The terms pure science and applied science began to appear in British usage some time after 1840, and were regularly used by American scientists from about 1880 through the 1930s, when pure science began to be replaced by basic or fundamental science (Kline 1995). While there is no firm consensus on how applied science differs from either pure science on the one hand, or engineering and technology on the other, distinctions made between pure and applied science are relevant to ethics because of the presence of widely held beliefs that pure science is more or less ethically innocent or neutral, and that any ethically troubling matters arise only when science is applied to practical matters.

Motives and Content

One generally recognized basis for distinguishing pure from applied science is the motives or aims of scientists: If one is engaged in science in order to increase one's understanding...