Scientific Temper

To fully do justice to this topic that can very well encompass human history with all its possible ramifications; include the progress of human civilization socially and technologically; challenge institutions like religion may require writing of a volume. Laying down some basic ideas is what one can hope for, in a single, brief article. It is impossible to touch on all aspects and all questions that might arise in readers’ minds.

Bhagat Singh argues marvelously in his article ‘Why I am an atheist’ as to how God cannot exist given the horrible conditions of the world (as God would correct the bad material conditions); and if God is considered benevolent, then he cannot preside over and take pleasure in the kind of atrocities that plague mankind. Dialectically, Bhagat Singh shreds the major premise of ‘benevolence of God’ among other bases on which major religions like Christianity, Islam and Hinduism are based. That, can be considered as a starting point of scientific temper. Scientific temper, however, will go beyond dialectics. It will also include logic based on evidence and observed phenomena; a spirit of enquiry; an unbiased judgment based on facts; and openness of mind to accept new knowledge. These are the key elements that will constitute the basis of scientific temper. This can become quite a challenging mental process to adopt and adhere to in the wake of innumerable biases, social and political conditioning, culture and customs, one grows with. Even Einstein grew up as a devout child (though his parents were non-believers); however his brilliant mind soon realized the folly of his thoughts. He writes in his auto-biography that, “Reading of popular science books soon made me realize that stories in the Bible cannot possibly be true.” He was only 13 at the time. Not everybody can reach that conclusion so early in their lives and it is only with incessant challenging of the dogmas, that one can hope to achieve that state of mind. It is also quite erroneous to think that scientific temper is related to science or people who study science. The very basis of it, in fact, requires no special training in any discipline. Anyone can achieve that state of thought process through one’s own conscious effort.

A person of true scientific temper will have no assumptions about benevolence of God; he will very well accept that God can be nasty with human attributes; or at the other extreme, no human attributes can be attached to God. What makes such a person not believe in God whether humanized or not is the sheer lack of any evidence of existence of such entity. It is only on facts that one chooses not to believe in a supernatural entity. This goes a little beyond polemics of logic. Many Greek and Hindu Gods were not particularly nice, many of them were quite humanized; full of human vices. That alludes towards a masterly figment of human imagination when resources and tools to acquire knowledge of natural world were cripplingly limited. Issac Newton, who spent his entire life understanding the natural world, and making laws which form the basis of our understanding of the natural world around us; was considered religious and was making calculations for the ‘end of the days’ in the sunset of his life. Someone like Issac Newton, who could single-handedly revolutionize human knowledge with his unparalleled intellect; was constrained by the lack of scientific tools and knowledge in his time to investigate further. And that possibly made him remain as a man of faith. Magical stories and description of ways to lead life in religious texts, not only point to a fertile creativity of human mind but also point to means which man developed to create some semblance of order in society. It was a time when modern concepts of laws of the land, constitution, courts etc. did not exist. Religious form of control and order in the society, however, had drastic and some of the most horrendous consequences on human race; where people who went against religious authority were pursued, persecuted and burnt alive. These people not only included astronomers and mathematicians but anyone who went against religious institutions and its diktats. Women suffered the most in these times when ‘witch’ hunts were carried out for non-conforming women among other unspeakable atrocities against them. These were the middle dark ages when science did not prosper and humanity witnessed some of the most egregious crimes against itself. Modern times have seen a revival of this trend when the religious right world over is trying to capture power and deny everything that is scientific and humane. A broad spectrum of issues is under direct attack from them ranging from climate change to the rights of women. Going into effects of religion on society as a whole is beyond the scope of this brief article. It suffices to say that even in its best form, religion in Marx’s words was nothing more than “opium for masses,” providing temporary and unrealistic respite from harsh economic and social realities; consequently, dulling scientific temper and diminishing the possibility for an emancipating revolution.

