Science and Modernity : Ravi Sinha
Science and modernity are widely considered among the most celebrated
features of contemporary human civilization. Increasingly they are
taken as the defining elements that distinguish our times from the times
gone by. At such a sweeping level, there can be many other ways to
characterize the contemporary. One can, for example, refer to
capitalism, market, globalization, democracy or nation-states. One can
also include various critiques of capitalism and the widespread
resistance to its hegemonic and imperialistic avatars among the
characteristic features of our times. Such characterizations, however,
belong to a layer of historical reality that is more systemic than
civilizational. Science and modernity, especially when taken as a
correlated pair, characterize our times at a deeper level. They have, so
to speak, seeped into the subterranean layers of contemporary
historical reality.
On the face of it, such an assertion would appear to be far removed
from the actual state of affairs in the real world. It would be rare,
for example, to find a person whose beliefs and practices are fully
consistent with established precepts of science. Such a search would be a
fruitless endeavour, more or less, in any society on the planet. A
similar anomaly is apparent in the case of modernity too. One can safely
say that an overwhelming majority of humans in the contemporary world
does not live by the canons or conventions of modernity. While few may
be completely untouched by the laws and institutions of a modern polity
or by the processes and pressures of a modern economy, most live by
traditions and practices that do not sit well with basic attributes of
modernity.
It can, perhaps, be argued that
rather than being an anomaly it is more a matter of the time lag that
necessarily exists between sowing the seeds of a culture and their
actual flowering into a civilization. One can perhaps claim that, with
passage of time, both science and modernity are destined to get
entrenched in diverse cultures and emerge as common and universal
elements of all future civilizations. While such an argument cannot be
refuted easily or decisively, it cannot be accepted as a self-evident
truth either. The long course of history since the twin emergence of
science and modernity in the middle of the last millennium has gone
through such disturbing episodes that one would be justified to have
serious doubts about any such claim.
One can take the example of religious sectarianism that appears too
often in its fundamentalist and murderous forms. The onward march of
science and modernity was supposed to have progressively undermined the
basis of religion and other forms of unreason, which would have,
eventually, put an end to the long history of religious wars, riots and
genocides. It would be hard to claim that history has progressed along
such expected lines during recent centuries. The infamous genocides and
carnages, such as those of Bosnia, Rwanda or Gujarat, are not merely the
exceptions that spoil an otherwise pretty picture. They are the far end
of the same spectrum that spans myriad forms of bigotry and
superstition ailing even the most modern among societies. Combined with
racism, patriarchy, misogyny, caste-ism and other longstanding ailments
of similar kinds, these forms seem to make the world a dark place
impervious to the values of reason, justice, equality and freedom. Can
one really claim that humanity now has come under the sway science and
modernity?
The picture is so murky that, even for the most erudite scholars, it
is hard to decide whether it is the best of times or it is the worst of
times. It may be interesting to recall that two competing theses became
the talk of the intellectual town at around the same time and were
discussed on the high tables of global policy makers. In the heady days
of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union, one
thesis announced “the end of history” and proclaimed the final victory
for western liberal democracy.
[1] In response came the other famous thesis that announced the onset of a new era of “clash of civilizations”.
[2]
The former rejoiced at humanity’s final arrival at the plateau of
eternal bliss that had long been promised by reason and modernity as
embodied in the liberal democratic version of capitalism. The last
hurdle on this pre-ordained path that came unexpectedly in the form of
“communism” had been removed. The latter, on the other hand, had ominous
forebodings of far more dangerous times heralded by the conclusion of
the clash of systems. Irreconcilable civilizations about which it had
been said long ago –
Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet[3] – were now to meet on the global battle-field of history.
If the success of science and modernity in reshaping human
civilization along the promised lines is suspect in many eyes, it
appears equally dubious in the realm of the parallel claim of creating a
new human being – one who is liberated from the clutches of custom and
superstition and equipped with unclouded reason and robust moral
autonomy. If it is difficult to gain reliable knowledge of how the world
works, it is even more difficult to assume the captaincy of one’s own
soul.
[4]
Fathoming the depths of the human psyche has turned out far more
challenging than conquering the expansive civilizational frontiers.
For those who would like to subvert the reputation of science and add
grist to the irrationalist mill, there is nothing more sensational than
the personal beliefs and practices of appropriately chosen scientists. A
reasonably famous scientist, who may complain about public disinterest
in his scientific achievements, can be certain of making it to the front
page if he is caught in the act of praying or reading the daily
horoscope. Newspapers, which seldom bother to inform the reader about
the scientific content of the Indian space programme, do not fail to
give prime space to reports about the space scientists making a visit to
the Tirupathi temple prior to every launch “to have a “darshan” of Lord
Balaji seeking his blessing by placing a replica of the rocket to be
launched.”
[5]
If science cannot rid even the scientists of superstitions, what hope
is there for it to give rise to a civilization steeped in science,
reason and modernity?
Skepticism about the claims of science and modernity and about the
desirability of their aspirations is not confined to the popular media.
There has been a long philosophical-intellectual tradition of
reason-bashing that flexes its scholarly muscles in casting doubts on
the foundations, methods and competencies of science.
