The Symbiotic Relationship Between Science and Technology

Science and technology are hugely creative endeavours, and their products are sometimes new ideas. Bridges, cell structures, the search for worlds or galaxies out there, even beautiful websites are some of them.

Science can provide us with technological fixes to our lives, but only so long as those fixes don’t cause illness in the people who rely on them.

Science and technology: science and technology?
Science and technology cannot be dissociated, they intermingle and reshape society in many different ways. Science is how you use observations, experiment and logic to learn about nature; technology is how you use scientific knowledge to build useful devices and tools for a society based on scientific knowledge. Together these fields have produced extraordinary technological progress.

Science is shaped by technology, which provides new devices and techniques for examining our world, but also opens new avenues of enquiry to researchers. It’s this back-and-forth between science and technology that is critical to advanced economies.

STS is an interdisciplinary field of studies into science and technology in relation to social arrangements and practices. STS differs from the likes of sociology, history or economics because STS’s practitioners are conscious that science or technological innovation isn’t something that can be conceived of as purely objective, without any regard for context.

Ancient civilizations
The peoples of antiquity had plenty of amazing inventions — from beer to pottery, from making some of the most famous pyramids on the planet.

Early societies were sometimes joined together by religion. Egyptian rulers were god-kings, and allegedly god-incarnate: this was the only way they could continue to rule over their subjects.

The art of writing was initially created to document and regulate large complex organisations, Mesopotamian cuneiform script became common, and ancient Chinese oracle bone inscriptions were used to project the future.

According to almost everyone, the biggest discoveries in ancient history came from brilliant men with very advanced science and technology, yet these successes have since been lost, and are not modern science or technology.

Science-technology synergy.
Science is a technology; it fuels science. Genetic studies, for example, can lead to new technologies such as gene editing or personalised medicine that make societies better off. Those are the relationships that are necessary to advance.

Science is how physical and natural processes are studied, systematically, through observation and experiment: technology is its practical application. For instance, space missions require complex fusions of astronomy, physics, mathematics engineering computer science and information science, and forensic specialists make use of a myriad of lab instruments to investigate crime.

Science and technology studies (STS, sci/tech studies) is the discipline of science and technology research in the world today and the social, cultural and political impacts of these practices. While pure science might rely on the theory by thinking of experiments or trial and error, tech might rely on estimation.

Technological advancements
And science and technology are growing hand in hand, ever more ensconced within social and political landscapes, and ever more refined themselves. Disciplinary researchers will have to work in harmony to tackle this growing challenge, if it is ever to be resolved successfully.

The technological advance is always happening, in some way for the better. There are drugs and vaccines for disease, new ways to educate kids, new sources of energy: all the positive things they have contributed to the world – but some of them are also bad for you, and need more stringent control.

Researchers recently built a 3D printer to print human organs. That could reshape healthcare and save lives. This would also reduce natural disasters such as earthquakes or hurricanes because it allows scientists more detail to observe them closer.