinding of lenses
had brought the compound microscope, invented by Janssen in about
1590, to a useful pitch of perfection by 1650. This enabled the
structure and function of organs to be studied as never before:
Linnaeus (1707-1778) was able to produce his Species Plantarum,
Buffon (1707-1788) his Natural History of Animals, and Haller
(1708-1777) his Elementa Physiologiae. It was in this period that

the idea of placing ~an in the order of priRates was seriously
mooted, so paving the way for the Darwinian revolution which
followed publication of The Origin of Species in 1859. This was
the third major chanr,e in the way man saw hi~self in relation to
the universe: the first was just after the Renaissance when
Copernicus (1473-1543) placed the earth in its correct perspective
as a planet of the sun, and the second when Newton showed that
terrestrial and astronomical phenomena were governed by the same
laws . Many years and much argument were needed after each of
these intellectual revolutions before the ideas could be assimilated
by religion and philosophy, and still more before they could become
part of the conventional wisdom of the COmMon man.
What was happening to che~istry during this burgeoning of science ?
Why do we not find this science having an impact on the Industrial
Revolution? After all, so much depended on combustion - in the
furnaces of the iron founders, the boilers of the enr.ine makers, and
the kilns of the potters. The answer is that chemi s try was at too
early a stage. Lavoisier (1745-1794) s et chemistry on the right
path when his experiments destroyed the phlogiston theory of com-
bustion, and also enabled the true nature of water to be estab-
lished. He paved the way for the work .of Avogadro (1776-1856) who
discovered the part played by molecules in chemical reactions, and
the work of Cannizzaro who in 1858 was able to inter,rate Avogadro's
ideas with Dalton's atomic theory of matter (1808). All this pro-
vided a proper foundation for the table of atomic weights. Once
the idea of a chemical elenent was firmly established, each having
its own properties and atomic weight, the search began for the
connection between them. When about ninety elements had been
isolated, it was pos sible for 11endeleev (1834-1907) to produce his
Periodic Table and predict that other elements would be discovered
to fill the gaps . It is quite clear that when chemists were just
beginning to be able to write down chemical equations, they could
hardly have much to contribute to the analysis and i~provement of
the complex processes being used by the manufacturinr. industries.
Neither, at this stage, was chenistry of ~uch help to agriculture.
Liebig (1803-1873), who with Dumas (1800-1884) was co-founder of
organic chemistry, correctly recognised the vital part played by
carbon and nitrogen in plant growth but specifically denied the
importance of humus in the soil. His recommendations led to in-
correct treatment of the soil and eventually to the dust bowls that
were to follow.
Let us now return to physics, and see first what had been
happening to the ideas scientists had been having about the nature
of heat. Joseph Black (1728-1799) began the task of clearing up
the confusion between heat and temperature, but unfortunately
introduced the idea of a weightless fluid, caloric, to explain the
phenomena of conduction and changes of phase between solid and
liquid or liquid and vapour. The name is still with us in the
term 'calorimetry'. The caloric theory persisted until Joule
(1818-1889) showed conclusively that there was an equivalence
between heat and work and that heat was a mode of motion. A
confusion between the concepts of 'force' and 'energy' still
remained, however, until resolved by William Thomson (Lord Kelvin)
(1824-1907) and Clausius (1822-1888). It was a young French
en gineer, Sad i Carnot (1796-18 32), who was to put these great minds
on the ri ght road . Carnot bent his mind to th e problem of ex-
plaining what went on in a steam en gine. He saw th e necessity for
thinking about what happens when a fluid i s taken through a c om-
plete cycle of ideal fricti onless processes . He argued that both
a hot source and cold s i nk of heat were essential if work was to be
produced, and that his ideal cycle would provide a measure of the
maximum work that could be obtained with given temperatures in the
boiler and condens er. Ca r not ca n rightly be said to be the founder
of thermodynamics . Hi s argument was faulty because he thought in
terms of the caloric theory of heat, but his conclusions were
s ound a nd laid the foundation for the statements of the Se cond Law
of Thermodynami cs prcposed by Kelvin and Cl a us i us . All this came
well after the de velopment of the steam enr,ines which made the
Industrial Revolution possible .
One must make the point here, to which we will return later, that
th e inability of sci ence to help the industrialists was no great
l oss. At this s t a ge no one was greatly c onc er ned with the
'efficiency' of the processes in the furnac es, boilers, engines,
condensers and kilns: that they worked at all was quite enough.
On ly when compe t i t ion or scarcity of resources arouses concern
wi t h 'efficiency' does one have to analyse what is r,oing on in the
plant.
One branch of physics which blos somed in this period, and which
had no c or r espond i ng preceding development in industry, was elec-
tricity . Al l the earlier work had been with static electricity
produced by fri ction, but in 1800 Volta 'invented' a pile of zinc,
coppe r and brine-soaked paper discs which produced a steady poten-
tial acros s the terminals. Invented is in inverted commas because
it was by no mean s a chance dis covery : it was the result of a
s e r i es of careful experiments su gge s t e d by the fact that a frog's
l e r, convulsed when touched with a metal s calpel, as reported by the
phy siologist Gal vani (1737-1798). Nicholson and Carlisle immedi-
a te l y found that s ui t abl e electrode s co nne ct e d to the pile would
decompose water, and the science of electrochemistry was born .
Faraday (1791-1867) discovered the two fundamental laws of this
s cience: that the mass liberated i s proportional to the quantity
of electricity (that i s, current x time), and that it is propor-
tional to the chemical equivalent weight (not atomic weight) of the
s ubst an ce. The first law enabled a unit of electric current, the
ampere, to be defined . Ot her important phenomena were noted during
thi s period, such as the thermoelectric effect, ( Seebeck, 1822), the
a bi l i t y of a c ur r ent in a neighbouring wire to deflect a compass
needle (Oersted, 1820), and that one current-carrying coil exerted
a force in another (Ampere, 1775-1836) . The laws discovered by
Amp er e and Ohm (1781-1854) laid a firm foundation for a theory of
e l ect r i ci ty .
One must note here that Volta was able to perform his experi -
ments only because of improvements in the sensitivity of electro-
scopes . And it was the torsion balance invented in 1784 by
Coulomb (another French engineer) that gave Ampere his idea for the
ga l va nome t e r and enabled him to perform quantitative experiments
which could lead to the formulation of general law s. Furthermore,
the torsion balance was made possible only by metallurf,ical tech-
niques that had been de vis ed for drawing out fine wires. There
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Figure 2.1 In crease in population and number of i nve nt i ons

must be many reasons for the great expansion of science in this

period, but one was certainly the ability of craftsmen to make the
wide variety of glassware and instruments required, which at last
enabled reasonably accurate experiments to be performed.
Another reason may have been the rapid increase in the population
which started in the 1700s and continued unabated until the early
1900s . Figure 2.1 shows the change in population of Britain from
1300 to the present day, but much the same trend was followed in
Europe as a whole. Also shown are the number of technical dis-
coveries and inventions during each half-century between 1700 and
1900 (although not limited to Britain). The correspondence may
be mere coincidence: on the other hand, it may be that a more or
less fixed proportion of any population is born with the capacity
for technical and scientific innovation. Bearing in mind that
many innovators were responsible for more than one invention or
discovery, and that the population of Europe was several times
that of Britain, one might deduce a figure of 1 in 100 000 which
is not unreasonable. Of course, this simplistic view of the
relationship between population and innovation cannot be pressed
too far. Innovation is self-perpetuatinr, and recent additions,
such as computer technology, together with the expansion of infor-
mation and education services, will lead to a continuing upward
movement of the innovation curve even though population r,rowth in
the developed world is levelling off.
The rise in population from 1750 must have been a function of
the wealth produced by the Industrial Revolution. That the rate
of increase was maintained was due to improvements in health
following the purification of water supplies and better hygiene
generally, coupled with the introduction of vaccination and
inoculation. The identification of disease with microbes by
Pasteur (1833-1895) was the first step on this road. The net
result was that the annual death-rate in major cities was dras-
tically reduced: in London the figure fell from about eir,ht per
cent in 1750 to 1.2 per cent in 1928.
We have now brought our historical surveys of craft/technics/
technology and natural philosophy/science up to the same date, 1850,
and for our purpose we need not carry the story any further. After
1850 we have a steady increase in the number of quite new industries,
associated with electrical power, petroleum fuel, internal combus-
tion engines, turbines, automobiles, aircraft, chemicals, plastics
including man-made fibres, electronics (wireless, television, and
telecommunications generally), nuclear power, computers, micro-
electronics, bio-engineering, and finally space exploration. Most
of these are inextricably bound up with the sciences on which they
are based - principally physics and chemistry - and all have led to
the development of separate subjects of study which are the province
of technologists and not scientists. Earlier we suggested that the
period 1800-1850 is the one most likely to be helpful in deciding
when the transition from technics to technology took place. Perhaps
we can learn something useful from the way in which the education of
engineers had been developing up to this period.
DEVELOPMENT OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION
We have said that technology must be more than invention combined

with manipulative skill, and that it must involve the study and
reasoned account of man-made technical processes. It must surely
also involve both theory and experiment desi[;ned to explain and
improve these processes. It follows that we should look at how
educational institutions had been developing . In 1600, the fifty
or so universities that existed in the Western World were still
devoted to classical learning and mathematics, and they provided
training mainly for the Church and the legal profession. Even
medicine was only recognised as an academic subject after 1656
when a chair was established in Leyden University . That something
more was required was expressed in various utopias conceived about
this time: Thomas More in his Utopia advocated trade schools to
upgrade the technical skills of the poor, and Francis Bacon in his
New Atlantis went further and postulated a 'House of Solomon' which
was a technical institute for teaching and research in crafts,
engineering, agriculture and science. Over a long period, various
writers from Descartes (1596-1650) to Voltaire (1694-1779) were to
stress the need for something of this kind. There were, however,
no national systems of education upon which to build, because
literacy was not yet seen as being necessary for craft training .
The Guilds had traditionally controlled craft training via appren-
ticeships, that is, learning by doing.
The scientific societies of the period were also aware of the
need and saw themselves as doing more than merely fostering science .
Hooke, one of the founder members of the Royal Society, said that
its purpose was 'to improve the knowledge of natural things and all
useful Arts, Manufactures, Mechanick practices, Engines and Inve-
tions by Experiments'. Boyle, another founder member, expressed
the belief that much useful chemical and metallurgical knowledge
was to be gained by s t udy i ng the practices of craftsmen. These
scientific societies recorded the results and achievements of the
practical men of the time, but how was it to be disseminated?
We have observed that originally the term engineer referred to
those who specialised in the construction of military equipment and
fortifications. By the seventeenth century the skills required of
the military engineer had widened enormously, and he certainly had
to know some mathematics and have a working knowledge of hydraulics,
surveying, architecture and machine elements. But all this infor-
mation was still being passed on through the master/pupil relation-
ship, even though a number of treatises had been written on these
various topics. It was the French who first realised the need for
more formal education of their engineers, and from about 1690 on-
wards, the government set up a number of 'artillery schools', which
eventually led to the establishment of the Ecole du genie in 1749.
The professors in these schools, mostly mathematicians, wrote text-
books on their various interests: for example, Belidor wrote a
six-volume work entitled La Science des eng~nieurs (1729) dealing
with structures and mechanics, and Architecture HydrauZique (1737)
dealing with canals and water-works, bridges and harbours. In
1772 Bezout published a six-volume work called Cours des mathe-
matiques with applications to gunnery, naval construction and
navigation; and in 1795 Monge produced a manual of engineering
drawing called Geometrie descriptive. These efforts to systematise
~ngineering knOWledge led to the establishment of the prestigious
Ecole Polytechnique in 1794, from which Sadi Carnot graduated.
Ther~ was soon to be a national education system, and entrance to

the Ecole Polytechnique was by a stiff examination. Finally, during
the nineteenth century, the Ecole Poly technique came to be treated
as a feeder for more specialised ecoles d'application where the
practical aspects of the curriculum were taught.
Germany followed in a similar vein - with institutions initiated
and controlled by the government - but Britain did not. A military
college was established in Woolwich in 1741, but by then the indus-
trial revolution was directing people's attention more to the needs
of industry than to those of the military. Furthermore, efforts
to meet the need were left to the iniative of industrialists, in
line with the political freedom enjoyed by Britain under Parliament
after Charles I had been disposed of. At first the need was met
by itinerant lecturers who toured the industrial towns with their
courses. Some of these lecturers, and practisinp, engineers also,
produced textbooks which helped to provide the basis for the more
formal educational provision which was to follow: for example,
Switzer's Hydrostaticks and Hydraulicks in 1729, Emerson's Fluxions
and ~wchanics in 1743, Valency's Treatise on Inland Navigation in
1763, and Smeaton's Experimental Enquiry into the Natural Powers of"
I/ind and Water to turn Mills in 1794.
It should not be supposed that even the master craftsmen of the
day took much notice of these books. The output of people like
Euler and Bernoulli, which was to have a great influence later on
engineering science, was probably read only by other mathematicians.
Although the leading engineers of the time certainly made use of the
more straightforward analytical techniques that were available, they
quite rightly did not place Much reliance upon theoretical results .
Telford, for example, although widely read, was scathing about
mathematicians who tried to advance theories about bridge building.
One of the criticisms was that the mathematicians took little account
of the variable forces of nature with which the practical men had to
contend. The final result of these early efforts in Britain to
systematise and disseminate the collective experience of practical
men and the work of applied mathematicians was the formation of the
Institution of Civil Engineers in 1820 with Telford as its first
president.
Worried by the effect that the formal education of large numbers
of continental engineering students might have on Britain's indus-
trial supremacy, some far-sighted men started The fwchanics f1agazine
for intelligent mechanics in 1824, and in the same year the first
Mechanic's Institute was opened in Glasgow. That Scotland should
have led the way was not surprising, because the Scottish education
system was far in advance of England's. By 1850, however, there
were 610 Mechanics Institutes throughout Britain, and apprentices
were being given a background of scientific knowledge to buttress
their practical training. Emphasis was laid on those aspects of
science which might have industrial applications.
What was probably the first engineering course in Cambridge
University was given by William Farish, Jacksonian Professor of
Natural Experimental Philosophy from 1813 to 1836. He surveyed
the whole industrial scene in his lectures and tried to convey the
principles behind the various processes. He dealt with mining
and smelting of ores; metal manufacture; processes by which the
common chemicals were obtained; textile manufacturing methods
28 The Nature of Engineer ing
inc luding t he processes of b leaching , dye inr, and printinf, ; water -

wheels , windmil ls , and s team engines ; canals , bridges and harbours ;
and naval architecture . The idea was to ' exc i t e t he attention of
persons a lready acquainted with the principles of Mathematics ,
Phi losophy and Chemistry , to Real Practice '. Farish 's successor
gave a course on ' St a t i cs , Dynamics and Mechanism wi th pract ical
application t o manufacturinp, processes , t o Eng ineer ing and Arch i -
tecture ' . His efforts led to the es t ab lishment of the first cha i r
in ' Me cha ni s m and Engineering ' at Cambr idge i n 18 75 . f1eanwh ile
the newer universitie s - notab ly the Lond on co l l eges - had f or s ome
t i me ha d chai rs i n mechanica l an d c ivil e ng ineering and were of f er i ng
de gr e es in these sub jects . Rank ine , p erh aps t he most ce lebra t ed
eng ineeri ng professor of t he period , had s tudied a wide rang e of
subjects a t Edinburgh Un ivers i ty , served an ap prent icesh ip , wor ke d
as an eng i ne e r on many civil engi ne er i ng proj e ct s , and published
h i s famo us papers on th ermodyn ami cs , before he became a professor
a t Glas gow University i n 1 8 5 5. Thereafter h e proce ed ed t o astoni sh
his co l lea gu es with a co ns t an t fl ow of origina l fund amental work .
Al t ho ugh many of th e earl y e f for t s t o e duca te the ' me cha ni c' must
ha ve di s seminated a little bas ic scienc e and mathemat i cs, the maj or
pa r t of t he co urs es wi l l ha ve mer e ly des cribed t he i ndu strial tech -
niques of the time wit hout much delineati on of pr inci ples . By
1 850 , howeve r , the re had been deve loped a body of knowledr,e dis t in ct
from scie nc e , which was t he pr ovince of the t e chnolop.is t and which
had t o be mastered by anyone hopi ng t o become an eng ineer . Nearly
a century ha d to pa s s before this was t o be dis s e mi nate d wide ly by
f ull- time h i ghe r ed ucat ion in Br i tain , and meanwh i le most engineers
con tinued t o be t r aine d by appren t ices hip , eveni ng classes and
private s t udy . Be that as i t may, the b ody of knowl edge was t here ,
produced by a blend of (a) th e work of applied mathemat icians ,
(b ) t he exper imen ts of pract ica l engin eers and of some scient is ts
who took an i ntere st in te chnical processes , a nd ( c ) rules-of- thumb
develop ed over t he cen t ur i es . Whi l e it i s not poss ible to a s cribe
t he bi r th of t e chn olor,y to a partic ular set of events , i t i s poss i b l e
to argue that t e chn o l ogy came of age during t he per iod 1 80 0 t o 1 85 0 .
Fr om t his period onwards s c ience and technology developed s i de by
s i de , e ac h support i ng a nd s t i mulat i ng the other .
SOME CHARACTERIS TICS OF SCI ENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
We are now in a position t o outline some of the obvious char a c t er -

isti cs of science and technol op,y, before tryin g to deal with t he
more detailed phi losophi ca l quest ions list ed i n the Introduct ion .
vie have seen t hat science grew out of nat ural philosophy , the
l atter being the name given to speculation ab out the s tructure and
beh aviour of the natural world based on direct observation of
phen omena. As natural philos ophy progressed it i nvo l ve d the
c l ass i f i c a t i on of phenomena and some degree of concentration by
individuals upon e ach category . It is not surpr i sin g t hat
as tronomy was the first study to reach a high s t a t e of de velopment
because it deals with natural phenomena which can only De observed -
there is no question of them be i n g subjected to exper i ment under
co n t rol l ed conditions. Astronomical observation s be came pro-
gress i ve l y mor e accurate as t he technique of maki ng telescopes
improve d , and eventually the planetary moti on s were described in a
detailed quantitative and consistent way. No physical explanation

of the motions could be given, and indeed prior to the birth of
science most people were s a t i s f i ed with explanations of the form
'ordained by god' or 'it is in the nature of the thing' .
As far as terrestrial phenomena were concerned, in mechanics
and optics for example, it was eventually realised that only
repeatable experiments could lead to agreement between natural
philosophers, and to a body of certain knowledge which could be
added to step by step. Therein lay the birth of science. Certain
though it may be (and just how certain we shall examine later), the
knowledge was of a strictly limited kind because it was concerned
mainly with how things behaved rather than why. For this reason
few scientific discoveries were in direct conflict with the Church's
t eaching. In those cases where the Church did react, it did so
because it feared the eventual impact of the discovery on the minds
of ordinary people who could not be expected to appreciate the
limited nature of the scientists' work.
Science came of age with Newton's Principia which showed the
connection between astronomical and terrestrial phenomena. Both,
it now appeared, could be described in terms of the same few prin-
ciples or 'laws' of mechanics . It is in this sense only that
science can be said to 'explain' phenomena. A concept like
gravity - even if highly abstract and not expressible in terms of
something obvious to the senses - is entirely satisfactory if it
leads to a theory from which the behaviour of widely different
systems can be deduced. The laws of science give us a satisfying
feeling that we are understanding nature, because they are capable
of predicting what will happen under specified circumstances: they
bestow on us both a psychological and a practical benefit . They
make use of the notion of internal cause and effect, and we no longer
feel at the mer cy of diverse gods. This is a very real advantage
because we are thereby encouraged to try to take avoiding action,
and with increasing knowledge we are often successful in so doing,
particularly in the biological and medical s phe r es .
This brings us conveniently to technology, the mainspring of
which is the belief that our environment can be manipulated to our
advantage . We have seen that technology grew out of craft and
that craft pre-dated natural philosophy by many millenia. This is
not surprising because natural philosophy required an advanced
written language with a full vocabulary to supplement man's innate
curiosity about his environment, whereas craft merely required an
inventive streak coupled with manual dexterity. Rules-of-thumb
were soon accumulated for designing everything man constructed -
from waterwheels to engines of war, from canals to cathedrals.
This is the age of technics. During the Industrial Revolution
a vast range of new technical processes and machines were invented,
but that they worked was virtually all that was asked of them. As
this revolution spread throughout Europe and America, competition
forced the engineers to consider the efficiency of their processes
and appliances. They looked increasingly for help from applied
mathematicians and interested scientists, and began to perform
experiments to determine the properties of the materials that they
were using, and the strength of the structures that they were
creating. Bodies of useful theory were formulated concerned with
materials, machines, hydraulics, and structural design. These
30 The Natu re of Engineering
were soon t o be f ollowed by many mor e a s a variety of t e chn ologies

were s pawned by t he de veloping sc ienc es of physics an d chemis try .
These b odi es of t e ch nolop,ical kno wledge do differ f r om th e s ci en ces .
and i t i s the pre ci s e nature of the differen ce that we will e xami ne
i n detail in the ne xt chapter .
The main caus e s of the differen ce we can de al with s t ra ight away.
and they are thr e e f old. Fi r stly. there i s the di f fere nt purpo se i n
the mind s of t he s c ien t is t an d techn ologi s t . Fr om our hi storical
a c c ount i t s ho uld be c lea r t hat the scient ist 's pu r pos e is t o try
t o under stan d t he world a round himse l f . Or i g i na l l y thi s was t he
natural wor ld . virtuall y unchanged by man' s endeavours : nowadays
i t is a world modi f i ed very considerably by man's technological
a ch i e vemen t s. A solid-s tate physicist . for example . may wel l fi nd
hi ms elf s t udy i np, t he behavi our of new mater ials cre a ted by t he
te chn ologi s t. in h i s search f or answers t o fun damenta l quest ions
ab out the nat ur e of atomi c f or ces . The t e chnologis t' s main
purpos e . however . is t o Meet s ome human need ( other than sat is fy i ng
man ' s cur ios i t y ) perceived either by h ims elf or by s omeo ne e lse.
He may a lso be s t udy i ng the be ha viour of the mat erials occupy i ng
t he at t ent ion of th e sol i d-s tate phys icist . but he will be do ing
qu i te different exper iments because he i s like l y t o be inte res ted
only i n the ma croscopic proper ties of t he materia l . His ob ject i s
t o enab le the material to be used more e f f ect ive l y i n the cons t r uc-
t i on of some artifa ct or str uc ture . This major d i fference in
attitude be t ween the scient is t and technologist might properly be
r efe r r e d t o as t he t eleological dist i nc tion be ca us e i t re lates t o
purposes or aims.
The second cau s e of the d i fferenc e in the nat ur e of scienc e and
te chn ology lies in the bas i c pre supposition s be hi nd the s e t wo human
endeavours . Sc ie nce . we ha ve observed . pr esuppos es a certai n
regularity in nature . Sc i ence became pos sib l e onl y when the noti on
of natural cause an d effect r eplac ed the idea that the f lux of things
was due t o the wh i ms of t he gods . While this is a lso a n important
pre s upp os ition of t e chn ology . we ha ve see n that there i s a more
fundame ntal one - at least it i s pr ior in t he h i stori cal sense - and
that i s t hat natur e i s ca pab le of mani pul ati on and modi f ication . t he
better t o s e rve human ne e ds. This is why techn ological progre s s is
esse ntially the endless quest for more an d more diversifi e d ob jects
and bet t er means f or producing them - be t t er in t he s e nse of more
economi c (that i s. les s energy. materials. labour or time) . or
better in the s ense that the produ ct i s more effective fo r its
purpos e . Sc i ent i f i c progress i s qu ite di ffer ent: i t i s an end-
l e s s quest for bett er theor ies and concepts t o expl ain phenomena.
Here better may mean s i mpl e r . more univers al. or having greater
explanat ory and pred i ctive p ower.
Thirdly . economic and social considerations p laya much more
importan t r ole in t e ch nology than in science. This i s be cau se in
prin ciple the products of technology are av a i lab l e t o a l l . and all
are directly affe cted by te chn ology in one way or another . For
t hi s rea s on too . technology involves the use of a var iety of c odes
of standards bas ed on soc i ety 's evaluation of what it i s reas on able
t o expect in ma t t ers of safety . reliability . durability and
aesthetics. Sc ience i s a more private activity . certainly in the
sense that its product - kn owledge - does not have t o be availab le
to all . t hat is . be understandable by all. Thi s is not to say
that science has no social implications, or that no codes of

standards exist. There are codes of practice associated with
animal experiments and genetic experiments, for example, and no
doubt others will arise in the future. Such considerations do
not, however, playa central role in science.
Finally, we might end by pointing out one similarity between
science and technology which clearly distinguishes them from the
arts and social sciences. Both the scientist and technologist
study events which are substantially unaffected by the process of
study itself. Three important consequences follow. Firstly, the
results can be expressed in quite impersonal terms; secondly, the
results are repeatable; and thirdly, they should be acceptable to
any rational person . The arts, as we shall argue in the first
section of chapter 4, are concerned essentially with the expression
of an individual's personal emotional experience of aspects of the
world, whether through literature, music or the graphic arts. The
artist will, of course, hope that he is dealing with sufficiently
basic human experiences for his work to strike a chord in the minds
of other people. The extent to which he is successful in doing
this is a measure of the depth and quality of his art. But he
knows that no two human beings' emotional experiences are identical,
and therein lies the challenge of his endeavour. The social
sciences - economics, psychology, sociology and so on - try to
adopt the objective stance of science and technology, but differ
from them in that the objects of study are markedly affected by
the process of study. As a consequence the results are seldom
repeatable, and so far the theories have lacked sure foundations
which can be accepted for building on by successive generations.
This is, of course, not the fault of the social scientists, but
follows from (a) the intractable nature of their continuously
changing subject matter, (b) the difficulty of defining unam-
biguously the concepts used in their theorising (for exa~ple, gross
national product, intelligence quotient, extrovert/introvert, social
classes), and (c) the impossibility of quantifying these concepts
in such a way that they can be manipulated mathematically to yield
results which can be confirmed or falsified.
3 Scientific and Technological
Explanation
What i s meant by ex p lana t i on?; scientific e xplanation;

histori cal explanation; techn ological explanation;
eng i neer i ng , t echnology and engineering scien c e.
At the en d of c hap t e r 2 we noted an important difference between

the aims of scien ce a nd t echn ology, which we ca l l ed the tele o-
logical distinction . . One c onse que nce i s a s follows . In its
e ffort to expl ain ph en omen a, a sci e nt i f ic inves tigation can wander
at will as unfores e en results s ugges t new path s t o follow. More-
over, s uc h investigations never end because they always throw up
further qu estions . The esse nc e of te chnological invest igations
is that they a r e dire cted towards s e r vi ng the process of de signing
and manufacturing or cons t r uc t i ng particular thin gs whose purpose
ha s be en c l ear ly defin ed. We may wi sh to desir,n a br i dge that
uses le s s mat erial, build a dam that i s s a f er , improve the e f f i c -
iency of a power station, travel faster on the r ailways, and so on .
A te chnological inve stigation i s in this sen s e more prescribed than
a scientific invest i gation . It is a lso mor e limited, in that it
may end wh en it ha s l ed to an ad equate s ol ut i on of a techni cal
problem. The investigation may be restarted if there is renewed
interest in the product , either be c ause of changing social or
econ omic circumstances or because favourable developments in a
neighbouring t e chnology make a new advance possible. On the other
ha nd it may come to a complete stop because the product has been
entirely superseded by s omet h i ng else that will meet humanity's
changing ne ed s rather better.
It c oul d be that this difference will be found to lead to a
corresponding difference between scientific and technological
e xp l ana t i on of ph enomena. Because of its limited purpose, a
te chnological e xplanation will certainly involve a level of
approximation that is unacceptable in science . But is there a
more fundamental distinction? Before examining this qu estion in
detail, let us look briefly at what i s usually meant by explanation
in general.
WHAT IS MEANT BY EXPLANATION ?
We hope for two distinct things from an explanation : a psycholo-

gical benefit and a practical benefit. Firstly, we expect an
assuaging of our curiosity - a replacement of an uncomfortable
mental sensation of not knowing with the intellectual satisfaction
of knowing. This sense of mental comfort can be provided in
different ways, is usually only temporary, and never complete.
32
Scientific and Technological Explanation 33
Secondly, we expect some practical benefit in the form of an in-

creased ability to mould our environment in accordance with our
wishes. For this to be possible the explanation nust enable us to
make predictions about future events . The ability to control the
environment is essential for human beings because, unlike most other
organisms, we are not equipped with sufficient built-in, inherited,
forms of behaviour to secure our survival. This is true whether we
are thinking of physical or social environments .
We can distinguish two quite distinct types of explanation, only
one of which can adequately serve both these purposes. Let us con-
sider the following situation. Father, being one of the 'top
people', is reading The Ti mes in a room with his three s ons . The
conversation goes something like this:
(a) The youngest son starts the ball rolling : 'Why is the cat
scratching at the door Daddy?' Answer : 'Because it wants to get
in.' This is an explanation in terms of a goal or purpose, that
is, a teleological explanation. It will be perfectly satisfying
to the youngest son, but its value for prediction is nil. On
another occasion the cat might be merely wi shing to sharpen its
claws.
(b) Now the middle son chimes in : 'But why does the cat want to
get in?' The answer ~ip,ht be: 'Because it wants to get at the
saucer of milk .' Again, this is a purely teleological explanation,
and because it is only one of many possible goals its predictive
value is nil. But Father might reply: 'Because there is a saucer
of milk here and all cats like milk.' Although still mainly tele-
ological, this explanation does perhaps have the beginnings of
another kind of explanation, a causal explanation, because it in-
volves the empirical generalisation that 'all cats like milk'. To
this extent it has some predictive value. Because 'all cats like
milk', the existence of the saucer of milk in the room makes it
likely that the teleological element in the explanation is correct.
(c) The middle son is satisfied, but not so the oldest son. Lifting
his head from his ho nework he says: 'Say Pop, what is it about a
cat's metabolism that makes it like milk ?' The actual and immedi-
ate answer would have to be a causal explanation in terms of bio-
chemical laws . And this would certainly satisfy the oldest son
because he is adequately prepared by A-level G.C .E. to be blinded
by science.
(c) The last act in our saga is a silent Father wondering why the
biochemical laws are what they are. The answer could be either a
teleological exp~anation in terms of God's purpose or nature's
purpose, or a causal one if some more general scientific laws could
be quoted from which the biochemical laws qre deducible. The tele-
ological explanation is final, if unsatisfying, but the causal type
can never be final. In spite of this, it is the causal explanation
which has the greater predictive power. Although it will normally
be hedged about with restrictions on the circumstances in which it
is applicable, provided that these are met we can usually expect not
only qualitative but quantitative predictions.
The basic reason why a teleological explanation has little pre-
dictive power is that it is explaining a present event by reference
to a future event in the sense of a purpose to be achieved. It is
also psychologically much less satisfying than a causal explanation
whereby a present event is explained with reference to either a
logically prior, or temporally prior, event. A critic from the

