It
is indeed beyond superlative degree of fashion and the spirit of
passion that the word crisis is being increasingly used in
organizing academic, chambers of commerce or government conferences.
Then we start to believe that crisis is there to stay forever.
Of course there are many types of crisis facing our daily lives. Huge
challenges of food security, governance reforms, poverty, education &
employment opportunities, infrastructure development, and health care
facilities are all the impending challenges and the failure to
respond to those is already translating into one of the biggest
crises of our country in the making. The audacity with which we
embrace vision documents being circulated every now and then
in those conferences merely touches the inner core of crisis i.e.
what were the reasons for it. And suppose if someone advises to
forget causality and respect uncertainty then he/she
would be lectured by people in rational think tanks to shut up
because it will add chaos and confusion to the process of scenario
building about their strategic equations.
 |
| SIDHARTHA MUKHERJEE |
Perception
of crisis is undeniably related to our projection of hope about life
we are living. Recently when asked about what it means to die at
early age due to cancer, Siddhartha
Mukherjee1 uttered,
“Question of what exists and how life
should be beyond certain time extends forever; you should rather
figure out what to do because our lives are stitched together through
memories. Thus question of beyond is abstract question, rather
ask question what is now, what is next, what u want... Hope is
negotiable; there are no archetypal/standard/classic hopes. Why then
the hope should be absolute? People`s hope change over time and
surely hope is negotiable.” Then he continues to say that why we
are spending millions of rupees on military when we direly need
investment in life saving drugs to prevent or to cure cancer.2
The
economist William Baumol calls this "a touch of madness."
You can see that venture capitalists do better than entrepreneurs,
but publishers do better than writers, dealers do better than
artists, and science does better than scientists (about 50 percent of
scientific and scholarly papers, costing months, sometimes years, of
effort, are never truly read). The person involved in such gambles
is paid in a currency other than material success: hope. As a
matter of fact, your happiness depends far more on the number of
instances of positive feelings, what psychologists call "positive
affect," than on their intensity when they hit. In other words,
good news is good news first; how good matters rather little. 3
 |
| PAUL FORMAN |
 |
| THOMAS KUHN |
This
reminded me of three persons and one book. First Steve Jobs; who died
due to curable cancer. He, in later life transformed crisis in his
life into assets, turning the frustration of professional failure
into something crucible of creativity. Secondly Thomas Kuhn who also
died because of lung cancer and is remembered for legendary work on
scientific revolutions through abrupt changes in paradigms of
knowledge determining the extension or contraction of subject
boundaries. Paradigm is explanatory model which comprises scientific
concepts, methods, facts and assumptions. Kuhn theorized that instead
of altering ways of thought gradually and progressively, dramatic
paradigm shift in scientific beliefs could occur with unexpected
suddenness. This shift from intellectual framework to another could
result by accumulation of awkward facts that fit poorly with an
existing theory when body of ill-fitting facts was two weighty to
reconcile with the orthodox world-view. Thus a new framework would be
developed to replace it and consensus would tip towards new position.
If new world view were radical enough, the old one might even become
incomprehensible and incommensurable in the words of Kuhn. 4
Thirdly,
I am reminded of one book which recently I came across. The book I
tumbled upon was about how scientific feuds contributed to the
evolution of knowledge system in modern times.5
It expresses the process of scientific enquiry in following words:
“Nature of science means that conflict is built into its DNA. Since
in its purest form is a process of trial and error: hypotheses are
formed through observation and experiment, and then these hypotheses
are tested with further observation and experiments. If they are
supported they become theories—true models of how world works,
perhaps even laws of nature—but even most solid theory can be
revised or overturned of new evidence comes to light. This ideal of
scientific method has lead some theorist of science to apply
Darwinian ideas of natural selection to science itself; ideas are
engaged in a constant battle for survival in which only fittest will
prosper.”
Fourthly,
this all discussion about crisis and hope also reminds us of great
thinker Paul Forman and his thesis. Paul Forman is an historian of
science and a curator of the Division of Medicine and Science at the
National Museum of American History.
Let us keep in mind classical, rational way of investigating science
and then reflect on how Forman introduces
his thesis about peculiar German connection to the dynamics of
quantum mechanics discovery in 1920s and 30s.
