AnnDespite the origins of India’s National Science Day, which is meant to celebrate the discovery of the Raman effect rather than talk about pre-eminent scientists and Nobel laureates, it may be worthwhile to consider the absence of serious training in science criticism. Is.
Last week, an article in a mainstream publication claimed that the ‘Shivling’ was proof that sages in ancient India knew about the existence of protons and electrons and that their knowledge was forgotten because they did not use the same terms that Western scholars did. , Such claims have increased our awareness of and skepticism towards attempts to rationalize the validity of knowledge held in some non-science system according to the principles of science.
two extremes
But in their eagerness to get away from this pseudoscientific nonsense, many have gone to the other extreme, championing scientism – the perceived superiority of science and scientific knowledge – to the exclusion of other equally valid experiences of reality.
Adherents of these two extremes may claim to be far apart but they are still united by their inability to imagine each other, better alternatives to a world in which science and non-science can only be at war – as, for example. For, a world in which we make sense of reality through science, humanities and social sciences (HSS), and experience all at once. Even today, anything vaguely unscientific appears on one’s Twitter feed the moment anything vaguely unscientific appears, often at the risk of discarding more robust alternatives.
For example, in 2020, Trisha Greenhalgh noted that waiting for evidence that scientific studies cannot provide may slow our response to COVID-19 in some contexts. As Geeta Chadha and Renee Thomas wrote in 2022, it was an example of “what happens when we present science as a holistic system that has the superpower to transform all ignorance, all evil and all regression. “
In the words of Wilfrid Sellers, our pursuit of the ‘scientific image’ of the world (what science tells us the world is) is threatening the ‘manifest image’ (what the world looks like). Yet we have also learned that the two are not mutually exclusive.
For example, we know that science has a problem with androcentrism. Feminist philosophers have noted that the exclusion of non-cis-men through history has privileged some learning ecologies over others, the way scientists decide what questions to ask about the world, and the way scientists How achievement is defined and rewarded. As a result, today, among other contests on other liberties, the community has taken up the question “What is science?” shrinking to admit only professional scientists, political leaders and perhaps journalists. These are all important stakeholders, but they are not the only ones with skin in the game.
We should welcome more HSS scholars who can take a critical but informed view of science from the outside; more people who have developed their own ways of generating and organizing knowledge based on observation and experience, including indigenous peoples; And more people who have faced the state’s faltering attempts to ‘apply’ science towards economic development at the expense of human rights.
replaceable
There is much more about science that is liable to change than we would like to believe. The usefulness of science arises from the application of critical methods to generate knowledge. But all the activities and events that take place after such knowledge is generated are not necessarily scientific. Biologist Mukund Thattai wrote in a 2018 essay that in India, for example, to finance science as a cultural activity, “a science curriculum based not on dry facts but on the history and process of discovery”. The basis of a broad education with a combination of the humanities and the arts that “may constitute the world”.
Getting from where we are today to where we are today has clearly been a long journey. We need a cultural shift in which, for example, a radar-based coastal weather forecast is considered to be no rationally better than an experienced fisherman’s prediction based on reading familiar natural signals. We will need better science literacy that is not founded on the idea that a ‘scientific image’ is inherently more desirable. We need to systematically examine our fixation on, and often misinterpretation of, the ‘scientific temper’. Above all, for a democratic (re)imagining of science, there must be systematic criticism of science.
As a practical first step, we need to incorporate HSS studies as part of science education in schools, colleges and universities, and where this faculty already exists, into the core curriculum rather than operating it separately. should be integrated.
Currently, in institutions that have HSS departments, English literature scholars are hired to provide better language skills. As a result, many students do not develop the ability to criticize science. Instead, these institutions should include subjects such as the history of science and science and technology studies, in which students are critically engaged with the practice of science.
It is a matter of pride that science has a special place in the concept of India. But far from this vague ideal, in the weeds of daily life, science is increasingly being pulled between two extremes – pseudoscience and scientism – with very few envisioning better options for all of us.