Technics

The study or science of an art or of arts in general, especially the mechanical or industrial arts.

The Beginning

Common sense is science exactly in so far as it fulfils the ideal of common sense; that is, sees facts as they are, or, at any rate, without the distortion of prejudice, and reasons from them in accordance with the dictates of sound judgement. And science is simply common sense at its best; that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic. ― T. H. Huxley, 1896. ¹ The Crayfish: An Introduction to the Study of Zoology, Thomas Henry Huxley. At Gutenberg

Huxley's statement is both encouraging and demanding: science is not mysterious or remote, so it is open to all, but the scientific investigator must perform at the highest level. A particular characteristic of science education is that key conceptual elements are identified by the name of the scientist who devised each one. These select figures are held in great respect, and have become true immortals. In one case this has come to the point of idolatry:

Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night: God said, Let Newton be! and all was light. ― Alexander Pope

This is not just poetic imagery, it conveys a view widely shared by educated scientists.

In 1998 the back cover of the paperback edition of Isaac Newton, the Last Sorcerer by Michael White promised that “After White's Newton, National Curriculum Newton will never be the same”. Would this book cast shadow of superstition over this celebrated genius? Actually, no: "White's Newton" is presented as a great genius, and his alchemical researches as a source of inspiration. A chapter on "Feuds" introduces Newton's work on light, and his disagreements about it with Robert Hooke. A footnote on page 185 gives background:

Newton believed that light is made up of invisible particles; Hooke supported the view that it is composed of waves. This argument is still not completely resolved, but modern science suggests that light has a dual nature: that it is both wavelike and corpuscular, depending upon the experimental circumstances.

Here White is suggesting an excuse for Newton's refusal to accept the wave nature of light in his time on the basis of later developments. Surely, the issue is whether Newton was accurate in observation and rigorous in logic at the time. A classic experiment in the modern science curriculum which explores the wave nature of light is called Newton's Rings. Newton managed carry out this experiment, and perform accurate calculations on his observations, while still denying the wave nature of light.

A more significant issue comes to light on page 198 where White quotes a passage from An Attempt to Prove the Motion of the Earth from Observation in Hooke's Cutlerian Lectures, 1674.

I shall explain a system of the world, differing in many particulars from any yet known, answering in all things to the common rules of mechanical motions. This depends upon 3 suppositions; first, that all celestial bodies have an attractive of gravitating power towards their own centres, whereby they attract not only their own parts, and keep them from flying from them, as we observe the Earth to do, but that they do also attract all the other celestial bodies that are within the sphere of their activity, ... The second supposition is this, that all bodies, that are put into direct and simple motion will continue to move forwards in a straight line, until they are by some other effectual powers deflected and bent into a motion describing a circle, ellipsis, or some other uncompounded curve line. The third supposition is, that these attractive powers are ‘so much the more powerful in operating, by how much nearer the body wrought upon is to their own centres

Anyone who has learned Newton's laws of motion will recognise the first of them in the above passage by Hooke. Further, Hooke's System of the World sets out the basis of the celestial mechanics for which Newton has been given credit. The commentary in Michael White's book on this passage dismisses Hooke's efforts as guesses, and contrasts them with Newton's empirical science and revolutionary description of universal gravitation, in a way that appears very much distorted by prejudice against Hooke. With this kind of conservation, "National Curriculum Newton" can remain the same for ever.

There is a lasting disagreement about who contributed what to shining the light on Nature's laws. A concern about the misinformation of generations of students has been eloquently expressed by Robert Weinstock, in Problem in two unknowns: Robert Hooke and a worm in Newton’s apple published in The Physics Teacher, 1992. Weinstock summarises the affair by saying that Newton's greatest achievement was in public relations.

The middle

At that time there was a general lack of awareness of Hooke's life and work, beyond the law of spring which bears his name. The biography of Robert Hooke by Margaret 'Espinasse (Heinemann, 1956) dispels the myth of Hooke as a "hot-headed schemer" that is propagated by Michael White. On the scientific front, 'Espinasse gives an introduction to his Micrographia and Cutlerian Lectures, but as far as his work science and mechanics is concerned, she defers to Jacob Bronowski's view of Hooke as being "yesterday's man" ² The Common Sense Of Science, Penguin, 1960, Jacob Bronowski, Chapter 3 Isaac Newton's model, esp.p34-5 . In this view, the future of mechanics lay in the mathematical analysis inaugurated by Newton. It appears that Bronowski was unaware of Hooke's System of the World when he made this assessment.

