The Limitations of Science
Scientific discovery has created a deep divide between peoples and nations, writes AVERTHANUS L. D’SOUZA
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We are talking about the ‘limitations’ of science; not about the limits of science. There is a very important distinction involved here. Any educated high school graduate, should be able to understand the distinction. It is necessary to draw attention to the limitations of science, because there has been a tendency in the past few years, and, maybe in the last few decades, to misunderstand that science has its limitations. Failure to understand this reality, has led to many erroneous conclusions which have had unfortunate consequences for individuals and also for many societies.
When Christopher Columbus ‘discovered’ the New World, this New World came into being. Before Christopher Columbus discovered it, it did not exist – or so they wanted us to believe. According to the zeitgeist of that time, discovery was equal to creation. Whatever the Spanish conquistadores discovered in the New World ‘belonged’ to them. Therefore, they went about pillaging and plundering whatever they wanted without considering that there were inhabitants before they arrived on the scene, and that these inhabitants had a prior right to the natural resources. In their greed and avarice, they proceeded to misappropriate everything that they found. In the process, these conquistadores not only destroyed valuable natural resources, they also wiped out highly developed civilizations such as the Inca, the Aztec and the Mayan.
In North America, something similar happened. The newly arrived ‘settlers’ from Europe proceeded to grab land and other resources for their own benefit without any concern for the rights of the “original” inhabitants of the place. Both in South America and in the North, the Europeans justified their pillaging and plundering on the grounds that they had ‘discovered’ the lands. After decimating the local populations, they confined the remnants of the local Indians in ‘Reservations’ ostensibly to protect them and to ‘educate’ them in the civilized ways of the European world. The story of Australia and New Zealand is not much different. The aboriginal inhabitants were cruelly deprived of their traditional hunting grounds and herded into ‘Reservations.’ It should be noted that the common factor in the settlement of all the new territories was the use of force by the newly arrived settlers.
What happened in the process of colonization in the New World, in Australia and in New Zealand as well as in other lesser known places of occupation by the Europeans, is paralleled by what happens in science and technology. Scientists endeavour to understand how Nature works. They assiduously pursue the various branches of knowledge – Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Anthropology etc., with the implicit intention of “subjugating” Nature. Their discovery of some of Nature’s laws is quickly converted into proprietary rights over the laws. This is why we have Newton’s laws, Descartes’ laws, Einstein’s laws, and the whole plethora of laws named after the scientists who ‘discovered’ them. There should, normally, be no problem about the laws being named after the scientists who discovered them, just as there should be no problem about stars and planets and constellations being named after the astronomers who discovered them. It makes it easy to formulate the laws and to understand the context in which they were discovered. The problem really arises when scientists and many non-scientific people behave as if the discovery of a law is equivalent to the creation of the law. It is as if the Law of Gravity did not exist until Newton discovered it. The parallel with the conquests of new lands is very striking. America did not exist until Columbus discovered it; nor did Australia and the other lands which were ‘discovered’ by enterprising Europeans. Without digressing into a whole new area of reflection, it would be useful to state, at this point, that the entire world is infected with what can only be described as a Eurocentric view of the world. The core of this article is, however, to draw attention to the sad fact that the discovery of some (emphasis on ‘some’) of Nature’s laws, is construed as a proprietary right of the discoverer to use the newly acquired knowledge in an arbitrary manner. Arbitrary, in the sense, that the knowledge is used to benefit a few people – either companies or nations – to the disadvantage of others. Scientific discovery, as a rule, has created a deep divide between peoples, nations and civilizations. Instead of being a unifying factor, knowledge has been a source of deep divisions between people. Scientific discoveries have never been disinterested. They have always been applied in what is known as technology. And technology has been used as a political tool to subjugate “the others.” There is not enough space to elaborate on the truth of this assertion. However, one or two examples should suffice. The discovery of jet propulsion by Nazi scientists was used by Hitler’s armed forces to develop the missiles which devastated London during the Second World War. The knowledge of atomic fission enabled the U.S. scientists to develop the Atomic Bomb which totally destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Leaving aside for the moment the question of the morality of the use of scientific knowledge and the way in which it is applied in technology, it should become evident that the discovery of laws is not an unmixed blessing. It can be used for good or for evil.
