Jason Crawford

So as we've seen, technological experimentation and invention can give science new phenomena to study and the motivation to study them.

All right.

So what?

What's the upshot of all this?

What can we conclude?

Well, there's a simple sort of epistemic thing, which is just giving theory its due.

And part of why I wanted to give this talk was to kind of rescue theory from the pure tinkerer model and to point out how important essential, indispensable theory actually is.

But I think if we want to, if we take this idea seriously and we think about what are the practical implications, I think it can point us in certain directions to think about how we manage research.

In the case study we just saw, the transistor at Bell Labs, we've seen that science and engineering can be tightly integrated in a single project.

Under one roof, in one lab, you had people going back and forth between the chalkboard and the workbench, so to speak.

Before we conclude, let me look at one last case study.

You thought I was done with case studies, didn't you?

You thought I was wrapping up.

Okay, you're going to get one more case study.

A real hero of mine in the history of science and somebody whose career absolutely exemplifies this integration between understanding and practical applications.

And that is Louis Pasteur.

Pasteur had a really amazing career.

He was one of the founders of microbiology.

Along with Robert Koch, he established and demonstrated the germ theory of disease.

And he also created the first laboratory-created vaccines, the first vaccines since Edward Jenner.