[6]
Recent decades have witnessed remarkable academic popularity of
intellectual attacks on the ideals and practices of both science and
modernity. Such arguments and studies in the fields of philosophy,
sociology, cultural theory and ‘science studies’, which can often be
identified by the prefix
post- as in the
postmodern, post-structural, or the
postcolonial, invariably subscribe, whether unabashedly or with qualifications, to the
cultural relativist and
social constructivist attitudes and standpoints.
Cultural relativism generally holds that knowledge and values
are generated within specific cultures or civilizations each one of
which has its own cognitive-epistemological-normative universe. Being
culture-specific, the cognitive goals and strategies or the moral values
cannot be compared or judged across the cultural-civilizational
boundaries.
[7] Social constructivism
asserts that all knowledge is socially constructed in which natural
world has little role to play. In this scheme of unpacking what science
is and what it
does,
social facts such as interests, values or prejudices are taken as
primary and fundamental, whereas natural facts such as atoms, gravity or
galaxies are secondary and derivative. Together, cultural relativism
and social constructivism deny the possibility of trans-cultural
knowledge of mind-independent and language-independent reality. In their
strong versions they even deny the existence of such a reality. In any
case, this kind of thinking strives to undermine all benchmarks of
truth, objectivity and method created by science and adopted, even if
partially and selectively, by modernity.
In the case of science such critiques and subversive strategies
proceed along multiple lines. For example, history is summoned to expose
the scandal associated with the birth of science. Unlike Athena who
leapt out fully formed from the head of Zeus, science was an
illegitimate child of religion which came through a very unclean birth
soiled with magic, alchemy, astrology, sophistry, illogic,
inconsistency, vested interests and myriad other forms of unreason.
Along another line, the methodological promiscuity of scientists is
cited as a proof that science can have no claim to a consistent and
foolproof method capable of guiding it to correct conclusions and
reliable knowledge. Yet another line of attack comes from sociological
studies of scientists and their institutions. Such studies purportedly
show that the primary reason for the emergence and existence of science
is its usefulness in maintaining systems of hierarchy, power,
exploitation and vested interests. At another front, evidence collected
by anthropological-historical researches is marshaled to prove that all
different cultures and civilizations have had their own indigenous
sciences. Implicitly or explicitly as the case may be, this implies that
western science, which was nothing but a product of European
provinciality, could impose itself on rest of the world as universal
modern science through the brute force of capitalism, colonialism and
imperialism.
Modernity too has faced increasingly hostile reception in the
academic-intellectual circles during recent decades. In fact, when
compared with science, modernity can be attacked far more easily.
Science in its abstract and general form is modeled on the natural
sciences. The ultimate court for trial of science is Nature itself. The
charges against it are likely to fall flat if its assumptions, methods
and conclusions are supported by evidence gathered from the natural
world. That is why a key strategy of the prosecution has been to
question the jurisdiction or impartiality of the court itself. If there
is nothing like Nature with its mind-independent laws and if, instead,
what is thought of as objective reality is nothing more than a
social-cognitive construction, science, then, loses its most secure
foundation. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the most convincing
defense of science comes from calling upon Nature as an authority
external to the society. Modernity, on the other hand, does not have an
external support about which it can be said that it is unsullied, more
or less, by social interests and historical contingencies. Despite the
fact that it has borrowed certain elements from science, modernity is
primarily a way of life. It is the philosophical-social-institutional
infrastructure of the modern world. It is not surprising that it is
deeply implicated in society and history and cannot easily extricate
itself from all that has happened to humanity under its watch.
Most common critiques of modernity dwell on its being congenitally
entangled with capitalism and colonialism. This entanglement has
continued with the postcolonial avatars of western imperialism. An
essential feature of such critiques is the viewpoint that a disembodied
modernity is nothing but a figment of intellectual imagination. Its only
existing form is that of capitalist modernity shaped in accordance with
the logic and interests of capitalism and complicit in all the historic
crimes of colonialism and imperialism. Postcolonial critiques form a
part of this larger category. Invariably they consider modernity to be a
pliant handmaiden of capitalism, fully complicit in the ideological
justifications of colonialism and racism and utterly contemptuous
towards non-western cultures. All such critiques ascribe unlimited
powers to capitalism in shaping modernity to exactly suit its purpose
and bestow universality on every particularity of a given embodied form
of modernity.
In the real world, however, advancement of science and expansion of
modernity have progressed unabated. Neither the plebeian resistance nor
the cultivated critique has had much success in undermining the
increasingly entrenched hegemony of science in the cognitive sphere or
in arresting the spread of modernity as a worldview and as a way of
life.
In the case of science, all relativist arguments deployed in exposing
its inconsistencies and inadequacies fail to take notice of one simple
thing – science works very well in the domain it rigorously defines for
itself and claims as its own. Furthermore, it keeps on improving itself
and goes on expanding this domain. In this it does not face any real
competition. This glaring oversight of the postmodern skeptics and
relativists was underscored rather bluntly by Richard Dawkins who is
supposed to have said, “Show me a cultural relativist at thirty thousand
feet and I will show you a hypocrite. Airplanes built according to
scientific principles work.”
[8] He could have added that so far there are no civilization-specific ways of flying – no flying chariot or
Pushpak Viman[9]
has ever been sited. One could perhaps also add that never since the
days of the scholastics, who used to argue about how many angels can
dance on the head of a pin, have so much scholarship and erudition been
pressed into the service of shear irrelevancies.
