Scientific Temper And More
By Dr.S.G.Vombatkere
16 December, 2014
Countercurrents.org
Before trying to see what is meant by scientific temper, let us understand what “science” means. Science may be seen in three ways. One, it is an endeavour to understand the structure of the universe (including ourselves) and how it works. Two, science is an intellectual activity involving the practical, systematic study of the physical and natural world around us, through observation and experiment. And three, science is a process of hypothesizing, logical reasoning, theorizing and seeking explanations to solve real-world problems. Science, which attempts to enlarge the body of human knowledge, should ideally be subject to criticism, transparent and free from motivation for material gain.
Scientific temper refers to the methods of science applied to all subjects and circumstances for the rational solution of problems, including problems and hypotheses which may not lend themselves to measurement or quantification. Thus, the study of politics which follows scientific method is called “political science”.
On 14 November 2014, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru's 125th birth anniversary, Prime Minister Modi made a call for “promotion of scientific temper among children”. This is a wider call for people of all ages to develop scientific temper, but children were mentioned because Chacha Nehru's birthday is celebrated as Children's Day. Nehru was one of the first people to use the term “scientific temper”, writing about it in his seminal work “The Discovery of India” in 1946. He wrote about scientific temper and its need, calling it “the scientific approach, the adventurous and yet critical temper of science, the search for truth and new knowledge”, and saying that scientific temper goes beyond objectivity and fosters creativity.
Prime Minister Modi's call is in keeping with Article 51A(f) of the Constitution of India, which defines the fundamental duty of every citizen “to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform”.
Scientific temper is a way of life, both method and path, striving for objectivity and rationality in addressing problems of the real world around us. On the other hand religion, any religion, is also both method and path but it is subjective, and uses emotion, intuition and belief based upon personal or socio-cultural experience to address the problems of the “inner man”.
It is common observation that scientific temper and religious practice co-exist both at individual and societal levels. However, rationalists – who often are also atheists – trash religious practices, while some religious persons attempt to give their inner beliefs the respectability of science and scientific method. The first approach seems to say that a religious person cannot possess scientific temper, while the second approach condemns the rationalist as morally degenerate. Both approaches assume an unrealistic black-and-white world.
In the Indian political context, public discourse often confuses scientific temper and religious praxis, encouraging a “if-you-are-not-with-us-you-are-against-us” approach. Scientific temper depends for its rigour upon questioning and accepting questioning, whereas religions are founded upon individual experience and individual and group beliefs. These beliefs can neither be proved by believers nor disproved by rationalists or non-believers. And yet as observed all around us, scientific temper is in use howsoever inadequately, by people who also practice religion, showing that the two are not mutually exclusive.
For example consider astrology, which some public personalities have claimed as scientific truth. But first, we need to distinguish between astronomy and astrology. Astronomy is the observation and study of the movements and positions of satellites, planets and stars. Ancient Indian astronomers were also gifted mathematicians, and their achievements are acknowledged for their remarkable accuracy by modern science. This was possible because they followed scientific method of observation and experiment; scientific temper was not alien to the society of those times. Indeed, the nyaya and vaisheshika schools of philosophy were based upon logic, debate, questioning and analysis.
Some scholars hold that according to the vedanga jyotisha, ancient priest-astronomers needed to know the precise positions of astral bodies to conduct religious rituals at specific times. But astrology used astronomical information and knowledge for practical purposes like travelling and navigation, and agricultural operations of sowing and harvesting. Later, astrologers sought to connect the movement and positions of the “heavenly” bodies with terrestrial events, human individual attributes and social events and affairs, and further, to provide predictions of human attributes, affairs and events. This is the astrology which is in the public eye today.
Examining the claims of scientificity of astrology, Prof.Jayant Narlikar has demonstrated conclusively by using the double-blind method, that the position of planets and stars of a person's horoscope cannot reliably assign attributes to a person nor predict events in life. Notwithstanding, any person is at liberty to believe in the effectiveness of horoscopes or the accuracy of astrological predictions, especially as the Preamble to the Constitution of India assures all citizens the liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship.
In present times, there is a class of politicians, some of whom pose as religious persons, who claim that modern scientific and technological skills and achievements existed in ancient India. They claim that airplanes and helicopters were used by religious deities, and plastic surgery and organ transplant were developed. They claim that a religious text was written an exact number of years ago (5,151 years, to be precise). While these claims do not stand the rigour of scientific inquiry, at the same time these beliefs cannot be questioned, because every citizen has the liberty to believe what he/she chooses. But when these beliefs are used to claim superiority over another set of beliefs, this causes conflict within society among believers of other faiths.
There is no organic conflict between scientific temper and religious practice, but conflict between them is created in societies in which religious or political dogma prevail. In medieval Europe, Galileo Galilei's observations, experiments and conclusions challenged the dogma of the Papal church, which persecuted the man who is counted among the pioneers of modern scientific method. At the other extreme, in Stalinist USSR, the communist cadres who were atheist and anti-religion, persecuted the church and believers in God.
In a free society, scientific temper and religious practice co-exist without conflict and persecution. Their co-existence is vital for a society with a liberal Constitution such as ours, which guarantees liberty of religious practice and also prescribes duty of scientific temper. It is the responsibility of public personalities and people's representatives not to confuse the two, to avoid exacerbating conflicts within our troubled society.
Major General S.G. Vombatkere, VSM, retired in 1996 as Additional DG Discipline & Vigilance in Army HQ AG's Branch. He holds a PhD degree in Structural Dynamics from I.I.T, Madras. He is Adjunct Associate Professor of the University of Iowa, USA, in international studies. With over 400 published papers in national and international journals and seminars, his current area of interest is strategic and development-related issues. E-mail: [email protected]
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