Passage 1
According to the new school of scientists, technology isanoverlooked force in expanding the horizons of scientificknowledge.71) Science moves forward, they say, not so much throughtheinsights of great men of genius as because of more ordinarythingslike improved techniques and tools.72) In short, a leaderof thenew school contends, the scientific revolution, as we callit, waslargely the improvement and invention and use of a seriesofinstruments that expanded the reach of science ininnumerabledirections. 73) Over the years, tools and technologythemselves asa source of fundamental innovation have largely beenignored byhistorians and philoso-phers of science. The modernschool thathails technology argues that such masters as Galileo,Newton,Maxwell, Einstein, and inventors such as Edison attachedgreatimportance to, and derived great benefit from, craftinformationand technological devices of different kinds that wereusable inscientific experiments. The centerpiece of the argument ofatechnology-yes, genius-no advocate was an analysis ofGalileosrole at the start of the scientific revolution. The wisdomof theday was derived from Ptolemy, an astronomer of the secondcentury,whose elaborate system of the sky put Earth at the centerof allheavenly motions. 74) Galileos greatest glory was that in1609 hewas the first person to turn the newly invented telescope ontheheavens to prove that the planets revolve around the sunratherthan around the Earth. But the real hero of the story,according tothe new school of scientists, was the long evolution intheimprovement of machinery for making eyeglasses.
Federal policy is necessarily involved in the technologyvs.genius dispute. 75) Whether the Government should increasethefinancing of pure science at the expense of technology orviceversa often depends on the issue of which is seen as thedrivingforce.
