What is Science?
Science is not an esoteric activity; nor is it black magic. It is nothing but the knowledge that we obtain through our common sense.
​
Human beings have obtained this knowledge by directing our intellect on a problem, systematizing and classifying it, collecting it and then improving or enlarging it. This precious treasure is called Science.
​
During the evolutionary history of the human species, humans might have acquired the thinking capacity of the brain 100,000 years ago. From that time, they have been questioning about themselves and the environment. This inquisitiveness is the characteristic that distinguishes humans from other species.
​
Who are we?
What is the Earth?
What are the Sun and the stars?
What is the sky?
How did animals originate?
How did the trees and plant life originate?
What are the things, that we see, made of?
What is hidden inside them?
​
And many more questions.
​
But some answers, that were thought of, were found to be wrong and hence rejected. The imaginative power of the brain has often been used in creating Science. If one looks at the 2000-year old history of Science, it will become clear that many ideas had to be thrown away as not true.
​
In this context, the role played by Galileo who lived 400 years ago is very important. He is the one who demonstrated the importance of experiments. He showed how ideas that were created by imagination must be subjected to experimental test and only those that are proved by
experiments must be accepted as true.
​
As the years pass, the progress of Science filters the true ideas and throws away what are untrue. This 'filter' is an important part of Science.
​
Science is not a storehouse of unrelated facts. It is a mansion built from related facts and ideas which have been proved by repeated experiments.
​
This filter may act in a few days or years. For somethings it may take many years. But it will surely act. Only by its act the grand edifice of Science has been constructed.
​
Science has been created by using our general knowledge. In our daily life we decide what to do, how and when by using our knowledge. When
we encounter problems, we try to solve them by using our intellect. This is what is called common sense and it has grown into Science.
​
But an important difference. This work has been going on for more than 2000 years. All the results have been collected in a systematic manner.
So all this has grown into a huge edifice which is deep and extensive. It is difficult for anybody to grasp the whole of it. That is why, Science
has been divided into various parts such as Physics, Chemistry, Biology and so on. These parts also are divided into many sub-parts. Only
when the scientists concentrate their intellect on a small part, they are able to discover new things.
​
Science is an endless journey since the Universe is unbounded. There is no other way than making more and more efforts. As we dig further,
our answers to questions become more precise and more useful.
​
Science and Technology
Science and Technology are just two sides of the same coin. The scientific truths that are discovered today are the seeds for tomorrow's technology. Technology can help life to blossom or wither.
​
Two big mistakes have occurred:
​
1.Nuclear weapons,
2. Consumerism
​
1.Nuclear weapons:
​
The inward bound journey that probed the secrets buried inside all matter deeper and ever deeper, showed us the atoms, the atomic nuclei and the enormous energy that lies locked up inside the nuclei. This energy was first used for destruction. In 1945, two Japanese cities Hiroshima and
Nagasaki were destroyed by nuclear bombs.
​
This is something that has made all scientists, especially physicists, to hang their heads in shame.
​
This nuclear demon is still threatening us. Until this is bottled up, there can be no peace for human race.
​
2.Consumerism:
​
The danger for our environment on the Earth which is our home is very near. Increase of the temperature, destruction of forests, destruction
of other forms of life, destruction of the resources that are essential for life and many other dangers.
​
The Earth and its resources must be protected. Otherwise humans will perish. This issue has been debated in all fora.
​
But not enough emphasis has been put on the main cause for this problem-human greed.
​
The fuel for the capitalistic economic machine that is ruling the world today is consumerism. This is just another name for greed.
​
Ask for more. Go on asking for more. This is the mantra today. Asking for fridge, TV, car, mobile, computer, laptop etc and trying to get
them has become the aim of life.
​
All the advertisements in newspapers and television channels are constantly feeding only this message to everybody including children.
​
Mahatma Gandhi had said:
Earth has enough for everyone's need,
But not enough for anyone's greed.
​
If we continue to use Earth's resources to manufacture more and more unwanted products, how can Earth survive?
​
We have to stop market economy and consumerism.
​
Inspiring biographies
In our youth, we were all inquisitive about our world and the Universe. What is there above the clouds? What is there inside the Earth?
How do plants grow?
​
It is this love of knowledge, if nurtured properly, makes the youngster into a great scientist like Charles Darwin or Albert Einstein.
​
Do our schools feed them the food of knowledge to satisfy their hunger for knowledge and help increase their love of knowledge? Or do we, in
our efforts to change their text books and courses of studies, make them bored and destroy their desire for more knowledge?
​
A mistaken view about Science is to try to contain Science within a list of scientific facts. Such lists do not become Science.
​
How are apparently distinct phenomena related? Discovery of this is Science. The wonder that Isaac Newton experienced when he discovered that
the same gravitational force that makes fruits to fall down from the trees on the Earth makes the Moon to circle around the Earth without
going away must be conveyed to the students so that they also feel the same wonder.
​
When a magnet is rapidly moved, electric current is generated in a metallic wire. Michael Faraday who discovered this, through his
imagination, created the concept of the electromagnetic field which exists everywhere.
​
Students must be made to feel the thrill that Faraday felt when he discovered the connection between magnetism and electricity.
​
If the students are not attracted by the truth discovered by Charles Darwin that all of us are related to the other living beings, what
is the use of all that is taught to them?
​
Enchanting stories
Michael Faraday
Born in an ordinary family; not even sent to School. Worked in a book-binding shop. Read all the books that came to the shop for binding. His love of Science got kindled because of that reading. He grew into the greatest scientist the world has ever seen.
