Science and Technology 229the power to evolve the perfect machine, and when we say that theory
does not agree with practice, it means that we have not got brains enough
to apply the theory to the facts and get at the result.”^13
This is a startlingly clear statement of the necessary and suffi cient in-
terpretation of the relationship between science and innovation, the fur-
thermost point on one end of the spectrum. Machines could be derived in
a complete and perfect form solely from Rowland’s specialty, pure science,
provided one had the brainpower to do it.
Among the contemporary critics of this ideology, engineer Robert
Thurston created a sophisticated alternative based on the emerging ideals
of his profession. A proponent of “school culture” over traditional “shop
culture” in mechanical engineering education, Thurston developed an
ideal of applied science composed of four broad usages of the term.
Thurston’s speeches contain many instances of the meaning closest
to Rowland’s position—the application of scientifi c theories to the useful
arts. He told the Virginia Mechanics Institute in 1894 that the unprec-
edented material progress in the nineteenth century “has come of the
application, by the inventor and the mechanic, of the facts and laws of
physical science to the useful purposes of their lives.”^14 Yet in this speech
and in many others, Thurston put equal emphasis on a second meaning of
“applied science”—the application of Francis Bacon’s inductive method
to the useful arts. As a proponent of school culture, Thurston also used the
term to signify a relatively autonomous body of knowledge and the prac-
tices of research, teaching, and innovation—the third and fourth mean-
ings of the phrase. In this usage, “applied science” was a synonym for the
knowledge gained from “scientifi c research in engineering,”^15 which he
also called “engineering science” on at least two occasions.^16
The four meanings of “applied science” formed complementary parts
of Thurston’s philosophy of science and innovation, an ideology best
summarized by his claim that engineering was a union of science and
the mechanic arts. In Thurston’s ideal world, which was partially realized
at his home institution, the Engineering College at Cornell University,
engineering researchers applied scientifi c theories and methods to create
a body of knowledge called “applied science,” which engineers learned
in college and practiced on the job. The four meanings meshed well with
Thurston’s campaign to raise the social status of engineering by arguing
that it was a “learned profession” rather than a trade or a craft.^17 This
wide spectrum of meanings is also evident in the writings of Charles
Steinmetz, a prominent electrical engineer, and in speeches by three vice
presidents of the engineering section of the AAAS in the late nineteenth
century.