Expertise Articles, Technological Information
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, two additional developments enforced the hierarchy. First, the definition of a clear class of ‘fine arts’ break up aesthetic creativity away from the mere craft skills of the mechanical arts. Second, the relationship of ‘science’ to industry was subject to considerable boundary work as scientists and engineers professionalized. For engineers, especially American engineers, ‘applied science’, together with its greater status, might be claimed as their very own autonomous physique of knowledge. For scientists, similar to John Tyndall and Henry Rowland, ‘applied science’ was the applying of pure science, a transfer that reserved the autonomy of their own science while additionally claiming ‘credit for modern wonders of the economic age’ (p. 64). As Schatzberg notes, after 1850 the frequency of use of the term ‘mechanical arts’ dropped as ‘applied science’ increased. Troop buildups and diplomatic negotiations spotlight the specter of a signi