'other culture' mir,ht say that because causal laws can never be
final explanations they are only answers to 'how' questions and not
'why' questions. In other words that they are merely descriptions
of what happens. They are, however, more than thi s, because if
true they cover all instances that have not been observed as well
as those that have. They evidently have a predictive power that
mere descriptions or enumerations of events do not have.
SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION
Teleological explanations are often used in the early days of a

science - partiCUlarly in the development of the biological and
psychological sciences . 'Why is the heart beating? - To circu-
late the blood around the body.' Here an intention is ascribed
to the biological organ. One should not despise such explana-
tions - no one would deny the great step forward in our under-
standing of the body due to Harvey's theory of the circulation of
the blood. But it is a first-stage explanation only, and nowadays
one feels more comfortable if such explanations can be given in
terms of chemistry or physics : in our example it would be in terms
of the biochemistry of blood.
A word of warning is in order here. Just because one sort of
explanation is 'reduced' to another as a science develops, it does
not necessarily mean that the early type loses all its value.
Classical thermodynamics is still useful even though, with suitable
assumptions, it can be reduced to statistical mechanics. Both
theories make use of abstract concepts, and it makes little sense
to indulge in inconclusive argument about which i s the truer rep-
resentation of reality. What is important is that the theories,
each in their own way, should enable useful predictions to be made.
Or, to take a simple analogy, suppose the time arrives when the
detailed physical and chemical conditions for the occurrence of
mental depressions are determined . Such depressions will not
thereby be shown to be illusory, and the word depression will still
playa useful part in our vocabulary. The same argument can be
applied to moral concepts such as right and wrong, just and unjust.
As psychology and neurology advance we may come to modify our use
of these terms - to apply then in more restricted situations
perhaps - but it is unlikely that we shall dispense with them
entirely.
Let us now look at the way causal explanations are used in
science. Figure 3.1 shows a simple deductive system representing
Galileo's theory of motion: it is an example used by Braithwaite
in his book Scientific Explanation. (C.U.P. 1953). The enuncia-
tion of the high-level hypothesis I is a scientific explanation of
the events described by the lowest-level hypotheses III. This
example exhibits most of the important features of a scientific
explanation that we shall need to discuss.
(i) Verification of hypotheses

The high-level hypothesis is justified by testing instances of the
lowest level hypotheses. We must note, however, that a finite
High-LeveL hypothesis I
Every body near the earth, falling freely, falls with an acceler-
ation of 9.81 m/s 2•
Using the integral calculus:
2
-ds = 9.81 m/s 2
dt 2
1 If s = 0 and ds/dt =
e
= 4.9 t 2
o at t = 0
Lowep-LeveL hypothesis II
Every body starting from rest near the earth, falling freely, falls
4.9 t 2 metres int seconds for all values of t
~ By arithmetic
Lowest-LeveL hypotheses III (aJ, (bJ, (aJ, eta.

(a) Every body starting freely for I second falls 4.9 metres
(b) Every body starting freely for 2 seconds falls 19.6
metres
( c) and so on .
Figure 3.1 Simple deductive system due to Galileo.

(Galileo actually used balls rolling down
inclined planes, and a geometric argument
instead of the integral calculus.)
number of verified instances can never prove a hypothesis to be

true, whereas one instance to the contrary can prove it to be
false. This is a consequence of the form which all scientific
laws take. They are all of the form 'Every A is B', although A
and B may be complicated statements such as : 'Every (system
carried through a cycle) is (an instance of an event wherein the
net work done by the system is proportional to the net heat trans-
ferred to the system). This is one way of expressine the First
Law of Thermodynamics. Propositions of the form 'Some A's are
B's' have the reverse asymmetry: no finite number of instances
to the contrary can disprove them but only one instance of agree-
ment proves them to be true. 'Some technologists are women'
might be an appropriate example, and we certainly would not call
this a scientific law.
A second point to note is that instances of hypothesis III(a),
while evidence for hypothesis II, are also indirect evidence for
the other lower-level hypotheses III (b), (c), etc. This is
because all hypotheses III are logical consequences of hypothesis
II. One of the main reasons for organising the theory into a
deduct ive sys tem i s s o t hat di rect ev i dence f or an y l owest-level

hypot hesis ca n be i ndi r e c t ev idence f or al l the ot he r l owest-level
hypotheses .
Of co ur s e , most sc ien t if ic theo ries ha ve more t ha n one h ighes t -
level hyp othes is . For example , when Ga l i leo 's t he or y i s inc or-
porated i n Newton 's , hyp ot hesis I becomes deduc ible f rom NeHt on 's
l a ws of mot i on and his l aw of uni ver s a l gravi tation . Refutat ion
of a l owest-level hypothe si s wi l l then not des t r oy the whol e sys t em,
but wil l require at l eas t one of t he high es t- l e vel hyp ot he s es t o be
mod i fi ed. As t o how t o ma ke t he change , th i s i s where the intuition
and i nsp i rat ion of an Einstein or a Ma x Pla nck ar e ne ed ed .
I t shou l d be c l ear f rom t he f ore going t hat t he essence of a
sci ent i f i c proposition i s t ha t it i s falsifi able . It i s most
empha t ica l l y not a provable state men t . It fo l lows t hat s c i ent i s ts
do not s pe nd their t i me c onduc t i n g experiment a ft er e xperiment to
ma ke a hypothe sis more ce r t a i n an d thereby turn it i nt o a 'law' .
Adv an c es come by l ooki n g f or a fal sificat ion - by seeki ng co ndi t i ons
und er which t he law does not hold. Major advan ce s are made on ly by
chan gi ng a high-level hyp othe si s so that anomalou s r e sults can be
e xpl a i ned . This enab l es th e modified theory t o embrac e a wider
r a nge of phenomen a . Tho se sci en t is ts hoping t o make a maj or
advance in their sub ject cond uct experiments i n une xplored situ-
a t i ons hoping t o fin d t hat the e xis t i ng t he or y does not fi t , and
t hat they wi l l b e a ble t o de velop a the ory tha t does .
Onc e a ch ange in a h i gh - leve l hypoth esi s has been a c cepted by
t h e s c i en t i f i c fratern ity , t he who le sys tem of i de a s wi th i n whi ch
the related phenomen a are s t udi ed und ergoe s a r a dic al change .
Cer t a i n propert ies of ma t t er h i ther to unknown or t hought t o be un-
important now become s i gn i f i ca nt . What Kuhnt c a l ls ' norma l'
sc ience then takes over , and t he ord i nar y pract i t ioners i n the f ield
ent hus i a s t i ca l ly set ab out t he t a s k of me asuring t hese properti es .
Muc h i n genuity goes i nt o t he de sign of apparatus f or mak ing the
measurem en ts and t he re i s con siderab l e s a t isfact ion t o be ga i ne d i n
the purs ui t of a high order of accur acy . A good example of
'nor mal' sci en ce was t h e spate of work on t he measurement of the
prope rties of atomi c nu cleii once i t was s hown t o be pos sible t o
indu c e nuc l ea r reacti ons . A va s t amount of work was involved in
the meas ur ement of t he ma s s es of nuclear particles, the n uc l e ar
cross-sect i onstt of a l l the i s otopes for a r ange of r eacti ons , and
the mod es and rate s of decay of radioactive i s otopes. All these
data we r e required if Pl anck 's quantum t he or y and Ein st ein' s mass-
en ergy relat ion were t o have useful predic tive va lue. And the
fact t h a t a l l t hes e data co uld be cross -checked t o s how an interna l
cons is t en cy provi ded s uppor t for the high- level hyp otheses up on
whi ch quantum theory and the mass - enervs relation wer e based .
(i i J Status of s cie nti fi c Za1.Js
Perus al o f a few autobiographies of great scientists l eaves one in

no doubt that high-level hyp otheses are produced as an act of
crea t i on , springing i nto mind s u dde nl y after a long peri od of
t T. Kuhn , The Str ucture of Sci en t ific RevoZutions ( Chicago , 1962).

t t A nuclear ' cr os s - s e c t i on' i s a mea sur e of t he proba bility tha t
a particular nuclear r eaction will ta ke place.
worrying at the problem like a dog with a bone. They are not
formed by some logical process of induction from an accumulation
of results, which was the view taken by Francis Bacon. Until
Karl Poppert had argued the case for the view of science presented
here, philosophers of science spent much time and effort trying to
solve the 'proble~ of induction'. How could a generalisation be
arrived at logically fro~ a finite number of instances ? Why should
the next instance follow the last? Reference to some principle
such as the regularity of nature was no answer to the logical
problem because it is itself a result of induction. The answer
is in fa ct that science uses deductive systems of thought not
induction.tt In chapter 2 we said that Francis Bacon might be
called the first philosopher of science: but we did not say he was
correct in all his views, and in this respect he sent his successors
off on a wild goose chase .
Once a hypothesis is accepted as a scientific law, this does not
mean that it is regarded as an immutable truth about nature. Neither
is it normally ever shown to be completely wrong. What happens is
that it is shown to be applicable over a more limited range of con-
ditions than was once thought . For example, Boyle's Law - that
the pressure of a ga s varies inversely with its volume when the
temperature is constant - was found to be inexact when more
accurate methods of measurement were employed, but to be more
nearly 'obeyed' the lower the pressure and the higher the temper-
ature at which the experiments were conducted. The reason that
it is true only for a limiting case was satisfactorily explained
when it was shown to be a predictable result of the kinetic theory
of gases: that is, when it could be shown to be deducible by
applying the ordinary laws of Newtonian mechanics to a model of
gas conceived as a collection of molecules behaving like perfect
billiard balls of negligible size.
To take another example, Newton's laws of mechanics were not
~eplaced by Einstein's relativistic mechanics : they were subsumed
in them. Newton's laws are still as applicable as ever to a wide
range of phenomena, but they are not quite s o universal as was first
thought . When changes are made to a hypothesis at the head of a
large deductive system like the science of mechanics, it is not
surprising that there are very significant consequences. Thus mass
was conserved under Newton whereas it is mutually convertible with
energy under Einstein . Quite new things, such as nuclear physics,
'atom bombs', and nuclear power plant, suddenly become possible.
It is indeed a brave man who says that something is impossible
because of a scientific law: sooner or later he is likely to have
to eat his words. For example, a great deal of modern physics
depends upon the idea that the velocity of light (that is, radia-
tion) is a universal constant. It is not iMpossible that even-
tually more astronomical data, collected by telescopes in space,
will suggest that some events in the universe can be explained
t See B. Magee, Poppe~ (Fontana/Collins, 1973).

t t This is not to say that induction is useless: by looking at
instances we can make such statements as 'most metals are
ductile, so this new metal will probably be ductile'. Although
they do not have the status of scientific laws, such generalis-
ations are useful knowledge .
only by assuming that the velocity of light has varied over

astronomically long stretches of time .
(ii i) Contingent and neces sary propositions
The next feature of Figure 3.1 which is worth a comment is the step
from hypothesis I to hypothesis II. A scientific theory normally
comprises two parts : (a) a set of propositions whose truth or
falsity depends upon experiment - these are called contingent pro-
positions; and (b) a set of propositions whose truth or falsity is
largely a matter of logic - these are called necessary propositions .
The latter is the mathematical part. (We say 'largely' a matter of
logic because mathematics cannot in fact be reduced completely to
logi c. Russell and Whitehead attempted this in their Principia
Mathematica. but failed. Since then one of the major achie vements
of mathematical philosophy has been to prove that this is a fruit-
less quest.) Fortunately a great deal of the mathematical part of
a scientific theory can be dealt with separately. the resulting
equations being fed into the system of contingent propositions at
appropriate points. Figure 3 . 1 is dressed up in modern language.
because Galileo preceded Newton and Liebnitz who introduced the
integral calculus. Galileo accomplished the step from hypothesis
I to hypothesis II by geometrical arguments which would be more
difficult for the Modern reader to follow. We have already noted
in chapter 2 that the necessary mathematics has often be en developed
many years before it finds important applications in a scientific
theory. Einstein. for example. had Riemann' s non-Euclidean
geometry (1854) and Ricci's tensor calculus (1887) ready to hand
when developing general relativity (1916). Any Minister of Science
s houl d be prepared to financ e mathematicians' research projects
f i f t y years ahead of the scientists!
It is worth noting the essential difference between a mathem-
atical theory and a scientifi c theory. A s c i ent i f i c deductive
system can be extended virtually indefinitely in the upward direc-
tion so that the high-level hypotheses embrace wider and wider
fields of experience. The process would be complete only if all
the sciences could be shown to be part of one great deductive
system. In contrast. mathematical deductive systems start at the
top with initial axioms and can only be extended downwards. The
validity of the axioms does not depend on the theorems deduced from
them: it is the other way round.
(iv) The meaning of abstract scientific concepts
Although the simple example of Figure 3.1 does not show this. it is
common knowledge that higher-level hypotheses invariably make use
of theoretical concepts which are not observable by the senses -
electrons. energy. entropy and so forth. Philosophers of science
have now shown, fairly rigorously. that if these concepts were
directly and completely definable in terms of observable things.
the set of higher-level hypotheses containing them would become
logically deducible from the lowest-level empirical generalisations
which they purport to explain. They would then become simply
another way of stating the same information and the theory would
lose its power of being able to explain facts about new. hitherto
unrelated, ev ents. To ha ve s hown thi s i s a major cont r i but ion of

modern ph ilos oph y of science . It i s n ow r eal i s ed that the ab stract
co ncep ts derive the i r Mean i ng on ly by vir t ue of the part they play
i n the deduc t ive sys tem, an d that there mus t be an e lem en t of
vague ness in the ir definit i on. Thi s i s why , f or examp le , i t t ook
so l on g for the early i dea s about f orce, momentum a nd energy t o be
c lar i f ied. In it i al c l arificat ion had to await the sys t em of
Newt onian mechan i cs. Inde e d, owing t o their i ndef i n i t eness, t hese
co ncepts were stil l the s ubjec t of deb ate l ong a f ter Newton,
be twee n men s uc h as Helmholtz, Maxwe l l an d Mach in the ninete enth
century .
Becaus e the mean i ng of s c i en t i fic conce pts i s s o c lose ly bo und
up with the de duc tive sys tem i n which th ey ar ise , di f fic ul t i es
somet imes oc cu r when one the or y is r educ ed t o ano t he r . One
examp le is the di ff icu l ty of a t tach i ng a meaning t o t emper ature -
a concept i n c lassica l thermody namics - whe n think ing i n t erm s of
s tat is t ical th ermodyn ami cs. It fo l lows that it is most un l i ke ly
tha t theor e tical concep ts wi l l ma ke sense whe n us ed in ent i rely
differe nt contexts. Di scuss ions of met aphysi cal or r eli gious i m-
plicat ions of sc ientific pr inciples - s uch as the principle of
inc r ea s i ng ent ropy - c an be int e r est ing, bu t the c on clusions must
be t reated wi t h reserve. For example , en t r opy i s a co nc ep t arising
from a st udy of finit e sys tems a nd the princ iple coul d not l ogically
be app l ied t o the who le universe if one was arguing f or a c os mology
based on the co nti nuous c reat ion the ory of matt er .
I t a lso fo l lows t hat it makes littl e sense t o ask s uch qu esti ons
as ' Do el e ctr ons ex ist? ' or ' Doe s en t ropy ex is t? '. For the s e co n-
cep ts t o serve their prope r f un ction in sc ience , th ere i s no
nec e s s ity f or there t o be a one - to-one c or respondenc e bet ween them
and th ings in th e r eal wor l d . In f a ct t o r e gard thes e a bstract
conc epts i n s uc h a way i s t o r ev ert t o th e time of Francis Ba c on .
And to regard the s e co ncep ts as i n f a ct the on ly reality, and the
observab l e wor l d as a mirage se parat i ng th i s reality fr om our mind s,
i s t o r evert t o Platonism. Plato thou ght that a ppear ances wer e t oo
of te n subject t o i l lusion t o be of i mporta nc e, and that the essence
of t he wor ld lay in t h e i deal, abs t r act, f or ms whi ch the mind c ould
d edu c e f r om the s e a ppearances.
(v) Science in perspective
Let us s um up this sect ion on sc ient i f ic explana t ion. Sc ient i f ic

ex pl a na tions involve th e es tab lishmen t of gene ral laws c overing what
wer e hi therto unconnected emp i rical events , a nd they ena ble pred i c-
tions of futur e even ts t o be made. In th e ear ly or 'natural-
philos oph y' s tage of a sc ience the l a ws are of t en mer ely c l ass i fi -
catory . Even thi s i s no t a negl igible step - to c l as s i fy a wha l e
a s a ma mma l i s t o asser t t he genera l isation that ' a l l baby whale s
are pr ovid ed with mi lk by t heir mothers ' . It s i ng l es out an
important f eature by which wha les diff er from fi she s and ena bl es us
to predi ct that t he next wha le we meet wi l l be a mamma l. As s c ienc e
d evelops it explains l ow-level genera l isations by d educ ing them from
more genera l hypot heses which cove r a wi de r r ange of ex perience.
Th i s or ga n isat ion i nto a h i erarchi cal sys t em requires sub t le deduc-
tive t echniques, and t he s e are pr ovided by Ma t he ma t ics. The things
wi t h whi ch the hi gher- l evel hy potheses are co ncer n ed often cease t o
be d irect ly obser vab le a nd b ec ome t he ore t i cal concepts which are

meaningl es s out of t he co n text of the deduct ive s ys t em i n which they
arise . We no l onger pretend that our abstract concep t s represent
real th ings , and ev en expl a na tor y models , l ike t he ki netic theory
of gases , become impo s s i ble to c onstruc t once we s t ep int o t he heady
r ealm s of wave mechanics a nd qu a ntum phys i cs .
The reason why sc i e nc e is so suc cessful i s that most of the ti me
i t limi t s itse lf to problems whi ch l end thems e lves t o cont r o l l e d
exp eriment and which c an be sol ve d with in t he cur r ent framework of
estab l ished sc ientifi c theory . But a word of warn ing i s in or der .
There may still b e tho se who are s o i mpressed by the power of
sc ien ce , with its po ten t i a l f or e ver- increas ing kno wl edge whi ch
commands general agreement , tha t they d ismiss ot her forms of know-
ledge and human a ct i vity a s pr e - s cient ifi c mumbo-j umbo. The reader
is as ke d to refle ct on the followin g t wo parab les t a ken fr om
Edd i n gt on' s book The Philosophy of Physical Sc i ence ( C. U. P. 1939 ) .
The f irst parab le i s about a n i ch thyologi st exp lor ing t he lif e
of the ocean - h e casts his ne t , a na lys es hi s catch , and pronounc es
hi s c onclusion t ha t no sea crea t ure i s smal l er tha n t wo cent ime t res
l one. An on looker po i n t s ou t that he is us ing a ne t of two cent i -
metre mes h . But t he i ch t hy ol ogi s t , be ca us e he i s a hu man be ing a s
well as a s c i en t ist , gets very c r oss and says tha t anythin r, un -
catchable by his net i s not part of t he k i ngdom of f i shes , wh i ch
has be en defined as th e theme of i chthyological knowledg e , and i s
i pso f ac t o outs i d e the scope of such knowl edge . I n shor t he says
' Wha t my net c a n ' t c a tch a in 't fi sh ' .
The s e co nd para ble i s an extens i on of t he l er,end ab out Procrustes
who s t r e t ch ed or chop ped down his gues ts to fit the bed he ha d co n-
s tructed for them. Edd ingt on adds tha t perhaps we have not heard
the r est of the s t or y - how Procrustes mea sured hi s gues t s i n the
mor ni ng and wrot e a l e arned pa per for the An t hropo logical Soc i e t y
of America en t it led ' On the Uniformity of Stat ure of Travellers ' .
What the fi r s t parable su gge s t s is t hat our s e ns or y apparatus
a nd the s truc ture of our minds - no matter how wel l supplemented by
s ophisticated measuring devices - inevitab ly r estrict what we can
d i s c over abou t the wor l d . And the second parable sugge st s that t he
world we obs er ve i s mod ified by t he mere act o f our studying it .
At the su b-atomic l e ve l this i s true even of the mos t ob j ect i ve
sc ience - physic s. Hei senberg 's uncertainty principle i s a formal
express i on of the fa ct (namely , the greater the accuracy with wh ich
we can define the posit ion of a part ic l e t he greater the error i n
ou r kn owledge of i t s ve loc i ty , or vi ce ve rsa) . Exa ctly what we
know i n scienc e i s compl ete ly mysteri ous : just a s myst er i ous a s
tha t wh ich the r eli giou s pers on be l ieve s he knows when he prof esses
his creed . J ust what is gravity, e nergy , an e lectron , and s o on?
Sc ienti fic explanations a re j u s ti fi ed beca use they he lp us make
sense of the world around u s and because they enab le engineers and
technologists t o modify t he world i n ways which we ho pe wi l l prove
to be be ne f i c i a l . If we j udge sc ience on the bas is of its uti l i ty ,
rather t ha n on whether it lea d s t o s ome absolute ' truth', should we
judge ot her forms of knowledge from a more e levated standpoint?
I f art and religion l ea d us to v iews of t he wor ld of human exper ience
whi ch ar e helpful, perhaps we shou l d ask no more of t hem. Cer t a i nly
we s hould not belittl e t hem be c ause they cannot be ' proved' a nd
becau s e they never command general a greement. It is naive t o
s ug ges t that science i s truth, art pure imagination, and religion

mere myth . A more sophi sticated v i ew i s expres sed el oquent ly by
Cass i r ert in his book Essay on l~n: 'In l a ngua ge , in reli gion , in
art, in sc i en ce , man ca n do no more than build up his own universe -
that en ables him t o understand and interpret , t o articulate and
orga nis e , t o synthesise and universalise, his human e xpe r ienc e ' .
Be cause it may well ha ve repercuss ions on our view of techn o-
logical explanation, l et us now make a di version to cons i d er the
part explanation plays in historic a l s t ud i es . In what way do es
hi storical explanation diff er fr om s cie nt i f ic exp lanation ?
HISTORICAL EXPLANATI ON
The function of history is held t o be ' t o provide an understanding

of the past in the light of t he pres ent, and of the present in the
light of the past'. No mere chronol ogy would fu lfil this fun ction
of history. Hi story must be an a t tempt to explain e ve n ts , not just
de scribe them.
The fir st point to note is that whereas t he scient ist works wi t h
effectiv ely i s olated s ys t ems, where the number of r elevant variables
is s ma l l and the events are r ep eatab l e, the historian deal s with a
t otal co mp l ex of events whi ch ha s no definite beginning or end in
time a nd which can never be repeated . The s econd point is that
the sub j e c t matter of h i story ar e the a cts of human be in gs who are
c ommonly s uppo s ed t o behave in a purpos eful ma nne r . It foll ows
that h i storical explanation s must ha ve a t ele ologic al element ev en
when expr es sed i n ca usal language.
The expl ana t i on of a pers on ' s ac tion s will invo lve at l east two
things: (a) reference to a pur pose or inten tion, a nd ( b) r e f erence
to previous ev ents wh i c h gave r i s e t o that purpos e or intention.
It i s the group of previous events giving ris e to the intention
wh i ch i s l oos ely cal led the cause of t he pers on' s a ct ion . But the
s a me c i rc umst ances may g ive ri s e t o different intention s in different
pe ople, and different c i r cums t a nces may gi ve ri s e to the s aMe i n-
tentions in different pe ople. There i s, therefor e, no inevit-
abi lity about this kind of ca us e and eff ect. Furth ermore, we ar e
dealing with causal c ha i ns o f even t s wherein alternative mea ns may
be used to achieve th e s ame int ention or end . It i s c l ea r that
causal explanation s i n history will be qu ite diff erent in kind from
thos e in sci ence.
Of co urse , f or 'person' in what has be en s a i d , we may subst itute
wor ds like gover nmen t , nation or c l ass . The s e are the ab stract
concep t s used by hi storians. They a re always gi ven human attri-
butes be cause th ey a r e groups of pers on s . The danr,er ar ises whe n
this f ac t i s f orgot ten and t he c oncepts are t reated a s having a
reality of their own quite apart f rom the pe ople who co mpr ise them.
This i s how the g l or i f ica t i on of the state ar i ses , of t en wi t h the
consequen t ial d eath o f millions of i ndi v i dua l s .
How does the historian go ab out his j ob ? The first thin g he
d oe s i s to group t he possible causes of an event - into religious,
economic, pol itical, ide alogica l, personal or psychologica l c ause s -
and into long term a nd s hor t term causes. He then tries to reduce
t Ernst Cass i rer , Essay on Man (Yale U.P. , 1944)

