WHAT SHOULD BE THE SCIENCE OF THE FUTURE?
Posted by bmhegde on 1
Anything that man does on this planet should be guided solely by the holistic interest of mankind. Science so far has been trying to do just that but got derailed somewhere en route and got bogged down by monetary interests and the fame attached to scientific discoveries. Science, in the true sense of the word, only means organized curiosity to understand the secrets of Nature. "Nature", said a great thinker, Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari, " is like your mother and if you respect her she will feed you and look after you; on the contrary if you treat her as your mistress she would kick you in the back!" A genuine scientist, who is an infracaninophile, should, therefore, think of the future generation and not of the immediate glamour, awards, monetary gains, and honorary doctorates and such like.
Studies even in the West have shown that there are vested interests that bring pressure indirectly on innocent researchers to see that they get their desired results at the end of the day! Science Without Sense by Stephen Milloy is one such book that bares the ugly face of medical science research. A recent article in the British Medical Journal (24th June 2000) issue reads like a horror story. The title is revealing Seeing What You Want To See in Research! More recent editorial in another leading journal The Lancet entitled Influence of Drug Company Money on Medical Education in the USA, exposes the hollowness of our scientific ethics and morality. Ethics are there only in absence. Morality seems to be a dirty word in science.
I am sure that the story is no better in other fields. May be it is different. There have been instances of genuine researchers suffering because of their trying to uphold the truth. Most of the research for which poor taxpayer's money is spent is replicative in nature; consequently, it could not add any new knowledge to the existing pool. That apart all research in a poor country like ours must have direct relevance to the people. A small field could be examined. Whereas chemical fertilizers and pesticides could give apparently better results in the short run do they not deplete mother earth of all its potency? Do they not destroy the ecological balance? If earthworms are destroyed who would burrow the earth to make it breathe oxygen? What would be the long-term effect of pesticides on human health? DDT alone must have been responsible for human misery of unimaginable dimensions!
Nature intended wide-ranging cross-fertilization to get robust offsprings in any area of reproduction, including humans. Genetic engineering, to bring quick results, would negate this natural concept by narrowing down the genetic selection process. The resulting strain could be vulnerable to even slight change in the environment and a time might come when we may not have any crop at all. Are there not natural cousins of the two common edible cereals in nature? I understand there are hundreds of varieties of cereals in the wild, which are very closely related to rice and wheat. If they are investigated and found fit for consumption it would a great boon to mankind. Just to preserve the shelf life, potato has been engineered using a gene from a virus from the arctic region. If only this eventually mutates to make the edible potato into a poisonous variety of which there are many in the forests, we would lose even the few that are edible! Greed is the key word in every field.
Scientific greed is still worse. When I first came to know about the pulls and pushes applied even for the Nobel Prize, I lost all faith in scientists. The story of the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1927 to Wagner Juregg is an example. I am sure there are many more. If that were so what of the lesser awards. Less said about them the better. Fraud in science is rampant. Some of the most prestigious journals had to retract important articles from "star performers" in the field. John Darsee affair stands on the top of the list. While science in principle is laudable many scientists even of repute have feet of clay. A rare unfortunate fellow gets caught, while the majority goes about as great scientists of repute. They are the ones who manage to get top ranking posts in all areas as they are the masters in the art of living in this make believe world. Society blames only the poor politicians for all our ills, while many of our problems could be traced to greedy scientists who connive with the manufacturers of various technologies and the like.
What is the remedy?
Shakespeare had once said that man, whether in the palace or pad; castle or cottage, the same passions and emotions ultimately govern his actions. Our educational system teaches the new comer into the system, even as early as in the kindergarten stage, all the negative emotions of greed, anger, jealousy, hatred, and pride in the name of competition. While these bring on all the diseases in later life, they also make life miserable with all the crimes included. The present system never gives one the truth about the oneness of all that exists on this planet. The king of sciences, physics, now understands that there is nothing solid here and all of us are but bundles of jumping lepto-quarks, which keep changing from one to another. When one realizes the significance of this scientific truth altruism, per force, gets rooted in the young mind. While the present system is very good in teaching objective, external, intellect based education, it totally fails to impress upon the virgin human mind of the wonderful arena of the subjective, internal, and intuition based altruistic knowledge.
The remedy lies in rewriting the syllabus to be based on the latter idea of inner world of man. Total education includes the essentials of humane cultural moorings. Culture could be defined as that which remains with us when all that we studied in school and college is forgotten. This must prepare mankind to act with equality, justice and beauty under all circumstances. Scientific bent of mind is the one that has all these qualities plus that element of curiosity. If one could combine this curiosity with a judicious dose of skepticism and logic one becomes a wonderful scientist. The latter would in addition have an authentic trait that would drive all his actions with altruism as the guiding principle. Society must learn to respect authenticity and not fame and power. Power of all kinds corrupts the mind-it could be money power, muscle power or brain power that many scientists now possess in good measure.