The Emergence of Science-based Technology. Comments on Floris Cohen's Paper

摘要

In his paper Floris Cohen raises a very important question, to which historians have so far devoted but scant attention, namely, why the emergence of science-based technology did not follow immediately from the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century ? In this respect, it is frequently held that traditional arts and crafts (based on trial-and-error and slow accumulation of rules of thumb) persisted well into the nineteenth century as the major source of technical advances. It is interesting to note that the existence of this interlude between the 'beginnings' of modern science and the acceleration of economic growth brought about by the Industrial Revolution, has made it difficult for historians to properly assess the role played by the emergence of 'science-based' technology in the early phases of industrialization. As a matter of fact, economic historians have frequently stressed the empirical rather than scientific nature of most of the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution. In this view, modern science begun to contribute substantially to economic growth only from the late nineteenth century with the creation of industrial research and development laboratories.