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How Technology Aids and Impedes the Growth of Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Joseph Agassi*
Affiliation:
Tel-Aviv University and York University, Toronto

Extract

Allow me to begin by thanking Professor Nickles for his organizing the session on “Technology and Scientific change” in order, as he wrote me in his kind letter of invitation to participate in this session, to explore ways in which technological developments have stimulated or obstructed scientific change. I take it there is no established list of ways in which technological progress stimulates scientific progress, yet some ways are all too obvious. The simplest, perhaps, are the cases of the technological progress which facilitate the life of the scientist, the technological progress which makes more free time available, some of which is used for scientific education and research, the innumerable technological advances which raise the standard of living in myriads of ways, and which help science grow in all sorts of manners. I suppose these are the indirect ways.

Type
Part XIII. Technology and Scientific Change
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

Robert S. Cohen went over the penultimate version of this paper and won my gratitude yet again.

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