Man,
the Homo sapiens has existed and even flourished for millions
of years and it is largely believed that he civilizationally advanced
from a food-gathering jungleman to e-commercial urban man of today.
However, the emphasis on science and technology, almost to the
oblivion of human spiritual values, leading to the identification
of science and technology to that of the past 300 years - the
period of Enlightenment and Industrialization of the Western Society
- needs to be corrected. Due to this, Science and Technology is
invariably taken as synonymous with and an inseparable part of
Human development. This approach hides the undesirable, ugly and
darker side of Science, Technology and growth achieved in the
Western world. UNESCO states this explicitly in the Preamble of
Declaration on Science and the use of Scientific Knowledge, (1)
In addition to their demonstrable benefits the applications of
scientific advances and the development and expansion of human
activity have also led to environmental degradation and technological
disasters, and have contributed to social imbalance or exclusion.
As one example, scientific progress has made it possible to manufacture
sophisticated weapons, including conventional weapons and weapons
of mass destruction. There is now an opportunity to call for a
reduction in the resources allocated to the development and manufacture
of new weapons and to encourage the conversion, at least partially,
of military production and research facilities to civilian use.
The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed the year 2000
as International Year for the Culture of Peace and the year 2001
as United Nations Year of Dialogue among Civilizations as steps
towards a lasting peace; the scientific community, together with
other sectors of society, can and should play an essential role
in this process.
The
correction should first come from the admission of the injustice
of offsetting of millions of years of human existence with the
last 300 years, which latter has also generated a linear model
and mindset of human - even technological - progress. Unconsciously,
because of this mind-set, we have come to use phraseology, conceptualizations
and parameters of science, technology and human progress and
development as derived from the period of last 300 years of
Western Science. Earlier Cultures and non-Western Civilizations
were equally creative in evolving their Science and Technology
to suit their basic needs. Claude Levi-Strauss' words would
be worth remembering, (2)
When
we speak of world civilization, we have in mind no single period,
no single group of men: we are employing an abstract conception,
to which we attribute a moral or logical significance -moral,
if we are thinking of an aim to be pursued by existing societies;
logical, if we are using the one term to cover the common features
which analysis may reveal in the different cultures. In both
cases, we must not shut our eyes to the fact that the concept
of world civilization is very sketchy and imperfect, and that
its intellectual and emotional content is tenuous. To attempt
to assess cultural contributions with all the weight of countless
centuries behind them, rich with the thoughts and sorrows, hopes
and toil of the men and women who brought them into being, by
reference to the sole yard-stick of a world civilization which
is still a hollow shell, would be greatly to impoverish them,
draining away their life-blood and leaving nothing but the bare
bones behind. The true contribution of a culture consists, not
in the list of inventions, which it has personally produced,
but in its difference from others. The sense of gratitude and
respect which each single member of a given culture can and
should feel towards all others can only be based on the conviction
that the other cultures differ from his own in countless ways,
even if the ultimate essence of these differences eludes him
or if, in spite of his best efforts, he can reach no more than
an imperfect understanding of them. The notion of world civilization
can only be accepted therefore, as a sort of limiting concept
or as an epitome of a highly complex process. There is not,
and can never be, a world civilization in the absolute sense
in which that term is often used, since civilization implies,
and indeed consists in, the coexistence of cultures exhibiting
the maximum possible diversities. A world civilization could,
in fact, represent no more than a worldwide coalition of cultures,
each of which would preserve its own originality.
Such
societies existed and survived happily for centuries in the
non-European world without damaging the environment in which
they lived. Science, Technology and the Human Development brought
by it do not function in vacuum. Nor can the human beings exist
isolated in the society. They interact and depend on each other
for smooth functioning of life. These earlier civilizations
built houses, cooked food, built ships, observed planets, solved
mathematical equations and even had highly creative fine and
performing arts. They also had their own Medicine, Surgery and
science of Language. They learnt this by their successes and
failures. Science and Technology evolved through this process
was appropriate to their needs. This also gave birth to their
social and cultural institutions and belief - systems. Collectively
we call this human activity as Culture or distinctive Life style
of these respective peoples or Civilizations. Popularly they
are called as Indigenous Peoples and their Culture as Indigenous
Cultures. On the time scale, these Civilizations precede the
present Civilization. They became past and we became present.
They became old and we became new. They became backward and
we became modern. Thus modern means something new, useful, good,
viable and progressive as against past or old becomes, primitive,
useless, ossified and backward- incapable of progress. Linear,
sequential and anthropomorphic model strengthens this viewpoint.