In 2003 a conference was held at The Royal Society of London to mark the tercentenary of the death of Robert Hooke. Hooke's contribution to the development of celestial mechanics and the theory of gravitation received expert attention from specialists. There were some other assessments of Hooke's wider work on mechanics that had dismissed it generally as riddled with elementary errors, and conclude that none of his contributions could be of any value. It is evident that the authors of these assessments had themselves only an elementary understanding of the subjects that Hooke studied, and that the errors were not on Hooke's part. This was reported in my paper Assessment of the Scientific Value of Hooke’s Work at the London conference, and subsequently adapted it to form Chapter 6 of the conference book ³ Robert Hooke - Tercentennial Studies (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006) . The material is also presented here.

Since the 2003 conference there have been several biographies of Hooke, and a flood of academic studies on him. Hooke is no longer the person whose main claim to fame is that he had disputes with Newton. The popular biographies by Stephen Inwood and Lisa Jardine have conclusively debunked Michael White's attempted assassination of Hooke's character. In 2009 Robert D. Purrington could write "In any event, the last two decades have seen Robert Hooke rise from almost total obscurity to the point that he is nearly fashionable, something that would have been unimaginable not so very long ago" ⁶ Robert D. Purrington, The First Professional Scientist: Robert Hooke and the Royal Society of London, Science Networks, Historical Studies, Volume 39 2009 page xiii . There is a web site dedicated to Hooke, hookiana.uk, which is a cornucopia of resources

Hooke may have become almost fashionable, but the issue of Hooke's contribution to celestial mechanics remains in contention thirty years on from Weinstock's paper. The popular biographies convey that this contribution was insignificant: Inwood writes as though Newton had all the concepts he needed anyway ⁷ Stephen Inwood, The Man Who Knew Too Much: the strange inventive life of Robert Hooke, 1635-1703, Macmillan 2002, pages 293, 296, 297 , although the sources he cites do not support that view. Jardine (née Bronowski) retains the view that Hooke was "yesterday's man", and not a part of the mathematical breakthrough ⁸ Lisa Jardine The curious life of Robert Hooke : the man who measured London. London : HarperCollins, 2003, page 319 . All of the four relevant Wikipedia pages (Principia, de Motu, Universal gravitation, Hooke) end with the same quote (from a mathematician):

"One must not think that this idea ... of Hooke diminishes Newton's glory", Clairaut wrote; "The example of Hooke" serves "to show what a distance there is between a truth that is glimpsed and a truth that is demonstrated".

The Wikipedia content is based on numerous sources, but in the most significant case the source does not actually substantiate the content.

It seems that for all the rehabilitation of Hooke's reputation, he is being given only a small part of the credit for celestial mechanics. A particularly vigorous assertion of a contrary view appeared in 2017 (Gribbin and Gribbin ⁵ Out of the Shadow of a Giant: Hooke, Halley & the Birth of Science. John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin. 318 pp. Yale U. P., New Haven, CT, 2017. ):

Comparing those almost contemporaneous accounts, the modern reader is left in no doubt who was the forward-looking scientist with great insight, and who was the backward-looking mystic with a head filled with magical mumbo jumbo.

Hooke was a great scientist, who came up with the first scientific world-view; Newton was a great mathematician, who put Hooke’s world-view on a secure mathematical foundation, and then claimed credit for the whole thing himself.

How can we sum up the relative achievements of Hooke, Halley and Newton, and their contribution to the scientific revolution? ... None of them deserves to be remembered in the shadow of any of the others, but if push came to shove, we would certainly place Hooke ‘first among equals’.

This vigour has been met in one quarter with matching contradiction by a distinguished historian of seventeenth century mechanics ⁹ Michael Nauenberg, Review of: Out of the Shadow of a Giant: Hooke, Halley & the Birth of Science, American Journal of Physics 86, 79 (2018); DOI: 10.1119/1.5012509 :

If one wants to avoid the irritation caused by such ridiculous comments and similar ones elsewhere in this book, it is better not to read it.

