"ESST is part of a relatively new research tradition which focuses on the interrelationships between social, scientific and technological processes. The basic characteristic of this tradition is an insistence on the necessity to think about social and economic circumstances in order to understand the evolution of science and technology. The development of science is often seen as an essential autonomous process; a process of gradual accumulation of knowledge, driven by purely internal imperatives, such as the search for truth. Technology has been seen largely as a process of applied science, a kind of "lesser cousin", which simply followed from previous scientific advance. Science was conceived as opening fields of knowledge which engineering exploited. This began to change the in the 1950´s and 1960´s: a new approach emerged , which regarded scientific activity and technological change as deeply embedded in our society. The argument was that understanding the development of science and technology involved the recognition that internal scientific and technological advance occurs in the context of powerful social and economic forces, which shape both the development of science and technology, and also shape the impact of any advances. This tradition insists that a study of the evolution of science and technology must include social, political, cultural and economic dimensions. This involves a multidisciplinary approach which ESST was established to promote."