The advent of agriculture and metal work which freed and disengaged a significant portion of human population from the act of producing food, and keeping themselves safe, allowed cities to flourish and people to delve into arts, literature, science and philosophy. As the fight with the nature for survival reduced, gaining an understanding of nature, or explaining it in some fashion, became focal for early intellectual part of human life. Ultimately, two paths seem to have emerged; one, which led to religion, in which any unexplained phenomenon could be attributed to the supernatural and second, a difficult path of painstakingly trying to understand nature with observation and evidence; and developing laws to explain the natural phenomena. Ancient philosophers took part of the latter path in a dialectical sense, and tried to explain the world around them. The polemical and philosophical points put forth by ancient philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, that remained guiding light for mankind for centuries, could not survive the test of physical evidence and observation of the natural world. Philosophers like Aristotle, who pursued truth or mysteries of life by sheer logic or dialectics, got phased out in the course of time. It became apparent that it was impossible to understand the natural world only with logic; without any sophisticated knowledge of mathematics, physics, biology or other disciplines of science. When philosophers failed to keep up with the scientific and mathematical developments, their relevance in regards to pursuit of truth of the natural world waned. In today’s modern world, it is the synergy of the diversified scientific fields of study that give us some glimpse into the workings of the natural world and a means to explore it further. “Technicians” of the “age of philosophers” became physicists, engineers, biologists and other people of highly specialized skills unraveling the mysteries of the natural world. The realm of modern philosophy is now mostly in socio-political sphere. One notable exception is the theory of dialectical materialism. Originally proposed by Hegel, and furthered by Marx and Engels, who together put forward a stunning analysis of society based on material conditions (evidence as in pure science) and made it achieve a state of science together with historical materialism. In the words of Karl Marx, "The ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind and translated into forms of thought." The theory has stood the test of times as it bases itself on the material or the natural world, as do other scientific disciplines.

It is humanly impossible today to pursue knowledge of the natural world or gain understanding of it in one’s own individual capacity. That is due to diversified skills required for such pursuit; so one will need to trust existing, proven knowledge and literature in the field. A simple example can be that one might argue that one does not believe in divisibility of matter as one has not seen existence of electrons with one’s naked eyes. However, there are other ways of finding its existence, e.g. one feels electric shock due to passage of electrons but does not necessarily see them. We see sun going around the earth but in reality earth goes around the sun. At the other end of the spectrum is the phenomenal theory of evolution postulated by Darwin in his masterpiece “The Origin of Species.” Publishing of this work was the ultimate blow to creationism and put a final nail in the coffin of any intellectual content in any religion. Anybody who has resounding and unfaltering ‘faith’ in human perception must read this book to understand how details do not reveal themselves even being in front of one’s eyes. Human sensory perception is not only inadequate in many cases but can often lead to wrong notions and ideas. To get physical evidence free of bias of human perception, scientific methods are adopted and it is not possible for everyone to know those methods. When those methods correctly correlate the physical phenomena they can be safely assumed to be correct although we may not understand the methods themselves. And that’s what can be considered and accepted as knowledge, based on evidence. This knowledge, one can find and accept.

Scientific temper, as can be seen, is one of the most misunderstood phrases. One often associates scientific temper with people who have had some education in science. As science becomes a refuge to counter religion and superstition, it also endangers people, especially from humanities to tend to think that all mysteries of nature have been answered by science. A vast majority of humanities people, however, quite easily succumb to religiosity, superstitions and tradition. Science itself has become so diversified and specialized that it is possible only to pursue a relatively narrow stream of it; and studying a tiny fraction of one stream of science may not necessarily inculcate scientific temper in a person. Realization of the fact (apart from social conditioning) that education in a stream of science left terribly many question unanswered, can be highly unsettling in mind, thus opening an easy and highly tempting path of belief in supernatural. Belief in an all powerful supernatural force can provide a means to get rid of the subconscious anxiety for knowledge and truth. That is the beginning of intellectual decline. Not many people are able to resist the temptation and that’s why it is not uncommon to see many people who have studied some branch of science as being highly religious. A civil engineer will know perfectly that a bridge can collapse due to its faulty design and not because of some mysterious and grand design, but may look in awe and wonder at the birth of a human child. Similarly, a doctor with full understanding of the process of birth may observe the night sky with shining stars in great mystery and awe. Only a holistic way of thinking can prevent one from falling into such traps.