He says: “In
the aftermath of Germany`s defeat the dominant intellectual tendency
in the Wiemer academic was a neo-romantic, existentialist ‘philosophy
of life’, reveling in crisis and characterized by antagonism
towards analytic rationality generally and towards the exact sciences
and their technical implications particularly. Implicitly or
explicitly, the scientist was the whipping boy of the incessant
exhortations to spiritual renewal, while the concept-or the mere
word-‘causality’ symbolized all that odious in scientific
enterprise.” 6
Further, a sense of spiralling social
crisis affected all aspects of life, including science. It
particularly inspired widespread discussion about the ‘crisis in
science’, which encouraged some scientists to question the
conceptual foundations of their respective disciplines.
In
a way Germany sought to build future out of its past by rejecting
utilitarian standards of her conquerors, to re-establish itself on the
cultural level as the leader of a new Europe. Mathematical education
in schools was replaced by intuitive ways and cultural methods.
Weiman Hendry, another historian, sheds more light on the nuances of
the debate started by Forman.7
Weimar says that, “We are often reminded that history of ideas is
rarely straightforward. For while there were indeed many attacks upon
mathematics and physics from outside these disciplines, these were in
all cases attacks upon their value, rather than upon their content.
(In Germany) Causal approach to social sciences was attacked as being
inapplicable to their particular subject matter.”
Physics and
causality were being attacked by equating both to each other. Those
were the times when Einstein declared through correspondence with the
peer scientists his reluctance to give up the rationality of science
in these words, “…business of causality causes me a lot of
trouble too; but would be very unhappy to renounce causality.”
The
legendary work of Forman has been under constant review and
discussion in recent times.8
Scholars say, “Forman`s thesis has
remained at the heart of debates about the historical relationship
between science and culture ever since. His work placed at the centre
of a broader discussion the argument that the cultural values
(especially individuality and clearness) prevalent in a given
place and time could influence the results of discipline-bound
research, i.e. the very content of scientific knowledge. This idea,
if still controversial, has since become commonly used in cultural
studies of science, but at the time of its introduction it created
uproar as it explicitly contradicted generally accepted and beliefs
about science. Yet tectonic shifts were already underway, if not
always visible, that would eventually put those very beliefs into
question.
The Forman study both reflected and forwarded these shifts
in our general perspectives on the nature and practice of science.
Despite some heated objections to its findings, Forman’s work has
fundamentally changed directions of research in the history,
sociology and philosophy of science and established itself as a
classic in this group of fields, sometimes collectively called
science studies.” 9
Thus
Forman thesis played an important role in the spread of the sociology
of scientific knowledge in the 1980s. Many of the pioneers of the new
sociological approach referred to the case of quantum acausality as
the single most powerful demonstration of the far-reaching influence
of social factors on the hard theoretical core of scientific
knowledge. 10
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1
Mukherjee, S. (2010). The emperor of all maladies: A biography of
cancer. New York: Scribner
2
Transcripts of Tehelka Conference ‘Think Fest’,
Goa, India, November 2011
4
Johnston, Sean (2009), History of Science
A
Beginner's Guide,
One World Publishers, ISBN
9781851686810
6
Forman, P. (1971) ‘Weimar
culture, causality, and quantum theory,
1918-1927: Adaptation by German physicists and mathematicians to a
hostile intellectual environment’, s.l.:s.n.1971. Print
8
Forman, P., Carson, C., Kozhevnikov, A. B., & Trischler, H.
(2011). Weimar culture and quantum mechanics: Selected papers by
Paul Forman and contemporary perspectives on the Forman thesis.
London: Imperial College Press
9
C. Carson, A. Kojevnikov and H. Trischler (2011), ‘The Forman
Thesis: 40 Years After’, Weimar culture and quantum mechanics:
Selected papers by Paul Forman and contemporary perspectives on the
Forman thesis. London: Imperial College Press
10
Entering the field as trained historians of science, Thomas Kuhn,
John L. Heilbron, Paul Forman and Lini Allen embarked in 1961 upon
the ambitious project of the Archive for the History of Quantum
Physics (AHQP) — not an archive in the usual sense but a
comprehensive effort to locate and catalogue an international body
of manuscripts and correspondence of several hundred quantum
scientists active between approximately 1900 and 1935. Taking a
proactive approach to sources, the AHQP project microfilmed many
crucial collections, bringing them closer to researchers. It also
pioneered the technique of oral history in the history of science by
recording interviews with about 100 physicists, including Niels
Bohr, Max Born and Werner Heisenberg.
