On Tue, 2014-07-01 at 15:50 +0530, Deepa Agashe wrote: > I'm a scientist, but I don't think most what I do has any direct > impact on > people at all. My work (understanding how evolution works, in a > nutshell) > makes some people happy and some angry, but mostly people don't care. > The > state of the human body or mind is certainly not a goal that drives my > work, at any rate. > > I'm still unsure what agenda or plot am I following (or losing), apart > from > trying to understand what I find curious.
I am a scientist too and have spent all my life, reading, thinking about and working with and on, science. And I am not sure I like the way science is heading. So, as is my wont, I am making a statement about impressions I get and looking for responses. The responses I got were angry and indignant and that in itself is interesting to me - but it's another topic. :D But first, one could ask, "What is science?" Science is partially about understanding the world/universe around us and answering questions that we have. A far larger part of the world's "body of scientists" are involved in "applied science" in which science is applied to achieve some goal. Of course I have spent many enchanted hours following the science of how to design things that kill people. But even here - goals are met by funding research that designs such killer hardware simply as a means to dominate and make some people richer and others poorer - so even weapons manufacturing and the science that goes into that only aids the goals that I listed. Certain aspects of science - like pure mathematics, particle physics of the CERN genre are not obviously offshoots of my list. But my own field - medicine, is all about making people fatter and live longer. And happier, with a bit of luck. I think that science sort of "blasted its way" into a religion clouded world and blew religion away with its successes and its promise. But science, having blown religion away does not know where it is heading. Religion had used outrageous explanations for what it could not explain. Science brought in rationality and understanding - much to the chagrin of "religionists".But Science started "playing God" to an extent. Things that previously required a chancy divine intervention were easily and consistently achieved by science. The need for God receded. Ever since my childhood - which was over four decades ago, I have been bombarded with information about science which invariably seeks to conquer nature, the world or the universe. That was a stated goal and it was also very very believable back in the 60s. It was possible to "conquer" nature and control everything. That of course is untrue and scientists everywhere are beginning to understand the limitations of science and the difficulties that are yet to come to make the slightest progress. But that realization has come at a cost - too many mistakes have been made and not all of them are reversible. Science has done things to the world which were done "in good faith" as part of "conquering nature". Instead of conquering nature - a lot of things simply got screwed up with no easy solutions. While there probably are many examples I see the "demographic bulge" of older people in populations as a consequence of the stupidity of science and a naive belief that good was being done. Mind you, it was not "science" alone. But it was science and scientists who were readily available and genuinely believed that they were doing good by working on ideas that were actually social engineering and blind experimentation with no idea about long term consequences. Everything about personal freedom, freedom from hard labour, health, wealth and happiness as in lack of suffering, lack of hunger, lack of comfort, lack of spare time to spend for "leisure", lack of "quality" in life were all addressed as problems to be solved by scientists who devised short term or medium term fixes with little understanding about what "long term" really means. The topic is huge and is partly philosophical. I did not mean to cause anger - but "anger" when science is dissed shows the kind of cockiness that science has engendered among people who admire science. This in itself should be a warning sign. The last time people got angry at their work being dissed was when religionists were having their butts kicked in by scientists. shiv