Among other factors, ignorance of other fields contributes towards inclination to supernatural. In the modern world, it is impossible to master all disciplines of study and be on top of all of them. One way is to simply assume that some field of study must have an answer to the question that is troubling us, but that in itself is a dogmatic approach. Truth is, that as much as we have advanced human knowledge and have managed to answer many questions, we still don’t know enough. It is arrogant to assume that we are at the height of pursuit of knowledge mankind can ever achieve. Civilizations with first written word might have assumed something similar but they could have never, even in their wildest of imaginations, imagined the kind of world which we live in today. The key is to remember that we are not at the zenith of knowledge; we don’t know whether we ever will be and we are still finding answers to questions that have posed themselves since centuries. This thought process itself can free one’s mind of many shackles that constrain the mind. If one is curious enough for a particular question in mind, one can definitely dabble in the area to find out what is the latest knowledge in that field. A persistent pursuit of knowledge, in however small baby steps, can lead towards a path of intellectual enlightenment and freedom from the trap of supernatural and occult.

It is important to point out that in no way there is an allusion to sole individual responsibility for developing scientific temper. Even privileged sections of society who have had the opportunity of decent education struggle with social customs, mores, traditions, religious faith, rituals, political conditioning, which all may cumulatively hamper development of scientific temper. With education, at least they have the tool to get out of darkness. It is however, monumentally difficult for a vast majority of population, especially in the third world, that is systematically deprived from and denied education and basic living of standard. The feudal relations that still exist in countries like India make it beneficial for the ruling class to have majority of the population illiterate and mired in superstitious beliefs. The underlying capitalist relations in feudal systems which make profits of socialized production through bonded labor go to a small group of people thrive on such lack of education. The betterment of life, and even its preservation, which can be achieved through scientific knowledge never reaches them, let alone the knowledge itself or means to achieve it. State power derived from class based democracy obediently serves the capitalist class and its interests. A glaring example that must be mentioned is the Tsunami waves that hit Sri Lanka and south-eastern coast of India. Thousands of people died due to lack of any Tsunami warning systems. While coastlines of California in the US and Japan enjoy advanced warning systems, none of these systems are installed in South Asia as majority of it remains a sweat shop of imperialist Western powers and lives of the people in the sweat shops are obviously cheaper than the products they make. It is revealing to glance over a few quotes from Chicago Tribune when Tsunami hit Indian Ocean:
"What one’s faith gives you is the capacity to respond to a disaster, not necessarily to explain it." - Prof. Diana Eck, Harvard Divinity School
"It is a natural event. We cannot do anything about it. Hold onto the feet of the lord. He will give you the strength to go through what you have to go through." - Krishna Rajan, Hindu Temple of Greater Chicago
"When the waves washed over India’s coastal villages Sunday, thousands of pilgrims to a Marian shrine were washed away as they attended mass. Bodies were buried in the sand, and the shrine suddenly became a morgue. University of Chicago divinity student Kristin Bloomer, in the region to study Indian devotion to Mary, said she watched one man shout: ‘There is nothing! There is nothing! Where is God? What is God?’"
The above includes quotes of people from prominent universities; such is the state of moral and religious philosophers! When sea retreated in many areas for up to two miles from the coast, the poor people in the coastal areas had no clue how to react to it when that was a clear sign of Tsunami. They wondered at this natural quirk, even playing in the exposed sea bed, waiting unawares to be engulfed by killer Tsunami waves. Thus they held feet of the lord.

As cumulative knowledge of mankind progresses, it is becoming increasingly evident that in existence of today’s physical world, there is no need of a supernatural entity. As Stephen Hawking mentions in his latest book, ‘The Grand Design,’ almost all phenomena of the natural world can be explained with the help of natural physical laws. This progress has been possible only with true scientific temper. It is the subconscious scientific temper that leads to an unbiased, free of prejudice thought process and commitment to truth. It makes an investigative journalist to unearth a true story, a lawyer to fight for the underprivileged, a teacher to teach correct history and a scientist to draw correct conclusions from experiments. Human race still has long ways to go, to employ science in the service of mankind and not for its destruction; to develop and achieve a society where exploitation of man by man would be unthinkable, where discrimination of all forms would be abolished, where nation boundaries will cease to exist and the entire human race will be part of the world citizenry, free to think, innovate, create and prosper; where class-based society would be a thing of past, where manual and mental labor would not be differentiated, where harmony would replace competition and people will live in a just and free world. Development and nurturing of scientific temper will be crucial in striving towards achievement of such a society, whose mere mental glimpse makes us feel living in a stone age.