Scientific Culture: A 21st Century View
Much of what is in 21st century now, has been due to science technology and industry which gained momentum during the early 20th century. They had immense acceleration during the second half of the 20th century.
The nuclear bomb exploded over Japan was in a way, a sad metaphor for the explosive growth of human capabilities and activities. Even human population grew from then to now to about 500 percent or more. The 1957 Space era saw a tremendous boost to S&T and associated industries and a major arms race and “science race”.
Many newly liberated nations saw S&T as a panacea for their economic growth and removal of poverty. Look at the number of statements made by their political leaders. Thus grew a huge infrastructure for S&T and industries and agriculture with the use of S&T and healthcare services. All the nations of the world together have about 7.5 billion population and may even each 10 billion in a few decades.
What are the new factors that are facing us now in 2021 and beyond, impacting what was called “Scientific Culture” or “Science Communications” as conceived in Europe and USA more than a century ago? One can write an essay on it. I will mention a few here:
- There are many millions of scientific workers now using a broad meaning of science including industries, health etc. Many billions of people are benefitting from the fruits of their work without any idea of what is the science behind them. Many of them are also ready to believe that there are many ills coming from “Science”, be it flood or a new disease etc. See for example the Vaccine Hesitancy in the most advanced countries, which were ‘avant garde’ for “scientific revolution”.
- There are many nations which are even perhaps ‘anti science’ using S&T merely as a machine for economics, military strength and for keeping their population under severe state control through tools of science. In this process one of the key assumptions of Scientific Culture, namely, individual freedom is essential for growth of science, discoveries and innovation, is under severe question for those who have truthful mind.
- A large part of scientific knowledge is not freely exchanged due to the controls by the states, funding industries and various forms of intellectual property rights (IPR) protections. Also, the dominant institutions of science and technology & innovations (STI) and the journals, mostly in the Western World, are suspected to be having their own opaque peer reviews and editorial practices of the journals. COVID has exposed many of these fault lines.
- The social sciences which have tried to adopt the scientific methods from the natural sciences appear to be split in many ways into ideological positions rather than openness to different approaches.
- Within this milieu comes the explosive growth of internet, mobiles and various Apps to assist instant communications. They have also created a culture of ‘instant gratification’ ‘one click’ approach to many things in life, including the ‘truth’ as they want to get. Very few have the patience to read or listen to a full treatment of a subject. In the process, minds of billions of persons including many youths are conditioned in a variety of ways. Algorithms by the tech-giants have become ‘indoctrinators’ as well. Situation is such that many millions of ‘elites’ and ‘opinion makers’ are somewhat akin to the extremists who are trained in fundamentalist hate-thoughts right from their childhood shutting out other ideas. They can still use all tools and gadgets derived from S & T!
It is important that persons, who are behind the laudable endeavours, as in this seminar to address the scientific culture, the gains of the approach, address the issues I have noted before with open mind. If my facts are wrong or my fears exaggerated, I am open to correction, even condemnation. If I am wrong on all points, I will be the happiest person.
What I have listed above have been in my mind for more than a quarter century through actual experiences and writings of great stalwarts of science. I have written about them in my book Empowering Indians with Economic, Business and Technology Strengths for the 21st Century, published by Har Anand (2001). It has been reviewed by Dr A P Jayaraman in English and Malayalam. (Ref 1)
Ideally, I would like to read out the full quote by Murray Gell -Mann in his book “Quark & Jaguar” (1994) (Ref.2) as quoted in my book. Time is the limitation. So, I give some snippets: Quote “Unfortunately that information explosion is in a great part a misinformation explosion. All of us of are exposed to huge amounts of material consisting of data, ideas and conclusions – much of it wrong or misunderstood or just plain confused. There is a crying need for more intelligent commentary and review” unquote.
Then he describes in detail how incentives in academic systems are skewed against, Quote “that very creative act, the writings or serious review articles and books that distinguish the reliable from the unreliable…” unquote.
Efforts in this direction has been less because academic systems have not adopted it as a part of regular academic work as much as it considers work on original research. Some global efforts like Wikipedia have attempted it. They have done a good job. I use them. I found in some of them, ‘ideological skews’ or ‘biases of blinkers’. I had cross checked with facts. I found that I was not alone. I would like to quote from a report in Epoch Times “Wikipedia co-founder warns; “Wikipedia is more One-sided than ever” by Jack Phillips, July 5, 2021, updated July 6, 2021(Ref.3).
I quote from the report: “Sanger, in particular, took issue with how some Wikipedia entries are sourced. “In short and with a few exceptions, only globalist, progressive mainstream sources- and sources friendly to globalist progressivism – are permitted” he wrote in an article on his website”. Unquote. I find such an approach is not just limited to social sciences and such ‘ideology’ spills to other areas of sciences as well as their sourcing are limited.
We have seen a number of retractions in esteemed journals especially on COVID related matter. But the retracted papers, which are falsehoods are still in the web without any marker on the fact it is wrong. Many future researchers would use them. In such papers, one suspects a pattern of being influenced by commercial competitive interests and biases against some nations.
