This age of ours is the age of science, and much of man’s happiness depends on how man utilizes the immense power of science. Image how the man of today can survive without the various scientific discoveries and inventions made from time to time, which have rendered his life comfortable and worth living. A thing of electricity, the wireless, the airplane, the railway, the motor car, wonderful drugs, and a thousand of other achievements of science, which have become indispensable for our day–to–day existence. Science has also given man something which is much more useful — the scientific outlook, without which he cannot make the progress that lies in store for him.
Scientific outlook helps a man to ascertain facts, grip them accurately. It gives him training in observation, a rational habit of mind. It widens immensely the horizon of the mind, extends its range, gives it a sense of infinite possibilities, and makes life more interesting and alive. It is rare to find a scientist who is a pessimist, for he lives in an atmosphere of progress. The scientist is an explorer of an unknown world with infinite possibilities of discovery, and not only is the act of discovery exciting, but it leads on to actions, to practical results. It seeks to know, but also to transform the world, and this is a further stimulus to those who follow it.
Scientific outlook tends to analyze every object. Chemistry resolves matters into elements, physics resolves it into atoms, biology resolves organic life into cells. Now this spirit which is born of a scientific outlook has become characteristic of any kind of scientific Inquiry in any field.
But the various scientific discoveries and inventions and the scientific outlook which the study of science has engendered have not proven to be unmixed blessings for mankind. Science has, no doubt, made man’s life more comfortable, healthy, and bright, and it has given him the forward look, and the spirit of inquiry, but it has also brought about certain complications and created some new problems which stand in the way of human happiness.
For example, science has upset international relations by annihilating space. It has abolished distance, made the five continents adjacent countries, and unified the world. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, a letter from England took weeks, in favorable circumstances, to reach America, and its arrival was uncertain. Today one can speak from London to a friend in New York within fifteen minutes and be with him in twelve hours. All kinds of materials can be now brought from distant countries at a much cheaper price than could be imagined a hundred years ago.
Under such circumstances, the international relations of the past are an anachronism, and fit the body politic as ill as the clothes of a child fit a grown-up man. But the people of different nations have not yet developed the outlook demanded by modern conditions, and they still think in an isolated and provincial manner of an earlier age in which steam and electricity were unknown. This fact has created a serious problem which is responsible for much of modern conflicts in the international field, and which has led to much human misery in the form of wars.
Another problem created by science is that it has given man. The power to abolish poverty, but this power has brought fortune in the hands of a few nations, who are too uneducated to spend the hands of a few nations, who are too uneducated to spend it intelligently. Instead of using huge amounts of wealth placed in the hands of the scientifically advanced nations of the world, for the good of mankind as a whole, these nations are trying to explain the poorer nations and dominate them politically and economically. Every capacity is a capacity for evil as well as for good, and each addition to human power is a chance to misuse it. For example, the printing press has distributed more falsehood, corruption, and rubbish to men than wisdom, knowledge, and beauty.
Modern technology, whereas it has greatly to accelerate the industrial progress of the world, has impaired craftsmanship - replacing it by mass manufacture, turning the skilled worker into automation on the production line, making men richer in their possessions and poorer in themselves. Rushing rightly remarked: No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour, nor the making of stalls a thousand yards a minute, will make us one what stronger, happier, or wiser. There was always more in the world than men could see, walked they ever so slowly, they will see it no better for going fast. As for being able to talk from place to place, that is true, well and convenient; but suppose you have, originally, nothing to say! We shall be obliged at last to confess, what we should long ago have known, that the precious things are thought and sight, not pace. It does a bullet no good to go fast; and if a man is truly a man, no harm to go slow; for his glory is not at all in going but in being. "
The outlook is also not free from certain glaring disadvantages. Purely scientific education has a narrowing effect. Natural science seems so all-embracing, that we do not notice that vast regions of life and these the most important — do not come within its view, and a mind dominated by it would naturally be inclined to ignore or underestimate them. It has little to say about those creations of the human spirit which alone are immortal, great literature, or great art. Moreover, the spirit of analysis engendered by the scientific outlook has got its own, serious limitations. By subjecting everything to a minute analysis we, in the words of Wordsworth, murder to dissect. The parts, even if they are complete, are not the same as the whole. Dissolved into Amos, the solid world is no longer itself. Reduced to cells or an amalgam of psychological impulses, human beings no more make that whole which commands our devotion, than some shredded dissections of human tatters is that warm and breathing beauty of flesh which our hearts find delightful. Analyzes a thing and the life leases it, but life is the most important thing in the world, and analysis not only does help us to see it, but it encourages us --- so potent and engrossing is it - to forget the existence of what it cannot reveal.
Science has also created some crucial problems, which, if not adequately solved, will jeopardize human existence, and bring untold misery to mankind. But we cannot blame science for this, it is the man who is to blame. Under the new conditions, created by science, man must change his primitive outlook, science is guiltless; it is our hands that are unclean science goes steadily about her work, revealing the greatness of man, and if he misuses it, he is to be blamed for it. The gifts of science do not a corrupt man. If new problems are created by the discoveries and inventions of science, and man is exposed to new temptations and thrown into confusion, it does not mean that he should go back on science, we must go forward. A great new force that comes into the world is revolutionary, and for the moment upsets and confuses the minds of men. That was true of all great movements, as of science. In course of time, man will prove himself equal to the task of solving these problems and meet the new challenge successfully, and will certainly survive the crisis precipitated by science as the past.
The most astounding modern invention is the invention of the atomic and hydrogen bomb. But we do hope that man will be able to survive this crisis, and use these tremendous energies for his benefit rather than for his destruction, as in the past. Already the Atomic Energy Commission of the United Nations is devoting extensive and unflagging attention to the effects of radiant energy - both those that may prove to be beneficent and those that may or kill. When man first discovered fire, he began a large apprenticeship to caution in dealing with what is both useful and dangerous, and the end is not yet. To control the use of this power, explore its nature, its implications, and potential applications, and at the same time to protect us against all dangers - these possibilities set a series of tasks that also are all but immeasurable. Ultimately, man is the measure of all things, and we do hope that he will in course of time learn to control the power that science has placed in his hand, and also adjust himself to the changed conditions in such a manner that it will contribute to his happiness.
Albert Einstein, the greatest of modern times, gave the key to the problem of science and human happiness when he remarked: "Why does this magnificent applied science, which saves work and makes life easier, brings us so little happiness? The simple answer runs because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it." In war, it serves that we may poison and mutilate each other. In peace, it has made our lives hurried and uncertain. Instead of freeing us in great measure from spiritually exhausting labor, it has made men into slaves of machinery, who for the most part complete their monotonous long day's work with disgust, and must continually tremble for their poor rations.
Certainly, we want science to be used for the betterment of human beings and humanity. Pure science is important because it is a search for truth. Nevertheless, we want to apply it for the betterment of human beings. It is not only justified, but it is right. On the other hand, if in the pursuit of that objective you make science and the pursuit of truth a kind of handmaid to set policies which you have in mind - political or other - then, perhaps the temper of science is affected and the approach to science is not exactly what it should be.
" One sees, on the one hand, people some time praising science and other times becoming very apprehensive because science has led to discoveries and use of the tremendous powers of nature which can be used for good or evil and which has produced terrible weapons of mass slaughter. Surely that is not the fault of science. It is the fault of human beings who misuse the science. Science is neutral, as truth is neutral. There is no question of it being positive or negative. It is no good blaming science or scientists. If you blame science, you can as well blame knowledge. Knowledge misused is dangerous, yet we want and seek knowledge. We must know how to use it properly.
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