Science and technology: The physicist and the engineer

The terms science and technology are commonly meant to designate different yet cognate activities. Their divide, however, can hardly be expressed. When dealing with the question whether a certain problem pertains to science rather than technology (or the other way round), people tend to identify the two realms more or less in the same ways or to respond with an admission of ignorance. If, instead, people are asked about the difference between science and technology in general, they tend to give more dispersed and uncertain answers. According to a widespread narrative, science has more to do with theorization, abstraction, generalization, simplification through modelling, whereas technology is committed to the actual reality, measurements in concrete scenarios, individual cases, entangled conditions. In our paper, we briefly illustrate the epistemological as well as sociological motivations of the common answer sketched above and suggest to pose the question of the distinction and the positive relation between science and technology assuming a historically-informed point of view. Historians of modern technology have identified the birth of a new actor in the European cultural milieu of the 18th century: the scientific engineer. The goal of this new intellectual figure, often well trained in mathematics, was the rationalization of design and implementation of processes. For this purpose, hypotheses and experimentations were employed, as in the (mathematical) physical sciences; on the other hand, data from technical ateliers, shipyards, etc., were requested and utilized. The need for such a new figure derived from the tumultuous developments of science of the 18th century, consequence and cause of the economic development, requiring a growing body of qualified engineers. On this background, the engineer – the actor who is entrusted with technological knowledge – appears as a sort of middle term in a twofold relation: the intermediate operator between the scientist and the final user