Why should these disagreements persist? However much the historians may agree that Hooke has been hard done by, and that his name should be credited alongside Newton in celestial mechanics, this has not been transmitted to the National Curriculum. Perhaps the reason is the great significance of the topic: it is regarded as the first Great Unification of physics, so the reputational stakes are high, and the feelings also. This cannot be the sole reason, however; the second Great Unification was James Clerk Maxwell's 19th century unification of electricity and magnetism, so the stakes are just as high, but the outcome is very different:

Faraday was an experimentalist who conveyed his ideas in clear and simple language. His mathematical abilities did not extend as far as trigonometry and were limited to the simplest algebra. Physicist and mathematician James Clerk Maxwell took the work of Faraday and others and summarised it in a set of equations which is accepted as the basis of all modern theories of electromagnetic phenomena. On Faraday's uses of lines of force, Maxwell wrote that they show Faraday "to have been in reality a mathematician of a very high order – one from whom the mathematicians of the future may derive valuable and fertile methods" (Wikipedia).

In this case there is no attempt to dismiss the earlier work as a mere glimpse of the truth, or to denigrate it in comparison with Maxwell's monumental achievements. Maxwell's generosity is in stark contrast with Newton's meanness. It would be a fine thing if we could achieve a similarly balanced view of the roles Hooke and Newton in the first Great Unification. This can only be justified on the basis of a detailed examination of the original evidence and sources. This is given in detail at Robert Hooke and celestial mechanics.

Wider implications for the present day

The conclusions of the above mentioned essay on the assessment of Hooke's work are that

A view arises from the present study that might be more widely applicable. Science appears as technology carried out with greater depth. Thus technology is first to achieve a dim understanding, and science is first to achieve a full one. Chronologically and causally, technology gets there first, and drives discovery forwards. Technology has to make do and mend, until science clarifies and organises. These strands remain distinguishable even in the close integration of the modern era. This view retains the need to defend resources for science to go deep, but does not support the notion of science for its own sake.

This view calls into question how physical science is presented, both to specialists and others. The laws of motion, for example, are learned right at the beginning of a physics course although historically they were not formulated until long after mechanical devices were being designed that were far too complex to be analysed by using them. Elementary science students are baffled and disheartened by the “laws first” textbook presentations and find it inimical to clear thinking and inspiration. It appears that the current syllabus is without pedagogical, conceptual or historical justification. It is still the common basis for the assessment of scientific value in historical studies.

This view inspired another essay Early modern scientific and technical activities: sorting out “science” and “technology” which is available here. This includes a detailed study of the history of the development of mechanical clocks, and particularly the place of scientific work in it. According to the essay

This history, in which a centuries old conventional mechanism is revolutionised, by the advent of an early scientist who applied an advanced mathematical analysis to the problem, is considered a clear example of the distinctively different qualities of science and technology, and of the impact of science on technology.

The scientist in question was Christian Huygens, who calculated how to make it possible for the pendulum of a clock to keep the same time at large angles of swing as it does at small angles, and designed a device to achieve that aim.

The essay reveals that the development of the pendulum clock was not aided by Huygens' mathematical advances, but was the product of technical innovation in a technical environment. Huygens device was not used in the pendulum clocks that were produced. Further, as far as the outcome of the mathematics was concerned:

It’s immediate effect on technical development seems to have been rather negative, in that it was accompanied by the erroneous removal from consideration of the drive in the analysis of timekeeping. This view has endured: the education of present day scientists and engineers conveys that the length of the pendulum determines timekeeping, and it is only specialist horologists who know otherwise.

It turned out that even the specialists had not quantified the effect of the drive on pendulum timekeeping and verified it experimentally. This led to an investigation which is reported as Mechanics of the escapement driven pendulum in Horological Science Newsletter ⁴ Horological Science Newsletter 2007-4 p.2 . The results are also presented here. They show that, for the seventeenth century pendulum clock, the effect of changes in the drive in practice is about ten times the effect of a change in the angle of swing of the pendulum.

The end: Technology and Science

All the above investigations into specific problems generated rather general statements about “science” and “technology”, how people learn about them and how they are presented publicly. These general statements call for more substantiation than is provided from looking at a few particular problems, however important they might be in their own right. This is provided in a set of web pages introduced here, which look at the nature of what we call science and technology, and how they are taught in four countries. The pages also look in detail at the history of perhaps the most important technical development in which the role of science is widely asserted: the advent of steam power.