236 Kline
ing research pays dividends and they are soon realized, but over the de-
cades and the centuries the richest returns come from the gratuitous and
disinterested researches in pure science, from knowledge sought for its
own sake alone.”^40 The weak position of academic research before the war
thus mitigated against engineers developing a strong rhetorical stance to
counter the pure- science ideal. They did not take the alternative rhetorical
path of engineering science until the 1950s (see p. 240 below).
Several important changes in terminology occurred in the interwar pe-
riod. Although “engineering science” had not become an everyday phrase,
the terms “basic science” and “fundamental science” began to replace
“pure science” in the rhetoric of many scientists and engineers. Frank
Jewett helped popularize “fundamental science” in the 1930s. In 1945 he
told Bush that he objected to the term “pure science” because the “word
‘pure’ implies that all other kinds of research are ‘impure.’”^41 Those who
substituted these phrases for “pure science” probably shared Jewett’s con-
cerns about the connotations of the word “pure,” especially since applied
science had gained respectability through the work of industrial research
laboratories.
The new terminology refl ected changing practices in science and engi-
neering. Both “fundamental science” and “basic science” appear to have
been coined by industrial and engineering researchers, who were growing
in numbers and infl uence during this period. They undoubtedly favored
these terms over “pure science” because the words, which could refer to
technological as well as academic science, did not belittle their research
with the implication of impurity.
Although scientists and engineers often expressed opposing views and
modifi ed them substantially during this sixty- year period, they generally
subsumed their differences under the fl exible key phrase “applied science”
in the process of drawing boundaries and promoting complementary self
interests. Scientists tended to emphasize the epistemological dependency
of applied science on pure science to argue for fi nancial support for their
research; engineers called themselves “applied scientists” and their fi eld
an “applied science” to raise their occupational status above that of arti-
sans to the level of a “learned profession.”^42SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY: FROM FIELDS OF STUDY TO
SOCIAL FORCES
Of our three key phrases, “science and technology” is the most common
one in use today. It permeates the English language to such an extent that