them t o some sor t of order of i mporta nce, and sometime s to deter-

mine the ' ultima t e' cause . Phrases l ike 'in the fina l analys is '
and 'in the l a s t re sort ' frequently appear in historians ' wr it ings .
To do this se lecti on , t he hist orian must make use of some gener a l -
isations about the way human beings behave , bo th singley and in
groups . These general isa t i on s , however , are seldom explic itly
stated , a nd i ns t ead the process i s r efer r ed to a s t he ' e xer ci s e of
h istorical j udgemen t'. Hi s difficulty i s that he cannot merely
use his exper ien ce of how huma n beings l iving now behave: he ha s
t o thi nk hims e l f i nt o t he minds of those living in the age "he i s
studying. This i s t he r e a s on why histor ies a re r ewr i t ten time and
t ime again . His t orian s have to a dop t a kind of s uccess ive a pproxi -
mat ion - one as ses s ment of th e ev idence wi l l ass is t t he ne xt a t t empt ,
because the s econd histor ian i s better a ble t o appreciate t he
int elle ctual cl i ma te of the pe r iod .
Faced wi t h all thes e diffi cultie s - of de l i neat i ng e i t her an area
or peri od of study; of a multipli city of caus es; of the t eleo-
l ogical e l e ment whi ch is made wors e by the e ase with whi ch human
beings de ceive thems elve s as t o th eir motives f or act ion - there
ca n be no question of erect i ng hierarchical sys te ma t i c theorie s or
of making reliable predictions . The few his t or i an s who a t tempt
t h i s do not f ind f a vour wi t h t he maj ority. Arno ld Toynbee , wi t h
his monumenta l t hirt e en- vol ume history o f all known civilisat ions ,
i s a r e c ent example of a hi storian who attempt e d t o f it his tory into
a sys tem at ic t heory . He i nt r oduced t he co ncepts of ' cha llen ge' a nd
'res pons e' t o provide a n e xplana tion f or the ris e a nd fal l of
civil isations . These are such broad and impr eci s e ter ms that they
have littl e explanatory va lue .
Because we cannot expec t anyt hing like scient ific ver ifiab i li ty ,
or much of pred i cti ve value , f r om hi s torica l explanation , do we then
agree with Hen ry Ford tha t ' h i s t or y i s bunk '? Of course we do not.
~os t of our lives have to be r un , and dec is ions taken , on the bas is
of t he kind of i n t uitive j udgement s used by his tor ians . The know-
l edg e of human behaviour ga ined by t he hi s t orians' wor k i s pa r t a nd
parcel of t he semi -consc ious knowledge t hat we carry around in our
minds and us e i n our da i ly lives. Ce r t ainly we ac t as though we
beli e ve human beha viou r to be i n prin ciple unders tandab le and t o
s ome ex t e nt predictab l e. I f one day yo u were greeted by yo ur wi f e
at the breakfast table with b l a ck l ooks and a vio lent at t ack up on
yo ur mode of life , yo u would not merely shrug thi s off as a co n-
v inci ng demonstration of the capric iousness and unpredictability of
human na t ur e . You would instead look for a ca us e and s ay something
like: ' Oh dear, I hav e f orgotten her birthday again .' This is
the kind of t hing historians are trying to do bu t on a r ather
l a r ger sca l e .
TECHNOLOGICAL EXPLANATION
Explanati ons given i n answer t o questions ab out how a technical

de vice works are largely teleological , that i s, they are in terms
of purpo s e . ' What i s the flywheel for? - To reduce the fluctu-
a t ions in t orque which " arise from the intermittent na ture of the
proc es ses i n a re c i pr ocating en gi ne . ' ' rfuy is the spark initiated
before t he end of the compression stroke? - To allow f or t he de lay
in th e i gnition proc e ss . ' Even though such questions must be
asked and answered as a prelude to technological investigations,

we are not here concerned with this relatively trivial kind of
explanation. They are first-order explanations in the sphere of
craft or technics.
Some examples of the sorts of situation in which mature techno-
logical explanations are called for are as follows.
(a) When a bridge collapses the engineer will be called upon to
explain the failure: to determine the cause of the failure. The
cause may turn out to be wholly technological, perhaps because the
bridge is a new design sensitive to aerodynamic forces that had
hitherto caused no problem, or it may turn out to be partly due to
human error during construction.
(b) In the early days of engine development, trial-and-error experi-
ments showed that ignition advance was necessary to make a spark-
ignition engine run smoothly . Rule-of-thumb methods enabled this
requirement to be incorporated in the design of such engines. When
it became necessary to improve the engine efficiency - because of
competition or rises in fuel cost - the technologist had to deter-
mine the causes of ignition delay so that he could find a way of
controlling it. To do this he had to explain ignition delay in
terms of the chemistry of the combustion process.
(c) Because of the high intensity of heat transfer in the core of
a fast-breeder reactor, a liquid metal must be used as a coolant .
If one used the same theory for calculating the required surface
area that was developed from studies of heat transfer in air or
water heaters, one would find that the rate of heat transfer ob-
tained is not in accord with the theoretical predictions. An
explanation would have to involve a detailed study of the way heat
is transferred in boundary layers of fluid, which would in turn
lead to a more comprehensive theory applicable to a wider range of
fluids.
These three examples should serve to show that technological ex-
planations are of a causal type: but are they causal in the way
scientific explanations are causal, or are they perhaps closer to
the causal e xpl a na t i on s of history? The answer is that they vary
across the whole spectrum between these two extremes.
Explanations of the causes of failure of any engineering con-
struction - whether it be a bridge, a dam, or an aircraft - have
many of the characteristics of an historical explanation. One
would inevitably be distinguishing between immediate causes and
ultimate causes, and between technological error and the human
situations which might have contributed to that error. The
immediate cause may be the failure of a structural component, but
was the ultimate cause a simple error in the design calculations or
was it an unusual set of conditions not taken into account by the
theory? On the other hand, perhaps it was due to mismanagement of
the process of construction or assembly. Going even further down
the chain of circumstances, perhaps the ultimate cause was an in-
adequate system of engineering training . How far back in time
one has to go before one can be said to have established the cause
is somewhat arbitrary, and it depends upon the purpose of the
enquiry. Are we merely trying to ensure that if we build an
identical bridge/dam/aircraft again it will not fail, or are we
trying to ensure that any subsequent design of a similar but not
identical kind will not fail?
Turning now to consider explanations arising from such problems

as (b) and (c), that is, the causes of ignition delay and the
failure to predict heat transfer rates when using liquid metals, it
is clear that they will be at the science end of the spectrum.
Solutions of these problems involve the establishment of techno-
logical theories: of chemical kinetics in the case of problem (b)
and of convective heat transfer in problem (c) . Both theories have
been built up steadily from a study of many different but related
problems in each field. To see how technological theory differs
from scientific theory, let us consider a concrete example wherein
both types are involved and interact with each other : we will con-
trast thermodynamics with its technological counterpart 'engineering
therr.1odynamics' i ' •
(i) Thermodynamics
The science of thermodynamics arose in answer to problems posed by

the development of heat engines in the eighteenth century. A heat
engine is a device for converting heat continuously into mechanical
work. Originally the heat was provided by the cor.1bustion of wood
or coal, but soon engines were developed which used oil and gas as
the fuel and nowadays the heat source might be a nuclear reactor.
It is not surprising that the science of thermodynamics underpins
the technologies associated with power plant: yet as we shall see,
it does not by itself carry us very far.
Figure 3.2(a) and (b) depicts the logical structure of classical
thermodynamics based on the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics.
Therr.1odynamics deals with phenomena which arise when a system (any
collect ion of matter) interacts with its surroundings due to the
movement of a force at the boundary, or due to the difference in
temperature (tl - t2) between the system and surroundings (see
Figure 3 .2(a). In the former case work (W) is said to be done,
and in the second case heat (Q) is said to be transferred. The
state of the system at any instant is described by the value of its
properties - volume, pressure, temperature, say. Experiments on a
variety of systems have shown that when the system is taken through
a cyclic process, so that it is brought back to its original state
and all its properties have their original values, the net quantity
of heat transferred to the system is proportional to the net work
done by the system. If we postulate that this is true for all
imagirable systems, we have what is called the First Law of Thermo-
dynamics. We are satisfied with the hypothesis because no experi-
ment has ever refuted it, nor refuted any of the consequences which
follow logically from it.
The most important consequence of the First Law is the deduction
(by a very simple mathematical argument) of the existence of a
property of the system which we call the 'internal energy' (E). It
is no less a property because it is unobservable directly by the
senses: what is important is that a change in its value depends
only on the end states and not upon the process joining ~he states.
Having established the existence of this property, it is possible
t The non-technical reader may wish to skip the remainder of this

section.
state described by values of properties:
volume
pressure
-
work W
surroundings
temperature
1st Law
t
heat Q For a cycle: Q ex W
deduction
There exists a property, E, such

t
that ~E =9 - W for any process
(a)
2nd Law
source For a cycle: Q > 0

R
I
!
All ideal (reversible) engines with source at t
s
•
hwffactah
and sink at t have the same efficiency

R
1
There exists an absolute temperature scale, T
For a cycle:
!
Q/T ~ ~ (Q/T) rev =0
l (Q/T) .
1rrev
< 0
There exists a property S such that ~ = (Q/T)

~ rev
For any isolated system ~S is positive or zero
(b)
Figure 3.2 Logical structure of thermodynamics

to define what is meant by work and heat more clearly. These are
now seen to be 'na me s for different ways in which energy is trans-
ferred between the system and its surroundings . Furthermore we
can now write down an equation which applies to any process - not
just cyclic processes - and this is referred to as the energy
equation, namely Q = ~E + W.
Reverting to the cyclic case, and referring now to Figure 3.2(b),
we see that what we have is an engine - work being delivered to the
surroundings continuously by a system undergoing a series of cyclic
processes while exchanging heat with a source and sink of energy.
We see directly from the First Law that no system can be devised
which will produce work continuously without energy being supplied,
that is, if Q = 0 then ~ = O. But an enormous reservoir of heat
exists in the atmosphere and ocean. Why is it not possible to
power our ships by tapping such sources of heat? It is the Second
Law of Thermodynamics which tells us that this very valuable type
of perpetual motion machine is impossible. What the Second Law
states, in effect, is that during any cycle some heat must be
rejected to the surroundings, that is, Q > O. Since there is no
R
natural sink of heat at a lower temperature than the ocean, our
highly desirable engine is impossible. Furthermore, since we can
never convert all the heat supplied (QS) into work, our engines can
never have an efficiency (W/Q ) of 100 per cent. An immediate
consequence is that although ~eat and work are both transfers of
energy they are not quite mutually convertible: a source of work
can always be completely transformed into heat but a source of heat
cannot be completely converted into work. Thus work is a more
valuable form of energy transfer than heat.
Oddly enough, from this rather negative statement which we call
the Second Law, a large number of most important and positive con-
sequences follow as logical deductions. The deduction written as
'hwffactah' in Figure 3.2(b) is not a Welsh villaf,e; it is simply
short for 'heat won't flow from a cooler to a hotter', a result well
publicised by Flanders and Swann. This is often used as a state-
ment of the Second Law and the two statements are in fact inter-
changeable. The second deduction - known as Carnot's principle -
is a statement about the efficiencies of ideal or 'reversible'
engines, which apparently all have the same efficiency when operating
between the same source and sink of heat. Furthermore, since these
engines may differ in every respect other than in the temperatures of
their source and sink, the efficiency must depend only on these tem-
peratures.
At this point it is necessary to say something about the notion
of reversibiZity, which is a concept central to classical thermo-
dynamics. Consider a weight being lifted by a rope over a pulley.
With a frictionless pulley, the work done on the system in raising
the weight is equal to the gain in potential enerpy of the weight.
If the weight is allowed to return to its original position, the
system will do as much work as was done on the system in the first
place. The original process was completely reversible, because
both the system and its surroundings can be restored to their
original states. Now consider what happens if there is friction
in the pulley bearing. The work required to lift the weight is
now greater than the increase in potential enerpy, the difference
appearing as an increase in internal energy in the bearing.
Furthermore, when the weight is lowered to its original level all

the potential energy is not converted into work: again there is
an increase in internal energy in the bearing. The system can be
restored to its original state by allowing heat to be transferred
from the bearing to the surroundings, but the surroundings cannot
be restored to their original state. In the surroundings there
is a deficiency of work and a surplus of heat, and the Second Law
implies that the heat can never be completely converted to work.
The original process in this case must have been irreversible.
No work was wasted in the reversible process, whereas some of it
was wasted in the irreversible process. Any irreversibility always
means that some capacity for producing work is irretrievably lost,
and that the universe can never be quite the same ar,ain after it has
occurred. When heat is transferred by virtue of a finite tempera-
ture difference, this too can be shown to be an irreversible process.
Since real processes always involve friction and/or heat transfer
across a finite temperature difference, all real processes are
irreversible processes.
Reverting once more to the deductive theory, Carnot's principle
enables us to define an absolute scale of temperature: a scale
which is quite independent of the behaviour of any thermometric
substance such as mercury in a glass tube or the pair of metals
used in a thermocouple. Temperature on this fundamental scale is
denoted by T. It is then possible to show that the quantity of
heat divided by the temperature at which it is transferred to the
system (Q/T) has a special significance. Summing up all such
quantities for a complete cycle we can show that it is either zero
(if the cycle is composed of reversible processes) or negative (if
there is any irreversibility). We are then able to deduce that
there must exist another property of the system, which we call the
entropy (8) and which satisfies the equation ~8 = (Q/T)rev' That
is, if we imagine a reversible process to carry the system from one
state to another and calculate the ratio Q/T, we obtain something
which is quite independent of the process and depends only on the
end states. This 'something' is the change in entropy of the system.
It is not too much to say that it is the existence of the property
entropy which makes thermodynamics such a powerful tool for the
analysis of all phenomena involving heat and temperature. Finally,
we can show that for any isolated system (that is, no heat transfer
to or from it), there must be an increase in entropy if there is any
irreversibility present, or no change in entropy if the process is
reversible. This 'principle of increasing entropy' tells us the
direction in which real processes must proceed; in some way it must
therefore be associated with the directional property of time and the
notions of past, present and future .
It is an empirical fact that the state of a simple system consis-
ting of a gas, vapour or liquid is fixed when any pair of independent
properties are specified. This implies that any third property is
some function of the chosen pair. Thus p = f'( V, T), 8 = <p( V, T)
and so on. The laws of thermodynamics place a restriction on the
form of these functions in the sense that once the p-V-T relation
is specified the other property relations must take a particular
form. Although there will be constants in the equations whose
values differ for different substances and which must be found by
experiment, thermodynamics enables the results of one set of experi-
ments to be correlated with those of another. Once these property

relations have been established, it is then possible to calculate
the heat and work transfers in any specified process provided that
it can be regarded as a reversible process .
What we have don e here is outline the basic principles of thermo-
dynamics up to the point where the scientist proceeds to apply them
to a variety of phenomena concerned with chemical reactions, surface
films, thermocouples, electrochemistry, low-temperature physics and
a host of others unrelated to the design of power plant. The
scientist uses thermodynamics in his continuous pursuit of knowledge
about the behaviour of matter at the molecular, atomic and sub-
atomic level, often using statistical thermodynamics rather than
the classical thermodynamics outlined here. Classical thermo-
dynamics describes systems in terms of macroscopic properties:
properties of the system as a whole like pressure and volume.
Statistical thermodynamics tries to predict the macroscopic
phenomena in terms of the microscopic behaviour of the constituent
particles. On this view, for example, pressure is the average rate
of change of momentum due to molecular impacts on unit area, and tem-
perature is a measure of the average kinetic energy of the molecules.
Here the scientist is creating a model of the system to enable
thermodynamics to be explained in terms of mechanics. It is im-
portant to appreciate the secondary importance of the model. A
change in our ideas about the microscopic nature of matter might
lead to a different model, but it must still be capable of pre-
dicting the results of classical thermodynamics.
(i i) Engineering thermodynamics
We have said that thermodynamics is concerned with the relationship

between work and heat and the properties of systems. The scientist,
however, is not in the least interested in the details of how work
and heat are transferred in practical engineering plant: in recip-
rocating and rotary machines, in boilers and condensers, and so on.
At this point he hands over to the engineer/technologist, who has
systematised knowledge of such matters in a subject called
'enr,ineering thermodynamics' . Let us now look at the chief char-
acteristics of this subject.
The first point to note is that while classical thermodynamics
was built up from a study of what happens when a fixed mass of sub-
stance undergoes a change of state, engineering thermodynamics places
much more emphasis on what happens when a fluid flows through a piece
of equipment . It is the steady-flow energy equation which is the
basic tool of analysis and not the ordinary energy equation of
classical thermodynamics. It follows that engineerinr, thermo-
dynamics makes use of knowledge about the flow of fluids which is
itself systematised in the subject of fluid mechanics.
While thermodynamics enables us to calculate the quantities of
work and heat transferred in reversible processes, the engineer/
technologist is interested in predicting what happens in real,
irreversible, processes. Viscous friction is always present, and
heat is transferred across an appreciable temperature difference to
ensure that the plant is of economic size. Consequently he has to
build up his knowledge of the way work and heat are transferred in
practice by performing experiments. Such experiments might, for
Scient ific and Technolog ical Explanatio n 49
example , t a ke the f orm o f measur ing the way different f luids f low
a r oun d t urbine bl a des of va r ious shapes i n a sp ec i a l t yp e of wi nd
tunnel ; or of mea suring th e rate o f heat transfer froM a fluid t o
a s ur f ace of given s hape over r a nge s of value s of ve loci ty , d ensity,
viscos i ty and thermal conduc t ivity of the fluid . The empiri cal
t he ories de velop ed enab le him to determine t he s i ze an d s hape of a
pi e ce of equ i pmen t t o perform a s peci f ied duty, or t o pred ict the
perf orman ce of the de s i gn when it is ca l led up on t o functi on und er
other operat i ng c onditions. Suc h ca lculat ions are r e f erred t o a s
'design-point calcul a t ions ' an d 'part-loa d ca lcu lations ' r e spe c-
tively.
The theori e s are character ised by the us e of a mUl tipl ic i ty o f
empirical co e f fic ients or proc e s s efficien ci es, which a re ne ce s s ary
because the en gineer /te chnolog i st is d ealing wi t h r eal, i rrevers ib le ,
processes. Much us e is mad e of so-ca l led l aws - s uch as Four i er' s
l aw of he at co nduc t ion a nd Ne wt on' s l aw of viscos i ty - whi c h t ak e
the f orm of a prop ort i onality be t ween a quanti t y t r ansfe rr e d in a n
irreversible proc e s s and t he gradien t of a prope rty which is the
dr ivi ng f orce f or th e transfer . I n the t wo e xa mple s men t ioned the
grad ients a re those of t emperature and ve loc i ty res pect ively , and
th e co nstants of pr oportionality are the t he r mal co nd uctivi ty a nd
v iscosity . Such l aws are ap proxima te empi rica l relat ions whose
accuracy can be determined by expe rimen t. Thei r inac cu r a cy i s
manife sted by the fac t that the ' con stant s of proportionali t y' a re
not in f a ct co ns tant but va ry with t he co ndi tions of t he e xpe r i ment.
I t f ollows that the s e l aws a re qu i te d i f feren t i n ki nd fro m the Laws
of Therm odynami c s which are fundamental hyp othe s e s at the head of a
deduct ive sys te m on which the sc ience i s based, and which can only
be s hown t o be true, f als e, or pa rt of an even br oa der genera l is-
ati on about nature .
One ot he r noti ceable f eature o f the the ories produced by the
t e chn olo gi st i s the frequent use made o f dime nsionle s s groups o f
var iab les . The t1ach nu mber, Reyno lds nu mber, a nd Nusse l t number
are well-known examples. Th is proc edure i s made necessary by t he
very lar ge number of variab les affec t ing the phenomeno n under
invest iga tion . On ly by group i ng thes e var iables sens ib ly can we
hope t o reduc e the r e sult s t o na nageab l e pr op ortions an d br ing
order out of chaos. A ve ry s imple example wi l l illustrate t he
principle involved. Fi gure 3.3 (a) s hows a ser ies of ~~aphs rep-
res enting one of Newton 's equa t i ons o f motion e xpress ing the di stanc e
moved s as a f unct ion of i n i tia l ve loci ty u , acce lerat ion a a nd t i me
t. Knowi ng the va l ues of u, a and t , the d i s t an ce s can be obtai ned
from t he graphs. Note that a very l arge nu mber of exper iments would
be r equired t o e s tab lish t he curves if the eq ua tion was unknown. In
Figure 3.3 (b ) the equa t ion ap pears in non -dime ns iona l f orm, ( s l ut)
and (atlu ) be i ng pure numbers . On ly one curve on one graph is
n eces sary t o convey th e same in f ormation as Fi gur e 3 .3( a ) : aga i n ,
i f u , a and t a re known, (s l u t) can be re ad f rom the p,ra ph a nd s
calculated . Even more impo r tan t , f a r fewer exper i ment s ne ed be
performed t o est ab lish th e in for ma t ion . Al l t hat is r equired i s
that an a d eq ua te r an ge of (atlu) is c overed, th ere be i ng no need
t o cover wide ranges of a , t , an d u separate ly.
The reader might well as k what i s t he point of do i n g this when
it i s j ust a s easy t o us e the equat ion d i rect ly? The answer i s
t hat wi t h the aid of t he te chnique o f dimensional analysis i t i s
s s s
(aJ
s
ut
at
u
(bJ
Figure 3.3 Graphical representation of s = ut + at 2/2
possible to arrive at suitable dimensionless groups when no simple

equation exists . And this is the situation in which the engineer/
technologist usually finds hi~self. Dimensional analysis will tell
him that DI is a function of D2 and D3 say. where the D's are the
relevant dimensionless groups of variables. His exper i ment s will
be directed towards determining the function. For examgle. he may
find that he can express the function as DI = A(D2)m(D3) • where A.
m and n are constants determined by the experiments . He is then
said to have established an empirical equation. The range of
values of D2 and D3 covered by his experiments will be carefully
specified. Serious errors can result from using such equations to
find the dependent variable in the group DI when D2 and D3 lie out-
side the specified range.
There is one other limitation which must be noted . One of the
variables will be a dimension (for example. length or diameter)
which is characteristic of the geometry of the system under inves-
tigation. The equation can be applied only to geometrically
similar systems. This is no drawback in practice because the
experiments will have been performed on a scale model of the real
system. One powerful advantage of dimensional analysis lies in the
fact that one of the groups often consists of fluid properties (for
example. specific heat. viscosity. thermal conductivity and so on).
This means that experiments can be performed using any convenient
fluid. so long as the range of values of that dimensionless group
is the same for both the fluid used in the experiments and the fluid
used in the actual plant.
One might argue that the empirical equations used by the techno-
logist are no more than sophisticated rules-of-thumb. This is not
true, however, because there are unifying principles within each
class of phenomena. Side-by-side with the empirical equations
there are theoretical equations derived from idealised models of
the phenomena: for example, the equations expressing the behaviour
of a non-viscous fluid, or the behaviour of a perfectly elastic
solid. These fundamental equations tell us which are likely to be
the important variables in a given situation, and help us decide on
the most fruitful experiments to perform. Technological theories
are much more than sets of rules-of-thumb.
We have already stressed the teleological distinction between
science and technology, and the fact that the technologist aims at
providing sufficient information to enable the engineer to design
a piece of equipment to serve a given purpose. The engineer must
call on the work of many technologists even within a restricted
range of endeavour: let us say in power plant design. For example,
the gas turbine engine designer must call on the specialised know-
ledge of the combustion technologist, the aerodynamicist, the
metallurgist, the materials scientist, the stress analyst, the
control-system technologist, and many others involved with the
process of manufacture and production of components including
those concerned with industrial relations and the economics of the
applications of the engine. All of these individual technologies
have systematic bodies of knOWledge associated with them. Some
are related to a basic science which provides the necessary funda-
mental concepts, as combustion technology depends upon chenistry
for example. Others are based on theories developed solely from
a study of engineering plant, such as control-system technology:
in this case it is mechanics and mathematics which provide the
unifying concepts. In all cases the test of a satisfactory theory
is that it should enable the engineer to design a piece of equip-
ment which will give the performance required of it. If an
addition to a technological theory makes the whole theoretical
structure more widely applicable this is a welcome added bonus,
but it is not the prime object of the work as it is in science.
Any engineer reading this section will have been struck by the
somewhat artificial way in which the term technology has sometimes
been used. It is time that we clarified the distinction drawn
between engineering and technology in chapter 1, and introduced
a third term in common use, namely, 'engineering science'. The
remainder of this chapter will be devoted to a discussion of these
matters .
ENGINEERING, TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING SCIENCE
The word 'engineering' has the form of a verb, and rightly so

because it refers to an activity. From what was said about the
origin of the term engineer in chapter 1, and the description by
Vetruvius of the qualities required of an engineer (see chapter 2),
it should be clear that engineering refers to the practice of
organising the design and construction of any artifice which trans-
forms the physical world around us to meet some recognised need.
The main ways in which we do this were listed in chapter 1: we do
it by increasing the efficiency (a) of our body, (b) of our senses,
and (c) of our intellect. We have said that an engineer is likely
to make use of a number of different technolofies in pursuit of his

aim . How might technologies be classified ? One possibility is
via the avenues through which we meet our needs. We would then
have as examples of avenue (a), machine-tool technology, automobile
technology, marine technology etc.; as examples of avenue (b),
various instrument technologies, metrology and so on; and as
examples of avenue (c), the technologies of printing, photography,
and computing. We might refer to these collectively as ppoduct
technologi es . In practice we also have a number of technologies
based on the matepials needed for these product technologies,
namely, iron, steel, oil, coal, rubber, ceramics, etc. Used in
either way, technology is a word signifying a body of knowledge
associated with a particular industrial activity.
We have also said that technologies are more than mere collec-
tions of sophisticated rules-of-thumb. Craft and technics are
certainly based on rules-of-thumb: for example, 'to anneal copper,
heat to 600 °c and cool slowly in air', or 'to harden steel, heat
to 900 °c and quench in oil'. But once research has explained
why such rules are effective by discovering unifying principles
for a limited class of phenomena, they become well-grounded,
rational rules and a technology can be said to have appeared. When
information covering a broader class of phenomena can be organised
into a comprehensive body of theory using unifying concepts, prin-
ciples and formulae, something else is born. To carry our example
further, when rules-gf-thumb such as 'to fire the glaze, he3t to a
temperature of 1600 C', and 'to temper glass, heat to 600 C and
cool the s ur f a ce rapidly', can also be encompassed by the theory,
the subject 'properties of materials' appears on the scene. In
other words some common principles have been found within the
technologies of metals, ceramics, plastics and s o on.
There are in fact a large number of such bodies of knowledge
which are concerned with fundamental principles underpinning various
technologies. In addition to 'properties of materials' we have
such subjects as strength of materials, fluid mechanics, engineering
thermodynamics, mechanics of machines and so on. These are what
are referred to as the eng ineeping sciences . They mayor may not
be closely linked to associated sciences. We have seen that
engineering thermodynamics is closely linked with the science of
thermodynamics, but so far there is very little in common between
the engineering science of strength of materials based on a study
of the macroscopic behaviour of materials, and the information which
the solid-state physicist has gained from his study of material
behaviour at the microscopic level. The engineer's education and
training involves firstly the mastery of an appropriate group of
engineering sciences - under the headings aeronautical, civil,
electrical, mechanical, chemical and so on - coupled with training
in communication via engineering drawing. And secondly, it
involves the mastery of a technology through practical experience
in a chosen industry coupled with specialised postgraduate courses
which may cover technical or managerial topics. Figure 3.4 is one
way of depicting the classification of technical knowledge outlined
here.
Whether or not they are closely linked with a particular science,
the engineering sciences are so called because they have some of the
characteristics of science. For example, the expansion of know-
MATERIALS PRODUCT
TECHNOLOGIES TECHNOLOGIES
i ron and steel machine tool

aluminium ENGINEERING power plant:
SCI ENCES steam turbine
gas turbine
S.L and C.L
engineering fluid engines
thermodynamics me chanics
geotechnics
strength of
MATHS materials
surveying
SCI ENCES theory of aircraft
paper
properties physics structures
ceramic of materials printing
chemistry mechanics of
glass engineering biology machines radio and
mathematics television
plastic electrical
machines telecomm.
aircraft
concrete
propulsion electronics computers
cable bridges
aircraft metrology
structures ships
textile
boilers and
food conde ns er s
chemicals agricultural
machinery
Figure 3 . 4 Classification of technical knowledge