These are serious matters as they get reported in regular news media, in different forms and in social media with many variants. The net result is the loss “Trust” in what scientists say. Most people do not have time to find that what the truth is.
I quote from my book again which gives a quote from Sergei Kapitsa which is from an article in current science Vol.61 Number 12, Escape from Reason, Anti-science trends in the USSR. (25th December 1991) (Ref.4) written before the collapse of the Soviet Union. A great article, I quote only a small part; Quote: “A point one must bear in mind is that the message of the populariser of science is in most cases taken on trust. The layman believes in what he is told, as the proof is obtainable only through the education. Thus, the trust in message of science demands great responsibility on the part of messenger. On the other hand, the persuasive power of the media, specially of television is remarkable, and the misuse of its potential is a matter of great ethical importance to the society” unquote. He had written before the social media explosion!
Have we as science communicators done something? Instant experts during COVID have almost annihilated that trust. Many lay persons look at science practitioners no better than the politicians whom they consider to be looking for their own selfinterest. Or just those who use something that looks nice for them, which is far away from truth.
Carl Sagan had foreseen this situation in his book “The Demon Haunted World”. I have not read it. But have read some excerpts from a book by Richard Dawkins the Oxford book of Modern Science Writing (2008) (pp.239-243) (Ref.5). Carl Sagan’s book title is “The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”. (1996) He died of cancer in 1996.
Extracts I am sharing now. Quote: “I have foreboding of an America in my children’s and grand children’s time when the United states is a service and information economy, when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries, when the awesome technological powers are in the hands a very few, and no one representing public interest can even grasp the issues………The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media – the 30- second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less) lowest common denominator programming…. but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.” Unquote.
But he does not want a scientocracy. See one more quote: “Humans may crave absolute certainty; they may aspire to it; they may pretend, as partisans of some religions do, to have attained it. But history of science—teaches us that the most we can hope for is successive improvement in our understanding, learning from our mistakes, an asymptotic approach to the Universe, but with a proviso that absolute certainty will always elude us.” Unquote.
How many practitioners of science would openly say this!
In the passing I was pained to read an introductory remark by Dawkins to this article. Quote: “Quite apart from his outstanding contributions to public understanding, Sagan’s own research contributions to planetary sciences would have been fully enough to ensure his election to the National Academy of Sciences, and it is widely believed that envy at his massive success in communicating science to millions was the direct cause of his being black labelled for election for academy”. Unquote
Having seen many things in India over past several decades, I was not surprised. But at the world level, has such a “ganging together” by the scientists who are “powers-that- be”, killed many green shoots of Carl Sagans in their early stages of careers? Point to ponder!
Lastly, I will briefly touch upon another point. It is much more relevant because millions of practitioners of science and billions of consumers of its products are from different cultures. Many of them are different from Europe based on concepts of scientific culture.
I quote Murray Gell-Mann. See Ref 1& 2- Quote- “Many of the local patterns of thought and behaviour are associated with the harmful error and destructive particularism but specifically harassment and persecution of those who espouse the universalizing scientific and secular culture with its emphasis on rationality and the rights of the human individual. And yet it is within that very culture that one often finds people concerned, as a matter of principle, with the preservation of cultural diversity. Somehow the human race has to find ways to respect and make use of great variety of cultural traditions and still resist the threats of disunity, oppression and obscurantism that some of those traditions present from time to time”. Unquote
I would add now in the present context that it will include some modern forms of autocratic regimes as well.
The ways of blending local cultural traditions with modern eurocentric dominant S & T system is given in a highly researched book by Susantha Goonatilake “Toward a Global Science- Mining civilisational knowledge” Vistaar Publication (1998) (Ref.7).
Actually, I need to explain in some detail but due to time constraint I quote only a small part.
Quote: “Grafting knowledge on to the dominant knowledge tree can accomplished in two broad ways – one is to splice in, directly, existing material that has demonstrable direct validity. The second would be to bring in, as metaphors, elements of other traditions that could nudge the imagination and give rise to new concepts” Unquote
He has given several concrete examples of such grafting that had taken place in the past between the East and the West. They existed from the early times, even before colonialism. He has also indicated several examples possible for the future as well.
This form of cultural diversity is crucial not only for the growth of STI but also because it makes it acceptable in fact if I may say lovable and trustworthy in many parts of the world. It is not just our science versus others. But all of us growing into the dominant tree of modern science.
In my writings quoted before (Ref 1), I have given detailed steps to cope up with the massive information explosion and I am not repeating again. Keeping in mind many of the recent developments and trends, I may just add one suggestion for effective science communication as desired by Murray Gell Mann, Carl Sagan and Sergei Kapitsa. It is for creation of ONE CLICK APPS to reach out to links for balanced views on many matters of importance to laypersons and even experts. But I find that the progress in that direction of creating even separate blogs or websites, is rather slow. New generations, even the most educated among them may not see the excitement of science, its beauty but use it as a practical tool for narrow ends.
I thank the organizers again for letting me share my ideas.
(A plenary address on 28th September 2021 by Y S Rajan at a function organized by the National Centre for Science Communications NCSC and Guru Nanak College of Arts, Science, and Commerce, Mumbai on the International Day of Scientific Culture.)