64 Protocolos de manejo del dolor agudo en niños
CUMPLIMIENTO DEL FIN
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of 420 Niiniluoto’s model seems to imply that the relationship between basic scientific research and technology is an important feature of scientific research. The following section explores this relationship in detail.Page
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of 420 technology can be interpreted not only as objects, knowledge, processes or volition as Mitcham suggested: it exists as a complex reality that interconnects all these elements. Kahn & Kellner [2006] emphasise the common mistake of exclusively associating technology with industry and cite Pearson & Young’s [2002] argument that technology “comprises the entire system of people and organizations, knowledge, processes, and devices that go into creating and operating technological artifacts, as well as the artifacts themselves” (p.255).Authors have linked the complex phenomenon of technology to scientific research. They establish a relationship of mutual benefit, where science feeds technology and technology feeds science in an iterative process. On the one hand, technological development sets directions for scientific research, as Nelson & Rosemberg [1993] (p. 7) illustrate: “The advent of new technologies often leads to scientific work aimed at understanding these technologies, so as to enable them to be improved. Sometimes new technology leads to whole new scientific disciplines.” Technology also enables advancement in scientific research, mainly by providing equipment and instruments for research; as an example of this Brooks [1994] explains: “Technology has played an enormous role in making it possible to measure natural phenomena that were not previously accessible to research”. On the other hand, Brooks argues that science contributes to technological development as a “direct source of new technological ideas” and as a “source of engineering design tools and techniques”, or by providing “Instrumentation, laboratory techniques, and analytical methods...for industrial processes and process controls”.
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of 420 It has also been suggested that technology is the end result of scientific research. Mankins [1995] presents a linear model of technology utilised by NASA that splits technological development into technology readiness levels (TRL). The author explains that the model serves to assess specific technologies level of maturity, and to set comparisons between different technologies. This model proposes a level of basic technology research at the onset of technological development, and includes several stages or TRLs’ that ends with the technology being qualified and proven.Mills [2005], in an attempt to provide managers of a NASA long term and complex research project on making interstellar exploration practical, with a model to evaluate scientific progress, proposes a linear model of applied science readiness levels (SRL). The author suggests that the final and most advanced level of this model precedes the less advanced and first TRL. As suggested by Mills, Driver et al. [2012] integrates both models to show how technology is seen as the end result of scientific research.
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of 420 Diagram 5.8 Integration of science and technology readiness levels according to Driver et al. [2012]Phaal et al. [2011], in an attempt to develop a framework for mapping science- and technology-based industrial emergence, also describe technology as a progression from scientific research. In their model, they outline a ‘precursor’
phase that represents “the scientific developments that act as the initial conditions for technology-based industrial emergence and an ‘embryonic’
phase associated with the translation of applied science proof-of-concept demonstrators into technology prototypes and early application demonstrators.”
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of 420 Diagram 5.9 Science, technology, application and market linear model, adapted from Phaal et al.[2011]’s diagram of “Phases, transitions, milestones and trajectories of technology-intensive industrial emergence”
Although these linear models hint on the idea of technological development being “fed” by science, other authors argue that technology has brought more to science than science to technology. For example Sismondo [2010] explains that although science and technology today are “increasingly entangled”, science has not been necessarily a guiding force for technology, and that
“accounts of artifacts and technologies show that scientific knowledge plays little direct role in the development of even many state of the art technologies” (p. 93).
Even if scientific research fed technological development and conversely technology fostered scientific research, advance in technology or science is not necessarily mutually dependent. Bauer [1992] (p. 125) argues that “technology
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of 420 is not just applied science follows obviously (...) from the historical certainty that significant techniques are ever so much older than anything that one could call science”. Bauer also sets a clear distinction between applied science and technological development. While the purpose of the former is to achieve certain aims regardless of how beneficial they are, the later only develops if the premise of usefulness is met. This distinction reflects the differences in nature between science that seeks to understand the world, and technology that wants to render it useful. As Feenberg [2006] explains, “Science and technology share a similar type of rationality based on empirical observation and knowledge of natural causality, but technology is concerned with usefulness rather than truth” (p. 5).Bauer also warns that confusing applied science with technological development fosters the mistaken idea that “any advance in scientific research could be harnessed to useful application” (p. 127). Additionally, he highlights the potential difficulties of an attempt to set up cooperation between science and technology, “since the interest of one partner (science) is best served by complete openness while the interest of the other (technology) is best served by utter secrecy” (p. 128).
From a different point of view, Stokes [1997] has developed a model to explain the relationship between scientific research and technological development (see Diagram 5.10). His model acknowledges the nonlinear relationship between science and technology, and their capability to progress independently from one another. Drawing on his Pasteur’s Quadrant model,
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of 420 Stokes proposes a “revised dynamic model” that links scientific research to technological development. This model establishes two interwoven parallel streams in which paths of basic and applied research move from existing understanding and existing technology to improved understanding and/or improved technology. While Stokes’ model also recognises that research for understanding and technological improvement can happen independently of one another, it acknowledges instances of interdependence, and sets use-inspired basic research as the key for the improvement of understanding and of technology.Diagram 5.10 A revised Dynamic Model of Pasteur’s Quadrant from Stokes [1997] (p. 88)
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of 420 Driver et al. [2011], in a similar line of thought, argue that scientific research can be an activity that is “inherently iterative”, and that scientists move constantly from basic to applied research and vice versa. They found that iterative interaction between scientific research and technology “give(s) rise to applications” and suggest that the search for applications fosters research in science and technology, as illustrated in Diagram 5.11.Diagram 5.11 Driver et al.’s Model of scientific research in relation to Technology, from Driver et al.
[2011]
To conclude, it seems that although a distinction between basic and applied research can be made, in the day to day practice of science this differentiation is not perfectly defined. There is also an extra type of scientific research, the experimental, that seems to exist in the boundaries between scientific research and product/business development.
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of 420 Even though scientific research and technology can develop independently from one another, scientific research in practice is closely linked to technological development. It seems that technology benefits from, and contributes to, all basic, applied, and experimental scientific research.In all the models presented in this chapter, there seems to be an underlining principle that shows progression from basic research towards application.
However, Stokes model identifies the important aspect of use-inspired basic research, which creates a link between basic research, applied research and the development of applications. Based on this and on the OECD model that also recognises applied research as a preceding step for the development of applications, a new model is proposed that connects basic and applied research to the development of application in a sequential order. The model shows how once principles are understood in the domain of basic research, they are tested and applied in the domain of applied research, and how this precedes the development of applications (Diagram 5.12).
Diagram 5.12 Map of scientific research (modified from Pasteur’s Quadrant)
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