Patanjali Yoga And Scientific Value System-Part I (Science & Its Values)

By Staff

Thursday, July 17, 2008, 12:28

The Vedanta Kesari, p. 101-105, March 2006, Ramakrishna Mission

Science And Its Values

1.Universalism

This value demands that science should be independent of race, colour, creed, or gender and that it should be essentially international in character, with no artificial boundaries. This makes science essentially a unifying factor among diverse races and creeds.

Two classic cases can be cited here. The first one is Hitler"s attempt to dub the Theory of Relativity as Jewish science, since it had been enunciated by Einstein, a born Jew. Hitler"s attempt to ban the teaching of this theory ended in failure, because the scientific community was not prepared to accept such prejudices.

The second example is that of William Shockley, a Nobel Prize winner in physics, who tried to prove that black races are intellectually inferior to white races. This, again, was vehemently rejected by the scientific community.

2.Communalism
This value requires that scientific knowledge should be public knowledge, not the exclusive prerogative of any group. It also means free and frank exchange of scientific information among scientists across national boundaries. This is ensured by the system of publications in scientific journals, under strict supervision of quality. It is also absolutely necessary to ensure that any scientific discovery is authentic and trustworthy.

There are innumerable instances in the history of science to show the importance given to fidelity. The best example is that of Newton, who withheld the publication of his Gravitational Theory for almost 16 years, because his theoretical predictions did not agree with the available observational data. For his deductions, Newton had used a value for the distance of the moon from the earth, which was based on observations available at that time. However, later observations refined this value. When Newton plugged the new value into his equation, he got almost perfect agreement between theory and observation. It is only then that Newton decided to publish his magnum opus, Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis. Such was his sense of honesty!

3.Disinterestedness

This value of science demands that the results of scientific research should not be influenced by any ideology, or manipulated to serve for personal profit. They should be honest, objective, and impersonal. This is perhaps the greatest strength of science. The best example in this context is the way the Soviet regime distorted science during the Stalinist era. Many were the attempts made by it to show that most of the important scientific advances made by the rest of the world, like Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, had already been done by Soviet scientists much earlier! The international scientific community, however, was not prepared to swallow this claim, because it lacked proof.

4.Organised Scepticism

This value demands that no scientific statement should be accepted based only on the word of authority. There must be intellectual freedom to question such statements. According to science, the test of validity of any statement is experimental or observational verification.When Schrödinger introduced probabilistic concepts into Quantum Theory, Einstein was dismayed and made the famous remark 'God does not play dice with the universe." However, later investigations showed that the younger scientist was right and the senior one was wrong! If science today has become a force to reckon with and is influencing human life in all spheres, it is because of its strict adherence to the above value system.

To Be Continued