Similar disregard for facts is evident in most critiques of modernity
and especially in their postmodern varieties, although it must be
acknowledged that modernity has had a far rougher ride in the real world
when compared with science. It is a fact, nevertheless, that systems
with their economies and polities configured in accordance with ideals
and values of modernity, even if only of the capitalist kind, have
spread to the far corners of the world. Postcolonial societies, despite
the varying degrees of hesitation and resistance they might harbour,
have opened their doors to modernity. More importantly, this has
happened in the period of decolonization when the newly independent
countries have strived to rid themselves of the colonial imprint. Spread
of modernity to these countries cannot be attributed exclusively to the
strategies of appending the East to the empires of the West, although
the latter may continue to nurse such desires and maneuver accordingly.
In the western societies, on the other hand, a degree of fatigue in
relation to modernity may be noticed in certain sections and resistance
to its capitalist version may become intense from time to time.
However, even in these cases, there is no serious challenge. No
alternative to modernity as a way of life is visible on the horizons of
the real society, except perhaps in the theoretical exertions inside the
otherworldly precincts of the academe.
A robust understanding of science and modernity and of their
historical as well as conceptual inter-linkages can be gained only by
looking at them in relation to the real world. Like everything else in
the real world, the situation here too is never clear-cut. Science has
not taken all aspects of human life under its fold and it never will,
but its supremacy in the sphere of knowledge and in dealing with Nature
is undisputed. Cognitive values of the modern era increasingly conform
to the scientific values and, despite the valid and necessary criticisms
of positivism, many of the methods of dealing with social, systemic,
psychological and cultural aspects of life continue to draw inspiration
from the scientific method.
Science and the sum total of cognitive values, however, are not
enough to constitute modernity. The latter encompasses a set of moral
values and their cultural manifestations. Science is not enough to
constitute a way of life, whereas modernity has definite prescriptions
and recommendations in this regard. Modernity, therefore, is articulated
much more directly and intricately into the progression of history.
Science cannot dictate or fashion all elements modernity. The latter has
its origins in a far larger domain of social life and human history. On
the other hand, with its closer proximity to social life and historical
reality, modernity is in a better position to link science with
society. Indeed it has played the role of a conveyer-belt in
transmitting the influence of science to the social world.
Our objective here is to cast a glance at science and modernity in
this perspective. By reading what follows, no one will be able to learn
actual science. What is intended here is to situate science in the
larger context of human history and culture. We will sketch the progress
of science as it has happened in history and distil from it what we can
say about what it is. In case of modernity, we will confine ourselves
to its abstract and general features, which too can be accessed only
through distillations from actual history. Our focus will be on its
linkages with science. This will require at least a cursory glance at
its grand intellectual and cultural architecture. Success or failure of
science and modernity can be judged only if one has a sober and valid
assessment of what they actually are and what should be expected of
them. This is important for fixing our attitude towards them. Both
science and modernity, eternally changing as they are, are going to be
with us for a long time – possibly for as long as humans are going to
exist. It is important for each one of us – whether scientist, scholar
or layperson – to learn what to expect from them and how to make the
best out of them.
Science in History
In a broad sense, humans have done science and invented technologies
right from the time they became humans. The control of fire, for
example, has been mythologized in many cultures. The ancient
civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, Japan, Mesoamerica,
Greece, and Rome had significant scientific and technological
achievements to their credit.
[10] They were followed by remarkable achievements in the Arab-Islamic civilization in the medieval period (9
th to 11
th century AD), in China again during the 12
th to 14
th century AD, and in medieval Europe (mainly Oxford and Paris) in the 13
th and 14
th century AD.
However, the Scientific Revolution identified with names such as
Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Boyle and Newton, which during the 16
th-17
th
centuries inaugurated the era of modern science, turned out to be
fundamentally different from all previous episodes in the history of
science. It is not easy to put one’s finger on what exactly this
fundamental difference was. Not surprisingly, this has been a topic that
has consumed enormous intellectual energies and generated a great deal
of scholarly debate.
[11]
In many ways it appears rather surprising that the Scientific
Revolution, which gave birth to modern science, occurred in the Western
Europe and that it had to wait till the 17
th century. On the
face of it, many earlier civilizations seem to have had a far greater
potential for unleashing such a revolution. Accomplishments of the
classical Greece and of the Hellenistic Greek diaspora by the closing of
the ancient era, remarkable scholarly achievements of the Arab-Islamic
cultures extending from “Near East” and North Africa to the Iberian
Peninsula during the centuries at the transition from the first
millennium to the second, or the awe-inspiring technological feats of
the Chinese in the 12
th-14
th centuries, were far
more impressive than anything that Europe at the threshold of the modern
era could offer. Instead, the Scientific Revolution was consummated in
the latter. The uniqueness of this great episode of human history is
underlined by the fact that it inaugurated a period of uninterrupted
progress of science that has continued to pick up speed ever since. Even
more important, perhaps, is the fact that it could uncover the far more
universal nature of modern science in comparison to any other branch of
human knowledge or any other version of science as evidenced in earlier
civilizations. Science in its modern form has been adopted by all
cultures and civilizations. It is not surprising, then, that scholarly
attention in more recent times has focused on studying the uniqueness of
this episode.
