Editors note: This lecture is part of a series of lectures Prof. Kambadur Muralidhar gave at the University of Hyderabad in 2017, that he kindly shared with Club Sciwri. We will be publishing all the lectures, in parts, over the coming months. ~ Arunima
Cosmologists tell us that our ‘Universe’ arose approximately fourteen billion years ago as a result of the ‘Big Bang’. It is estimated that our planet Earth formed around 4.5 billion years ago.
It is also speculated, with some scientific evidence that ‘Life’ originated on Earth around 3.5 billion years ago. Cellular forms of life or living organisms arose much later, but the details of this period are not yet known with much certainty. The Darwinian mode of organic evolution by Natural Selection probably started around the same time. A vast ‘Biodiversity’ was gradually created over a period of millions of years. However, creatures resembling ‘modern man’ probably did not arrive earlier than 4,00,000 years ago! Man was initially a ‘hunter-gatherer’ and agriculture was mostly discovered around 10000-15000 years ago, enabling humans to live in groups that later got organized as ‘societies’. Waves of human migration followed, enabling man to occupy different habitats on earth. Comparative linguistics also supports this story. Inter-individual (within a society) and inter-societal relations were complex and dynamic during the last 5000 years. Rulers, traders, and workers got organized as subgroups within each identified society. Coexisting in these subgroups were an insignificant percentage of men who indulged in ‘reflective thinking’ on matters concerning individual lives vis-a-vis society; these were later called ‘Philosophers’. Two traditions in philosophical discourses could be discerned. One, in which bards told stories (mythos) of Gods and God like men, thus creating mythology, and the other, where the majority of early Greek Philosophers sought to analyze and explain human behavior in terms of ‘Ethology’ and ‘Aesthetics’. Ethology deals with expected social conduct and Aesthetics deals with understanding ‘Beauty’ from different perspectives. Some others, especially those around Asia (e.g. India, China etc.) speculated much on life after death and in general on the cosmic significance of human life!
All the great religions like Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Sikhism arose out of these speculations. God is the central concept in all these. Every religion in this world comes with its own mythology.
In addition, many atheistic but humanism-centric rational systems of Philosophy also arose especially in China, India and Greece. The latter systems, based on ‘logos’, or logic, were called Natural Philosophies in contrast to those that discussed ‘God’.
During the Renaissance period in Europe, another system of Philosophy began to take shape. This went on to be labelled as ‘Natural Science’, to distinguish it from all other systems of Philosophy. Science in the modern sense took birth in Europe around this period. This was different from other systems of Philosophy in many respects. For one, it had as its principal aim, understanding the structure and function of ‘NATURE’. The approach to realizing this was through experimentation, and not merely reflective thinking. Measurement of some variable was the foundation on which the edifice of science was to be built. Inductive reasoning and deductive logic dictated the experimental design. Reproducibility of results/observations became an essential demand of this approach. This whole approach was to be called ‘Scientific Method’. In summary, this new philosophy called ‘Science’ was both, the obtained information/ knowledge about Nature, and the way to go about obtaining that information/ knowledge. As ‘NATURE’ is vast and complex, Natural Science was divided, for convenience, into Physics, Chemistry, and Biology as the three fundamental sciences. Each sought ‘TRUTH’ about ‘NATURE’ in their own characteristic way in terms of questions, methods, and ways of interpretation. While Physics arrived at the Physical Reality of this universe as its version of ‘TRUTH’, Chemistry sought ‘TRUTH’ in compositional analysis seeking the utopian universal substance. Biology, the science of living organisms, did not choose experimentation as an approach till the middle of the seventeenth century. At this point, René Descartes, the French mathematician and probably the first philosopher of science, sought to change Biology into an experimental science, like Physics and Chemistry, and also emphasized on the utility value of science in terms of adding creature comforts to human lives. Applied sciences began essentially from that period. Science became a way of life and greatly influenced national developmental policies all over the world. But, like any other system of philosophy, science also divided society and truth got fragmented.
Suggested Reading Material
- Sarukkai, S. (2010). What is science? National Book Trust, Delhi.
- Balakrishna Shetty (2013). What is Mathematics? National Book Trust, Delhi.
- Durant, W. ((1961). The Story of Philosophy, Pocket Books, Simon Schuster Inc., USA.
- Taleb, NN. (2007). The Black Swan Penguin Books, England.
- Raman, VV. (2008-2010) The Scientific Enterprise, a series of eleven articles that appeared in ‘Resonance’ the science education journal, Indian Academy Of Sciences, Bengaluru.
- Bernal, JD. (1954) Science in History, Penguin Books, England.
- Koestler, A. (1964) The Act of Creation, Hard back Hutchinson, London, Baggins Book Bazaar Ltd Rochester, UK.
- Lakoff, G and Johnson, M. (1998) Philosophy in Flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to western thought, Basic Books, New York.
- Wilson, EO. (1999). Consilience, the unity of knowledge, Vintage Books, New York. 10. Wilson, EO. (2014). The Meaning of Human Existence, WW Norton and Company Ltd, USA.
- Carl Sagan., (1980) Cosmos, Random House, New York.
- Muralidhar, K., (2014) Nature of Science, Creativity and Education, INSA Distinguished Lectures, (Ed) SK Saidapur, Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi.
- Peter Medawar (1986) The Limits of Science, Oxford Paperbacks.
Author
Prof. Kambadur Muralidhar is an Indian biologist, known for his work in biochemistry, endocrinology and reproductive biology. He taught at Delhi University for over thirty years, and was Head of its Department of Zoology. Currently, he is Jawaharlal Nehru Chair Professor, School of Life Sciences, University of Hyderabad. He is a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, the Indian Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences, India. He is also highly regarded as a teacher and educator, and has contributed to biology education at both high school and college levels.
Editors
Arunima Singh, PhD edited, and Paurvi Shinde, PhD, proofread the article.
Arunima obtained her PhD from the University of Georgia, and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the New York University. A computational structural biologist by training, she enjoys traveling, reading, and the process of mastering new cuisines in her spare time. Her motivation to move to New York was to be a part of this rich scientific, cultural, and social hub.
Paurvi is a recent PhD, in Biomedical Sciences (Immunology) with expertise in T cell activation pathways. She currently works as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Bloodworks Northwest in Seattle, where she studies the mechanism of how alloantibodies are formed against ‘non-ABO Red Blood Cell antigens’. Apart from science, she loves editing scientific articles to convey the message behind it, in a clear and concise form.
Artist
Ipsa provided the cover image. She is a post-doctoral fellow at Instem, Bangalore. She tries to communicate science through visual arts as a medium. Collecting graphic books, tree trash, and reading brain pickings is few of her favourites. Follow and purchase her artwork at Ipsawonders (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram). She will be happy to hear praises and non-praises at ipsajain.31@gmail.com.
The vintage images incorporated in the collage to make the cover image were taken from British heritage library collection.
Other images in the blog courtesy Pixabay.
Blog design: Arunima Singh
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