From engineering science to technoscience

Abstract

This chapter argues that the development of engineering science which transformed technology by establishing a new interdependent relationship between science and technology was only the first step in the emergence of an even more radical transformation of the relationship between science and technology that would begin to occur in the second half of the twentieth century. The chapter argues that while technology became more similar to science during the eighteenth and nineteenth century during the twentieth century science became more similar to technology. This has resulted in erasing the boundaries between science and technology and the emergence of what some have called technoscience. The chapter concludes by arguing that the history of the rise of engineering science plays an important role in understanding technoscience.