Historians sometime argue that science and technology run on separate tracks, each advancing independently of the other. In this view, scientists develop deep theories; inventors come up with gizmos. Newton plumbed the nature of light, but he didn’t invent the prism. Boyle worked out the formula for calculating the pressure exerted by expanding gas, but a bunch of other guys invented the steam engine, and they knew nothing of Boyle’s law. They were just trying to improve on a pump that was being used for the very practical purpose of emptying water out of mines.
