After having a discussion with a friend of mine on this subject I finally came up with the analogy that: science is to technology as art theory is to art.
Art theory of course is a farce. I have helped artist clients of mine write foundation and museum descriptions of their own work.... to do so we had to create an imaginary world of words that have only incidental connection to the actual art.
That is indeed what science is to technology.
Niels Bohr was my science teacher at the University of Chicago. He taught physics by showing us that all of physics was a series of constants. He started with Galileo's measurement of acceleration due to gravity and continued into modern quantum theory. All of these constants were derived from brilliant technological achievements.
What has always been my experience is that entire new fields are developed outside of science theory. A perfect example is the higher temperature discoveries regarding superconductivity, even though the theory did not allow for that. Similarly the discovery of cosmic background radiation came from persistent technological efforts to silence the circuits in a Bell laboratory antenna.
I repeat, science is to technology as art theory is to art.
