Claims

Factual · Science and research methods

“Theory is born from (convex) practice more often than the reverse (the nonteleological property).”

Nassim Taleb, essay author · 12 December 2012 · Understanding Is a Poor Substitute for Convexity (Antifragility) (Edge.org)

Theory is born from practice more often than practice from theory, with technology more often preceding science.

Mostly true True in substance, wrong in a detail.

The second judge said mostly false; the verdict shown is the first judge's.

What would count as true or false

True if history-of-science and technology scholarship broadly supports that practical or technological innovations more often precede the related scientific theory than follow from it. Mostly true if this is supported for most historical periods or domains with notable exceptions (e.g. modern science-driven fields). Mixed if the scholarship is divided or finds roughly balanced directions. Mostly false if the claim generalises from selected examples while the evidence is inconclusive or does not support 'more often'. False if the evidence shows theory-to-practice to be clearly the more common direction.

Evidence

1. Does science get the credit for too much? Journal & Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales (Stephen Gaukroger) · 2023

   “As historians began to examine the history of technology they found little evidence for a strong dependence upon science.”

2. Does science get the credit for too much? Journal & Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales (Stephen Gaukroger) · 2023

   “Historically, the thesis can be maintained that more fundamental advances have been made as a by-product of instrumental (i.e. engineering) improvement than in the direct and conscious search for new laws.”

3. steam engine Archives - Not Even Past Not Even Past · 1 March 2012

   “Historians of science and technology have often remarked that the steam engine did far more for science than science ever did for the steam engine.”

4. An analysis of the evolution of science-technology linkage in biomedicine arXiv

   “We find that the cited papers are likely to be basic research, yet a significant portion of papers cited in patents that are related to FDA-approved drugs are clinical research.”

Reasoning

Gaukroger's survey reports that historians of technology found little evidence that technology depended strongly on science (E1). It also cites the view that more fundamental advances came as by-products of instrumental and engineering improvement than from a direct search for laws (E2). A historian's blog adds the common remark that the steam engine did more for science than science did for it (E3). A bibliometric study of biomedicine finds patents citing basic research, a notable exception in modern science-driven fields (E4), which matches the 'mostly true' criterion.

Cite this claim

Nassim Taleb, “Theory is born from practice more often than practice from theory, with technology more often preceding science.” (said 12 December 2012). Verdict: mostly true. Reliability API, claim c_a5e42d30c1f2, method 0.1.0+28da144b. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_a5e42d30c1f2