HOW SCIENCE BECAME TECHNICAL

Not until the 20th century was science regarded as fundamentally technical in nature. In that sense, a "technical field" refers not so much to a field capable of producing technology and not only to one difficult to master, but also to a field based on concepts and vocabulary that matter only to its specialists. That understanding implies unequal access to the contents of science, as the predominantly technical parts of it are given over to the specialists. In addition, it serves as a defense against interference from politics and religion. A historical review of the technicality of science is taken up in the second part of the article. An alternative understanding, which identified science with an ideal of public reason, attained its peak of influence in the late 19th century. Until the 1920s and ' 30s, the most prominent advocates of science emphasized its contribution to the moral, economic and intellectual order, sometimes abetting tradition but more often (and more naturally) challenging old authorities or established religion and promising grounds for moral and intellectual progress. While the scale and applicability of science advanced enormously after 1900, scientists have usually preferred a pose of detached objectivity in service to bureaucratic experts rather than cultivating engagement with the public. This reshaping of science, which has been both celebrated and condemned, provided a stimulus to the nascent field of history of science, and it remains a key historical problem. The article traces the vicissitudes in the development of this problem and the solutions to it proposed by scientists and historians of science from different generations.