(The lists are indicative, not exhaustive.)
ledge is self-generating because the formation and application of

theories throw up new questions, so stimulating further research .
Although the research is often undertaken to support a new tech-
nology - offshore mining technology say - it is sometimes pursued
as an end in itself just as is science proper. The for~er type of
research is undertaken mainly in industrial or governmental labor-
atories whereas the latter Dore often takes place in universities .
It follows that our knowledge of engineering science is cumulative,
grows continuously, and is never-ending. Product technologies, on
the other hand, can re~ain virtually unchanged for decades, and fall
into disuse when some totally different technology arises which
serves the particular need rather better. 'Better' might mean:
more cheaply in terms of labour cost, material cost or energy cost;
or having a less deleterious effect on the environnent and health
of the population . A change of technology is usually associated
with an invention rather than research, although supporting research
may be needed to bring the invention to fruition. No amount of
money poured into research laboratories can bypass the need for
individuals with original ideas. This is sometines forgotten by
those who call for more ~oney to be spent on so-called 'alternative'
energy programmes based on renewable resources. The point ha s
been expressed strongly by Lord Zuckerman : 'A cure for cancer will
be discovered only when some new genius reaches a new understanding;
one day perhaps another genius will discover how to tame the pro-
cesses of nuclear fusion; and in the fullness of time maybe someone
will develop a simple effective device which will allow us to see in
the dark. But none of these things will happen except as spon-
taneously creative acts of particular gifted individuals.'
Engineering sciences differ from science proper in the way in
which it is appropriate to ask whether their theories are true or
false. One should ask of the engineerinr, s c i e nc es only that they
be adequate for the underpinning of our technologies. A theory can
be of great practical use for design purposes, yet inadequate from a
scientific point of view. For example, nuclear power stations are
designed using a theory called 'reactor physics' which is based on a
rather crude model of the atom. No one would suggest that the fact
that a nuclear power station works, in any way validates that model
as the best representation of an atom which science can formulate.
A much more elaborate model is required to explain the results of
modern nuclear physics. Si~ilarly, much optical equipment is
designed on the basis of the corpuscular theory of light: this does
not invalidate the more comprehensive wave theory. Successful
practice, that is, a successful application of a theory, does not by
itself validate the theory.
There is another rather obvious difference between engineering
science and science, which is related to the difference just dis-
cussed. One cannot 'do' science without 'knowing' science because
science is knOWledge. One can, however, 'do' engineering or
technology without knowing engineering science because engineering
and technolops are about making things. Practical knowledge can
co-exist with theoretical ignorance, and theoretical knOWledge with
practical ineptitude. For this reason alone, practice cannot be
an adequate test of the 'truth' of a theory.
We opened this chapter by referring to the different aims of the
scientist and technologist, and stated baldly that one consequence
is that technological explanation involves a level of approximation

unacceptable in science. We can now see how this arises. High
accuracy is often required in science because small differences can
decide which of two competing theories should be preferred. Such
accuracy is achievable because the scientist is usually working with
a well-defined system having a limited number of variables, under
carefully controlled conditions. The technologist, on the other
hand, must often work with apparatus which only approximately models
the full-scale device . The theories which he develops to explain
the results of his experiments, and to enable predictions to be
made, will strictly apply only to the structures or fluid flows
which he used in his apparatus. He will not be certain that his
results can be extrapolated to the full scale, nor Hill he know
with any accuracy the conditions under which the full-scale device
will have to operate in practice. It is for these reasons that an
engineer has to introduce safety factors in his design calculations.
He will also build and test a full-scale prototype whenever possible.
It follows that the technologist is seldom seeking the same experi-
mental accuracy as the scientist .
There is another consequence of the teleological difference
between science and technology. We have seen that in one sense
science progresses by virtue of discovering circumstances in which
a hitherto acceptable hypothesis is falsified, and that scientists
actively pursue this situation. Because of the catastrophic con-
sequences of engineering failures - whether it be human catastrophe
for the customer or economic catastrophe for the firm - engineers
and technologists must try to avoid falsification of their theories.
Their aim is to undertake sufficient research on a laboratory scale
to extend the theories so that they cover the foreseeable changes in
the variables called for by a new conception. The scientist seeks
revolutionary change - for which he may receive a Nobel Prize. The
engineer too seeks revolutionary conceptions by which he can make
his name, but he knows his ideas will not be taken up unless they
can be realised using a level of technology not far removed from
the existing level. Furthermore he is very conscious of the fact
that his failures are immediately drawn to the attention of the
public by the media, whereas the failures of science are more often
known only to colleagues in the laboratory.
Certainly revolutionary changes do arise as a result of acci-
dental failures in engineering constructions - the discoveries of
the phenomena of fatigue, creep and brittle fracture in naterials
were made in this way - but they represent a failure, not a success,
for technology. Nowadays revolutionary changes in technology arise
from another source also - from new scientific discoveries . But
these one might say are spin-offs from the successes of science.
Bearing in mind the restrictions placed upon enr,ineers and tech-
nologists by economics, health and safety regulations, pollution
controls, labour relations and so on, there is little doubt that
the normal successful path for technology is one of evolution
rather than revolution . The question of how technological inno-
vation arises is the main subject of the next chapter.
,a.) SCIENCE (I.) ENGINEERING
Existing knowl edge St at e of the art
I
via observation
I
via recognit ion of need/
and reflection ma r ke t research
!
hypothesis
l
design of new concept
I
via logic/mathemat i cs
I
via feasibility study/
!
engineering science
falsifiable deductions
~
acceptab ili t y of t he design
I
via experiment
I
vi a prototype /deve l opment
I
conf i r ma t i on
L
product1on
I
via communication
I
vi a public a cceptance
~
new knowledge
•
new state of the art
Figure 4 .1 Progress in sc ience and engineering

4 Creativity and Engineering Design
Engineering as an art ?; the creative process; engineering

design.
From what has been said of the nature of scientific explanation in

the last chapter it would s eem reasonable to depict the development
of science as in figure 4.1(a) . Of course, this is merely a formal
scheme and no one would pretend that science actually progresses ln
such a tidy manner. There is no indication, for example, of the
long and often bitter controversies that en sue before a new hypo-
thesis is accepted. Bearing in mind that the aim of engineering
i s the production of some artefact, one may depict the de velopment
of engineering as in figure 4.1(b). Elements in this scheme
which are associated with the design process deserve s pe c i a l
attention becaus e design plays such a central role in engi ne eri ng .
In this context it will be necessary to discus s the nature of
creativity. t10st of this cha pt er is devoted to these matters.
The reader will note that the beginning and end of the engin-
eering scheme is denoted by the phrase 'state of the art': a
colloquialism often used by engineers. Enr,ineers frequently
present papers at conferences in which they claim to be outlining
the current state of the art in their field . It may be of
interest to examine the phrase to see if it means anything more
than 'state of technology' . Again, it i s often said that
engineering is as much an art as a sci ence. He ended chapter 2,
however, by suggesting that both science and en gineerinr, differ
markedly from the arts. There is clearly some c onf us i on here
that deserves examination . lie have discussed en gineerinp, vis- ex- vi s
science at some length, and it would not be entirely out of place to
examine its status vi s-ex-vis art. To do s o will be consistent with
our broad aim of finding the place engineering occupies within the
whole spectrum of knowledge.
ENGINEERING AS AN ART?
The Greeks and Romans had no word for 'art' as it is used in the
modern world. To them it meant a craft or specialised skill -
whether carpentry, surgery, painting or sculpture. And so it
r emained until after the Renaissance. It was not until the eight-
eenth century that people began to make a distinction between 'fine
arts' and 'useful arts', and between 'artists' and 'craftsmen' .
Only then did writers on aesthetics appear and begin to use the
collective noun 'art' as a generalised concept. It is this last
use of the word art that we must examine, because we must assume
57
t ha t when engi neers s pe ak of th eir a ctivi t y as an a rt they are not

jus t ~ea n i n g that it i s a craft , e i ther ' us e f ul' or 'fine' . That
engineer ing involves t he us e of crafts i s too obv ious f or engineers
t o point out , and we have a lready argued that engineer ing is much
mor e than craf t . Our s t a r t i ng po int will be t o see what i s meant
by ' art ' and t o see how t he concept ca n be dis t i nr,uished from
cr a f t .
Cr a f t i s the power t o produce a pre co nce ived result by con -
s c ious l y c ontrol led action : the cr a f t sman a lways knows what he
wa nt s to make in advance . Furt herm ore it i s a lways poss ible t o
d ist i nguis h be tw een the raw materi a l and t he produc t , a nd t here i s
a hierarchical r elat i on be t ween var ious cr afts in the s e ns e that
t he fin is hed produ ct of one of ten be co mes t he r aw mater ia l of
a nother , f or example , spinni ng - wea vi ng - t a i lor inr. or steel making-
forg i ng - machi n ing-fitt i ng . Finally , with a ny craft i t i s always
pos sible t o differentiat e between the means (tool s) an d t he end
( ar t efact). All craf ts ha ve most or a ll of thes e characteristics .
Do we find these s a me c ha r a cter ist i cs in the art s, or i s there some-
t h i ng a bout 'art' which d istinguishes it from cr a f t ?
First ly, it c a n be a r gu ed that in many cas es a wor k of art is not
preconc e i ved in t he mind of t he artist , and that t he final form
which emerges is a s muc h a surprise t o the c ons cious mi nd of the
ar t ist as t o his au d ience . What an artist want s t o s ay i s no t
often c lear ly and co nsc ious l y pres ent as an end f or wh i ch he merely
has to devise a mea ns of express ion . What he wan ts t o s ay becomes
c l ea r only a s the poem take s shape in his mind, as the paint i s
appli ed t o t he ca nva s , or t he c l ay takes shape i n his hands .
Ce r t a i nly t h ere are many ca s es where t he poet, s cul ptor or composer
i s meet ing a broadly spec i f ied need - t o commemora t e a r oy al even t ,
t o f i l l a nich e in a publi c build i ng , or t o prov i de the i ncidental
music f or a f ilm - but on the whol e most pe ople woul d say t ha t t he
more deta iled the s pec ificat ion the les s the pr oduc t i s like ly t o
be regarded a s a wor k of art and the more it i s likely t o be re-
garded s imp ly a s an exercise of t he ar t ist 's s ki l l or craft . Thi s
may be a r omantic vi ew of art t o be taken wi th a pi nch of sal t , but
wha t one c an say at t he ve r y least i s that unplanned works of art
are poss ib l e whereas a n unpl a nned product of a craft is a co nt ra-
diction in terms.
We next turn to the d ist i nc t i on in an y cr a f t be t wee n raw ma t er i a l
and product , for e xample , between. the wood and the table produced
fr om i t , or between the inr,redients and a l loy produ c ed by a metal-
lurgical process. It cannot be said tha t there i s the s a~e sort
of distinction in a work of art . One cannot s a y that a po e ~ is
made of words , t ha t a piece of music i s ma de of notes , or that a
painting i s made of l a yer s of paint , in qu ite the same way that an
artefact is made fr om its raw material. One c ould say this kind
of thing about the construct ion of crosswords , the f ormation of a
musical scale , and the ' pa i nt i ng by numbers' s e ts of f ered a s
Chr i s tma s presents t o children, but none of these a ctivities could
lead t o a work of art . Evidently there is something subtle ab out
the re l a t i ons h i p between vehic l e and final work of art whi ch is not
pres ent in craft. There is little doubt that t his su btle some -
thing is an emotional experience which the artist i s trying to
understand , and e xpress or capture in some way.
Cons i der a portrait painter. If he uses his s kill mer e l y t o
Creativity and Engineering Design 59
satisfy his patron's desire for a likeness he will not produce a

work of art, and indeed an undoctored photoeraph would serve the
purpose rather better. What the great portrait painter tries to
do is to invoke a feeling in a person looking at the painting that
he is in the presence of the sitter. To do this the artist may
have to emphasise some characteristics and play down others. What
he is after is not a literal likeness but an emotional likeness .
Anyone doubting thi s is asked to recall the portraits of Somerset
Maueham and Winston Churchill by Graham Sutherland. Or consider
the painter more generally: there can be no doubt that his visual
sense is much more acute than that of the p,eneral public and that
this ability to see form and colour is enhanced by his practice of
painting. As a result, his observation of an object or scene can
elicit a personal emotional experience denied to the casual ob-
server of that object or scene, and it is this emotional experience
which the artist hopes will be conveyed by his painting.
The third characteristic of craft which we noted was that the
product of one craft could become the raw material of another.
Does art have this hierarchical characteristic? When a poet writes
verse which a compser sets to music, the verse is in no sense the
raw material of the music. What happens here is a blending of two
art forms into a third - in this example a song or opera - and the
final result could be a work of art of some significance even
though the individual contributions of verse and music taken separ-
ately are rather ordinary. A scientific analogy might be the
difference between a mixture and a chemical compound. The latter
has quite different properties from those of its constituents,
whereas the former has not.
Finally, we turn to the distinction between means and end which is
always characteristic of a craft . The writing of a poem, novel or
play certainly does not involve the use of a tool or its equivalent,
except for the purpose of writing down the result (that is, pen and
paper). A composer of music usually finds an instrument of great
assistance but it is not essential: Beethoven still composed after
becoming deaf. On the other hand, paintinp, and sculpture does
involve the use of tools, and essentially so because the artist
thinks by feedback from the hand wielding paint brush or chisel .
So here again, as we did when discussing the first characteristic
of craft, we have arrived at a rather negative characteristic of
art: a work of art can be produced without there being a distinc-
tion between means and end although not necessarily so.
There is another way in which the distinction between means and
end could be interpreted . We have suggested that art is associated
with the expression of an emotional experience, and it is a fact
that most artists hope to have an audience or clientele. It could
be argued therefore that the work of art itself is a means to the
end of conveying an emotional experience to others less gifted who
need the work of art to enrich their lives as a cripple needs a
crutch. But no artist would say that this is a primary character-
istic of art. What motivates the artist is a compulsive need to
understand an emotional experience and thereby ease his own mind.
He explores his sensuous experience by letting his imagination work
upon it, thereby raising the experience to a fully-conscious level.
In the course of doing this his skill or craft has enabled him to
produce something which encapsulates his experience - a poem, a
painting, a novel, a symphony, and so on. It would therefore be

quite wrong to conclude that a work of art is necessarily and simply
a means towards the end of arousing a certain emotional state in an
observer. If this were so every speech by a pOlitical or religious
orator, or every advertisement, could be a work of art. If the
artist feels the need for an audience it is because he hopes to find
in its reaction an assurance that he has hit the emotional nail on
the head. He hopes to find that he has been spending his time on
a fairly universal experience of life and not some private halluci-
nation.
From this brief discussion of the nature of craft and art one may
conclude that art is more than pure technique: more than the con-
scious working-out of means to achieve a conscious preconceived
purpose. Art is essentially an activity in which an artist ex-
plores and expresses an emotional experience. But a skill or
craft is an important ingredient. Without it the exploration will
be ineffective and the expression will be little more than des-
cription . To say 'I am happy' is to describe an emotion - to
classify it - and not to express the particular emotion that is
felt. An expression of emotion must convey the uniqueness of the
experience and enable the artist (and perhaps his audience) to know
why he has that feeling in that particular context. Art is
evocative: it calls attention to feelinf,s about aspects of life
that other people have half felt but have not recognised or brought
to a fully conscious level.
To associate art with the expression of emotion is not to suggest
that the converse is true, that is, that anything causing an erup-
tion of emotion is necessarily an artistic activity. The foregoing
distinction made between expression and description should be
suffi cient to dispel any such notion. The euphoria that swept over
Archimedes when he leaped from his bath shouting 'Eureka' did not
make his solution of a problem of physics a work of art. All
solvers of tough intellectual problems of whatever kind shout
'Eureka' if only metaphorically.
The history of science and philosophy is the history of man's
rational thought. The history of religion is the history of man's
efforts to come to terns with the fact that he is conscious both of
not knowing why he is here and that reason cannot help him discover
why. The history of art is the history of man's feelings about his
relationship to his fellows, to nature, and to God. These histories
have a centripetal effect: they draw men tor-ether by providing con-
texts in which, and lanf,uages by which, man can communicate ideas and
feelings. No man is complete if he ignores anyone of these three
histories. In particular, if man collectively ir,nores the history
of feeling, the emotional springs of life will dry up and he will
find that he has inherited T.S. Eliot's Waste Land. He will die of
boredom after a fruitless search for more and more amusement, which
is a not unknown contributory cause of the downfall of civilisations.
We are now in a position to consider what can be meant by the
statement that engineering is as much an art as a science. One
must conclude that it is true only in the null sense, that is,
because engineering is neither. Engineering fits somewhere between
art and science in the spectrum of knowledge. We have seen that
engineering has links with science through the engineering sciences.
Any engineering science has some of the characteristics of science
i n t hat it is s e l f -generat i ng , cumul a t i ve , never -end i ng and can

command ge neral agreement . But t he re the s i mi l ar i ty ends . The
links wi th ar t are even more tenuous . Firstly , l i ke ar t but unli ke
sc ience , engineer i ng i s concerned with creat i ng thi ngs r a t her than
theori es ab out t hings . Secondly , because the e ng ineer rarely ha s
a ll t he nec essary data for a complete a nalysis of h is problems , he
has t o ca l l upo n hi s exper ience and flair an d oft en t a ke a leap in
th e dark . Eng i ne ering pa pers purporting to out l ine the ' cur r ent
state of the art ' a re attempts to de scribe t his expe r ience f or t he
benefit of ot hers . One mus t admi t , however , that ' current s t a t e
of technology ' woul d be a l es s grandios e phrase .
There is lit t l e doubt that e ng i neers , and indeed the publ i c , often
ha ve a esthetic f eelin gs about some of their prod ucts . The be auty of
a Rol ls-Ro yc e or Concorde i s und eni ab l e , and as ~oving a s a beautiful
piece of hand-mad e f urniture or a well-proport i oned bu ilding . But
an e l eg ant solution of an intellectua l probleo can als o gi ve rise t o
s uc h fee lings , whe the r it be a prob lem of desi r,n i n en gi ne e r i ng , of
devising a cr uc ial e xpe r i ment in science , or of provinr, a theore m in
mathemat ics . Aes t he t ic feelings are not the so l e province of art,
nor does a l l art gi ve ri se t o aesthetic feelings . It s e e ms tha t i t
i s not poss ible t o ce nt re a phi l os ophy of a r t up on the co nc ept of
be a uty . If one canno t us e t he presence of aes t hetic f eelings a s a
dis tin gu ishi ng f eatur e of ar t , still l es s can on e use the r e l a t i ve
i mporta nce of creativi ty . As we sha ll see i n the ne xt s ect ion ,
crea t ivi ty pl ays an equa l ly impor t an t r ole in a r t , en gin eering and
science , althoueh the f orm i t takes in each case wi l l be different .
THE CREATI VE PROCESS
At the most fundamental l evel it i s prob ab ly t r ue t hat ther e is

lit tle d i f f er ence be tween the cre at i ve proce ss in art , sc i ence an d
engineer ing . Creat ivi ty stems fr om ma n 's na tura l ur ge t o explore
his envi ronm en t . And no t only man : the explor a to ry ur ge i s
a ppa r ent i n most an ima l life soon after b i r t h and it migh t be said
t o be one of t he i mportant charact er i s t i cs whi ch dist i n gu ish living
fr om no n- l iv i ng ma t ter . Why a pers on s houl d be c rea t i ve i n on e
d irection ra ther than anot he r , however , depends on the motivat i on
directing this exploratory urge . We have see n that crea t i v i t y i n
art i s mot i va t ed by a strong des i r e to explore emot i onal exper ience .
Creativi ty in s c ience i s un doubted ly mot ivated by curios ity about
the natura l world ac c ompanied by fee l ings of wonder and awe.
Engineering creat ivity , on th e other hand, s eems t o s pr i ng f r om a
pa s sionate de sir e t o make no ve l things or s hoH t ha t s omet h i ng c an
be do ne whi ch has hithert o been t hou ght t o be impos s i bl e. Even
th i s is not solely the prov ince of man. Ther e is the t rue s tory
of the ch impanzee who fai led to draw a ba na na i nt o hi s cap,e beca use
t h e st ick he was using was t oo shor t . When f ur n i shed wi t h t wo
hollow sticks he solved the problem by fi tt i ng t hem t oge t her. The
story goes that he was so proud of h imself tha t h e spent his time
a s s e mb ling an d dis a s s embling t he st icks and f orgot t o ea t t he ba nana.
In speaking of motiva t ion i n the above terms , we are not s ugges-
ting that artis t s, sci e nt i s t s and engineers do not a l s o ha ve mor e
eg oistic mot ives l i ke pride and greed . But without the more f un -
dament a l driv ing for ces be i ng present , i t i s do ubt f u l i f the baser
variety would be powerful en ough t o s us t a i n t he ne cessa ry effort
over a sufficiently long period to bring their ideas to fruition.

A new idea, whether in science or engineering, arises from a
juxtaposition of two or more hitherto unrelated ideas at a sub-
con scious level. Suc h ideas seem to sprinp, to mind after a period
of gestation following an even longer period of sustained thought
at a fully conscious level. De Bono's concept of 'lateral
thinking' t, and the modern practice of organising group 'brain-
storming' sessions, are efforts to shorten the process by consciously
looking for unrelated ideas. Since it is the ability to see
analogies between different fields that is important, polymaths
tend to be more creative than people who have only a narrow range
of experience. A brainstorming session with a group of specialists
is an attempt to circumvent this problem. Seeing the analogy
between a stone skipping over the surface of the sea and a way of
delivering a bomb to blow up a dam is only obvious when someone has
thought of it . An oft-quoted scientific example is the analogy
between the motion of the tides and motion of the moon which
enabled Kepler to solve the mystery of the tides.
Really creative ideas in science, leading to new hypotheses which
cha nge the outlook in a whole area of science, usually occur to an
individual only once in a lifetime. Einstein's theory of rela-
tivity and Plan ck's quantum theory are cases in point . Not only
did the theories solve anomalies and throw up new problems, but
they changed the whole framework of ideas within which important
parts of physics were conducted. Kuhn's +t 'normal' science is
governed by mental habits and a matrix of ideas implanted by
education and training. It would seem that only the subconscious
is capable of breaking the circuit: of rerouting ideas away from
the usual channels in the brain much as they are rerouted in dreams.
'Intuition' and 'inspiration' are the words usually applied to this
process. Of course, the result is sens e, rather than nonsense, only
when the brain has been fed with the relevant facts and has thought
hard, long and l orically about the problem, This is why brain-
storming sessions with groups of specialists are seldom effective
except for superficial problems.
In engineering too it is rare for an individual to make more
than one substantial contribution of a revolutionary kind. A
recent example was the invention of the transistor by Bardeen and
Brattain in 1948 when working in the Bell Telephone Laboratories.
This led not only to the growth of a new industry - the silicon
chip industry - but also to a completely new set of ideas within
which electronic engineers had to work. As a consequence many
existing industries had to radically revise their technology .
Examples of products already affected are radios, TV sets, Hi-Fi
equipment, computers, watches and electronic instruments of all
kinds. In addition, the growing use of the silicon chip in con-
trol systems is beginning to have a substantial effect on almost
every industry.
Another example of a different kind was the development of a gas
turbine engine for aircraft propulsion. The gas turbine was not
invented by Sir Frank Whittle, because a few gas turbines had been
t E. De Bono, lateraL Thinking: A Textbook of Creativity (Penguin,

1970) .
t t See page 36.
built before he arrived on the scene. It is true to say, however,

that he was a pioneer of the gas turbine industry. He it was who
first realised that the gas turbine was the ideal power plant for
aircraft, and that its failur e in other applications up to that
time was irrelevant. It was his faith and tenacity which gave the
U.K. a head start in the gas turbine industry. Nowadays, ga s
turbines are used very widely, not only for aircraft propulsion,
but in peak-load electricity generating plant, as pump drive s for
transcontinental gas and oil pipelines, as power plant for the
navies of the world, and to provide the power on off-shore oil
rigs . Any student of engineering, interested in discovering just
how difficult it was to gain acceptance of an idea from the commer-
cial and civil service establishments of the period, will find
profit in reading Whittle's autobiographyio. If he compares it
with the autobiography of Dornbergert t, who fathered the V2 rocket
bomb, he will note some interesting parallels in this respect
between war-time Britain and Germany.
That it is very difficult indeed for the brain to break out of
its straight jacket of 'conventional wisdoM' and change the rules of
the game in any sphere, is obvious from the rarity with which it
happens. Even within the arts - always thought of as essentially
creative pursuits - one finds that an individual artist rarely
makes more than one s i gni f i c ant advance in a lifetime. Some
striking emotional experience may cause him to adopt an original
technique which starts a new school of painting, sculpture, music
or novel writing. With practice he becomes more skilful at
applying his technique, and normally his art shows some develop-
ment, but he seldom makes a second breakthrough into something
really new. This development is the artistic equivalent of
'normal' science: it is a process of filling in the potholes in
the trail already blazed. And filling in the potholes is all the
ordinary practitioner, whether of art, science or engineering, can
ever hope to do.
This last s t a temen t is not quite correct . The lively ordinary
practitioner can hope to do something more . He can keep his eyes
open for the next work of genius, try to recognise it when he sees
it, and try to distinguish it from the many new ideas that are
false trails. This is not easy. The history of science is rife
with controversies between proponents of rival theories all of
which at the time seemed to account for the facts. To playa part
subsequently in interpreting the work of genius, so that it may be
assimilated by lesser mortals, is a valuable contribution because
the rigidity of our brain circuits is such that it can be a very
long time before the view finally accepted filters down to the
ordinary practitioner and begins to be widely used.
It is perhaps a blessing that genuine acts of creation are as
rare as they are. It is doubtful whether society could stand a
greater rate of change of fundamental ideas than exists at presentttt .
Looking at the history of science and technology from 10 000 Be to
1850 we have seen that both proceeded by fits and starts . There
were long periods of consolidation, and even regression, broken
t Sir Frank Whittle, Jet: the Story of a Pioneer (Huller, 1953).