Let us now, briefly dwell on some of the undesirable consequences of technology in recent times. The world has not forgotten the Chernobyl atomic reactor meltdown; nor has it forgotten the Bhopal disaster which was caused by irresponsible handling of a dangerous chemical process by a Company which used technology only to maximize its profit, irrespective of its social obligations. Many readers will remember the panic caused by Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) also commonly called the Mad Cow disease. The driving force behind this Mad Cow disease was the greed of cattle feed manufacturers who mixed the ground remains of dead cattle – bones and offal – with the feed which they supplied to cattle farmers. Older readers will recall the world-wide panic caused by the birth of malformed babies, who were born without limbs, because a pharmaceutical giant marketed the drug Thalidomide for women in early pregnancy, knowing the risks involved. Then there was the medical disaster caused by the marketing of Enterovioform and Mexaform by an irresponsible pharmaceutical giant which put its profits before the health of the people. Such examples can be multiplied.
The point that emerges from this reflection is that scientists and their sponsors – either governments or commercial businesses – pursue science, not for the noble purpose of increasing our knowledge of how Nature functions, but for the purpose of amassing money and power even at the cost of the health and well-being of people.
The Roman thinker Horace warned us that we should not play with Nature because, as he put it:“Naturam expellas furca tamen usque recurret” which translates: You may expel Nature with a pitchfork, but she will reassert herself. This warning is very relevant today when we are confronted with the massive disasters of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the melting of polar ice caps, global warming, the depletion of both terrestrial and marine resources.
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Miracles Do Happen
By Adelmo Fernandes
The tragic plane crash of an Air India Express Boeing 737-800 at Mangalore’s hilltop runway which killed 158 people, has sent shock waves throughout the country. It brought a pale of gloom in Kerala, where most of the passengers lived. But in all this mourning darkness and a sense of disbelief, there was a bright ray of light. Eight passengers, including a woman and a child, miraculously survived the crash. To top it all, one person even left the plane without a scratch. Nine others also had a brush with death. They either could not catch the flight or changed their travel plans. During times of such tragedies one also hears of stories of heroism. But there is probably no story to beat this one. The Chairman and Managing Director of Air India Mr. Arvind Jadhav said in an interview that one of the survivors, after the crash, walked to the main road, asked a motorcyclist to take him back to the crash site, and he himself got involved in the relief work. Seems unimaginable. The CMD of Air India said that the gentleman need not go to Dubai for a job again and has promised to give him a job with Air India. Besides stories of heroism, such accidents are also full of tragic incidents. Like a son, who was on his way home to attend his father’s funeral, being killed in the plane crash. Well miracles do happen. How many times in the past have we not heard of huge buildings collapsing during an earthquake and the lone survivor who is removed from the debris happens to be a little baby? It is indeed the hand of the Almighty God who can bring about such a miracle. George Santayana has described miracles as propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood. Indeed, the human mind is too small to digest the real meaning of a miracle. The eight survivors of the plane crash at Mangalore had a close brush with death. They walked away from certain death. They have had a ‘second life’. How many of us have had a brush with death? We have heard of true stories of a person not reaching the Railway station in time to catch the train only to hear latter on in the news that the train met with an accident. On the other hand one has also heard of stories when a person did not get a plane ticket till the very last moment, only to be told that he would be flying because another passenger had cancelled his plans to fly. The plane then plummets into the sea killing all the passengers. The ways of the Almighty God are indeed strange. They cannot be understood by the human mind with all its limitations. In the past we have also heard of true stories wherein the lone survivor in a plane crash happened to be a toddler. This is probably God’s way of telling us that He, after all, has not lost faith in His creation despite their shortfalls and iniquities. There is no doubt that those who have a close brush with death will no longer be the same again. They will now see life through a prism. They will realise the true value of life and will cherish every moment of their life for the rest of their life. We tend to take life for granted. It is only when we come out from a life threatening disease and get a ‘second life’ that we realise the true value of living and start thanking God for the gift of life.