[12]
Typically, uniqueness of any kind arises when multiple causations,
essentially distinct from each other, come together at some moment and
jointly give rise to a phenomenon. Exceptional character of the
Scientific Revolution can be attributed to such a convergence. At a very
general level, the relevant causes can be separated into two broad
categories. The first category consists of causes internal to the
make-up of modern science. Can it be said that the pioneers of modern
science in the period of the Scientific Revolution hit upon a way of
doing science that turned out to be far more successful than any prior
example in dealing with Nature and physical reality? The second category
is of causes external to methods and practices of science. These can be
the causes located in the social conditions of Western Europe during
that period. Can it be said that the social upheaval, which is often
summarized under the rubric of modernity’s origins, created the
conditions in which scientific values could be elevated to the status of
being the canonical model for all cognitive values and the resultant
social support and encouragement to the newly discovered ways of doing
science ensured the survival and expansion of modern science?
Each of these two sets of causes is considered very special and there
are tendencies that try to explain the uniqueness of the Scientific
Revolution on the basis of the one or the other. There was a great deal
of novelty – both in theoretical as well as practical domains – in the
make-up of the emergent modern science that could be taken as the
primary reason for its ascendance. On the other hand, the conditions
that gave rise to capitalism, individualism, republicanism, democracy,
and nation-state were quite unprecedented and they can be offered as the
main cause for the acceptability, survival and sustainability of modern
science. There is truth in both kinds of explanations, but a far
greater truth is revealed when they are deployed in combination.
Elements of the theory and practice of modern science had been
witnessed in parts during previous episodes in the history of science.
The Greeks of the classical period, for example, were famous for their
philosophy, logic and geometry, but there were examples in which they
also connected their theoretical exertions with empirical observations
as well as practical applications. Eratosthenes in the third century BC
calculated the circumference of the earth with an accuracy that was
within a few percent of the modern value and on this basis he went on to
estimate fairly accurately the sizes of the sun and the moon and their
distances from the earth.
[13] Achievements of Hippocrates (5
th-4
th
century BC) were so remarkable that he is considered the ancient father
of modern medicine. Archimedes, Euclid, Eratosthenes and many others
could have easily passed as scientists even on the modern criteria.
[14]
Similar examples, although not as famous as the Greeks and perhaps not
at par with them, can be cited from ancient as well as medieval China
and from many other civilizations.
[15]
Why did these earlier achievements in the scientific field fail to
give rise to an uninterrupted growth of science the way the Scientific
Revolution of 16
th-17
th centuries did? Why were
these earlier revolutions forgotten in the intervening periods and why
were they followed by periods of decline? A large part of the answer
comes from the role played by modernity which arose in Western Europe at
around the same time as modern science was being born. But, before we
come to modernity, let us summarize the distinct features of modern
science which too played an important role in its success and which may
not have all come together in the instances of earlier scientific
revolutions.
Science in Essence
Modern science, as it emerged from the Scientific Revolution and
assumed its authoritative form in Newton’s hands, was in itself unique
enough and a fairly plausible explanation of its success can be obtained
from its internal make-up. Separate elements of this structure can be
discerned in the earlier versions of science in different civilizations,
but all of it came together, perhaps for the first time, in the
aftermath of the Scientific Revolution. The birth of modern science, as
mentioned earlier, was embroiled in religion and magic, in scholastic
disputes and philosophical speculations, and in narrow utilities and
mundane objectives far from the lofty pursuits of truth and knowledge.
But, despite this less than immaculate origin, it was able to shed its
natal entanglements and gain a clean and robust constitution. It soon
acquired the status of being the sole reliable way to comprehend,
describe, explain and manipulate natural phenomena.
[16]
In understanding this history it is important to differentiate between two questions –
how was modern science able to consolidate its position in the human civilization and
why
was it able to do so. The ‘how’ question takes the scholars to the
details of social and political history in which non-scientific aspects
played a role in putting science on a high pedestal. This is a
legitimate exercise and it provides crucially important context to the
internal history of modern science. It will be a serious mistake,
however, if one were to accord all power to the context as if given the
same context any other science would have succeeded just the way modern
science did. The ‘why’ question is of central importance when one is
trying to explain the success of modern science, and the answer to this
question lies primarily in its internal structure.
The pioneers of the Scientific Revolution, cumulatively and
collectively, hit upon a way of pursuing science that turned out to be
far more effective in dealing with physical reality than any previous
example. It did not all come together in the work of any one pioneer –
be it Copernicus, Bacon, Galileo or Newton. But it did come together by
the time of Newton and assumed a mature and consistent form in his work.
There are many ways to describe its salient features. In a pragmatic
way we will count the following as the key elements making up the
essence of modern science, being fully aware that this list is neither
unique nor exhaustive.
A Robust Ontology
Ontology is concerned with what are taken as the most basic and
fundamental constituents of reality. Any understanding or theory of the
world carries within itself a specific ontology. In this sense it is not
surprising that modern science too would have its foundational beliefs
about what are the basic constituents of physical reality. In fact, it
does not have a unique and unchanging ontology. In different times and
in different theories of modern science there have been different
ontological starting points and with further developments in a given
branch of science the associated ontology kept on changing.