tt Walter Dornberger, V2 (Hurst & Blackett, 1954).
ttt See Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (Pan, 1970).
onl y by short periods of rapid deve lopmen t . But wi thi n t he last

fi fty ye a r s mankind has been fa ced with a qui t e phenomenal r a t e of
change i n sc i ence a nd tech nology which may ye t turn ou t to be ex-
cess ive. Cer t a inly i n t he Middle East t he r a pid western isat ion
of tluslim s t a t es , made po ss ible by oi l wealth, has brough t about a
dangerous ly strong r eaction . I nevi tably, wi th the i mpor t ed wes tern
technology came an al ien cu l t ure whi ch could no t be assimi lated a t
such a r a t e . But even the we s tern s t a tes t hems elves are cr eak ing
under th e s t r ain of e conomic and soci a l prob lems caused by techno-
l ogic a l change . The present r ate of cha nge i s no t s urpr is ing when
on e r emembers the f act that the vast ma jor i ty of all the scient ists
who ha ve ever lived are s t i l l a l ive t oday, a nd tha t science and
te chnology are now ve ry c lose ly linked, each s t i mulat i ng t he ot he r .
Let us now leave t he s ub ject of rad i cal i nn ovati on and cons i der
the normal proc ess of design in e ng i neer i ng . Thi s is what give s
engi neer i ng i ts unique characte r .
ENGINEERING DESIGN
There are two aspects of the process of design in engineerin g

which need dist inguishin g . The minor one is concer ned with ma ki ng
a product more attractive to the cus tomer : i ndu st~ia Z design i s the
not-very -informative name gi ve n to this activity. Industrial
de s i gn may be merely a matter of co sme t ics t o i ncrease the a e sthetic
ap peal of t he produ ct . Cha nges of t hi s ki nd occur re la tively
s lowly beca us e cur rent fashion an d na tur a l conservat ism set a limi t
t o the de gr ee of novelty which will be a ccepta bl e t o prospec t ive
cust omers . On the other hand , i ndustrial de sign may als o i nclud e
ergonomic cons iderations . Er gonomi cs i s t h e study of ways and
means of fitting a machi ne t o t he human operator . The ob ject ive
i s t o r educe h uman f atigue, incr ease user-e f fi ciency, and so far
as poss ib l e make the operat ion foo lproof or a t least f ai l- s afe .
Many failures put down t o 'pilot error' are du e t o ergon omi c
s ho rtcomi ngs i n the de sign , whi ch manifest t hemse lves when unu sual
events put the operator under pres sure. I t fo llows t ha t i nd ustrial
des i g n i n the full sense i s most i mpor t a nt. A suc cess f ul outcome
i s likely on l y if the industrial des igner is brought i nto the desi gn
proc es s at an early s t a ge , and if he wor ks clos e ly wi th the
e ngi ne er i ng design team.
The major part of the desir,n process is con cerned wi t h de signing
a device - whether i t be a machine , ins trument , power pl ant , bridge,
dam, or chemic a l plant - which wi l l do t he job e xpect ed of it wi t h
the de sired e f fi ciency a t a c ompe t i t i ve cost . Thi s we will refer
t o a s e n gi ne e ~ ng des i gn . It mayor may not be assoc i a t e d with
invention . Just how much novelty i s requ ired before the word
invention becomes appropriate is difficult to say. The s i mpl e
a ns wer is t ha t the new dev i ce or process is an invention if the
i dea is patentable. It i s engineering design with which we shall
be concer ne d here .
We noted at the end of chapter 3 that progress in engineering i s
norma l l y by evolution rather than reVOlution , be ca use of the dire
con s equences to cust omer or f irm which may r e s ult fr om er ror . It
f ollows t hat muc h engineering de sign simply co ns ist s of usin g codes
of practi ce and of modifying existing de si gns by extra polating a
s uccessfu l de si gn t o a l a r ger s i ze . Even then, some times the

ex t rapolat ion is bas e d on poor engi neering s cien c e fo undat ions an d
l ead s t o di s a ster : the f ailur e of the large co nc re te c ooling t owers
at Ferry bridge power s tation i s a goo d e xa mple . We s ha l l ha ve in
mind, however, only case s where a new co ncept i s emp loy ed. The
ne w con c ept may be a n orig i nal a pp l icat ion of an ex is t i nr, de vi ce or
princ i ple which necess i ta tes a great deal of adaptation, or a ne w
de vice f or s erv i ng an ex ist i ng purpose . An e xa mple of the fir st
is the tra nslat i on of t he prin ci ples of jet propul sion t o a mar i ne
en vironment whi ch l ed t o th e hover cr aft. An example of the second
co ul d be th e r epla c e ment of a ma nually- c ontrolled machine t ool by a
co mput er - co nt ro l led ve rsion.
Once the basic id e a has been f ormulat ed, the desi pn pr oc es s in
enginee ring be c omes one of wor ki ng out the details to see whether
i t is pract icab le. To do th i s i t i s ne c es sary t o ca l Ion all the
r e levant t e chn ologie s a nd e ng i nee r i ng sciences . We ha ve seen that
the engi neer i nr, sciences a re essen t ial ly analyt ica l. They are
buil t up from t he sol ut ion of s mal l manageab le problems each of
which ca n be s t ud ied i n i s olation . The compr ehen s ive empi r ical
the ori es which r e sult then enab le new s i tua t i ons t o be analysed .
E n ~ine erin g design i s co ncerned wi t h the s yn t hes is of r ele van t
de duct ions made f rom a number of e ngi ne ering scienc es and t e ch-
nologi e s. For e xa mp l e , the de s i gn of a new t y pe of gas turbine
will draw upon: engineer ing thermodyn ami cs (for cy c le c a lcu lat ions ) ,
f l ui d me ch ani cs ( f or b lade -shapes a nd ducts), s t rengt h of mater ia ls
( f or s t resses in moving parts), mecha ni cs of mach i ne s ( f or s ha f t
whi r ling s pe eds , blade vibrat i on , bear i ng loads ) , co nt rol the ory
( f or contro l sys te ms) and prop erti es of ma teri als (for choice of
su i t ab le materials in cludi ng lubri cants) . The one component of
the gas turb in e whe re the or y i s s t i l l i na dequ ate i s t he combus t ion
syst em. Her e t he processes of combus t ion and gas fl ow are so com-
pl e x t ha t de s i gn r ests lar ~ely upon the exp e r ience of the combus -
tion technologist.
Engi ne e r i ng des ign i s essent ial ly a ma t ter of thinking of a
number of a l ternat ive sol utions t o each prob lem. The designer' s
ski l l a nd e xper ience is most vi tal at t he point s where he has t o
exercise hi s j ud gement in choosing the best alternative. He wi l l
a lmos t cer ta i nl y f ind probl ems f or whi ch there i s no so l ut ion with
cu r rent knowl e dge : fo r e xa mp le he may ne ed a material of s t rengt h
a nd den sity whi ch does not ye t e xis t but which the mat erials tech-
nologi st thinks i s pos s i ble of a chievement. Res earch programmes
are put i n h and and the des igner wi l l tentati vely a ssum e that
sol ut ions t o s uc h pr oblems c an be f ound before th e desi gn ha s t o
be finali sed. The design of an y large- s cale project always pro-
ceeds s i de - by -s i de with a r eleva nt r esearch programme and this has
t o be allowed f or when predi cting compl e t i on date s . As ea ch draft
design is produ ced the performan ce i s e stimated t o see if it meets
th e spe cificati on. Produ ction engineers will be making preliminary
de signs of an y spe cial machines and t ools required f or the produc-
tion line, a nd will be es t i ma t i n g co sts . They wi l l be f e e di ng
this information ba ck t o the design t eam with suggestions f or design
cha nges whi ch will r educe the c ost of production . Onc e the final
draft i s accepted a prototyp e will be built and thor oughly tested .
Further mod ifications to the des ign will usually be ca l led for, and
a Ma r k II prototype ma y be built.
In speaking of a 'production line' and a 'prototype' it is clear

that we have had somethinr, like a gas turbine in mind . That is,
s omet hi ng of moderate size of which more than on e- of f will be pro-
duced. If, on the other hand, the project is a new kind of sus -
pension bridge, there will be comparable star,es in the design
process but the words we have us ed will be inappropriate . For
example, for production engineers one would read construction
engineers, f or special machines and tools one might read special
giant cranes or ca i s s on s , and for prototypes one would read scale
models .
From this brief account it should be clear that a modern chief
designer has t o sift an immense amount of specialist advice, both
technical and economic . In making his decisions ~e will be
s eeki ng the best compromise between the conflicting requirements
of high performance and low manufacturing cost. Depending on the
nature of the product, 'performance' may be measured in terms of
running c ost, maintenance cost, operational life, or a combination
of the se. Moreover he will have to take many more things into
account than his predecessors. For example, he has to be aware of
the effects his product will have on the environment - pollution,
health hazards and noise. He will be conscious of safety require-
ments, and of legislation on product liability (that is, the
liability of his firm for compe ns at i on in the event of failure of
the product). If his design ca l l s for radical changes in manu-
f a ct ur i ng methods he may ha ve to take account of the effect on
industrial relations within the company . Increasingly he will
have t o con s i der the cost of eventual disposal when the product
has reached the end of its useful life, and the necessity for
making it easy for scarce materials to be recycled. This is all
a consequence of a rising standard of living in an increasingly
populated world.
In recent years much has been written on design methods in the
abstract, to try to systematise the process of design with the aim
of increasing the pool of innovative ability. Some writers have
been trying to produce an engineering science called 'des ign
science', but so far there is no agreed f ormulation which could
usefully be imparted to students of engineering. It seems that
what has been of value in all this effort has been made available
through s hor t courses run by people with stimulating personalities.
In saying this, we are not suggesting that these valuable attempts
to systematise the design process should cease, but merely that so
far success has been elusive. Nor are we suggestinr, that a useful
critical attitude to design cannot be implanted in the student by a
study of practical examples, and by requiring him to design some
piece of equipment which he will help to manufacture and use in the
laboratory. Furthermore, there are new design techniques that
need to be imparted to the student : in particular those associated
with the use of computers. Banks of data can now be made easily
available to the modern designer, and the computer enables him
rapidly to assess the effect of any changes he makes to the
variables at his disposal . He is thus able to consider a vastly
greater range of alternatives than his predecessors, and is much
more likely to find the optimum solution to his design problem.
The engineering student clearly has to be made aware of these
techniques, and of the way they can be dovetailed into the pro-
duction process using numerically controlled (He) machine tools.

What we are suggesting is that at the end of this teaching proces s,
which lays the foundation s, it is still de sirable for the aspiring
designer to work under a first-class practitioner in the world of
engineering outside the controlled cond i t i ons of a laboratory or
teaching establi shment.
This last section should have emphasised the point made earlier,
that engineering i s essentially action - de sign, construction,
development - and action requires a decision to do one thing rather
than another . This aspect we shall proceed to consider in the
next two chapters. There are broad decisions to be made by a
society about what sort of technology it should develop: advanced
technology or 'alternative technology', for example. Such questions
are closely bound up with what might be called 'engineering ethics' ,
and the important place that ethics will occupy in any philosophy of
technology was stressed in chapter 1 . The next chapter will deal
with these topics. Then there are more detailed decisions to be
taken about which specific technological projects to pursue to meet
given purposes. In this context, there are associated questions
of how the risks involved can be assessed, and how society can
control the social consequences of technological decisions. These
matters will be discussed in chapter 6.
5 Choice of Technological Futures
Ethical problems ar1s1ng from technological activity; a

code of ethics for engineers ?; broad categories of tech-
nology (advanced technology, alternative technology, why
advanced technology will prevail).
There are two broad classes of decision-making in the technological

sphere: (a) broad decisions about the type of technology that a
society wishes to use to supply its material needs, and (b) detailed
decisions about the choice of a specific technology to meet a given
need. The first class, discussed in this chapter, arise s directly
from the social impact of technology and involves such questions as
'Does advanced technology cause "alienation"?'; 'Would an alter-
native , appropriate, or intermediate technology serve our needs
rather better, and is there any r eal distinction between these
terms ?' . The key question here is 'Does a society in practice
have much option about the type of technology it can adopt?'.
The second category of decision-making involves such questions
a s: ' Should a breeder reactor programme be started?'; 'Should
lead be banned from petrol?'; ' Should we initiate a programme of
district heating using combined heat and power plant?'; ' Should
a channel tunnel be built?'. It will be necessary to see if any
general principles can be enumerated as a basis for taking such
decisions. The crucial question in this category becomes: 'I s
technology now so sophisticated with such far-reaching consequences
that it is almost impossible t o make rational choices between
technological options ?' . Chapter 6 will deal with such questions.
Both categories of decision will be based on more than mere
economic considerations and, in particular, ethical considerations
will play an important part. Before trying to answer the fore-
going questions, therefore, we will discuss the nature of the
ethical problems which arise as a result of advances in technology.
ETHICAL PROBLEMS ARISING FROM TECHNOLOGICAL ACTIVITY
Fruitful concepts, whether scientific or philosophi cal, cannot be

fully defined in simple terms. Their meaning can be made clear
only by exploring the way they are used in the theory in which
they arise. The concept of ethics is no exception. One must
have a starting point, however, and we shall take it that ethics
refers to that aspect of our lives wherein we try to harmonise
our desires and actions with those of other members of a community
using moral persuasion instead of lies, force or bribery. The
community may be of local, national or international dimensions,
68
Choice of Technological Futures 69
but we shall us e 'society' in what follows and leave the context to

indicate the relevant dim ension. This incomplete definition im-
plie s that an is olated individual on an i sland coul d never be faced
with an ethical problem . He or she may, of course, have religious
problems.
Those who believe that morality springs frOM relir,ion will ha ve
little difficulty in accepting the foregoing partial definition of
ethics. Ot her s , however, may say that by referrinr, to 'moral
persuasion' in a definition of ethics we are begging the question.
We could reply siMply that most partial definitions involve a
circular argument. A sc i e nt i f i c example is provided by: 'energy
i s the capacity of a body to do work' and 'work is a f orm of trans-
fer of energy'. But the difficulty can be resolved rather more
satisfactorily in the f ollowing way.
Human ists and agnosti cs take a pragmatic view of eth ics and
believe that the ultimate an swer t o 'Why should I do this?' is
s omet h i ng like 'Be cause I am a Man , and if Mankind generally did
ot h er wise no s t ab l e s oc i et y could exist and ultimately there would
be no human race' . In other words, they believe that ethical
values and concepts - like a esthetic values and concepts - are
grounded in the nature of our species. No transcendental backing
is required. On an y theory of ethics of this kind, a moral code
is a di gest of past solutions to ethical probleMs. It is s i mp l y
an ai de-m~moi pe ; although a very important aide-m~moi pe because it
embodies a s oc i e t y ' s collective experience of what has been
regarded as correct ethical behaviour in the past . It saves
thought in all but the more unusual situations. For example, we
do not want to have to rehearse all the arguments as to why stealing
is wron g every time we are tempted to keep a borrowed book : we
refer to our moral code . On this view our partial definition of
eth ics involves not s o much a circular argument as a spiral argument .
The s olution of an ethical problem becomes a process of successive
approximation using past decisions, like legal precedents, to enable
us to hOMe in on a solut ion. Having said this, it is time to con-
s i der how ethical problems arise in a technological cont e xt , and
then discuss some examples.
We emphasis ed in th e Introduction that technology affects our
s ocial structure in two ways: firstly through the Means of pro-
du ction we adopt, and secondly through the devices technology puts
into the hands of mankind. One does not have to be a Marxist to
believe that the organisation of the means of production has a pro-
found effect on the way in which we live. One has only to look at
the historical development of technology in a social context as did
Lewis Mumford in his Technics and Civ iLisation, and indeed the con-
trast between the way of life in mediaeval times and during the
industrial revolution is well known. Or one can look at the
variations in the world today between countries at differing stages
of industrial development . The use of computer-controlled machine
tools and robotics in production processes is certainly going to
have a profound affect on the social fabric of industrialised
countries.
The effect on our life of the products of technology is just as
significant. We have, for example, large civil engineering works
bringing water and power to arid regions; we have the effect on
our lives of vastly increased Mobility due to the motor car and
a i rcraft , and of the i mmedia cy of ne ws coverage by t elevision; an d

now we are faced wi th major cha nges due t o the depl oymen t of com-
puters a nd associ ated i nfor ma tion sys tems .
There i s l ittle do ubt tha t t e chnologi cal deve lopment ha s be en
one of the gr e ates t s ingle engines f or change i n society . Arch-
ae ologi sts have r e cogni se d t hi s by referrin g t o epochs as t he bronze
a ge , i r on age and so on . No doub t future archaeologis ts wi ll refer
in due course t o t he foss i l -fue l age and the s i l icon age . Some
pe ople might demur and a rgue t ha t t hr oughout hi s t ory the s t r ugg l e
f or power between tribe s an d nation s ha s playe d a l arger part : but
so often onc e the armies had done bat t l e t he life of the or di nary
man went on much as b e f ore. Suc h change s as di d occur were l a r gely
due t o t he technologi cal cha n ges stimulated by military r equiremen ts ,
or to new technologie s t ha t the conque rors brought with them.
Recently t her e ha s been much talk about ' Te chnologi c a l As sess-
ment ' ( TA) , particularl y i n Ame r ica ; TA i s s uppose d t o pr edict t he
soc ial consequen ce s of t e chno l ogi cal de velopment s . 'Think tanks '
ar e a l l t he rage, try ing t o pre di ct pos s i ble fut ure s. One may
doub t t he va l ue of s uch e xer c is e s . Would any on e fi fty years ago
ha ve predi cted that fifty years later man would hav e walked on t he
moon watched by a television audience? Would they hav e predict ed
t he achi e vement of s upe rson ic flight , nu cle ar power , t he microchip ,
laser be ams , or s i l i ca l i ght - f i br e s for telecommunic ation s ? The
i ngen ui t y of man is limi tle ss an d qu i te unpredictable. I f one
canno t predict the t e chn o l ogi es , s t i l l le s s can one pr e dict s peci fic
social consequ ences . I t would b e f ool -hardy t o s ugges t t hat any-
thing i s impossib l e . One migh t argue t hat the so- called laws of
nat ur e p l a c e a r estri ction on what i s pos sib l e ; and a t any
pa rticul a r s t a ge of developmen t so they do . But some t i mes s uc h
l aws a re shown t o be s peci a l cases of more general l aws, as wh,m
Newtoni an mechanics were subsumed under Einste in 's mech ani cs , and
t hi s can lead t o somethi ng becomin g possible t hat was hithe r to
thou ght t o be i mpos sibe, that i s , the conve rs ion of mat ter into
ene rgy .
Among the most voca l f ore casters of the fut ure are t hos e who
a dvocate s e l f - s uppo r t ing commun es and s t eady- state economi es runn ing
on r enewa ble res ourc es. One might call it t he ' ba ck- t o-na t ur e'
s yn drome. Surely the i ncr e di bl e inven tivenes s of ma n woul d make
nons ense of s uch a f ut ur e. The con t inuous proce s s of sol vi n g
problems an d creat ing new ones i s wha t being human i s al l ab out .
The ant can ex is t i n a steady-state society but not a human bei ng.
Man i s not going t o r elinqui sh his hope f or a bet te r li f e becaus e
a fe w comfo r t ab ly-off conservat ionis t s pe r s i s t i n crying wol f.
Furthermore, such an a pproach i s quite impra cti cal in a world in
whi ch t he population is likely to double in the next thirty year s ,
and i n whi ch our mor a l sense has de velope d t o the po int where we
f e e l bo und t o be concern ed wi th f e ed i ng , c lot h i ng an d housing that
popUlat ion .
Suppo s e we ad mit t hat t he poss ibi lit i es wi ll be much greater t han
can b e f oreseen and t ha t a full- blooded use of t e chn o l ogy is
ne cess ary t o cope with t he populat ion exp losion - un les s two-thirds
of t he wor l d ' s population r ush lemming- l i ke i nt o the sea . We mi ght
then s ay : 'Perhap s we can do anything, but ought we t o do par-
ti cular t hings A, B an d-c? ' . Once we ask a ques t ion inV Olving
' ought ' we are i nv olve d with ethics . In thi s context we are
asking whether certain fields of inquiry should or should not be

pursued. Of course any individual can legitimately say that he
has a conscientious objection to working on a particular project,
but it will have little effect on the world because someone else
somewhere will certainly do the work. One simply cannot stop the
search for knowledge and the inventive process. Once Adam took a
bite of the apple from the tree of knowledge there was no turning
back . Man's capacity for innovation, and for handing on knowledge
from one generation to the next, is one of the important charac-
teristics which distinguishes him from other animals. t
But the question was 'ought we' or 'ought humanity', not 'ought
I', do something. It is the realm of collective ethics, not
personal ethics, that is relevant here. By collective ethics is
meant the moral stance adopted by a society. Certainly a
particu~ar society can stop the application of a particu~ar piece
of knowledge. But woe betide it if this leads to other societies
gaining the edge in this competitive world . It will be disastrous
for any developed country to opt out of the microelectronic revo-
lution because it thinks it morally wrong to deprive people of the
job they were originally trained to do.
This does not mean that societies have no real choices to make.
The exponential expansion of science and technology in the last two
hundred years has given man a bewildering range of alternative
courses to pursue, and we can and must decide which horses our own
society should back with publi c funds. At present in the U.K.,
the government makes its choice with advice from Standing Commiss-
ions, Royal Commissions, Parliamentary Committees, Research
Councils, and Committees of Inquiry t t . The development of appro-
priate machinery, for making rational decisions about large-scale
technological projects with very long lead times, is still in its
infancy, and the next chapter will have something to say about this
topic. While economic factors are often paramount, there are
other factors having an ethical content which do play a part in the
decisions. What are some of the collective ethical problems that
face a society?
One is how far a society should take account of the needs of
future generations . Should a society husband scarce mineral and
fuel resources now to leave more for the future? Governments and
businesses have to compare present costs and benefits with more
distant ones when planning expenditure. For example, is it
financially worth spending a great deal now on developing combined
heat and power plant (CHP) for district heating schemes to obtain
t This is not to be taken as implying that no other animals do

this. Nor when making remarks like 'man is a tool-using animal'
is it implied that no other animals use tools. All that is
meant is that these characteristics are much more marked in
homo sapiens than in any other species. That most, if not all,
human characteristics are to be found in embryonic form in some
other animals should surprise no one but a religious funda-
mentalist .
tt See for example: The Windsca~e Inquiry: Report by the Hon.
Mr. Justice Parker (H.M.S.O., 1978).
fut ure savi ngs on f ue l co sts? Using our power stations in the
back- pr essur e or pass- out mode to enable t he i r wa s t e heat t o heat
our c i t i es would undoubtedly s a ve a c ons i der abl e amount of f ossil
fuel for fut ur e gene rat i ons . Cal cu l a t i ons show that if one - ha l f
of t he U. K. ' s electri cit y was produced by s uch plant , the national
prima r y f ue l co nsumption would be r educed by a bout 8 per c ent .
When es timating whethe r such s chemes are e con omically viab l e , in
c ompar i s on with the present mix of i ndividual he a ting a ppli a nc e s ,
one ha s not only to make a n ass umption ab out t he r a t e a t which fuel
prices will rise , but de c i de on the rate of interest t o emplo y when
discounting the running cost s . (£ 100 now is worth £200 in 10
y ear s ' time at an i nter est r ate of 7 per c e nt ; conversely £20 0 in
10 y e ar s ' time is worth £100 now at a discount rat e of 7 per c ent .
The total co s t of a pro j ect of capital cos t C and a nnua l running
cos t s Ri , R2 , etc . , is f ound by d i scount i ng Ri, R2 , etc . t o the
start ing year over the life of the plant , and add i ng t he sum of
these to the capital cost C. This y ields what i s ca l l ed the
' pr es e nt va lue ' of t he t otal costs.) One reason f or discount i ng
i s that with cont inued e conomic growth i t is reasonable to expect
f ut ure gener a t ions t o be bet te r of f than the pres ent one . In 1969
t he Tr e a sury laid down a Tes t Discount Ra t e (T DR) of 10 per cent t o
be use d by public en terp r ises when mak i ng investment de c is ions . In
1978 this was reduced to 5 per cent for the nationalised industries .
A hi gh discount r at e me an s t hat s a vi ngs arising i n t he f ut ure ar e
wor t h very little now and , with a TDR of 10 pe r cen t , e ne r gy con-
s e r va t ion sche mes i nvolving CHP oft en s e em une conomic. The l ower
t he TDR the more fu ture s a vings a re wor t h , and t he more our e conomi c
de cisions are b iased i n f a vour of f uture gener a t i ons . The choi ce
of TDR i s thus a collective et hi c a l de cision .
The ques t ion arises as t o how f ar ahead it is reasonab l e to l ook.
Ce r t a i n ly t o our children 's lifet ime : we cannot he l p but be con-
cerned fo r t he i r wel fare , howe ver unwelcome t he conce r n may s ome -
t imes b e t o the r e c i pi ent s . But it c an b e argued that we canno t
anti cipate, s til l les s so lve , t he problems of our grandchi l dr en .
A se con d but r ela t e d problem of colle ctive et hics is the amount
o f cho ice a soci e ty s ho ul d allow its individua l con s umers. It is
r ela t ed t o the first be cause t oo much choic e now can mean less for
fu t ure ge ne r a t ions . To t ake th e example of district heating a
stage further: where a CHP s cheme is adopted the individual con -
s umer will have no choice of heat ing system or fuel . By s a vi ng
f os sil fuel now , however , future generations would have more
fr e ed om o f manoeuvre and more time in which to deve lop alternative
s ources o f energy such as f us i on . To t ake an other e xample , is it
rea lly s ens ib le to burn oi l in order t o ship c ar s acros s ha l f the
world from one car-producing c ountry to anot her ? Sur e ly this is
a particularly s ense l e ss f orm of i nt ern a t i ona l t r a de , except in
t erms of giving con s umers more choi ce . Consumer choic e is appar-
ently a l way s regarded as a benefit. To gain public a c ce pt an ce of
r e stri ctions on cho ice a government has t o muster al l its arts of
persuasion. Can the demand f or unrestricted cho ice r eally be
jus tified ?
Anot her problem of collective ethics is how to arrive at a
r e asonable attitude t o health and s a f e ty . How muc h of our
va l uab l e res ources should we devote t o this aspect of our lives ?
At pre sen t we seem bent on making every industrial activi t y a
thous and t imes safer t han widely a ccepted ris ks in the home and on
t he r oads . Would i t be more sen s ib l e t o b e a litt le le s s prof li-
gate with expenditure on sa fe ty measures and more l i b er a l with
compensa t ion to those unfortunate en ough t o s us tai n t he accidents ?
Would t he U.K . - a very s mal l i sland - ha ve a chi eved what it d i d i f
our f orefathers had had the present attit ude t o ris k ? How far i s
our pre sent attitude inhibit ing entrepreneurial act ivity and hence
ex a cerbating the unemployment prob lem ? But , on the ot he r hand ,
how f ar is it j us t i f i ab l e t o s acri f i ce individuals a t random for
t he sake of en trep reneuria l activity who se ul t imate benfi ts cannot
b e predicted?
A fourth problem, but aga in related t o t he a tti t ude adopted t o
our own live s, ari ses because of deve lopment s i n me di cal t e chnology
and bio-engineer ing . Thes e deve lopment s are ke ep i ng us alive much
l onge r, so the que s ti on ari ses : und er what c i r cumst an ces shou ld
t he medical profe s si on ce as e to prolon g l i f e or e ven a s s i s t de a t h?
Thi s i s go ing t o be a maj or et hi ca l proble m in the ne xt twenty
years if the av era ge age of t he population co nt i nues to i ncreas e .
A no l e s s pressing problem in th is a r e a i s the hi gh cos t of
s oph is t i c a t e d med i cal equ ipmen t ( X-ray scanners , a utomated l abor-
a t ory ana lysers , kidney machines , e tc .) and of organ transp l an ts .
This leaves f ewer res ources fo r the l es s ex c it ing s phere of pre-
vent i ve medici ne which co uld he lp a far l ar ger proportion of t he
population .
A f i f t h pr ob l em of coll ect i ve eth ics i s what s tance s houl d t he
de ve lope d countries take to t he developing co unt r i es . I s there
any hope of a pe a ceful an d cons t r uc t i ve world i f the ' ha ve s' do not
help the ' have not s ' ? I s t here an y hope of s t ab i l is i ng the wor l d
populat i on i f the s t a ndard of l iv ing i s not raised s i gni f ican t ly in
the Third World? Many people t hink that a c ceptan ce of birth
con tro l de pends on high l i vi ng s t a nda r ds . Shou l d not the advanced
soci et ies a ccept the r i s ks of nu clear power so t ha t f os sil fuel is
a va i lab l e f or the l es s ad van ce d? How do we ba l ance the clash of
i ntere s t between wishi ng to be independent of diffi cu lt ove rs e as
s uppl i ers ( say by r estri cting i mpor t s f r om polit i cally unstab le
reg i ons) an d wishing t o he lp t he s e r egions ? We cannot help t hem
i f we refuse to ta ke their product s . It i s not very e d i f y i ng t o
wa t ch the gov ernments of the de ve lope d na tions wrigg l ing on the
hook ca s t by the Brandt Commi s s i on Repo r t , whi ch was an a t temDt t o
see how the Wester n wor ld coul d help the deve loping na t ions wi t hout
be ggari ng itself in the process .
Fina l ly , a s i xth problem is concerne d wi t h man' s a t t itude t o hi s
env i ronment. We have sa id t ha t the mai ns pring of techno logy was
the r e cognition t ha t we were not comp l e tely a t the mercy of cap-
ri ciou s gods an d that we co ul d mod ify and a da pt th e wor ld t o s ui t
our purposes . The view t ha t man was the supreme s pe c i es and had
a right t o l or d i t over the res t of t he li vin g world has had a l ong
hi story wel l s upp orted by Chr is t i an i t y t hr ough t he Book of Genes is.
It cer t a i nly goe s back t o Ari stotle who said t hat plant s were
created f or t he sak e of animal s and an ima ls for th e s ak e of men.
In re cent ye ar s t hi s v i ew has b een changing as we ha ve b ecome mor e
con scious of t he co mb i ne d e f f ect o f populati on gr owt h a nd wi de -
spread use of t e chnologica l process es upon t he environment . It
would go t oo far to s ay t hat man i s now s een more as a partner i n
t h e living world tha n as an ove r lor d , but at least it is recogn ised
t ha t i f he i s to main t ain hi s mas t ery he ha s to co- ope rate with his

