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It has become an ideology of the powerful. Democratic societies need a plurality of knowledge systems.
Context:
- The recent ‘March for Science’ in Delhi on 9th August, 2017 has caught the criticisms of many.
Explanation:
- Science fights dogmas and practices, it gives us clarity of understanding, and the power to demystify and objectify nature for establishing human control over it, and hence, no modern nation in its quest for material wealth and secular reasoning can escape science.
- Critics are of the opinion that even though the achievements of science are remarkable, but its success is tragic.
- Science has been reduced to scientism; it has become hegemonic.
- The orthodoxy of old-fashioned priests, astrologers and practitioners of witchcraft is nothing compared to the damage caused by the scientist dealing with techno science.
- Despite tremendous progress in the philosophy of science, the majority of the practitioners remain reductionist, stereotyping nature and deterministic in their approach.
- They fail to understand the nuanced meanings of reality — the entire domain of symbolism, human longing and creative exploration for man is not just “rational” and “logical”; man is also a visionary, a mystic, a poet, a wanderer and civilisation progresses because there are multiple ways through which we make sense of the world.
- Science is just one way; it has no right to silence the other perspectives.
Conclusion:
- A truly democratic society needs plurality of knowledge traditions, not just science.
- Superstitions have to be fought but it is wrong to believe that science alone can fight it.