Period of past became the period of infancy. So development
or growth became synonymous with modernity and modernity means
westernization. S.N.Eisenstadt, a modernization theorist has
put it bluntly (3)
"
Historically, modernization is the process of change toward
those types of social, economic, and political systems that
have developed in Western Europe and North America from seventeenth
century to the nineteenth…"
This not only gives superior states to Western cultures and
Science and Technology but a license to civilize non-Western
cultures branding them backward or undeveloped. Many colonial
administrators in the past and renowned Western scientists even
today believed in this premise. Sir Henry Main, a colonial officer,
in India (19th century), writes, (4)
"
Native thought and literature is elaborately inaccurate; it
is supremely and deliberately careless of all precision in magnitude,
number and time. The Indian intellect stood in need, beyond
and everything else, of stricter criteria of truth. It required
a treatment to harden and brace it, and scientific teaching
was exactly the tonic, which its infirmities called for. "
Lord George Curzon, another British administrator in India says,
(5)
"
We are trying to graft the science of the West on to an Eastern
stem….. We have raised entire sections of the community
from torpor to life, and have lifted India on a higher moral
plane…. In proportion as we teach the masses, so we shall
make their lot happier, and in proportion as they are happier
so they will become more useful members of the body politic.
"
Even Florence Nightingale believed that creation of a public
health department for India is a part of a mission to ` bring
a higher civilization into India `. (6)
Coming to the recent times no less an authority than Thomas
Kuhn in the last chapter of his book Structure of Scientific
Revolution writes, (7)
"
Every civilization of which we have records has possessed a
technology, an art, a religion, a political system, laws, and
so on. In many cases those facets of civilization have been
as developed as our own. But only the civilizations that descended
from Hellenic Greece have possessed more than the most rudimentary
science. The bulk of scientific knowledge is a product of Europe
in the last four centuries. No other place and time has supported
the very special communities from which scientific productivity
comes. "
There
seems very little difference between colonial masters and modern
scientists' mind - set when they have to comment on non-European
Cultures and their sciences.
This created many a mischievous myth e.g. that the non-western
societies were riddled with superstition, that they had little
or no science and technology, that they had negligible scientific
literature. While diagnosing the " backwardness "
of the non-western world, it has become fashionable to posit
that the later inherently lacks ' scientific temper ' and so
lags behind in ' development ' and that it will be better if
it inculcates this scientific temper. Surprisingly, the champions
of this false notion of the scientific temper now are not our
erstwhile colonial masters but our own kith and kin. (8)
It pains me to note, in this connection, the opinion of no less
a personality than Pt. Jawaharlal Neharu the father of science
and technology institutions in India. In a letter written to
Mahatma Gandhi in the year 1945, he had this to say about our
village-folk, about whose human development we are talking here,
(9)
"…A
village, normally speaking, is backward intellectually and culturally
and no progress can be made from a backward environment. Narrow-minded
people are much more likely to be untruthful and violent…."
The above mention myths have gained such currency, prestige
and credibility that everything non-western is condemned and
dismissed as lacking in rationality and scientific temper. All
non-western and non-scientific history of mankind was governed
by nothing else but superstition, that it lacked logical thinking
that it stood in opposition to science. As in commercial cinema
the hero is painted all white and villain all black, similarly
all that western science stands for is the ' only ' knowledge
and all that had gone before was ' ignorance '. The so-called
scientific temper is credited with having acquired this scientific
knowledge. The arrogance of the protagonist of this scientific
temper leads them to branches of knowledge, the elements whereof
are non-quantifiable such as religion, politics, ethics etc.
There are hundreds of examples of great scientist, Newton and
Einstein not excluded who did not have THIS scientific temper
and yet they " did " the highest of science. This
scientific temper has less respect for pure science and knowledge
for more of an abject obeisance to the colonialists' disdain
for their enslaved colonies. . How can the Blacks and Browns
and Yellows have the White man's scientific temper? What temper
do we attribute to the builders of Pyramids, Bamian Buddha and
many South Indian temples that compete with modern day high-rises
and do not succumb to a slight tectonic tremor? Lot of mathematics,
planning, engineering, technology must have gone into the building
of these monuments, in the absence of modern machinery and equipment.
Will it not be more rational and scientific to admit that the
builders of these wonders had a temper conducive to this and
methods effective of this? The protagonist of the so-called
scientific temper if they have any honest respect for truth,
should examine their basics and premises and jettison their
borrowed opinions and biases.