environmen t rather t ha n mer ely e xplo i t i t . The po s t - war s pa t e of
l e gi slati on to limit po llut ion , t o r estrict the de facement of l and-
scape by re servoirs and motor ways , an d t o pre s erve wi ldli fe , i s
s ufficient in di cation o f t he trend.
Man is cer t a in ly acqu ir i ng a consci ence ab out hi s effect on the
b i o-sphere , and s o environmental prob l ems ha ve eth i c a l ove rtones .
Th e mat te r i s no t unre late d t o t he prob l em o f what hi s atti t ude
should be t o futur e ge nerat ions . One of the most movi ng s t a t e -
ment s of wha t this new a pproa ch t o the en vironment s houl d be i s
f oun d i n Chief Se a t t le 's r es pon s e in 1854 when t he Grea t White
Chi e f i n Washington off e r e d to buy a l arge are a of Indi an l a nd:
a fe w extracts s houl d suffi ce .
' What i s man without t he beasts ? If all t he beasts were gone ,
man would die f rom a gre a t l one lines s of the spirit . For whatever
happens t o t he beas t s s oon happen s t o man . Al l th ings ar e
con necte d .
So that they will res pe ct the l and, tell your chi l dr en that the
earth is r ich wi t h the live s of our ki n . Te a ch you r chi ldren
what we have t a ught o ur ch ildren , t hat t he earth is our mot he r .
Thi s we know: t he e arth doe s not be long t o man ; man bel ongs to
the e a rth . Whatever befa l l s the earth befalls t he sons of the
earth . Man did not weave the web of li f e; he i s mere l y a s trand
in it . Whatever he does t o the web he doe s t o hims elf. '
The s e are s ix example s of what can be calle d colle ct ive e th ical
problems - t hey i n vo l ve t he att i t ude which a t echnologi ca lly ad -
vanced s oci e ty takes eit her t o fut ure generati ons , t o life in i t s
own s oci et y , t o the Third World , or to t he en vi ronme nt . There
are no easy answers t o any s uch prob lems , nor can there b e an y
f i na l s ol ut i on s - they ar e not that sort of problem. They are
perennial questions t o which each gene r a t i on in turn must give s ome
sort of ans wer . This is a s i t s hou l d be : again , it is what being
h uman is a ll about. The an s wers will ch ange with the mor a l devel-
opment of manki nd and the t e chnologi cal means at its disposal .
And let no one sugge s t t hat t her e have been no ch ange s f or the
be tter i n man's mora l s t a t ur e . Although t here are sti l l great
evils - an d ev i l men - t he gen erality o f t he population no l on ge r
de l i ghts in the burn ing of witches , l au ghs at cr i pp l es , or kn i t s at
executions. And at no ot he r time i n history ha s t he r e b een such
an abundance of national and i nternational welfare systems trying
t o he lp the l e s s f ortunat e among us. Of co urse it i s impos sible
t o prove that there ha s bee n a net improvemen t in moral s ta t ure ,
be cau s e it is impos sible t o quantify past and pr es ent evi ls . It
may well be that evils in the con cent r a t i on c amps of St a l i n and
Hit ler were unmat che d by an ything a ch i ev e d by Ghe ng his Kha n .
Why do the peren ni a l co llect ive e t hica l pr ob lems seem so pr ominen t
today ? It is because of the power afforde d by mode rn scienc e an d
t e ch nology. Wha t was acce pte d as inescapable circumst ance or f a t e
i s b ecoming in creasin gly within our powe r t o regu l a te . I f indus-
trial society ha s created thes e pr oble ms, or s harpened old prob l ems ,
should we put the clock ba ck t o a void them? Sho uld we opt out and
s uc cumb t o t he ' ba ck-to-na t ure' l obby? Sur e l y this would be
throwing the baby out with the bathwa t e r . With all i ts fau l ts , i n
many respects t he i ndustrial ag e has b een the most successful man -
kind ha s known . A l a r ge r fraction of s ociet y eats better , is
better informed, lives longer and more comfortably, has safer and
more satisfying work, and is more mobile, than in any other age.
It is part of the conventional unwisdom to deny this, and to look
back at some other period in history through rose-tinted spectacles,
but one would have little success in convincing the developing
countries that it was anything but true.
Certainly the industrial age has many imperfections, and a clear
indication is provided by the statistics of crime, stress diseases,
and the vast consumption of tranquilisers and anti-depressants.
Obviously we hope to move forward to a better future : where man-
kind's material needs are easily satisfied and where we can concen-
trate on satisfying man's psychological needs. We all know broadly
what these are. Firstly, there is the need for emotional attach-
ments to people, places, local organisations and ways of behaving .
Such attachments provide a feeling of security, identity and status
on the one hand and an opportunity for service on the other. These
are all fundamental human needs. Secondly, society must be so
organised that a man can act in accordance with his conscience and
with freedom to follow his religious inclinations: a society which
is not might be called a psychic polluter . Thirdly, there is a
need for stimulus and challenge. Man's passion for competitive
and dangerous sports, and difficult pastimes such as trying to
master a musical instrument, are sufficient indications of this
basic need.
It has been suggested that we are slowly beginning to move in the
right direction, towards what some call the post-industrial society.
There has been increasing talk about the importance of job satis-
faction, diseconomies of scale ('the small is beautiful'), and
devolution of responsibility from central to local government; and
there is widespread acceptance of pollution controls, product regu-
lations and other measures concerned with the quality of life rather
than with economic growth. No one pretends that the transition to
the post-industrial society will be painless. The changes in our
attitude to work and leisure that will be required in the next ten
years under the impact of microelectronics and robotics will be
particularly traumatic . But we can move forward only by building
upon what we have. We can solve our problems only by the appli-
cation of yet more reason and intelligence, albeit with more
awareness of man's psychological and emotional needs than hitherto.
Unfortunately there are sign~ of a swing to irrationalism,
epitomised by the pseudo-religious groups that abound in the U.S.A.
This regression has been encouraged by the writings of those who
suggest we are spiritually and emotionally crippled by our commit-
ment to scientific ways of thinking. No doubt the warning is
justified and timely, but we need not be crippled in this way if we
remember that science can never answer the ultimate questions that
a self-conscious being like man is bound to ask, about who he is,
why he is here, and what his role in the universe can be. It is
just because he can ask these questions, which other animals
cannot, that he has ethical problems and that ethical statements
are significant, meaningful, propositions and not just expressions
of transient emotion or feeling.
A CODE OF ETHICS FOR ENGINEERS ?
Before leaving the subject of ethics, it may be worth a digression

to examine the practicality of a proposal that engineers should
adopt an explicit code of ethics for their profession as do
physicians . At the Se cond General Assembly of the World Iledical
Association in Geneva in 1948, the Physicians' Oath was discussed
and the reSUlting 'Declaration of Geneva' included such promises
as :
'Now being admitted to the profession of medicine, I solemnly
pledge to consecrate my life to the service of humanity.'
'The 'health and life of my patient will be my first consider-
ation. '
'I will hold in confidence all that my patient confides in me.'
'I will not permit considerations of race, religion, nationality,
party politics or social standing to intervene between my duty
and my patient.'
These extracts will be s uf f i ci ent for our present purpose .
In 1970 Professor Thring wrote an article for the September
issue of the Chartered 11echanical Engineer entitled 'Our Respon-
sib ility for Mankind' and suggested the following 'Hippocratic
Oath for Engineers'.
'I vow to strive to apply my professional skills only to pro-
jects which, after conscientious examination, I believe to con-
tribute'to the goal of co-existence of all human beings in peace,
human dignity and self-fulfilment.
I believe that this goal requires the provision of an adequate
supply of the necessities of life (good food, air, water, clothing
and housing, access to natural and man-made beauty), education and
opportunities to en ab le each person to work out for himself his
life objectives and to develop creativeness and skill in the use
of the hands as well as the head.
I vow to struggle through my work to minimise danger, noise,
strain or invasion of privacy of the individual : pollution of
earth, air or water, destruction of natural beauty, mineral
resources "an d wildlife .'
The first point to note is that although both statements imply
a dedication to the service of humanity, the physician's oath goes
on to deal specifically with the relationship between the doctor
and his patient. The physician pledges that the well-being of the
patient will be his first consideration, regardless of any religious
or political beliefs he may have. In conjunction with the promise
to hold in confidence all that the patient confides in him, this
must imply that the health and life of his patient is to come first,
whatever feeling he may have as to whether the continued existence
of his patient may be beneficial or harmful to humanity. Herein
lies the difficulty. Some doctors no doubt take this literally,
but others will temper it after examining their conscience. What
should a doctor do when he finds that his patient is a homicidal
maniac; that he is a terrorist injured in his own bomb explosion;
that he has been injured in a motor accident and has an alcohol
level way beyond the legal limit? All these patients are poten-
tial murderers. The rational man would surely expect the doctor
to remember the overriding pledge at the beginning of his oath
where he consecrates his life to the service of humanity. How is
he serving humanity by knowingly releasing potential murderers on

an unsuspecting public? Should he not, therefore, override his
promise of confidentiality and report the situation to the appro-
priate authorities? We may note then, that even with an oath of
this very restricted form - dealing with the relationship between
one individual and another - there are very considerable diffi-
culties. So much so that no doctor could be struck off the
register merely for failine to observe a portion of the code.
If a code dealing with a simple one-to-one relationship is
difficult to apply, how much more so is the code proposed for
engineers. The eneineer has responsibilities to his employer, his
profession and to the public, and he has potentially a much wider
sphere of influence than the physician. It is difficult to find
anything at all in Professor Thring's proposed code that applies
specifically to engineering. Read out of the context of his
article, the code can be seen to apply equally well to any pro-
fessional group whether it be of politicians, social workers,
teachers, artists, novelists, playwrights and so on. Any con-
scientious person whose activity has any influence on the world
around himself would be happy to take such an oath.
The next point to note is that a code covering all the desirable
effects of any activity does little more than outline what are
currently regarded as the characteristics of a good society. In
any practical situation, however, one is usually choosing to have
more of one characteristic at the expense of another, and one has
to decide which of various means is most likely to achieve the end.
In other words we have the normal state of affairs - human beings
faced with difficult ethical decisions - and the code is of very
little assistance. In the unreal world of party politics we are
led to believe that the decisions taken by members of the other
party are evil decisions taken by immoral persons : in the real
world, of course, we simply have human beings who genuinely believe
that their policies would be more effective than those of their
opponents in achieving the good society outlined in the code. One
group will believe that peace would be more likely to be achieved
if the nation disarmed, and another that adequate military pre-
paration is required. The code provides no help to an engineer
deciding whether to work in a military research establishment.
An ethical code is of help only if it saves us thought, and it
can do so only if it deals with relatively simple situations.
There are few situations where stealing might be justifiable, so
the injunction 'Thou shalt not steal' is a useful guide-line.
There are, of course, situations where observance of even this
seemingly obvious rule might not lead to a right action. For
example, a man with a starving family in a society with no welfare
organisations and no access to a plot of land, would receive little
blame for stealing food for his family, and indeed it could be
argued that he has a duty to do so. There are no absolutes in the
ethical sphere, and we are much more often faced with a choice
between various goods or various evils than a straight choice
between a good and an evil.
From the foregoing discussion, the reader will not be surprised
to learn that Professor Thring's suggestion has received little
support from the professional engineering Institutions. But if
such a code would be of no direct help to engineers, might it not
help them indirectly by showing the public that as a body they

espouse ideals which should be those of every thoughtful citizen?
BROAD CATEGORIES OF TECHNOLOGY
(i) Advanced Technology
Chapter 2 described the transition from societies based on craft

and technics to industrial societies based on full-bodied techno-
logy. In the previous section we suggested that we might be
Aspect of
Technology
Affected Agrarian Industrial Postindustrial
Level of Supports less Supports up to Supports up to

produc- than $300 in $4000 in per $17 000 in per
tivity per capita capita income; capita income;
income grows at approx- grows at 3-4 per
imately 2 per cent yearly
cent yearly
Primary Food Manufactured Services
product goods
Primary Land Capital Human expertise
factor of
production
Organization Household Factory Integrated nation-
of wide and world-
production wide economic
planning; devel-
opment of organi-
zational and
behavioural tech-
nologies
Role of the Crafts pro- Mechanized Pro- Automated produc-
worker duction; duction; worker tion; worker as
worker as as machine machine monitor
skilled operator
artisan
Instruments Tool-oriented Power tech- Informational
and technology; nology; technology;
machinery instrument as machines as re- machines as re-
extensions of, placements for placements for
or replace- human or animal human brains or
ments for, muscle power sensory receptors
human limbs
Figure 5.1 Agrarian, industrial and postindustrial tech-

nologies (from Gendron, B., Technology and the
Human Condition, by kind permission of St.
Martin's Press).
Choice of Techno logical Futures 79
passing through another technological revolution carrying us towards

the post-industrial society . Gendront summarises the historical
process as in figure 5.1. What he calls 'post-industrial tech-
nology' is epitomised by a substantial increase in productivity
per man; a transfer of manpower from the product industries to
the service industries (health, education, etc.); human knowledge
and expertise becomes the primary factor of production rather than
capital ; the primary unit of production becomes the multinational
or gani sa t i on rather than the individual firm; workers become
machine minders rather than machine operators; and power tech-
nology gives way to information technology in order of importance .
We have argued that the extreme anti-technology mo vement,
referred to as the back-to-nature cult, is unrealistic. Gendron
calls supporters of the movement the 'dystopians' . An examination
of their reasons for opposing technological civilisation might
help us to avoid the opposite extreme - the utopian view. Briefly,
the dystopians think that the social costs of advanced technology
outweigh the benefits: that advanced technology undermines freedom
and democracy by stimulating bureaucracy and by promoting the rise
of techniques of mass manipulation; that it dehumanises us and is
the chief cause of the alienation of the individual both from his
fellows and from nature; and finally that it increases the twin
dan gers of annihilating war and ecological catastrophe.
The utopians, on the other hand, think that the good outweighs
the bad; that ad vanced technology will eliminate scarcity and the
a ggr es s i on of which scarcity is a cause; that it will eliminate
famine and disease ; that the control of industry by technocrats
rather than by capitalists and politicians will lead to efficiency
be coming the paramount consideration instead of profit or idea-
logical rectitude, and that this in turn will lead to the proper
management of natural resources and adequate control of pollution.
We have expressed the belief that on balance the good has out-
wei ghed the bad, and to that extent have adopted the stance of the
utopians. But only to that extent. There are no grounds for
believing that man's aggressive instincts will be in any way
diminished, even if the superhuman task of eliminating scarcity
for the world's billions of population were to be accomplished.
There will always be wealthy groups or nations facing less wealthy
groups or nations ; the better educated facing the less well
educated ; and those in satisfying employment facing the unskilled
or unemployed. It is unreasonable to assume that man's competi-
tiveness will ever be limited to the sportsfield. All that we can
hope is that man will eventually de velop and accept rules for the
maintenance of fair competition in the industrial and commer c i a l
spheres just as he has done in the world of sport.
We said : 'even if the task of eliminating scarcity was accom-
plished' . The notion itself is nonsense, however, because tech-
nology continuously creates new needs - as fast as one is satisfied
another is created. This is an inevitable consequence of man's
inventiveness . Post-industrial technology may well be more
successful than industrial technology at meeting the minimal
requirements for food, clothing and shelter - what may be termed
t B. Gendron, Tec hnoZogy and the Human Condition ( St. Martin's

Press, 1977).
1900 - 1925 1925 - 1950 1950 - present
RESIDENTIAL
Heating 1-2 rooms, open fire, stove, central heatinc for well-off large proportion of homes
woollen underwear centrally heated
Lighting gas, some electricity, electric (1 bulb/room) decentralised and liberal
paraffin lamps in rural
areas
Cooking peat/coal ranges, some gas gas and electricity glamourised cookers with
in towns timers, spits, etc.
Housework vacuum cleaners for well-off vacuum cleaners, refriger- washing machines, refriger-
ators for well-off ators, deep freezes, mixers,
power lawn mowers
TRANSPORT Horse and cart, bicycle, train motor cycles, vans, lorries, general increase in speed :
bus, steam train, coal-fired buses, electric trains, mopeds,6-fold increase in
ships, military aircraft, cars diesel locos, cars for the cars, with decline of bus and
for the wealthy middle class, oil-fired train services, gas turbine
steamship, diesel freighter, ships, 10-fold increase in
beginning of air transport domestic air transport, world-
wide jet services
COMHUNICATIONS postal/telegram service, automatic telephones, radio trunk dialling, satellites,

telephones for wealthy T.V. ( immediacy of world
events
RECREATION unknown for many, short holiday camps, trips abroad increase in length and radius
local holidays, theatre, for well-off, cinemas, holidays, package trips, winter
own music gramophone sports for middle i ncome s , Hi-
fi and discotheques, sports
centres, sailing
N.B . Little now that the majority accept as a reasonable prerogative of the few.
I ~
Figure 5.2 The gr owt h of 'needs' in industrialised countries
man's biological needs - but that will not eliminate scarcity which
is essentially a relative term. A man will feel poor if he cannot
afford a reasonable proportion of the mass of goods and services
on which the advertising fraternity spend vast sums in persuading
him to want . Figure 5.2 shows how 'needs' have grown in the past
seventy years in the industrialised countries, and nowadays there
is very little that the majority will a ccept as being a reasonable
prerogative of the few. But even if advertising were drastically
curtailed and designed to inform rather than persuade, and even if
the wealthy refrained from conspicuous consumption, some forms of
s ca r c i t y would still exist. We have suggested that real improve-
ment in the quality of life will come only when we seriously con-
sider ways and means of meeting man's psychological needs . To
meet such needs, space, c l ea n air, clean water and recreational
fa cilities of all kinds, although not sufficient by themselves,
are necessary prerequisites . Suc h commodities cannot easily be
expanded to meet the needs of the whole population - and certainly
not if the world population continues to increase . This point has
been discussed at length in Social Limits t o Growth by F. Hirsch
(Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977) . There will certainly always be
competition for resources of this kind.
Finally, technological changes always throw up new social prob-
lems and there ca n be no question of ever eliminating these. The
ne cessity for our ch i l dr e n to make difficult ethical choices in
their turn can ne ver be avoided. Indeed to remo ve this necessity
would be to destroy their humanity .
Utopia then is a chimera, and mankind would probably die of bore-
dom if it were ever a chieved. If one is to t ake an optimistic
view at all, it is that mankind's story will continue on some kind
of erratic upward path in spite of many set-backs ca us ed by natural
disasters, climatic cha nges , epidemics, moral ba ck-sliding, or
pOlitical chi ca ner y. We have said that our only hope lies in
increasing our genuine empirical knowledge of ca us es of events -
whether they be technological or social e vents. Is there some-
thing in the utopian view that the passing of the control of a f fa i r s
from capitalists and politicians to a technocracy is a hopeful sign?
Gendron argues that it is, in the sense that the technocrat, proud
of his expertise, will do all he can to extend it . He will tend
to favour ploughing profits ba ck into research departments, hoping
to increase the stock of knowledge; he will be responsive to
cr i t i c i s ms about pollution and other anti-social aspects of his
industrial a ctivity because he will see them as indicators of in-
efficiency; he will favour the increased use of mathematical
techniques and information technology for making technological and
managerial decisions . In other words, his prime motivation will
be the pursuit of effectiveness, rather than profit for its own sake.
It is a hopeful sign too that e conomi c planning by go vernments and
by the great corporations is now beyond the capacity of any indi-
vidual . Increasingly, major de cisions must be taken as a result
of rational discussion between experts of all kinds - technical,
managerial, financial, governmental, and so on . The absolute
power that can corrupt individuals absolutely is shared in
committee.
Of course the dystopians are undoubtedly right to fear an
increase in bureaucracy , and to predict a strengthening of the
feeling of the ordinary man that his l ife i s increasingly beyo nd

his c ont r ol . It has probably a lways been be yond h i s cont r o l , but
at least in earlier times he f e l t he under stood the for ces whi ch
affected him - the greed of the landowner and ca pi t a l i s t , the
per s ona l aggrand isement of kings , the s e ek i ng of power by dema-
gogues . He cannot unders tand the complex processes a nd expert
knowledge required f or technologi cal de cision -making . If he is
not t o be tot a l ly a l i e na t ed , then side-by- s i d e with the growt h of
planning on a wor l d scale must go a de centralisation of the bodies
which execute the pla ns at a local l ev e l . For exa mple, t he f i s her -
men know t ha t a fr ee -for- a ll lea ds ev ent ua l ly t o d eple t ed fishing
grounds , and t ha t s omehow i nterna tional ru l es mu s t be form ula t ed and
a dh er ed t o: governme nt minist er s t rying t o r ea c h agreement might be
helped by c onf er e nc es of fishe r men dr a wn f r om the nations co nc erned .
The people most aff ec t ed ha ve t o be drawn into the dec i s i on- ma ki ng
if alienation i s t o be avoided . And i f i t is not avoided , the post-
i nd us t ria l revolution will have , as an equiva lent of the Luddite
movement in t he indus trial revolution , a ' r evo l t of t he masses '
a gainst the intel ligentsia (to borrow t he title of a polemi c by
Ortega y Ga s s e t ) .
'Alienation ' is one of thos e i n- wor ds whi ch ca n mean all things
t o all men. We are a s s umi ng that what is me a nt by al i enating wor k
is not that it is hard, da ng er ous , d i r t y , noisy an d sometimes
bor i ng , but that it has a ma jori ty of the following charac t er i st ic s .
It is work over whi c h the i ndividual has no c ont r ol as t o qua nt i t y ,
qua l i ty or di r ec t ion ; which is meani ngl e s s becaus e serving no
obvious need ; which f a i l s to present a c ha l l e nge or a ny satisfac-
tion other than the pay pa cket; and whi ch involves s ocial i s o-
lation. There is nothing inherent in a dva nce d technology whi ch
means that alienation i n this sense mus t be come more widespread.
Inde ed such t ec hnol ogy gives us a gr e a t er freedom to c hoos e ways
of or ga ni s i ng an d distributing work in su ch a way t ha t man 's
psychological ne ed s are met more adequately, on ce we ha ve ac cepted
the importance of doing s o. Likewise there is no reason to
s uggest , as do the dy s t opi ans , that advanced t e chnology will lead
inevi t ably to increased pollution a nd faster de pl e t ion of non-
renewable resources . Indeed, in the face of demands from an
increasing world population, advanc ed technology is our only hope
of reducing pollution and finding ways of doing what we want to do
with less expenditure of s ca r ce resources: microe lectronics absorb
very litt le electr ical power , s ilica op tical f ibres can replace
copper wire for communication systems , and nuc lear power reduces
pollut i on.
The dystopians are no t co nfined to t hos e a t t he extreme ' ba c k-
t o-na t ur e ' en d of t he spectrum. Some occupy a middle ground , not
denying the value of technology in i ts proper plac e , but believing
that an 'al t er na t i ve ', 'appropriate ' or ' i ntermediate ' technology
mig ht serve much of mankind's needs r a ther better t ha n a complete
reliance upon advanced technology . What is meant by these terms
and is there a ny real distinction between them ?
(ii) AZtePnative t echnoZogy
The t erms 'int ermediate', ' a ppr opriate' and 'alternative' tech-
nology began t o be used in the late 1 960s , and were or i ginally
coined to refer to technologies suitable for the developing

countries. To be classed as 'intermediate', a technology is
supposed to have the following characteristics: (a) be easily
understood so that a technically literate population is not
required, (b) be labour intensive rather than capital intensive,
and (c) use small-scale plant serving local needs to avoid the
need for an expensive transport system. An international con-
ference was called to discuss such matters, under the auspices of
the Intermediate Technology Development Group founded by E.F .
Schumac her who wrote Sma ll i s Beautiful (London, 1973) . A view
was expressed that the term 'intermediate' had overtones of 'second
best' and 'temporary', and that 'appropriate ' might be a more
suitable description .
Soo n the environmental and ecological protest gro ups in the
industrialised count r i e s began to see that they had something in
common with the intermediate technology groups, and began to argue
that the adoption of su ch technologies would benefit the de veloped
world also. They argued that an easily understood technology
would reduce alienation problems and serve man's psychological needs
rather better, and that local small-scale plant would save energy
which might become scarce in the very near future. It was in this
context that the term 'alternative' came into use, soon to be
followed by a multitude of other adjectives such as 'soft', 'non-
violent' and 'convivial'. We may conclude, therefore, that the
di f f er ent terms refer to the different contexts in which the sim-
plified technologies are recommended for use, rather than to any
difference in type of technology . Most writers on the subject
avoid the difficulty of nomenclature by simply referring to the
abbreviation AT, and we shall follow suit.
There are two questions then: 'Is AT more appropriate for the
developing countries than advanced technology?' and 'Is it a real
alternative for the industrialised nations?' . A review of the
fate of AT in the Third World by Rybczynski t rather suggests that
AT has many limitations in the first context . As an opportunity
for additional exports from the developed countries it has had its
successes, but as a way of-helping the Thirld World, by raising the
living standards of the desperately poor, AT has been disappointing .
The beneficiaries turn out to be the middle classes and richer
farmers rather than the urban and rural poor. Rybczynski quotes
as one example the many bio-gas digesters in India and South Korea
that never work or work only for part of the year when the ambient
temperature is suitable . In ca s e s where the conditions are
favourable, and the supply of farm refuse is of constant quantity
and quality, one finds them used successfully by a few wealthy
farmers. The immediate result is that cow-dung is no longer
freely available to the poor who use it as cooki ng fuel.
Then again, often the products of AT are not of acceptable
quality and the population prefers to pay more for the standardised
product from large factories. Here Rybczynski refers to the
village soap industries started in India, and the unsuccessful
hammer mills in Kenya which failed to produce the required quality
of maize flour. The more expensive rolling mills proved to be
t W. Rybczynski, Paper Heroes - a Review of Appropriate Teehnology

(Prisin, 1980) .
more economic in the long run. The fact is that, even in the
developing countries, capital-inten$ive technologies have a lower
marginal cost and are more readily aajusted to meet changes in
demand, and managers find it easier to manage machines than people.
Clearly AT is no panacea, and there is a growing pessimism about
its potentialities among all but the ideologically committed.
While China followed Mao, the proponents of AT always had an
example which they could feel exhibited the virtues of AT. The
position is rather different now that China has reversed the
Cultural Revolution and is sending its technical personnel allover
the world to update their knowledge of advanced technology. In
fact, as his slogan 'walking on two legs' implied, Mao never denied
the necessity for investment in large-scale industrial plant. The
small-scale village industries were very largely limited to the
production of cement, fertilisers, agricultural implements and
building materials.
There is no doubt that many developing countries do feel that AT
is second best, and that it is being promoted by the industrialised
nations to safeguard their own more advanced industries at home.
Furthermore, one cannot help such countries by educating their
students in scientific and technological departments of Western
universities and not expect them to wish to use that knowledge
when they return to their own land and reach positions of respon-
sibility. They will have acquired a taste for advanced technology,
which cannot be assuaged by designing cheap solar stills or wind-
mill-driven pumps for villagers. Nor can this kind of thing meet
the needs of their vast and expanding urban populations.
(iii) Why advanced technology will prevail