Cartesian ontology, for example, ruled out the existence of a true
vacuum and considered space to be a plenum filled with continuous
primordial substance that was at the root of all physical reality. The
ontology underneath the Newtonian system, on the other hand, accorded
fundamental status to particles of matter and to absolute and uniform
space and time in which the material particles moved and gave rise to
all physical phenomena. Leibniz had a synthetic ontology in which
discrete individual particles as well as continuous plenum were both
present as fundamental objects. Further developments in Physics, such as
electromagnetism, relativity and quantum theory, have all come with
their implicit but distinct ontological notions.
Across these multiplicities, however, modern science subsumes a basic
ontological approach. It considers physical reality to be autonomous.
The existence of physical reality and its laws are independent of
anything external to itself. The task of science is to find the
irreducible basis of reality and uncover the fundamental laws according
to which it operates. The most religious and even the superstitious
among the scientists, who may everyday seek the blessings of their
favorite deities in their pursuit of scientific success and fame, do not
invoke the deities while doing science. All supernatural powers
external to physical reality have lost authority over the conduct of
science and have been expelled from this domain. Science is scientific
despite the scientists and their institutions. It is not merely what
they think or do.
Robustness of this approach also came from the standpoint that Nature
is same everywhere. The laws of Nature did not change from place to
place and from one time to another. They were same in every corner of
the universe and in every era. Furthermore, it was also believed that
Nature was internally consistent. Its different laws did not contradict
each other. In fact they fitted with each other and together they gave
rise to the whole gamut of physical reality. Ontological assumptions
about uniformity and internal consistency of Nature became powerful
tools in further investigation of Nature and in the rapid development of
modern science.
Obvious as it may now appear, it has been a long and arduous struggle
to gain this robust approach to ontology and it has been far from a
straightforward and predestined journey. The actual history of modern
science has been replete with missteps, wrong turns and mistaken
arguments. Erroneous models of reality behind phenomena were often
proposed and fictitious processes were held responsible for real
consequences. Nearly every major scientist or thinker who played a
significant role in the liberation of science from religion, custom and
other external authorities, was himself or herself afflicted with
religious, superstitious or other non-scientific views. At every stage
in its development, science has had, to one degree or another, faulty
foundational beliefs. The details of the ontology kept on changing and
they will continue to do so as science makes further progress. And yet,
there is no turning back. The history of modern science so far is
evidence enough that it will continue to improve upon itself in gaining
an increasingly truer understanding of Nature and in finding better ways
to deal with it. One key reason behind its remarkable achievement as
well as its prodigious potential has been this robustly realist approach
while laying its ontological foundations.
Focus on Causality
Modern science was not the first in positing causes behind phenomena.
All sorts of explanations have resorted to the notion of causality.
There have been elaborate discourses about it from the ancient times.
Aristotle, for example, identified four different types of causes –
material, formal, efficient and the final cause. Material cause is the
material basis of existence as in wood being the material cause of a
table; formal causes are structural causes implicit in the overall
arrangement of things; efficient causes are the external causes that
generate motion or change in an object; and final causes are the
teleological ones which arise from the need of things to move towards
their final state.
The strategic change that modern science brought about in this regard
was to shift the focus from teleological causes, which were popular in
the pre-scientific days, to the efficient causes. Of course, this focus
on the efficient cause was progressively bolstered by supplementary
recourse to the formal cause. The concept of the efficient cause is
primarily concerned with the mode of transmission of the cause to the
effect – how does a cause generate an effect. Focusing on the efficient
cause had enormously beneficial consequences in the development of
science. It became possible to relate the cause to the effect in a
quantitative manner. The concept of
force as the cause of motion
in the Newtonian mechanics, for example, made it possible to calculate
and predict the state of motion of an object in a quantitative manner
provided the forces acting on that object could be identified and
measured in an analogously quantitative way.
As science developed further during the 17
th and 18
th
centuries, rich connections were found between the concepts of the
efficient cause and of the formal cause. Arrangements of physical
objects could be seen as resulting from combinations of forces acting on
entities in such a way that stable arrangements required mutual
adjustments of multiple forces with each other. This was a far richer
understanding than the one in which a particular force gave rise to
particular motion in a linear proportion. The structural properties of
the entire arrangement became important in explaining the properties and
the changes of the entire arrangement. A need for a fusion of the
concepts of efficient and formal cause became increasingly obvious and
it has been progressively accomplished. And this story is still
unfolding.
Mathematization of Nature
The quantification of motion and change as well as that of causality required mathematization of modern science. As early as 16
th century Galileo talked about mathematics being the language of Nature. He is also supposed to have said –
measure what is measurable, make measurable what is not.
Calculating, predicting, measuring and testing became the hallmarks of
modern science. Mathematization played a role of fundamental importance
in this regard.
But the role of mathematics in modern science went far beyond the
instrumentalist approach of calculating in order to predict and measure,
and measuring in order to test and prove. Mathematics was taken as more
than just being the language of Nature. It did not just describe
Nature; it also explained it. A kind of correspondence was assumed to
exist between physical reality and mathematics. Such a realist approach
to mathematics inspired investigations of nature that went far beyond
the technological limits on measurability. Mathematics turned out to be a
powerful tool in identifying inconsistencies in existing theories of
Nature. The theories could, then, be improved by removing such
inconsistencies and new theories could be fabricated on mathematical
grounds. Of course, the final validation of the mathematically
constructed theories came from empirical testing and natural phenomena.
