Tool-makers and machine operators knew that they were contributing to the invention of new technologies. What they were rarely aware of is that they were also contributing to new scientific discoveries. New machines prompt scientific notions and paradigm shifts more often than science happens to invent new technologies from above. As in an example mentioned earlier, it was the steam engine which gave birth to thermodynamics, rather than the other way around. The science of heat and energy transformation developed to ameliorate the steam engine: it was a projection of the lucrative ambitions of
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