So much for our question as to the suitability of 'alternative
technology' for the developing countries. The second of our
questions was 'Is AT a real alternative for the industrialised
nations?'. We shall argue that the answer must be 'No'. Perhaps
the strongest reason why we must pursue advanced technology is the
pressure on material and energy resources which will become acute
early in the next century. The grounds for saying this can be
summarised as follows.
(i) Two-thirds of the world will not be content much longer with a
sub-standard of living which corresponds to an energy consumption of
about 0.5 kW per man. This must be compared with an energy usage
of 3bout 5 kW per man required to give European man the standard
of living to which he has become accustomed. Whether we are
thinking of water supplies and sewage systems, food, or consumer
goods, a rise in standard of living implies the use of more
materials - and the production of most materials is an energy-
intensive process. Furthermore, although the energy coefficient
of an economy (that is, the ratio of the percentage increase in
energy consumption to the percentage increase in gross domestic
product, GDP) is about 0.7 to 0.8 for the industrialised countries,
it is about 1.2 for the developing countries. Thus a propor-
tionately larger increase in energy consumption is required to
raise living standards in the Third World. This is not surprising,
because the basic necessities which would be involved in the
increase of GDP of the latter are more energy intensive than the
Choice of Technolog ical Futures 85
fr i l l s whi ch f orm an increase i n the GDP of the f ormer .
(b) A doubling of the world popul a t i on is pr obab l e e ven i f current
eff orts to limit it prev en t an y increase beyond that. Such a
popu lat ion ca n be f ed only by us i ng modern method s of agricu l tu r e
whi c h are energy-intensi ve i n ter ms of f er t ili ser s , t r actors, an d
so on . Al s o , to a void soil erosion it will be necessary t o
res tr ic t the present indiscriminate c ut t i ng of f or es t s for f uel.
( c) The working of difficu l t sources of f ue l and mi ner a ls (for
example , North Sea oil , oil shale, weak er ores) will require
more primary energy .
(d) The production of alternative materials, and recycling of
s carce materials, will often require the expenditure of additional
energy.
(e) When oil becomes scarce the production of liquid fuels f or road ,
sea and air transport wi ll use more primary energy. For examDle ,
the production of oil from coal involves the loss of about 40 per
cent of the heating value of t he coal . Rail transport will no
doubt be cat ered for by i ncr e a s e d e lec trification of the railways ,
ass uming t hat nu c l e a r power is avai lab le .
(f) As the population a nd standard of l i vi ng i ncr e as e , more s trin-
gent anti-pollution measures will be necessary and these cost e nerm'.
These energy requirements will be met partly by new power plant
an d partly by energy cons er va t i on measures . Both ap proaches will
require the use of advanced technology. In the c a s e of the former,
we shall almost certainly not me e t the world's needs without us i ng
the concentrated power loc ked up in t he atom - whether by nuclear
f i s s i on or ultimately by nu c l ear fusi on. It is true that coa l
r eserves are much l arg er than o i l reserves, but when o i l becomes
s car ce t he power-producing i ndustries will ha ve to c ompet e with
t he c hemica l industries for the use of c oa l . Chemi c a l industries
require hydrocarbons as a feedstoc k . The anti-nuclear movement
seems to think that win d an d wave mac hi ne s will come t o our aid if
only we pour enough mon ey i nt o their de velopment . Un fortunately ,
s uch machines have to be designed to cope with ex ceptional weather
conditions, and so most of the time are operating in a very lowly
stressed condition. This implies that va s t l y mor e material is
required for their construction than for conventional power
stations, and we have noted that the materials industries are
energy-intensive . The maintenance costs too would be very l a r ge -
both in financial terms and energy terms.
To conserve energy , we shall need to use s uch a ids as combined
heat and power plant , heat pumps , and solar energy systems for
heat ing our homes . Solar heating i s like l y t o be economic only
when a sophisticated technology is found for produc ing c heap
electric s olar cells i n vast quan tities. The i ns t all a tion and
maintenance costs of the present liquid solar -absorber systems make
it highly unlikely that they will be widely used ex cept in regions
part i cularly favoured by the sun . We shall also need advanced
technology to reduce the energy cons umpt i on of our transport
systems , and of our most energy- intensive industries.
There is another basic reason why few industrialised nations
ca n forgo the use of ad vanced technology . Most are not s e l f-
suffic ient, but depend upon trade to pay for food and raw materials.
Suc h nations are therefore forced to adopt the most competitive
technology . Onc e t he developing countries a cq uire the means of
producing traditional goods - steel, textiles and so on - they can

always undercut the older industrialised countries because of their
lower labour costs. The only way that the developed countries can
compete and pay for essential imports is by selling goods produced
by new technologies.
In saying that regard must be paid to the economic imperatives
of international competition, we are not intending to imply that
no choice whatever is open to an industrialised country. We have
said, for example, that no such country can afford to opt out of
the microelectronic and robotic revolution. This is surely true -
but the direction in which this revolution proceeds is still
within our control. The argument that if we do not use technology
in such and such a way we shall be uncompetitive, must not be pushed
to extremes. Analogous arguments were undoubtedly put forward by
the plantation owners when faced with the abolition of slavery, and
by the mine owners and mill owners when threatened with the pro-
hibition of child labour. Although in the short-term a unilateral
action may have unfortunate economic consequences, if the change is
clearly beneficial on social grounds then competitors will be forced
to follow suit.
There are essentially two ways in which the microelectronic/
robotic revolution might develop - one is life-denying and the
other life-enhancing. We can drift into treating it simply as an
extension of the industrial revolution, which had the effect of
breaking down many tasks into semi-skilled or unskilled operations
and thereby denying many people the satisfaction of developing and
exercising a skill. The new technology could carry this trend
still further, spreading the de-skilling process into white-collar
work and even into professional spheres. The few additional
skilled occupations created - principally in computer programming
and the design and maintenance of associated equipment - will
certainly not compensate for this. Even assuming that society
will eventually adopt work-sharing schemes that will eliminate un-
employment, to proceed along these lines would lead to a society
polarised into a small group of people working hard at challenging
problems and a large group engaged on work requiring no initiative
or skill whatever. This is the very antithesis of a society de-
signed to meet man's psychological and emotional needs. That
such a path would in the end be self-defeating, and lead to stag-
nation, is the main reason for believing that it will be avoided.
The Council for Science and Society (CSS) publication 'New Tech-
nology - Society, Employment and Skill', contains the following
example illustrating the point.
Consider the case of a computer programmed for carrying out the
diagnostic work of a doctor. This is certainly not beyond the
bounds of possibility. The doctor works (a) by explicit scien-
tific rules that his training and experience have led him to
accept, and (b) by an intuitive knOWledge acquired from the prac-
tice of his diagnostic skill which he would find it difficult or
impossible to describe in explicit terms. An external observer
might, after careful study, be able to deduce what much of this
intuitive component consists of, and thus program a computer to
take both the explicit and implicit rules of diagnosis into account.
Indeed, if the program was devised from a study of the work of a
number of doctors, the computer might perform rather better than all
but the best . Imagine now that a hard-pressed Health Service

de cides to invest heavily in computer diagnostics, and to staff
regional diagnostic units with narrowly, relatively cheaply, trained
medical technicians at the expense of broadly educated doctors. It
is conceivable that initially the public might be better served by
the new system. Eventually, however, the source of skill upon whi ch
the programmers can draw will dry up, and medical practice will
ossify.
The same bleak picture can be drawn for many possible uses of
robots. Robots are often programmed by a skilled craftsman going
through the motions required, which are then recorded and repetit-
i vely performed thereafter by the robot. How is the cr af t sman to
maintain his skill under these conditions ?
So much for the life~denying way of using microelectronics.
But the CSS report goes on to explain why this is not inevitable.
Suppos e the doctor co-operates with a programmer to develop a
personal diagnostic computer for his own use, and that he treats
it as an aid to 'increase his productivity'. It may also prevent
him from overlooking some important question towards the end of a
tiring day. He will not always agree with the computer, be cause
sometimes he will spot an unusual set of a patient's circumstances
not allowed for in the program . Part of his skill will come to
reside in judging when , and when not, to trust the computer. Such
a doctor is in a good position to update his programs as medical
science advances and his experience is deepened. There is then
no danger of ossification. Fortunately, there is a reasonable
expectation that such life-enhancing uses of the computer will
prevail, because the economics of microcomputers are such that
there is no financial advantage in using a large regional computer
as opposed to a multitude of small personal computers .
Competition between firms and between nations is inevitable and
even desirable. In the long run the prize will go to the firm or
country which finds the best way of using its human potential.
The microelectronic revolution provides an opportunity for experi-
menting with totally new ways of organising the production of
goods and services. It coul d , if we are clever, put an element
of skill back into some tasks, return the control of pace and
pattern of hours of work to the hands of the worker in others, give
people a choice of work location (home, office or factory) in yet
others, and eliminate many repetitive and dehumanising jobs.
Many new problems will arise of course. For example, there is
the difficulty of sustaining the capa ci t y for rapid decision-
making in supervisors of computer-controlled plant . They may
have to act quickly when unforeseen faults occur, but only at
infrequent intervals. Regular sessions on an analogue computer
on which faults are simulated might form part of the solution.
Another problem is how t o develop, retain, and transmit, manual
skills which may be required only at intervals . This may turn out
to be less of a problem than might appear. It is conceivable
that extended use of numerically controlled machine tools and
robots will enable improvements to be made to components much more
frequently than hitherto, because there will be no need to replace
expensive sets of specialised jigs and tools. It may be, there-
fore, that it will come to be normal practice to engage in fairly
continuous product development, which will require the almost con-
tinuous manufacture of 'hand-made' prototypes using skilled labour.

Having, we hope, brought the reader to a more optimistic frame
of mind, we may conclude this se ction on AT ve r s us advanced tech-
nology by pointing out that the di chotomy is not a real one. Tech-
nological development oc curs in fits and starts: sometimes one
field is a ffected and sometimes another . Although science can
discard outm oded theories when new ones appear, societies ca nnot
so easily discard outmoded technologies because most represent va s t
c a pi t a l investments. Our nineteenth century sewer networks are
still with us and, as another example , if a new automobile fuel
were to be invented it would have to be capable of being disDensed
by the present network of garages . Environmental and e cological
protest gr oups tend to think of AT as a revolutionary solution of
technological c i vi l i s a t i on ' s problems, although te chnology is on
the whole an evolutionary pursuit .
In some areas of a ctivity, AT will no doubt be a useful supple-
ment to ad vanced technology. For example, when the working week
is shortened, as th e labour force is rationalised and more shift
systems are introduced to s ha r e out work more fairly, people will
wish to involve themselves in both home and local environmental
improvement schemes . AT, in the form of special tools and tech-
niques for use by the amateur craftsman, will no doubt find a place
in this context. No doubt, too, small wind-generators and hy-
draulic turbo-generators will be more widely used in sparsely
populated farming regions. But out gr ea t conur ba t i ons c a nnot be
served adequately by windmills, bio-gas digesters, pedal-powered
machines and c ompos t i ng toilets, as some advocates of AT seem to
suggest. Furthermore, AT may sometimes have as many undesirable
side-effects on the env~ronment as advanced technology - it is
c ertainly not always 'non-violen t' or ' convivial' . The use of
wind power on a large scale could ruin some of the most prized
stretches of c oa s t l i ne : modern windmills on a megawatt scale bear
no resemblance to the quiet picturesque Dutch variety . Or again,
water power has ruined some beautiful rivers in mountainous regions.
As a final ex ample, now that our conurbations and transport systems
have been modified to suit the motor car, its aboliton would cause
a tremendous social upheaval. We must conclude that although AT
may ha ve a part to play, mankind is likely t o be better served by
gr oups who do not overstate their c a s e than by those who allow
their strong emotional attachment to a particular life-style to
outweigh common sense .
6 Control of Technology
Technological dec i s i on- maki ng; risk assessment; soc i a l

co nt r ol of technology .
The previous c ha p t er dealt with broad categor i e s of technology,

a nd we co nc l uded that adv anc ed technology was here to stay . We
have now to consider how more detailed de cisions are taken, about
which particular proje cts to pursue to meet given needs . Should
we in the U.K.,for example, initiate a breeder reactor programme
or a Severn Barrage tidal-power s cheme to safeguard our power
supplies? Shoul d we start distri ct heating s chemes using com-
bined heat and power plant t o reduce our exp enditure of energy on
home heating? In view of the wide-ranging social consequenc e s of
large projects, whi ch ca nnot a l way s be foreseen, it will also be
important to discuss the means at our disposal for assessing the
risks involved.
Finally, although in chapt er 5 we suggested that it is impossible
to control the search for scientific and technical knowledge, we
ha ve not discounted the possibility of co nt r ol l i ng its application.
In effect this implies consideration of the ways in whi ch society
can exercise control over technological proje cts. In the past
such cont r ol was ver y largely left to economic for ces.
TECHNOLOGICAL DECISION-MAKING
We need not conc er n ourselves with comparatively straightforward

choices between different solutions to technical problems based on
a single obje ctive criterion such as an agreed measure of efficiency
or economic worth. This kind of choice is made as a result of
feasibility studies and ' des ign point calculations' in the early
stages of the design process. In these circumstances, when all
the options are known and all outcomes can be evaluated, we have
What is ca l l e d decisi on-making under certainty. Nor ne ed we be
conc er ned with situations where although not all the consequences
of the options can be evaluated with certainty, they can be assigned
objective probabilities. Economic consequences are often of this
kind . We then have deci sion-making under risk. In such cases an
obj ective measure can be optimised using an appropriate brand of
mathematical decision theory. Even in diffi cult cases where there
are several de cision makers with conflicting interests (that is,
compet i t or s ) , the problem of optimisation is potentially capable
of being handled by mathematical game theory. We say 'potentially',
be cause in fact such theory presupposes that all the compet i t or s
behave rationally and adopt optimum strategies, which in the
practical world is a dubious assumption .
89
Next in order of complexity is the situation where some of the

consequences of the options cannot be assigned objective proba-
bilities. This situation arises when non-quantifiable values are
involved in the decision - ethical values and social norms, or
subjective attitudes of the public to both hazards and benefits .
This is called dec ision-making under uncertainty. Mathematicians
are busily engaged in de veloping what is called 'fuzzy logic' to
provide a rational basis for taking decisions when the information -
is impreciset. At best, however, such a logic will be applicable
only if all the consequences are known. Assessment of the risk
to the public associated with a particular technology has been
treated as an example of this type of problem . It has assumed
such importance in recent years that the next se~tion will be
devoted to it . We shall argue, howev~r, that risk assessment is
not likely to fall into this potentially soluble category. Rather
that it falls into the insoluble cat e gor y which Collingridge tt calls
decision-making under ignorance. It is this class of problem that
concerns us in this section .
'Decision-making under ignorance' arises when we cannot identify
all the consequences of an option, let alone assign probabilities to
those we can identify. This is the common situation in which our
policy-makers find themselves, whether they be in the boardroom,
civil service department or parliament. The political, economic,
social and environmental consequences of most major technological
decisions are now so extensive and diverse that it is impossible
to foresee all of them, or to quantify many that are foreseen .
Furthermore, it is also impossible to arrive at a quantifiable
criterion for saying that option A is better than option B. In
this situation, what attitude should be adopted by a rational
policy-maker?
Firstly, the rational person wilL admit the possibility - indeed
the probability - of error at the outset . Secondly, he will make
arrangements to monitor the effects of his decision. Thirdly, he
will respond readily to signs of error by modifying his option.
Doctors do this all the time, although it is relatively easy for
them because they do not have to justify every action to the
patient . But how often does one hear of an architect monitoring
the adequacy of his buildingsttt? If the principles are diffi cult
to apply even in such a relatively simple and obvious case, it is
not surprising that we seldom find them applied in the more diffi-
cult field of technological decision-making. The difficulties are
very real even if we discount psychological restraints: that is,
even if we assume the existence of ideal, modest, decision-makers,
who are not afraid to admit a mistake, faced only with ideal for-
giving critics who always remember that hindsight gives problems a
spurious .a i r of simplicity. The chief difficulty is that the full
t For a good introduction to these ideas see chapter 6 of

D.I. Blockley, The Nature of Structural Design and Safety
(Ellis Horwood, 1980).
tt D. Collingridge, Social Control Of Technology (Pinter, 1980).
t tt It is not the fault of the architect : who would supply the
necessary funds? Such monitoring, however, could be a fruit-
ful source of research projects for the staff of schools of
architecture.
Control of Technology 91
cons equences of a technology become apparent only late in the life
of the technology . By the time they do, the expense of modifi-
cation is formidable if not prohibitive . Two examples often
quoted are (a) widespread use of chemical pesticides that led
to the emergence of resistant strains, and attack by new pests
because the ecological balance had been upset ; and (b) the use of
lead-additives in petrol to improve engine performance without
foreseeing that widespread use of the car might result in harmful
concent r at i ons of lead compounds in the urban atmosphere. In
both cases it is difficult to change direction because of the vast
capital investment involved : in the chemical industry in the first
case, and in both the motor manufacturing and petroleum refinery
industries in the second .
With this diffi culty in mind the desirable features of a good
technologi cal decision are not too difficult to enumerate.
Collingridge lists them as follows .
(a) The time which elapses before some performance indicator shows
up the error should be short; this is the 'monitoring response
time' .
(b) The cost of the error should be small.
(c) The time it takes to introduce a better option should be short;
this is the 'corrective response time'.
(d) The cost of reinvesting in the new technology should be low.
To achieve a short response time, the performance indicator should
be sensitive; to achieve a low error cost the technology chosen
should preferably be an option having a high ratio of variable cost
to fixed cost be cause fixed costs are normally lost if the decision
is wrong. In general, a system of small units is easier to cor r ect
than a system of large units. This is because with the former it
is easier to match supply with changing demand so that errors in
forecasts of demand be come less important, and also the lead times
for new plant are shorter . There should be more consideration
given to trading off economies of scale against ease of correction.
This is particularly relevant in the electrical power industry,
although here the apparent economies of scale have seemed so sub-
stantial as to be almost overwhelming. Now that it is possible
to work with actual figures of running cost and power production
over a number of years, the economies obtained by using very large
fossil fuel plants are not so clear-cut .
It is worth remembering that although the initial number of
options may be large, the number may decline as the monitoring and
corrective response times be come longer. This is because the
economic benefits have to be that much greater to offset the cost
of the error which has been mounting with time. On the other hand,
new technological options may have arisen in the meantime, so this
is certainly not a general rule.
The fa ctors which lead to decisions being undesirably sensitive
to error have been examined in detail by Col l i ngr i dge , and they may
be summarised as follows.
(a) Competition increases the error costs : it can lead to an in-
finite cost if it is a case of a company going bankrupt or a
nation losing a war.
(b) Long lead times in a competitive situation mean that decisions
to adopt a particular technological option cannot be postponed
until the decider sees that his competitor is also choosing that
option . Since both competitors think in this way a technology,
which both feel undesirable on social or environmental grounds,

may nevertheless be developed as a hedge against the worst outcome.
Decisions taken as hedges against possible developments in a com-
petitive situation ensure that the competing developments do in
fact take place, so that the decisions are self-justifying. Mili-
tary technology obviously spirals in this fashion, but so do new
technologies like microelectronics and robotics.
(c) A technology can become entrenched because neighbouring tech-
nologies adjust themselves to suit it. For example, it would be
difficult to change the addiction to the motor car because bus and
train services have been slimmed down, offices and factories have
moved away from city centres, the chemical industry has adjusted to
use the residues of crude oil after petrol extraction, oil refine-
eries have been designed to produce the necessary quality of petrol,
and there is a vast infra-structure of small industries and garages
involved in motor car production and maintenance.
We said that a good decision is one that can be monitored easily.
In practice it is often difficult to show that a decision was in
error, that is, to falsify a decision. Factors which make it
difficult are enumerated by Collingridge as follows.
(a) First there is the reluctance to monitor the outcomes for fear
of being shown to be wrong. Extreme forms of this are found in
the U.S . S.R., where particular scientific and technological
theories can be associated with a political ideology in a rigid
bureaucracy. The Lysenko affair was a tragedy for Soviet agri-
culture.
(b) The books may be cooked in the sense that the objective is
altered to suit the results : again for fear of being shown to be
wrong.
(c) Some decisions are very difficult to monitor: (i) when doing
something positive it is not always possible to say what would
have happened if it were not done, particularly in relation to
benefits received, and (ii) the objectives may be very imprecise
or there may be multiple objectives.
(d) Often the objective is a fut\we benefit, but how far in the
future is not specified.
(e) Finally, there is the Catch 2Q type of question : people say a
technology should be used only when it is shown to be 'completely'
safe, yet this cannot be done without developing the technology.
In the light of all these problems we may well ask how any kind
of social control of technology is possible. This we will discuss
in the last section. Before doing so, however, we will review
the special difficulties of an important input to many technological
decisions, namely, the balancing of the hazards which arise from
the use of a technology with the benefits received. We have to
ask ourselves whether this is in principle a soluble nroblem or
not.
RISK ASSESSMENT
Hazards to life and limb have become a major preoccuption of the
developed world in the last few decades for two main reasons - one
objective and the other subjective. The objective reason is
obvious: the impact of rapidly expanding technologies on an in-
creasingly populated world. For example, our ability to handle
dangerous materials h~s led to the production of a greater variety
and to their use on a wide scale. We produce hundreds of new

chemicals annually, radioactive isotopes, liquid natural gas and
so onto Furthermore, the development of instrument technology to
the point where minute concentrations of potentially toxic materials
can be measured has stepped up the search for connections between
new chemicals and health .
The subjective reason for our recent preoccupation with safety is
that we have been so successful in combating natural disasters,
such as epidemics and famine, and in increasing the length and
quality of life, that we value our lives more highly. Perhaps a
waning belief in life after death plays a part also. Man-made
disasters, widely publicised in the media wherein bad news always
drives out the good, now stand out prominently. They seem so much
worse than the natural disasters which remain; no doubt because in
one sense they are avoidable - we need not have used the technology.
This is not a very rational feeling, however, because earthquakes
and hurricanes bring no benefits whereas technologies do .
Just as an engineer seeks to design his machines and structures
so that all members are equally strong, one might expect society to
require that our technologies should be made equally safe. That
it does not do so is evidence of a subjective element in risk
assessment itself. People readily adapt to the familiar and are
fearful of the new. They also take account of the benefits when
these are obvious. The motor car, for example, is so familiar,
and the benefit of personal mobility so great, that a very high
risk is accepted. Insurance is the method used to mitigate the
consequences of such risks. Other evidence of subjectivity is
the difference in attitude to the death of 100 people in one acci-
dent as opposed to the same number spread over time or space, and
to a major disaster once in 100 years compared with more frequent
minor disasters. Should a community prefer the minor, but stat-
istically certain, losses from periodic floods to the risk of a
large loss when a dam, constructed to prevent flooding, bursts?
High-risk technologies may involve the use of tighter security
measures against possible terrorist activity: will they have a
serious effect on the freedoms of ordinary people and, if so, do
the benefits conveyed by these technologies compensate for this?
There are no simple answers to such questions.
The total assessment of risk involves three separate consider-
ations: (a) the likely frequency of the event, (b) the loss
suffered if the event occurs, and (c) the level of risk likely to
be acceptable to those affected. It is the third consideration
which poses the greatest problem to the policy-maker. When the
project is merely a variant of existing activities he can refer to
what has been regarded as an acceptable risk in the past. This
approach is inapplicable to new technologies such as nuclear power
or genetic engineering. Then he may look for some kind of absolute
standard. For example, where a maximum permissible level of radi-
ation is concerned he may use the natural background radiation to
which all are subjected, plus some marginal does based on either
(a) the additional radiation received by those living in regions
t The fact that we also produce all manner of explosives, from

'plastic' to nuclear bombs, is a separate issue: we are not
discussing here the ultimate risk - war.
of particularly high natural radioactivity, or (b) the average dose

received from medical X-rays. Genetic engineering is not yet with
us, but one could conceive of a standard of acceptability being set
relative to the frequency of adverse natural genetic changes. When
what is at hazard is not a matter of life and death, but a desirable
environmental value, a cost-effectiveness approach might be used.
The acceptable limit could then be where the incremental reduction
in risk is just balanced by the incremental cost of risk reduction.
This possibility follows from the nature of the curve of risk versus
cost of reduction, which is usually of the form shown in figure 6.1.
lIrisk
lIcost
=- 1
cost of risk reduction

Figure 6.1
Such an approach is applicable only when the risk can be assigned
some monetary value; for example, the cost of property damage
and/or health services attributable to a level of atmospheric
pollution. When both the risk of the technology and the benefits
received can be assigned monetary values a cost-benefit analysis
can be used.
This brings us to the question of how the risk is to be assessed.
If the probability of the event occurring can be estimated, and
the probability that if it occurs a certain loss will be sustained,
then the result can be expressed by the kind of graphs shown in
figures 6.2(a) and (b). Here we are looking at two kinds of
consequence - loss of life and financial loss - and they are kept
separate because of the impossibility of assigning an acceptable
monetary value to a life. The well-known Rasmussen study of the
safety of nuclear reactors presented results in this form. That
study is an example of risk assessment which uses a whole battery
of mathematical techniques. Fault 'trees' are compiled to show
all foreseeable routes to failure, and each failure is assigned a
probability from the known behaviour of individual components and
systems of components. The strength of such an extensive study
lies in the way it highlights areas where more data are required,
and it can certainly lead to better safety measures being taken.
For these reasons it is highly desirable that studies of this kind
be undertaken. The weakness is two-fold.
Firstly, a comprehensive mathematical study can give the techni-
cal people involved a false sense of security. False, because
when human error can play a part it is not possible to foresee all
possible sources of failure; and, furthermore, it is very difficult
to give meaningfUl probabilities to very rare events. The second
10 i i 10 I .....
road a ccidents road a ccidents
1
\
\ l~
•
r-. .... natural
'--~ ~total
G ~ 10 - 1 ~
1\\
H :
"" l o- J total man- caused
<? 10- 2
/ '' \
(/) (/)
+' +"'
I:: I::
Q) Q)
:>
~ 10- 3 ~ 10- 3 n
a
;::.
~ ~
I:: 4~ total man-caused I:: Q.
Q) 10 - 4
~ 10- (fires , air c r a s h e s , c h lor i ne ~
cr s,
~ r eleases, etc . ) Q)
H -i
lH lH ([)
10- 5 ()
10- 5 :Y
10 0 ::J
a
10- 6 100 nuclear
o
(0
10- 6 -<
power plants
(estimation)
10- 7 1 , , , ,
10 3 10 4 10 6 10 7 10 8 10 9 10 1 0
f atalities, X property damage, X dollars
(a) (b)
Figure 6. 2 Risks from large -scale events