Empirical Testability as the Bedrock
Empirical testability is the bedrock of science. The most rational
and mathematically consistent scientific theory will still be thrown
into the dustbin if it is contradicted by facts observed in Nature at
large or in empirical testing inside a laboratory. This is the most
commonly known characteristic of science. And, yet, it is a very recent
realization in the long history of science.
Take the example of Aristotle’s law of falling objects. He said that
heavier objects fall faster. Perhaps he had seen rocks falling fast and
straight whereas bird feathers fell slowly and dancingly. For two
thousand years no one thought of testing this law by dropping stones of
different weights. It took the genius of Galileo to actually do this
simple testing. It is said that he dropped different weights from the
leaning tower of Pisa and found that everything falls at the same rate
near the surface of earth. It is resistance of the air that does tricks
with falling feathers. Stones are practically impervious to such tricks.
Why did, for two thousand years, no one think of testing Aristotle’s
law the way Galileo eventually did? In most of human history,
authorities – religious, customary, political or philosophical – have
been far more important than facts of life and of Nature. It is only in
the modern era that such authorities have been challenged and
progressively replaced by the authority of facts.
It should be kept in mind, however, that empirical testability is one
among many characteristic features of science. If all facts of Nature
were to be added up, one will still not recover science. Science
requires a definite kind of ontology and method. Facts by themselves do
not generalize to other facts and predict new phenomena. For that one
needs a definite ontology positing uniformity and internal consistency
in Nature or in reality and a method that enables one to generalize from
known facts and predict new facts.
A Two-Way Street between Science and Society
These distinct elements combined to produce the uniqueness of modern
science. None of these, however, was a completely new thing unknown
before the advent of modern science. Leucippus, Democritus and Epicurus
in classical Greece, and Kanada in ancient India, had conceived of an
ontology not very different from the modern one of atoms and void
constituting the sum total of physical reality. Aristotle and many
others in the ancient world had underscored the importance of causes
while locating the sources of phenomena. Pythagoreans and Platonists had
believed long ago that Nature obeyed mathematics. Archimedes of the
Hellenistic Greece was a master of manipulating Nature and knew the
importance of empirical testing, as did many of the innovators of
medieval China. Yet all of these elements did not come together the way
they did in the Scientific Revolution. Coming together of these elements
was at the root of the power and success of modern science.
Success of modern science in dealing with Nature did buttress its
claim to being the only path to reliable knowledge. It paved the way for
natural science to become the model for all knowledge and for the
scientific values to become the model for all cognitive values. The
philosophical-ideological churning of the 17
th century and of
the subsequent Age of Enlightenment drew sustenance from modern
science. John Locke described himself as under-labourer of Newton and
the natural philosophers
[17]; Voltaire was regaling France with tales of Newton and his philosophy
[18];
Immanuel Kant kept his philosophical concerns close to natural science
and strove to provide metaphysical foundations to Newtonian physics
[19].
This intellectual revolution was also contemporaneous with the
Industrial Revolution, which, riding on steam and steel, transformed the
way necessities of life were produced and upgraded. Technologies
emerging from modern science laid the material foundations of modern
life.
[20]
There is little doubt that science played a decisive role in the
advent and advancement of the modern era. And yet, by itself it could
not have shaped the modern social order. Other forces, far more potent
in many ways, were at work in the epochal transformation of Western
Europe at the onset of the modern times. Religion – the dominant force
in the social as well as intellectual life of the pre-modern times –
began to develop internal fissures just as it was beginning to be
challenged from without by science and by political developments. The
split of Christianity and the religious wars in the first half of the 17
th century were a clear sign of crisis.
[21]
In the political sphere, the rise of republicanism and democracy and
the decline of absolutism – through a zigzag course of history in which
the French Revolution was followed by Restoration and by strings of wars
and failed revolutions in the 19
th century – were reshaping
the political order in Europe. Political transformation was driven by
the new economy of capital, wage labour and market, and by the overall
systemic imperatives of ascendant capitalism nourished by the colonial
empire. The capitalist system – the economy and the polity – were, in
turn, accelerating the social, intellectual and cultural churning
process.
[22]
All this played a crucial role in engaging modern science with the
processes of social transformation. While the advent of modernity could
not have occurred without the contributions of modern science, the
ascendance of the latter as a key element of human civilization was
greatly facilitated by the former. The internal make up of modern
science, in which all its basic components came together, was the source
of its intrinsic strength. This intrinsic strength was a prerequisite
for its success in the aftermath of the Scientific Revolution. But its
nearly universal acceptance in the larger cultural-civilizational milieu
as the model for all cognitive values and as an exemplar of how best to
attain a given objective could not have happened in the absence of the
historical processes of modernity. Science went into the making of
modernity; modernity made science an integral part of the culture and
civilization. Modernity paved a two-way street between science and
society.
The symbiosis between science and modernity has been a combined
result of their respective characters. We have already seen the
essential features of science. Let us now summarize those of modernity.
