THE title ‘Science and Technology - For What Purpose?’ puts the question in a form which links science and technology, thus implying that they are both directed to a single and common end. It is true that politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen and even many scientists tend to justify the activities of scientists and their claim to a share of society's resources in terms of the contribution they have made and can, presumably, continue to make to technology and thereby to the outcome of industrial production in its widest sense. But this link is historically relatively new. Even the achievements of the Industrial Revolution and the technology which made them possible were the work of ingenious practical people rather than intellectually and academically equipped scientists.

The forecasts of Bacon in the seventeenth century, that the new approach to the study of nature would transform our mastery over it, showed few signs of being fulfilled until this century. Until then scientists were concerned to observe, to describe and to understand what mankind encounters when confronting nature, rather than to answer the question, ‘What must I do to achieve a desired result?’ Accordingly scientists' relationship with nature remained organic, indeed familial.