So, obviously, it is taken as a given fact that all that has
gone before this short period of human history belongs to a
non-scientific, illogical, superstitious dark age. And this
is patently not true. It will be quite difficult for us to surmount
this obstacle in thinking - a colossal bias - created by this
dichotomous model of Dark Age Vs Enlightened Age. Modern Science
- since Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and others - grow in opposition
to the Christian religious dogma, so the protagonists of Modern
Science and technology placed other societies and cultures on
equal footing with pre-modern Western Society dominated by a
tyrannical organized religion. The biggest casualties of this
way of thinking were the Indian, Chinese, South American and
African, in short, non-western cultures. As Cultures do not
evolve overnight, accidentally or by mutation, talk of Science,
Technology and Human Development without reference and respect
to this time scale will lead to erroneous conclusions. It was
sincerely believed that post-industrial Western Europe was the
source of light that gradually spread on the dark continents,
and certainly it was for the benefit of the latter. So colonization
of these parts and imposition of Western Social institutions
was not a political-commercial necessity but a cultural-moral
obligation on the part of Europeans- the British, the Spanish,
the French et al.. Fortunately there are signs of change in
this mind set which is reflected in the two recent Documents
of UNESCO related to Science, Culture and Human Development
(1), (2)
One more such very pernicious myth is that literacy - mere ability
to read and write - is a measure of science and technology and
even of Human Development. I challenge this. It has been universally
believed that "literacy and education help in inculcating
the higher values of life, they build national character and
develop truth, patriotism, non-violence and freedom". These
are the precise words of our Vice-President Krishnakant employed
while delivering a lecture at the International Literacy Day
Celebration organized by the National Literacy Mission and UNESCO
in New Delhi on Sept. 8, 2000. (10)
This is a gross travesty of truth. Most of the Nobel Laureates
in science are from the U.S.A., a highly scientifically oriented
and technologically advanced society. And what value of non-violence
have they cultivated? Theirs is the most destructive chemical,
biological, nuclear arsenal and that country is the biggest
supplier of military hardware to all warring factions across
continents. Is this science and derivative technology human
development? The producers and dispensers of this destructive
war-machine are highly literate and educated people! Their prosperity
is soundly based on the gigantic profits they make by aiding
and abetting genocides all around. What is true of the U.S.A.
is also true of Great Britain and France in Europe. So, how
are we to correlate all this with development of human values
which formal education and literacy are credited with inculcating?
Our basic premise, therefore, needs radical re-thinking because
it has failed in logical, philosophical, human terms. Do we
have courage to do this or do we want to continue with high-sounding
hollow platitudes? Even in the department of Literacy it may
come as a shocking revelation to many that Apararka (12th Century
AD), while explaining a verse from Yajnavalkya-Smriti extolling
Brahmadana and Vidyadana, quotes several authorities such as
Yama, Brihaspati, Bhavisyottarapuran, Matsyapuran and Nandipuran.
They praise gifts by thousand of pens, inkpots, boxes for keeping
writing material and ink. This is a clear-cut literary and paleographical
evidence of Literacy in India for many centuries. (11)
So there is no wonder that even Colonial Administrators like
William Adam (1835-8), G.W.Leitner (1850) and T.B.Jervis (1823-4)
in their respective reports covering entire India, speak of
thousand and lakhs of schools.
India
and African countries had a higher rate of the current notion
of illiteracy and yet they were never aggressive, they never
sowed the seeds of enmity in other societies supplying them
with arms to conduct genocidal wars. And these are the very
countries labeled as un-developed, under-developed or developing
countries. What a travesty of truth! The merchants of destruction
are developed and Pacific Societies are not developed! Something
is rotten in the state of our thought processes! This gives
rise to the notion that Development means Economic Development.
And leading economists have started rethinking - trying to develop
'Economics as if man mattered'.
Does
literacy lead to happiness and contentment? Emphatically, not!
Perhaps more people in India and Bangaladesh are below poverty
line and below literacy line than the entire population of the
U.S.A. And yet, as surveys show they are more happy and contented
and peace loving. Indians have contributed immensely to the
culture of entire East Asia, not by conquest and massacre. Can
that not have a lesson for the thinkers of the scientific and
technological realms? Before a man becomes a scientist, a technologist,
he has to be literate, how very beneficial will it be if he
inculcates human values even before that or alongside? We must
think in terms of developing social institutions that will promote
this. And these institutions need not have direct relation with
mere literacy. Equating literacy with culture and illiteracy
with lack of culture is a dangerous notion. Human behavior does
not depend only upon literacy.