The Concept of Modernity
Modern is a very common adjective used with a wide variety of
nouns – such as, civilization, society, culture and way of life, science
and technology, political and economic systems, art, architecture,
literature, music and even sartorial tastes and designs. It is nearly
impossible to squeeze from such a diverse collection the common juice
that makes each one of them modern. Our concern in the present context
is with the advent of the
modern era in the long sweep of
history. This delimits the subject to manageable proportions but does
not make the squeezing of the juice any easier. Furthermore, an attempt
to distill essence from phenomena is controversial among philosophers
and theorists. For many of them it is a destructive, if not futile,
process arising out of an illegitimate desire. Phenomena, according to
them, are inherently corporeal and contingent and nothing is to be
gained by squeezing them for essences or underlying causes. They are
what they are and that is all there is to reality.
It is not possible to settle this controversy and then proceed with
our account. The best one can do is to state one’s assumptions and
conceptual starting points. These can be evaluated in the light of the
veracity or plausibility of the entire account. Nor is it possible to
rehearse here the process of distilling the concept of modernity from
actual history. Instead we will start with stating the concept and move
on to discuss its domain of applicability. Rather than handling the raw
historical modernity as it emerged from the great transformations of the
modern era, we will be dealing with a readymade version of conceptual
modernity described by its basic constituents and their mutual
interactions.
Conceptual modernity as distilled from history, especially of the modern period, consists of two basic elements –
autonomy and
rationality.
Autonomy refers to the emergence of the human being from the shadows of
religion, tradition, custom and communities. Rather than thinking as
religion would have them think, humans began to think for themselves;
rather than living as tradition would prescribe, they began to live in
newer ways; rather than remaining subsumed in the community, they began
to emerge as individuals. Immanuel Kant described it as humanity’s
gaining of maturity.
[23]
Rationality, on the other hand, refers to organizing the society and the way of life according to the principles of
reason.
Philosophers differ about the nature, the source and the seat of
reason, but there is enough agreement about what it is and how it can be
contrasted with dogma, faith and superstition. More importantly, the
understanding of reason has kept evolving through the history of modern
philosophy. Cartesian paradigm of
subject centered reason, with
the solitary thinker as the source of trustworthy knowledge, continued
as the dominant paradigm all the way to Kant for whom knowledge, in
spite of its connections to the external world, remained grounded in the
consciousness of the
individual self. Hegel questioned this subjectivist orientation and argued that
structures of consciousness are socially and historically constructed.
Reason,
of a given era or at any given time, is the historical and social
achievement of humanity and it is going to continually improve through
the dynamics of history driven dialectically by the defects of
contemporary reason as compared to the perfect one – the latter,
according to Hegel, being encoded in the Absolute Idea waiting for
humanity at the end of history. Discounting Hegel’s philosophical
idealism and his political conservatism flowing out of a method in which
history always justifies the
present, his contribution was to put real flesh on the emaciated
subject centered reason of Descartes and Kant.
[24]
In the story of
reason, if Kant brought in the
individual endowed with the critical faculties and freed from custom and community and Hegel brought in
society and
history as the makers of the social individual, then Marx completed the picture by bringing in
Nature and the
entirety of the material world.
He insisted that “mind is not the ground of nature but nature that of
mind; he stressed that human consciousness is essentially embodied and
practical and argued that forms of consciousness are an encoded
representation of forms of social reproduction.”
[25]
The source of intelligibility of the world is located, in the final
analysis, in the world itself. Reason cannot be conceived without mind
but mind cannot be conceived without the world.
Autonomy and rationality combine in the human subject who draws
knowledge from the world in order to remake it. This is the essence of
modernity. The entire dynamics of modernity operates through the three
interlaced layers of reality –
individual,
society and
Nature. The individual is social and, in part, socially constructed. Society is coming together of the socialized individuals (
social relations of production)
to deal with Nature and with the material world to ensure reproduction
of material and social condition of life at a progressively higher level
(
development of productive forces). Nature, society and
individual are ceaselessly interactive and operative in making and
remaking each other. In this process, the
totality, consisting of all the three layers, keeps constituting and reconstituting itself.
Conceptual modernity is complete, consistent and transparent.
All three layers of reality interlace with each other and cooperatively
constitute the totality. There is no place for error, discordance and
unreason. This would be enough to convince anyone that such a thing
cannot be real. Everyone knows that the real world – even the most
modern one that one knows or can imagine – is full of error, discord and
unreason. Why is
the world so different from
the concept? And what purpose can the concept serve if it is so different from the world?
The problem arises from the opacity of the process of distilling the
concept from the world. If the process is not described in its entirety,
as is the case with our account, the domain of applicability of the
distilled concepts will not be demarcated. If one is presented with the
juice without witnessing the process of squeezing, one may completely
miss the fruit. The fruit is much more than merely a juice container.
One way to remedy this shortcoming is to revisit the world in the light
of the concept.
Mutant Modernities and Their Environs
Conceptual modernity is an abstraction. All
actually existing modernities,
as embodied in modern societies, differ from the abstracted concept in
significant ways. The differences are twofold. First, embodied modernity
differs from the conceptual one because the processes of modernity
unfold differently in different environs. The body is much more than the
genetic code. The genetic code of modernity, so to speak, does not by
itself make a full-bodied modernity. All actually existing modernities
are
mutant modernities; there is no
typical member of the
species.
[26]
Second, even an embodied modernity does not make a full society. A
society is much more than the elements that can be categorized as modern
or non-modern. A modern society, for example, is the sum total of
embodied modernity, its social and natural environment, and their mutual
interactions. Modernity may encroach upon the environment and feed upon
it, but it cannot subsume the environment fully and completely into
itself.