​
Mary Curie
She did not get even a proper laboratory building. Worked hard with her husband Pierie Curie. A open verandah where rain and snow entered was their laboratory. They brought ton-loads of an ore called Ptch blende and Tried to separate the radioactive element which weighed only a fraction of a gram from the ore. Worked day and night and ultimately succeeded. This was the discovery of Radium, the strongest radioactive element.
​
Srinivasa Ramanujan
His mind was in Mathematics even he was bed-ridden with an incurable disease. Until the moment of his death, he was writing mathematics on papers or slate.
​
Even after 100 years after his death, mathematicians all over the world are doing research on the equations that he had discovered.
​
Do we teach our students these stories and the treasures that they discovered?
​
Cultural values of Science
It is a mistake to think that technogical products such as car, TV, and mobile as Science. Science and Technology have contributed an enormous variety of facilities. But it is debatable whether all of them are really needed for human welfare and whether all of them are beneficial.
​
There is no doubt that if Science is used properly it will contribute to human welfare. A large fraction of humanity is still poor because of
ignorance and exploitation. It is possible to increase human happiness if we use the world's resources properly.
​
But do humans have the wisdom for that? If we do not know which is the right way, how can we have this wisdom? Which is the right way that we
must take?
​
So it is clear that the cultural values buried in Science are more important than the technological products of Science.
​
In olden days, there was faith in God. Religions grew up on the basis of faith in God. Religious scriptures tied to explain the connection
between the Universe and us. Hinduism, Christianity, Islam and all the other religions used the level of knowledge prevalent among the
people at that time to preach us about the Universe and the path we must follow in our life.
​
In our times we have left the religious path and come to the scientific path. But the desired destination of both the paths are the same.
​
Science must tread the same path that religions pointed out.
​
There is no contradiction between Science and Religion.
​
Albert Einstein said:
Science without religion is lame;
Religion without Science is blind.
​
Contradiction comes only if we regard Religion as spirituality and Science as materialism:
Religion = spirituality; Science = materialism.
These equations are wrong.
​
Only because of the wrong ideas about Science that many people equate Science with materialism. TV, telephone, laptop and internet are not Science. These are like the toys that we give to children.
​
Science is beyond these things. It is about deeper matters.
​
True Science is our effort to understand Truth, impelled by our inner self.
​
What is the Universe? What is the true philosophy of life?
How did the Universe come into being? Why did it come?
What is the purpose of life? Why did we come?
​
Modern age is not the age of religions. The place occupied by religion and God is now a vacuum, leading to conflicts and violence.
​
Science is the only thing that can fill that vacuum.
​
But it is not what is generally talked about as science or what is taught in schools and colleges as science.
​
It should be what the great scientists who created Science considered as Science.
​
True Science is that which serves as the light for the ignorant soul in the
darkness of life.
​
If we learn this truth, we will realize
Science = Religion.
Ignorance --> Science --> Wisdom.
Beyond Science
(This part is taken from the Introduction to Bagavad Gita written by C Rajagopalachari.)
​
A little knowledge of the laws of nature and the wonders of science, especially when that knowledge is acquired second-hand, without the chastening influence of effort and investigation, acts as a wine on some natures. Their sense of proportion is unset. The unknown
is not only unknown but ceases to exist for them. Holy books and scriptures seem to them as ancient folly; nay worse, they are looked upon as instruments and deliberate devices for the practice of fraud.
​
But those who have struggled to obtain a deeper knowledge of the physical sciences and who, therefore, know enough to retain their sense of proportion and judgment know that the vast unknown is ever so much more than what is known and that while human intelligence may bring under its domain more and more under its domain as time goes on, there is a residue that cannot be either ignored or brought under the sway of human intelligence.
​
Men of Science not only preserve their humility, but on account of their very knowledge of the secrets of nature, contemplate with increased humility and reverence that which must ever remain outside the pale of human analysis.
​
The cause of all causes, the law of all laws cannot be seized by the highest effort of human reasoning or investigation.
​
Human reason is so perfectly fashioned and rounded off that there is no room for any sense of limitation.
​
But the fact remains that the part cannot comprehend the whole, however excellent it may be shaped.
​
The symbol of the serpent with the tail in its mouth as if swallowing itself illustrates the limitation of the human mind in its efforts to grasp the All.
​
Even a giant cannot stand on a platform and lift it.
​
We cannot jump off the ultimate cause on which we stand and on which we depend for every motion of the human mind, in order that we may get around it or measure it.
​
This limitation of human knowledge is a familiar boundary in scientific and philosophical investigations. Dive into any truth or investigate any phenomenon or examine any distinction deep enough, and at a certain point we reach the unknowable and further progress is stopped. We strike against God, so to say, in everything.
​
The unknowable is all-pervading. The known and knowable make up but a thin surface-crust over a mystery-sphere of infinite dimensions.
​
Religions and holy books, and the sayings and doings of holy men deal with this infinite unknown, not as science deals with matter, but in a different way which is the only way.
​
It may be asked why anyone should worry about the unknown. Of what use is it? The answer is that to ignore the real is foolish.
​
The unkown is no no less real because it is unknown. We know this much about it, that it is there and has profound relation to all that exist including ourselves. How then can we ignore it?
​
The gap in human perception, we know, is not a void but filled with the most important reality, although we cannot delve into it, analyze it or understand it.
​
In the material world, does not the mathematician deal with quantities and expressions that are for the human understanding look wholly unreal?
Infinity, zero, irrational number and imaginary number are not neglected, but are essential for mathematics, physics and engineering. So are the things dealt with in religious scriptures.