(with road a ccidents f or c omp a r i son )
CD
en
weakness i s that i t is such a c ompl e x process of a ssessment that

the concerned publ i c cannot unders tand it and so d istrusts the
results . It i s only human to regard evidenc e whic h supports one 's
belief as reliable and usefu l , but tha t which does not as unrel iable
and unrepresentative . Oppone nt s of any technology can always argu e
that exten s ive safety studies are ev idence of extreme danger . It
ma y be so , bu t somet imes an industry i s for ced to make them by t he
publ i c ' s irrational fears . Suc h fear s a r e r einforced when minor
mi s ha ps are g iven prom inence by the med i a as a r es ul t of pressure
from self -appointed watchdogs . The expert' s explana t ion i s
i ne vi t a bly regarded as an expression of a vested i ndus t r i al interest.
This has all the makings of a n anarc hic s ituation : a techno l og ica l
equivalent of the s ta te of affa irs which ex ists whe n unoff ic ial
vi gilantes r oam the str eets . How then shoul d we t a c kle the probl em
of adequate soc ial control of techno log ical development s? To thi s
we addr ess ours e lves i n t he l a s t s ec t i on .
SOCIAL CONTROL OF TECHNOLOGY
Soc i e t y has little difficul ty in ex e rc i s i ng adequate co nt rol of

well-es t ab l ished t e chn ologies t hrough var i ous kinds of re gulatory
bodies an d ins pectorates , en f or c i ng orders made by government .
The r e i s no t hing new i n this t ype of co n trol , and we noted in
chap ter 2 that an a nti -pollution act was passed by the Eng l ish
parl iament as e arly as 1 388. Thi s is how the quality of our water
s upp ly , food and medica l drugs i s ensure d, an d the s afety of
bui ldings , ships and a ircraft is maintai ned . Where safety is co n-
cerned , the t ype of ac t ion fo l lows t h e pattern of r i s k assessmen t .
Tha t is , an a t tempt i s ma de t o control both the frequency of t he
unwan t ed event (for examp l e , s peed l imi ts and drivin g tests to reduce
road a ccident s) , and the consequences of t he event (seat belts and
compulsory thi rd-party ins uranc e ). In s ome cas e s a re gulati ng
function can b e rather cos t l y t o t he c ommun i~' . For e xample, f i r e
officers and fac tory i ns pe ctors may s ometimes suggest undu ly exten-
s ive and e xpensive changes , to make doub l y s ur e that they canno t
be accused of ne gligen ce i f an acciden t occurs ; an d the manag er s
of organisat ions comply for the s a me reason. The old question of
who is t o wa tch the wa t chdogs i s a l way s with us. But a l l these
order s and re gulations are very ne cessary in vi ew of the proD ens i ty
for uns crupulous indi vi duals and c ompanies to cut co r ners in pur s ui t
of the ' fast buck'.
Gover nment s also e xerci se c ont r ol in the opp osite sense, by stim-
ula ting and supporting a technology. This arises when an industry
ce a s es to be of suffi cient bene fit to its c us t omer s t o remain
e c onomic, but nevertheless the commun i t y as a whole f i n ds it of
indire ct ben e f i t . Then the gover nment dire cts some of its revenue
f rom t a xation to subsidise the industry. Ra i l way s ha ve be en
suppor ted in.this way f or several de cades, and there are goo d grounds
for doi ng s o . Compe t i t i on from road transport is unfair in the
sense tha t the r ailways do no t have their track and safety s y stems
pa id for by the communi ty as are the roads, traffic lights, t raffic-
po l ice a nd s o on . There is no ques t i on in this ins tance of delaying
the moderni s a t ion of an industry which is in compe t i t i on wi t h ov er -
seas coun terpa r t s . When s uch c ompe t i t ion is involve d , indefinite
s ubsidies from t he tax- pa yer will not c ont ribu t e to the l ong-term
health of the economy: they should be of limited duration to cover
only the period of reorganisation and reinvestment (as in the
British car industry).
So mu(;h for the means of controlling traditional practices . The
problem is a little more difficult where the control of a new tech-
nology is concerned. This is because in the early stages the only
individuals with sufficient expertise to act as inspectors are
employees in the industry. Although some will be enticed to work
for the new inspectorate, inevitably their inderendence will be
questioned. Furthermore, in a rapidly growing high-technology
industry, like nuclear power , the inspectorate will be dependent to
some extent upon information from the industry. The close workin?
relationship required may lead to accusations of bias in favour of
the industry. It goes without saying that the regulatory body
should be independent even of any government research establishment
set up to support the industry: this has been the case in the U.K.,
but not always in the U.S.A.
When it is a question of whether to develop a new technology or
not, the problem of control is different in kind. We have seen in
the previous two sections how difficult it is to make and monitor
decisions about major technical projects, with all that it entails
in the way of risk assessment. And we saw in the previous chapter
that different sections of the community will give quite different
weight to the various social, political, environmental and economic
values involved in the decision. One essential step is to make
sure that the final arbiter - the government - has a clear statement
of the technical issues and their social implications. This can be
achieved if a panel of experts, not all of whom are committed to the
project, act in an adversarial way before a Royal Commission, Select
Committee of Parliament or Committee of Inquiry . The public need
not fear that the experts will inevitably agree . All scientific
controversy is about interpretations of so-called facts. Scien-
tists and technologists are quite used to disagreeing with one
another, and they can do this without clouding the issues with
accusations that the other side has a false set of values and
ulterior motives which politicians are prone to do.
Consider the controversy about whether or not to build a commer-
cial fast breeder reactor. The decision will rest on a wide
variety of assessments of : (a) the size of uranium reserves,
(b) energy demand, (c) the likelihood of other sources of energy
becoming available, (d) the importance to be placed on self-
sufficiency in power supply, (e) comparative risks and public
acceptance of them, and (f) the desirability of keeping an industry
in being for possible future needs. Finally, the decision will
take account of our inability to make such assessments with any
real accuracy. For this reason we must also make second-order
assessments as follows. We must decide which is likely to cause
the greater chaos: to have too much or too little electrical power,
to let the nuclear power industry decline or support too much of it,
and so on. A committee set up to enquire into this problem will
try to decide whether the available assessments are the best that
can be achieved with the current level of technological and socio-
logical knowledge, and this will involve interpretations of facts
and evaluation of probabilities. Only when trying to decide what
final conclusions can be drawn from these assessments should views
about competing non-quantifiable values and life-styles impinge on

the discussion; and these will ultimately be a matter for parlia-
ment itself as the elected body representing the majority view .
Whatever system is used for investigating technological options
it is important to separate, as far as possible, arguments about
ways and means from arguments about value systems and life-styles .
It follows that if pressure groups are to be effective they too
must be clear about this distinction. In the initial stages, when
trying to get the need for a committee of inquiry established, a
pressure group can be forgiven for using emotive language, for
presenting speculations by scientists and technologists as facts,
and for using dramatic statements taken out of context to capture
the headlines. Once the inquiry is set up, however,· if the group
wishes to retain its credibility it must be seen to be keen to
elicit as much objective information as possible. The government,
needing the facts for its decision-making, should expect to pay for
the panel of independent experts used including those called by the
pressure group. The pressure group, on the other hand, should
spend its money after the inquiry - on mObilising public support
for the particular environmental or social values it is espousing
in contrast to those (which often include an economic value) with
which it is competing .
All this sounds simple on paper, but difficulties arise from the
inability of non-technical members of parliament or of the pressure
group to understand the qualifications which always accompany the
results of technical studies. Such qualifications stem from the
assumptions made in the course of the studies. There are no
simple unambiguous answers to such questions as: 'What concen-
tration of lead in the atmosphere will not endanger health?';
'What ozone depletion due to fluorocarbons from aerosol cans can
be accepted?'; 'What level of oxygen in a river is necessary for
the support of fish life?' . Governments have the difficult task
of deciding whether to disrupt an industry, perhaps at great cost
to the country (that is, to the taxpayer), to meet the arbitrary
limit which the scientist or technologist is forced to specify,
against his better judgement, by the non-technical people involved.
In the end a government has to strike a balance between non-
quantifiable environmental and social values, and relatively
straightforward economic values. Sometimes attempts are made to
assign a monetary figure to a non-quantifiable value in a cost-
benefit analysis, but except in very simple situations so many
assumptions have to be made that the exercise is hardly worthwhile.
The main objection to quantifying the unquantifiable is that in
doing so the environmental or social value is stripped of much of
its essence. Cost-benefit analyses may lead a government to look
for what is efficient for society when really it should be looking
for what is good for society. Such analyses may sometimes help
us to find the most efficient means to a chosen end, but should
never be used to determine the end. Ultimately there is no sub-
stitute for wisdom: ideally, the political system should be
designed to throw up decision-makers who are both intelligent, and
morally sound in the sense that they should be responsive to the
changing goals and moral standards of society. When too many
judgements are found to be faulty, a democracy has the remedy in
its hands.
It should be abundantly clear from this discussion that many, if
not most, of our decisions are bound to seem wrong with hindsight .
This must be so in any de veloping society, where not only technology
but social and ethical ideas are changing with time. And this is
the main argument for the plural society, consisting of relatively
autonomous institutions, as opposed to the monolithic society. We
need to experiment with both our ethical decisions and our techno-
logical desicions. Decisions taken centrally ensure that mistakes
affect the maximum number of people . We need thriving local
government, l ocal unions, and local pressure groups, together with
a tolerance of others who do not think as we do and who have
different needs. Tolerance, based on the certain knowledge that
the whole truth will not reside in one point of view, is essential
if healthy argument is not to degenerate into social chaos . With-
out tolerance the plural society is impossible . Supporters of the
monolithic society, on the other hand, seem to be prepared to sacri-
fice far too much for the mirage of 'equality'. Human life is so
various that one can never assume that every member of society wants
and needs the same things .
Even if it is the more practicable 'equality of opportunity'
which is sought, rather than equality as such, - and no one would
deny its desirability - it is still too impossible to achieve in
any absolute sense to make it worth using means which would jeo-
pardise other equally desirable social ends, such as liberty. To
appreciate the difficulty, one has only to think of the genetic
component; the varied ability of parents in bringing up children;
and the natural tendency for people with similar ability, outlook
and achievement to group together and stimulate each other. After
nearly two thousand years of Christianity it should not be necessary
to remind ourselves that envy is to be deplored and that charity is
not to be despised. Few human beings get through their span of
life without accepting help from others. One should be prepared
to a ccept a measure of inequality provided it is tempered by res-
ponsible and charitable behaviour on the part of the well-endowed.
Finally , we ha ve been concerned in this chapter with what in one
sense are 'restrictive practices'. Necessary though regulations
may be for society as a whole, governments should positively en-
courage new developments by sponsoring industrial estates where
small concerns ca n experiment with new ideas free from restrictive
labour and safety regulations, and free from the influence of con-
servative trades unions. There will always be those quite happy
to take a risk for the excitement of being first in the field, and
society can only gain from such enterprise. This is where a new
generation of jobs ca n come from. No society will prosper if it
stifles its innovators - its industrial 'mountain climbers'.
7 A Summing Up - and Speculation
SUMMARY
Although in this book we have been trying ~o make explicit the dis-
tinctions between engineering and other forms of knowledge, one must
beware of thinking that there are necessarily any hard-and-fast
distinctions. Real life cannot be pigeon-holed neatly. It is
more correct to think of a continuous spectrum of any particular
characteristic over the range: art, craft, technics, technology,
engineering science, science, and so on. This is why the reader
will from time to time have said to himself; ' Surely this is also
true of some sciences' or 'That surely applies also to some tech-
nologies' . But the fact that we know light to be a continuous
spectrum of frequencies does not prevent us from finding the crude
concept s of red, blue and green very useful. Making distinctions
is what we do from birth: our sight separates out colours and
shapes, and our ears isolate sounds, in what the electronic
engineer would call the 'noise' of the world around us. Further-
more, we coi n words to express these distinctions so that we can
communicate our experiences to each other. This is what the
development of language is all about. With this warning out of
the way, let us try to summarise the important distinctions we
have found.
The fundamental presupposition upon which engineering is based
is that our environment can be controlled and modified. This idea
was historically prior to the fundamental presupposition of science,
which is that the human mind can hope to understand the world around
us because of the regularity exhibited by natural phenomena. The
reason is that the latter idea needed the development of a reason-
ably sophisticated language before it could bear fruit . These
successive presuppositions served to liberate man from the feeling
that he was totally at the mercy of fate.
The impulse to modify the environment led first to craft. The
process of development consisted of: (a) a craft being invented to
meet a perceived need, (b) new needs arising which could be served
by that craft, and (c) these new needs stimulating development of
the craft and sometimes the birth of a new craft . Eventually
bodies of knowledge consisting of rules-of-thumb were compiled for
each craft and something we called technics arrived on the scene.
Finally, when logical reasons were found for these rules-of-thumb,
and coherent theories were established to explain them, technologies
were born. Before this stage had been reached, the observations,
speculations and classifications of phenomena by natural philoso-
phers had been supplemented by controlled experiments. This led
100
A Summ ing Up - And Speculation 101
t o t h e formul a t ion of t heor i es from which experimentally veri f i ab l e

predict ions could be ded uc ed and we had the be ginnings of s cience.
We were then ena bled no t just to descri b e natural ph enomena but t o
explain them.
The s uc cess of all this activity dep ended upon spe c ial isat ion ,
and in particular upo n t h e abi lity of a gricultura l communit ies to
create food surpluses t o s up por t cr a f t smen and s ch ola rs . In
return , s cience and technology have been appl ied t o agri cultur e t o
maintain the situation.
We ha ve ob s erved that s cien ce and technology a r e now compl e t ely
depende nt upo n e a ch other. The de pend enc e of s cience up on t ech-
nology came first. There was t he direct dependence on techno l ogy
for the supply of ap paratus a nd measur i ng i nstr uments, a nd f or
paper and printing to aid the exchange of i deas . There was als o
a n indirect dependence in the sense that the a c t ivi t i e s a nd inven-
tions of the technolo gists threw up s timUlating questions to whi ch
s cience was able to find the answers. Following the rapid rate of
growt h -of t he sciences , technologies came to depend on them more
and more for their own improvement , and now much new industry has
sprung directly from important scientific d i scover i es . The rapid
growth of science stems from the fact that the s cientist i s rela-
tively free to fo l l ow his nos e . Technologists , on the ot her hand,
are cons t r a i ne d by a large number of fa ctors: by e c onomi cs, b e ca us e
of the large c api tal i nvest ment involved in i ndust r y ; by the need
f or ca ut i on owing t o t he ris ks involve d; an d by ethi cal cons ider-
a t i ons b eca us e of the wides prea d effe ct of their ac t ivi t i es upon
society . Te chnol o gy is essent i ally an applied a ctivity a nd it i s
eas i er for s ociety to res t r ain t his t han t he sear ch for s cientifi c
knowledge.
From our d i scuss ion of scientific explana tion of ph en omen a , we
wer e ab l e t o see the l imi t ations of s cience . Es s en t ially s cience
i nvolves theories which de scr ibe t he 'how' of t hings , and which
enable us t o predict fu ture events in pres cribe d situations . These
theories mak e use of abstract c onc ept s whi ch do no t ne c es s ar i ly ha ve
a one- to-one co r r espondenc e wi th a nyt hi ng in natur e . Technol ogi cal
ex plana t i ons ca n be of a rather d i f f er ent type, vary i ng from the
teleological type of e xplanation used in historical st udies t o
s c ientific-type explana tion. The purposes of s cientifi c and tech-
nological explanation are very di ff er ent . I n the fo rmer , the
establishment of better t heor i es is paramount , wh i l e in the latter
it is i mpr oveme nt in the efficiency of our produ cts and construc-
t i ons . Th i s difference in purpose i s reflected in a different
attitude to a c cur a cy . Ac curacy is vital to the sc ientist becau se
it ca n decide which of two theories i s to be preferred . I t is of
less i mpor t anc e to the engineer or technologist be cause of the
variable and imperfectly known condi t i ons under whi ch his cons t r uc-
tions will ha ve to -operate . Technology makes use of so- called laws ,
whi ch di f f er ma r ke dly from s cientific laws . It makes sense to ask
whether the latter are true or false, or under what conditions they
are true. In technology it usually makes sense only to as k if they
are sufficiently a ccurate f or the c ur r ent application.
We illustrated the di f f er ence be twe en a scientific subject and a
technological sub ject by describing the way thermodynamics differs
from en gineering t her modyna mic s . As a resu~t we f ound it useful to
mak e a di s t i nct ion be t we en technology and en gineering science .
Te chnologies are c l a s s if i ed on t h e basis of the industries tha t they

serve, whether they be produc t or mat er i a l s technol ogies. This i s
ve ry dif ferent from th e way t he sciences are c l ass i f i ed , namely , on
the bas i s of the t ype of nat ur al phenomena be ing studie d . The
en gineering s c iences a re s o ca l l ed because they ar e c l as s ifi e d on
the basis of the t ype of ' unna t ur a l' phenomena studied ; for exa mple,
the way f l uids be ha ve when c ons t r a i ned t o move in var ious ways by our
machi nery .
No doub t be cause of t he fundamental role of design in en gineering,
there is a tendency f o r engi neers t o refer to t he 'art' of engineer-
ing. We e xamined the nature of art t o see if en gineers were using
the word in anything other than a ve ry l oos e way, a nd were for ced to
conc l ud e that they were not. I n s o do i ng , however , we c l ar i f i e d
our i deas about cr aft , and we were able to see what cr e a t ivi ty
means in engineering and di stinguish it from cr eat ivi t y in art and
s cience .
It follows from the essentially ap plied , and pub l i c , nature of
en gineering , an d i t s profo und effect upon the wa y i n whi ch we l i ve,
t hat ethical prob lems a r e bound to arise from its pursuit .
(Be cause s c ience and technology are now i next r i cab l y i nt er wove n, in
one s e ns e th is is also true of s cience : but strictly spea king i t
i s t he appl ica t ion of s cience through tech nology that gives rise
t o i t s ethica l prob l ems .) We d i scus s ed ethical probl ems a s soc i -
a t ed with our attitude to fu ture ge ner a t ions , t o ou r own l i ves , t o
t he Third World, a nd t o our envi ronment. We noted t ha t t hes e
pr obl ems ar e quite diff er e nt in kind from those of s cienc e a nd
t e chnolo gy , in t hat t he y are pere nnial prob lems whi ch have t o be
answered a new by ea ch generat ion . The broad c a t egor i es of
' a dva nc ed' an d ' a l t er nati ve' t echn ology wer e compared . It was
concluded t hat , wi t h t he cu r r ent level of populat ion , we cou ld no t
afford t o dispense wi th adva nc ed technology i f we wi s he d to give
accep table a ns wers t o our ethi ca l pr obl ems . The di ff icultie s
invol ved in making deta iled technologica l dec is ions wer e d iscus s ed
at length , as was the associa t ed probl em of t he way s ociety coul d
co ntrol technology. Give n the probabi l i t y of error, we s aw the
ne ed fo r humi lit y , a nd a will i ngne s s to moni tor our dec is ions .
Fina lly , we en de d wi t h a plea for the 'p lur a l s ociety ' to minimise
the effect of error, a nd for 'no-regulation ' areas i n which the
s pi r it of i ndustria l adventure can flourish .
SPECULATI ON
We have now r eached the end of our a t t empt t o del ineate the mai n
fea tures of one of man 's important preoccupat i ons - t e c hno l ogy .
What we have not pointed out , however , is that unlike so me of his
o t her pre occupa t ions , such as art and rel igion , technol ogy is not
a n e nd i n i t s e l f. No doubt fo r s ome technologist s i t is, a nd in
s o far as it has its root s de ep i n the evolution ary proce s s (we
are not the on ly t ool-us ing an i mal ) it is cert a i nly as fu ndamen t a l
t o t he na ture of our s pec ies as any o t he r purs ui t. But no one has
ye t s ugges ted that t he ob j ec t of t he uni verse - i f it has one - i s
t he de ve lopment of a s pecies t hat ca n a lter it.
Most r e flecti ve peopl e would r egard tech nolo gy primari ly a s an
a id to provid ing an env ironment in wh i ch a man 's brief span of l i f e
can be l ived fruitfully i n dignity - in which he has an oppor tuni ty
t o develop t hos e cha r ac t er i s t i cs whi ch mak e him truly human . A
phil osop hy o f t e ch nology i s bo und t o concentra t e on one of his

cha r act er i s t i c s - that of be i ng a t ool-using an i mal - but he is
very far from being j ust a t ool- using animal . One has only t o
cons ider h is a chievements in understanding the phys ical a nd bio-
l ogi cal wor ld through science; the expression o f h i s feelings
about t he world through his art , poetry a nd music; his re flec tions
on the mysteries of life through his philosophies and rel i gions;
and his a tt empts t o wrestle with human r elationships thr ough liter-
a t ure and psy cho l ogy . Te chnol ogy g ives more time t o mor e pe ople
t o engage i n t hese l i f e - enhanc ing a ctivi t ies , wh i l e itse lf b e i ng a
fa s c inat ing pursui t for tho s e whose tale nts l i e in t ha t d i r ect i on .
That we have yet t o f ind a way of harness ing te chn ol ogy fo r the
greater b enefi t of manki nd rather than for the f avour ed f ew is no t
s ur pr is i ng . Even in his t or i a l time - l e t a lone bi ol ogi ca l an d
geologi cal time - the life of te chnol ogi cal c ivi l i s a t ion is very
s hor t (f i gur e 7 . 1) . It is sure ly not utopi an to believe that we
Now
I
1 5xl0 9 year s a go 5xI0 9 3xl0 9 0 .6xl 0 9
I I I I I
universe Earth
cr e a t e d ( ? ) form ed
J
r " - - - - -- - -- Now
500 xl0 6 200xl0 6 40XI0 1
6
I I
f i s he s dinosaurs primates
amphibians mammals
- coal a nd oi l - J
- -- - -- - -
fo rmed
- -- Now
0 . 8xI0 6 0 .2 XI 0 61
I 1
t ool-making
man
/
f i r e - us i ng European
- -- J
man man
r- - - -- - -- Now
10 000
I
4000
I
2000
I
20~ I
f ar me r / s hep he rd pyramids Chr i s t i a n ma ch i ne
t owns era
foss i l f ue l
~
ag e
Figure 7 .1 Our world in pe r spective

will eventually make a breakthrough that will release fresh energies

and lead to new hope for the poor and oppressed: certainly to give
up the attempt is to cease to be human.
The breakthrough will not arise simply from acts of a pOlitical
nature; it is not a question of substituting socialism for capi-
talism for example. Our problems are certainly deeper than that.
Nor is it sensible to look for a resurgence of religious faith.
Such resurgence would simply add yet more divisive factions to the
scene , because to proclaim one creed is simultaneously to deny all
the others . To see where one might look for a hopeful sign, let
us review briefly a possible explanation of the origin of religious
feeling.
In homo sapiens, consciousness has developed to the point where
life cannot help asking about the meaning of itself. Man cannot
fail to wonder why he is here and what his role in the universe
should be. Furthermore, he is disturbed by his failure to answer
such questions . He is disturbed because rightly or wrongly he
feels responsible for his actions. (If he did not believe in free
will, ethical concepts would never have arisen.) The first re-
action of mankind to the riddle of life was to people nature with
gods and ultimately to transform this pantheism into sophisticated
religions . The Christian concept of Incarnation and Atonement is
a symbolic expression of man's need to be absolved from his feeling
of guilt at not knowing what he should be doing or, in religious
terms, at being estranged from God.
The second reaction to the riddle of life was to try to find out
by scientific endeavour how the world works. But this led first
to the dethronement of planet Earth via the Copernican revolution,
and then via Darwinian natural sele ction to the dethronement of man
as a unique creature. Man was left with the feeling that all was
accident and there was no purpose to his existence . On the
material plane, science has also brought man to the brink of ex-
tinction by his own efforts. Can he possibly cor r e c t the destruc-
tive elements in his nature before his atomic weaponry destroys him?
There are two grounds for optimism - one is psychological and the
other physical. Firstly, recent advances in biochemistry and
biology may throw up an acceptable explanation of the origins of
life and speciest. This could lead to a climate of ideas which
would renew man's sense of purpose, restore his psychic energy and
promote a social cohesion that is so sadly lacking. For too long
people have been saying that either there is a god with a divine
purpose for humanity, or we are an accident with no purpose what-
ever. We may find the truth lying close to the underlying meaning
of the religious view, even though some would say that it is couched
in mythological terms. Certainly there appears to be something
purposive about evolution. We should be neither surprised nor
dismayed that we have as yet no answers to these fundamental
t Contrary to the belief of 'creationists', recent developments
in palaeontology do not contradict the concept of evolution,
but merely the original idea of it as a steady process of small
random variations some of which are adapted to changes in the
environment. Evidence now accumulating confirms that life has
also evolved in discrete jumps by rather large genetic changes -
mutations - the cause of which is still uncertain although the
mechanism is understood.
questions . Man i s a ve r y l a t e development inde e d . I f t he a ge of
t he earth i s s caled down t o one y ear , man appeared a t abou t
10 . 00 p .m. i n the evening of the las t day . And on this time s cale
he has be en s ol ving prob lems s cientific ally, that is, tentat ive ly
on t he bas i s of e vi dence , f or l ittle mor e t ha n one s e cond .
The ot her ground for hope l ies in recent d i s coveries in ge ne t i cs .
There i s now a poss ib ili ty t ha t man will acquire the ab ility t o
el imi nate ge ne t ically t r ansmi tt ed dise as es . In s o doi ng we may
f i nd tha t hi s pr ope nsity f or se lf-de s t ruct i on i s modi f iable a l so .
We are talking here ab out a new f orm of engine eri ng - gene t ic
e ngineering. Whe n t e c hniques f or maki ng positive an d de s irab l e
ge ne t ic va r i a t ions a r e fi nally est ab l i she d , man will certai nly
employ them to impro ve h i mself, j ust as he ha s used r a ndom var i a -
tions t o i mprove hi s l i ve s t ock a nd pl a nt s . I t wi ll be a not he r of
t hos e dev e lopme nt s which are a c celerated by co mpe t i t ion be twe en
nations. Any so cie ty whi ch eschews i t will be at a serious dis -
advantage . Genetic en gineer ing wi ll bring in i ts t rain the most
ser ious cr op of hazards a nd ethical problems tha t mankind has had
t o face . If we ar e t o have a dequa t e t ime t o devise appropriate
s afegua r ds i t i s not too early t o be gin to debate these matters at
a ser ious le vel . There will, of cour s e , be thos e who see nothing
but f ear a nd horr or in the pr os pe ct, no doubt as d i d s ome ea rly
groups of humans when fa ced with t he pros pe ct of the co ntrol l ed use
of f ire .
Or di na r y en gineers a nd t e c hnol ogists ha ve a v ita l par t t o play
i n this voyag e of dis covery : not only in provi ding sp ec i a l i s ed
e quipment for the voyage , bu t in solv i ng t he more munda ne prob lems
involved i n ke ep ing t he ship fue l led and the cr ew vi c tual led .
Onl y then c a n our genius es co nc e nt r a t e on the naviga t ion .

G. F. C. Rogers (Auth.) - The Nature of Engineering - A Philosophy of Technology-Macmillan Education UK (1983)

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G. F. C. Rogers (Auth.) - The Nature of Engineering - A Philosophy of Technology-Macmillan Education UK (1983)

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The Nature of Engineering

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

ISBN 978-1-349-06685-8 ISB N 978-1-349-06683-4 (eBook)

The paperback edition of this book is sold subject to the

2 TH E HIS TORY OF TECHNOLOGY AND SCI ENCE 7

3 SCI ENTI FI C AND TECHNOLOGI CAL EXPLA NATION 32

4 CREATI VI TY AND ENGINEERING DESIGN 57

5 CHO I CE OF TECHNOLOGI CAL FUT UPE S 68

6 CO NTROL OF TECH NOLOGY 89

7 A SUMM ING UP - AND SPECULATI ON 100

This e s s ay is a co ntribut ion to t he cur r ent debate a bout the impact

We live i n an a ge of the s pecialist: an age in whi ch spe cialised

connotation: from a semi-skilled machinist to a chief designer;

derive considerable pleasure and satisfaction in the process.

have paid much mor e a tten t ion to s c ience t han t o technology or

Moreover, technology is not just a matter of invention and manipu-

involved in engineering design. Ethical problems raised by techno-

Cr a f t 10 000 BC t o AD 500 ; natura l philosophy 3000 BC t o

From recent arch a e ol ogic al ev iden ce it appears that man has be en

CRAFT 10 000 BC to AD 500

A suitable location to have in mind for the start of this history

accidentally into a fire, or whether some logical process of

Vi t r uv i us was a military en8ineer under Juliu s Caesar in the firs!

t Th is wa s a t e r m u sed by Lewi s Mumford in hi s class ic wor k

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY 3000 Be TO AD 1400

We know nothing of the way in which the transition from animal

Eastern pr iests and admini strators began to keep records on clay

Anaxima nd ros car ried Tha l es ' line of th i nk i n g fur ther , by

There was at least one hint of what might be achieved by science

also take note of a Franciscan friar named Roger Ba c on (1214-1292)

SCI ENCE 1400 TO 1700

ve l ocity of a body and no t , in the absence of fr iction , to maintain

TECHNICS AD 500 TO 1850

We l e f t our earlier story at the point where we s a i d t hat the Romans

exe cut e d engineering drawings and was no doubt a source of i ns p i r a-

the departure of the Romans. Fortunately, coal was found in the

1381. There was to be no surplus of resources wi th which to

way in 1807. Various forms of telegraphy were introduced, notably

SCIENCE 1700 TO 1850

We have suggested that science proper, as opposed to natural

(1708-1777) his Elementa Physiologiae. It was in this period that

Figure 2.1 In crease in population and number of i nve nt i ons

must be many reasons for the great expansion of science in this

DEVELOPMENT OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION

We have said that technology must be more than invention combined

Ther~ was soon to be a national education system, and entrance to

inc luding t he processes of b leaching , dye inr, and printinf, ; water -

SOME CHARACTERIS TICS OF SCI ENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

We are now in a position t o outline some of the obvious char a c t er -

detailed quantitative and consistent way. No physical explanation

were soon t o be f ollowed by many mor e a s a variety of t e chn ologies

that science has no social implications, or that no codes of

What i s meant by ex p lana t i on?; scientific e xplanation;

At the en d of c hap t e r 2 we noted an important difference between

WHAT IS MEANT BY EXPLANATION ?

We hope for two distinct things from an explanation : a psycholo-

Secondly, we expect some practical benefit in the form of an in-

logically prior, or temporally prior, event. A critic from the

Teleological explanations are often used in the early days of a

(i) Verification of hypotheses

Lowest-LeveL hypotheses III (aJ, (bJ, (aJ, eta.

Figure 3.1 Simple deductive system due to Galileo.

number of verified instances can never prove a hypothesis to be