Scientific
discoveries gave birth to innovative technologies. They claim
to make life easier and comfortable. The resources and infrastructures
used for manufacturing such goods come from nature. One of the
growth indices of human development is the per capital consumption
of these resources and manufactured goods, like tin, iron, cars
etc. It is known now that consumption of such products in the
life style is responsible for ecological imbalance. Obviously,
the developed countries with higher indices of this growth are
directly responsible for this, more than the under-developed
world. But they suffer and will suffer equally, e.g. by global
warming to which they have contributed the least and the developed
world has contributed enormously. How are we going to reconcile
science and technology with human growth and welfare?
Health
is a perennial concern of humanity and we see some of the excellent
non-invasive nature friendly therapies developed and practiced
in the indigenous civilizations. Look at the irony, especially
in India. Ayurveda, the science of life was practiced for thousands
of years and it should have, legitimately, been the mainstream
medicine. But it is dubbed as alternative or complementary,
Allopathic usurping the position of the mainstream therapy.
This development is taken to connote that Ayurveda is unscientific.
This is the precise view reflected in the recent sixth report
of the House of Lords' Select Committee on Science and Technology
dismissing Ayurveda as ' unscientific.' (12)
I am proud to say here that, in India, the vehicle of knowledge,
man, was sought to be more refined and matured, through inculcation
of Dharma (the complex of obligations and duties), so that he
became more conscientious and accountable, even while pursuing
truth or knowledge of the realms- physical and non-physical.
Man respected man and his environment. That is why complete
freedom of thought and expression prevailed in all fields of
life in India. Aryabhatta (495 AD) could propound his theory
of rotation and attractive power (gravitation) of the earth
and Brahmagupta (598 AD) could criticize him on the basis of
his observations, whoever ultimately proved right or wrong.
Vatsyayana could write his Kamasutra (100 AD), an excellent
treatise on the science of sex, without any fear and we find
him not criticized by any Shankarachary then or now. There are
no religious arbitrators here to take side and mete out punishments.
That should be the real scientific temper. It was practiced
in India. It stemmed from deeper spiritual roots that recognize
many-faceted ness of truth and man's freedom to pursue it in
his own way as per his own psychological make up emotional equipment
and physical capabilities. Are we prepared to grasp these parameters
of human development and fulfillment and evolved indices to
measure real human development? That is the real task before
us.
REFERANCES
AND NOTES
1)
3,of the Preamble of Declaration on Science and the use of Scientific
Knowledge, Text adopted by the World Conference on Science (organized
by UNESCO at Budapest, Hungary), 1 July 1999, Definitive version
<Back>
2) Quotation from Introduction-The World Commission
on Culture and Development, Our Creative Diversity (Culture
and UNESCO). http://www.unesco.org/culture/development/wccd/chapters/html_eng/indes_en.htm
<Back>
3) Eisenstadt, S. N. (1966) Modernization, Protest,
and Change, Modernization of Traditional Societies series, Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. <Back>
4) Cited in Richard Strachey, 1911:297 <Back>
5) India Office Library and Records, Curzon
Papers, IOLR, Mss. Eur. F111/559: (xi&xvi); IOLR Mss.Eur.
F111/248 (b). <Back>
6) Quoted in E. Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale,
II, London, 1914,p.1. <Back>
7) Thomas.S.Kuhn (1963) The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions, p.166-67, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago
and London <Back>
8) Kindly see a small booklet A Statement on
Scientific Temper brought out by Neharu Center, Mumbai (July
1981) and signed by some top scientist, technologist and intellectuals
of that time. For an excellent analysis of this document, scholars
can see ' The " Statement on Scientific Temper " :
The Educators in Need of Education ' in Readings from PPST Bulletin,
Technology Foundation, No 18, Sri Ram Nagar Main Road, Chennai
600 113. <Back>
9) Cited in ' What is Development: Recalling
an Old Debate ' from Readings from PPST bulletin p. 9. <Back>
10) UNESCO Newsletter (New Delhi Office), Vol.
9 No. 4 (December 2000). <Back>
11) P. K. Gode, (1956) ' Some Puranic Extracts
quoted by Apararka (c. AD 1125) and their bearing on the History
of Indian Paleography and Education ' in Studies in Indian Literary
History ,Vol. III, Published by: Prof. Gode Collected Works
Publication Committee, Pune-4. <Back>
12) See Indian Express dated February 15, 2001
for news titled ' UK diagnosis of Ayurveda leaves India with
hiccups ' by Sanchita Sharma. <Back>
Dr.
Bedeker's Hospital,
M.Karve Path, Shivshakti,
Naupada, Thane
INDIA 400602
Phone:
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