Can Science Liberate? - Jeyamohan

Can science benefit humanity? Will freedom, food, clothing, shelter and satisfaction can be attained through it? We trained to say 'yes'. Those who deny science are conservatives like racists and communalists. Science liberated us from their grip and gave us this level of freedom, worldly pleasure and contentment. Those who look down the present-day society created by science as a decadent, and praise the feudalism of bygone eras, refuse to see the historical reality.

Science and modernity are intertwined. Science and rationalism are almost the same thing. So modern people should fully embrace science. In the past, there were only two sides in the knowledge base in our society: Acceptors and Deniers of Science. Those who accepted science spoke in the language of logic, while those who rejected it spoke in the voice of faith. Science gradually became a field of knowledge and religion. Whether one belongs to the religion of science or another is become a question.

Today the triumph of science is evident. Today we see those against science trying to 'prove' how scientific their fanaticisms like religion, casteism and language are. We are told that even blatant historical distortions and superstitions have 'scientific proof'. In fact, today, everything is shown to us as scientific, from the impact of face cream to satellites being deflected by the power of the Saneeswaran temple.

Today many questions arise from the supporters of science about the limits and harms of science. When a scientific discovery like cloning or artificial intelligence is presented, warnings arise from the advocates for science. Some postmodernist today denies the dominance of science by saying science itself has become an authority and many of the scientific principles are just a tool for authoritarianism.

The period from 1920 to 1980 can be roughly considered as the pinnacle of trust in science. Many of the great achievements of science were turned into products that directly controlled and created the world in the 1900s. Advanced transportation and mechanized modern manufacturing completely revolutionized economics. Modern communication tools gave way to modern education. The resulting societies coalesced into modern nations. A very strong army and a centralized government emerged. Democracy was born.

Both world wars were the result of science. Modern armies created modern governments. Modern states sought new dominions. As a result, world wars occurred. Yet faith in science continued to grow. Science also helped to repair the ravages of war. But the destruction wrought on nature by consumerism as a result of science was documented in the 1970s. Powerful governments created by science suppressed individual rights. Scientific investment leading to further exploitation is pointed out. The golden era of scientism is over.

Bertrand Russell was the central philosophical thinker of the scientific age. He was one of the primary authors cited by those who worked against superstitions and orthodoxies around the world in the last century. He himself became the sage of those who worshiped science as religion. He wrote a short book 'The Impact of Science On Society' in 1952. This book was translated into Tamil by an undergraduate, A. Natarasan in the 1960s and published by Rajeshwari Bookstore at a price of 4 rupees. Its reprint histories show that it has remained a book that has not been widely read. It was never printed again. I have the first edition. I read it again recently, forty-one years later.

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It is striking today that Russell did not see science as a liberating tool in itself. He elaborates on the constructive contributions of science. Mankind has tried to understand the universe, nature, and human life through beliefs and symbols throughout history. Empirical knowledge also came into play, which helped them to construct worldly life. It was that empirical knowledge that later developed as a scientific methodology.

Humanity has two conflicting intellects. One is to create and maintain continuity of thought. What matters to that party is what the ancestors have told. It continues to learn the past and takes it to the next generation. Another intellectual activity is exploring and learning new things. For that, the words of ancestors are important only as a prediction. Violation is its way. Among these two intellectual activities, the first type of activity had more space and power in the past. Religionists and ritualists are of this type. They monitored and oppressed the other type. Advancements in human thought took place, overcoming that oppression.

The era of science is the dominance of the second type. They created continuous progress with complete independence. They scrutinized and mercilessly rejected the past with experiments. They constantly scrutinize and reexamine their own ideas, reject them when they become outdated, and move on. Russell notes that the age of science emerged from the sixteenth century and gradually gained momentum, and reached its highest point in the twentieth century.

Russell mentions the following as two consequences of science. Knowing and using this world. Knowledge becomes application, and application provides the impetus to learn more. We call knowledge as science and application as technology. Thus the continuous development of knowledge and application has created the modern world of today. He consistently emphasizes this and says that further development of science is the only way forward for mankind.

But he also stresses a few points in this book. First, scientific discoveries do not automatically produce benefits for mankind when they are put to use. No machine has freed man from labor; on the contrary, it has created greater enslavement. A new machine created a greater greed for profit in the capitalists and made the workers industrial slaves.

Russell gives us several examples. In Lancashire, children were recruited to weave as young as 5 years old in the 1820s. They were tied to machines and made to work 16 hours a day. Overseers were appointed to whip them continuously to keep them from falling asleep. As shipping technology evolved from steamships to oil tankers, export opportunities increased. Cotton arrived from all over the world. Therefore, the industry had to be developed manifold. New types of weaving machines came. And yet the production increased. As a result, slavery became crueler. In fact, any Labor Act was promptly defeated in Parliament until 1824.

A scientist named Whitney invented a machine for cleaning cotton in 1793. Using that, a man could clean fifty times more cotton. As a result, cotton production and trade multiplied, became more and more profitable, and many people of color were drawn into the cotton industry as slaves. Slavery was abolished in 1787. But this kind of industrial slaves were emerging. They had no choice; they sold themselves.

Today we still believe that technology will make labor easier. Not so. Russell shows just the opposite happens every time. There is no possibility that human liberation and human welfare can arise spontaneously through science or technology. They should be developed gradually with emancipatory ideas and activities that make them populist. Otherwise, he shows that science and technology will only create more slavery. What he presents in this book is the importance of modern ideas aimed at human welfare and liberation. He says that what we have to do is to understand science from the foundation of thoughts and deal with science.

Russell says as one of the side effects of science is that it makes modern armies almost invincible to people. Modern governments cannot be defeated by any populism or counter-revolution because the army is actually the government. Never in history have governments been as powerful as today's governments. Even Roman emperors like Caligula and Nero were able to oppress other nobles. Rome had no authority over the common people. But today's dictators can monitor and oppress every citizen individually.

What is against that oppression is the human consciousness of freedom. Modern technology can be used to its advantage. Human beings from all over the world can gather together. The facilities provided by modern technology can be used against the oppression of one person by another.

But Russell also says it's not easy. Today governments can create outrageous beliefs through modern science. Anti-scientific mindsets can be established in the minds of thousands of people at a young age with science. What thinkers have to do today is to fight with that great power.

In this book, he suggests some ways to use science to create a healthy society in the future. The independence of science is one of them. It should not be a servant of government or business. Decentralization is another. State power is controlled by the people's bodies which are equal to the governments. Three world-influencing ideas. But he speculates that these will take many generations to develop and that they will be driven through various upheavals and destructions.

Even today, looking after three-quarters of centuries, Russell's ideas are still fresh. The fears, confusions, and nightmares they evoke persist today. We see that the predictions of scientists about the future have become ridiculously meaningless when compared to this. In the 1950s, scientists were predicting that chemical fertilizers would eliminate world hunger and that the balance of modern weapons would eliminate world wars.

Richard Feynman quipped that 'Philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds. It's true, birds can fly freely. But birds do not know how one bird's life affects another and how each is related to the other. The whole picture will be developed only by the ornithologist.

This book advocates science but says that morality should rule over science. Presenting the modern ethics of humanity and the modern philosophy that creates it. Today its need is felt more deeply.

References:

 

1.     Saneeswaran - refers to the divine personification of the planet Saturn in Hinduism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shani

 

2.     Originally from Tamil: அறிவியல் விடுதலை அளிக்குமா? https://www.jeyamohan.in/183412/

tratranslated with permission