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V.Balasubramani
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Tampering with scientific temper
Is scientific temper an attitude for both the public and the private domains or is it only for the public domain? Is it opposed to or can it coexist with superstition? These are questions India must debate
In early November, the Prime Minister announced that an important initiative to celebrate the 125th birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru was the “promotion of scientific temper among children”. Endorsing this view, a few days later, the Home Minister, who is also the convener of the committee tasked to organise the celebrations, lauded Nehru’s leadership role in promoting scientific temper and in establishing the institutions of science in the country. He described Nehru as a “Rashtra Purush,” high praise which the Sangh Parivar reserves for very few. The message from the two leaders is clear: India needs to invest in “scientific temper” especially among the young if we wish, as a nation, to be a proud participating member of the world of scientific knowledge. There was no ambiguity about government intent. India was on the threshold of a new push towards scientific temper.
Issue of domains
Some weeks later, the Union Cabinet Minister for Human Resource Development, which is the Ministry in charge of schools, colleges, universities, the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, the Indian Institutes of Management and the Indian Institutes of Technology, and thus with the responsibility for the “promotion of scientific temper among children”, was reported, by the media, to have spent four hours with an astrologer in Rajasthan.
When queried about the nature of the consultation, since it concerned the link between palmistry and forecasting the shape of the future, and about the message this publicly reported consultation would give to children, the Minister responded by asking the media to respect her privacy. She thereby introduced a new element into the debate. Is scientific temper an attitude for both the public and the private domains or is it only for the public domain? Is it an attitude of being, for the whole person, or is it only a protocol for public activity? Is scientific temper opposed to superstition or can it cohabit easily with superstition? Is astrology a science or is it superstition? Can the evidence from the palm provide testable hypothesis about future events, such as high humidity means that it will rain, or increased particulate matter in air will produce respiratory illnesses? Is there a causal relation?
These are interesting questions and India, following the Prime Minister’s call, will need to debate them. The urgency of the debate was emphasised when the former Chief Minister of Uttarakhand stated, in no less a place than Parliament, that astrology is superior to science and that Jyotish is a science to make calculations lakhs of years in advance and that all other sciences are dwarfed in front of astrology. With these two counter statements, to the two of the Prime Minister and the Home Minister, the debate has now got very confusing. Can one make calculations lakhs of years in advance? Is scientific temper only a public and not a private matter? Is astrology the master science?
Read more at : Tampering with scientific temper - The Hindu
