Рубрика:
39
Part II
Texts for reading and translation
(Tasks to be done at home and continued in class)
Text 1
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
1. Science problems can be roughly classified as analytic and synthetic. In analytic
problems we seek the principles of the most profound natural processes, the scientist
working always at the edge of the unknown. This is the situation today, for instance,
within the two extremes of research in physics -elementary particle physics and
astrophysics - both concerned with the properties of matter, one on the smallest, the
other on the grandest scale. Research objectives in these fields are determined by the
internal logic of the development of the field itself. Revolutionary shocks to the
foundations of scientific ideas can be anticipated from these very areas.
2. As to synthetic problems, they are more often studied because of the possibilities
which they hold for practical applications, immediate and distant, than because their
solution is called for by the logic of science. This kind of motivation strongly
influences the nature of scientific thinking and the methods employed in solving
problems. Instead of the traditional scientific question: "How is this to be explained?"
the question behind the research becomes "How is this to be done?" The doing
involves the production of a new substance or a new process with certain
predetermined characteristics. In many areas of science, the division between science
and technology is being erased and the chain of research gradually becomes the
sequence of technological and engineering stages involved in working out a problem.
3. In this sense, science is a Janus-headed figure. On the one hand, it is pure science,
striving to reach the essence of the laws of the material world. On the other hand, it is
the basis of a new technology, the workshop of bold technical ideas, and the driving
force behind continuous technical progress.
4. In popular books and journals we often read that science is making greater strides
every year, that in various fields of science discovery is followed by discovery in as
steady stream of increasing significance and that one daring theory opens the way to
the next. Such may be the impression with research becoming a collective doing and
scientific data exchange a much faster process. Every new idea should immediately
be taken up and developed further, forming the initial point of an avalanche-like
process.
5. Things are, in fact, much more complex than that. Every year scientists are faced
with the problems of working through thicker and tougher material, phenomena at or
near the surface having long been explored, researched, and understood. The new
relations that we study, say, in the world of elementary particles at dimensions of the
order of 10-13 cm or in the world of superstellar objects at distances of billions of
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