The separation between modernity and its environment resides in all three layers of social reality –
the individual, the social, and
the natural. As discussed above, the
rational
is a defining feature of modernity. One can see the proof of separation
between modernity and its environment by following the make-up and the
modus operandi of
reason at the respective levels.
In case of the
individual, reason resides in the mind, but it
does not ever succeed in taking full control of it. Consciousness is a
repository both of reason and unreason. In fact only humans are capable
of doing
unreasonable things. No other part of Nature can
err. Furthermore, the
conscious is not the only part of mind. There is the
unconscious
as underlined in the Freudian psychoanalytic theory. Science, as yet,
is far from fathoming the depths of human psyche, but there are
tantalizing hints of a large mental environment that envelopes the
rational part of the mind. Much of this environment lies outside the
conscious part. In all likelihood, the rational part interacts with this
environment. It may even attempt to encroach upon it. There is little
likelihood, however, that the rational part can grow to take over the
entire mind. The rational will always sit along with the non-rational
within the mind. Furthermore, there will be parts that cannot be
categorized as rational or non-rational. These parts will merge
seamlessly with Nature, which, in itself, cannot be described as
rational or non-rational.
In case of the
social, the separation between modernity and its environment manifests largely through the separation between the
system
part of the society and the rest of it. The system part consists,
largely, of the economy and the polity. This part can be modern or
non-modern. For example, the capitalist system in its idealized form is a
modern system. Socialist system too is supposed to be a modern one. In
comparison, the systems of the ancient and medieval worlds were
non-modern systems. Modernity resides primarily in the system part of
modern societies. The non-system parts, consisting mostly of the
cultural-civilizational aspects, form the environment of modernity
within the modern societies. In the realm of the
social, however,
all boundaries are blurred. The system and the non-system parts may not
be cleanly identified from each other within the boundary regions. In
any case, both these parts of the
social strongly interact with each other.
The economic and
the political sit in the lap of
the cultural and
the civilizational.
It is because of the blurred boundaries that one is able to speak of
modern or non-modern cultures. In the overall picture, however, only the
system part of society can be categorized consistently and rigorously
as modern or non-modern. Modernity resides in the system; the system is
enveloped by the cultural-civilizational environment; the former is
articulated into the latter and it feeds upon the latter.
In case of
Nature, the concept of modernity is applicable in a
limited and specific way. After all, one cannot divide Nature into
modern and non-modern parts. One can, however, deal with Nature in a
modern or a non-modern way. Science – more accurately, modern science –
is the modern way to deal with Nature. Characteristic features of modern
science have been discussed above. Of relevance here is the separation
between humans and Nature. The question of dealing with something arises
when the
subject is separable, at least relatively, from the
object.
There is difference between being part of Nature and being able to deal
with it in a conscious manner. When humans stepped away from the
animal kingdom, they gained a relative separation from Nature –
relative, because it is impossible to separate from Nature in an absolute sense. This separation enabled them to
deal with
Nature in a conscious and pre-meditated manner, which in due time paved
way for being able to deal with it in a modern way. This is how modern
science came into existence. The linguistic conflation characteristic of
the mystics and romantics notwithstanding, there is no modern or
non-modern way of being part of Nature. Only the ways of dealing with
Nature can be characterized as modern or non-modern. In this case, being
part of Nature functions as the environment for the act of dealing with
it. The act can be modern or non-modern whereas the environment itself
is neutral.
Putting all the layers together, one can say that modernity cannot
cover the whole of social reality. What can be characterized as modern
or non-modern will only be a part of the social reality. The rest of it
will be the environment. Modernity constitutes itself according to its
own rules and deals with its environs in a specific way, but it can
never constitute the whole. Max Weber’s worries about the
iron cage of a completely rationalized society were highly exaggerated.
[27] Modernity by its constitution cannot colonize the whole of social reality and it does not aspire to create
the one dimensional man.
[28]
Capitalism, of course, has such ambitions. Modernity, however, should
not be blamed for the crimes or the aspirations of capitalism.
The case of the superstitious scientist sheds much light on what
modernity is and what it cannot be. The fact that there are scientists
who are strictly rational while doing science but resolutely irrational
in many of their personal beliefs should be no cause for wonder and
should not be taken as a weakness or defeat of science. No one can be
fully rational in all aspects of life and in every corner of the mind.
If parts of reality fall beyond the boundaries of reason, and hence of
modernity, it is neither a negation of science nor of modernity, nor
does it spell their doom. The boundaries of science or of modernity
should not be mistaken for either of them being faulty or undesirable.
Superstition is no cause for glory in any case, let alone in the case
of the scientist. But, perhaps, one can nonetheless heave a sigh of
relief that reason and science, by their own make-up, do not and cannot
take over life in its entirety.
Science, Modernity and Life: Concluding Remarks
Life is prior to science and modernity. For most of the hundred or
two hundred millennia of their existence, humans have lived without
either of them. Obviously, science and modernity are nothing like
preconditions of human life.
Life is not only prior. It is also larger. It far outstrips the
domains of science and modernity. The latter are specific products of
the former. Even in this modern age there are large domains of life that
fall outside the purviews of both science and modernity.
And yet, science and modernity have come to form the core of human
civilization. Their emergence, perhaps, is the most significant
development in human history after the separation of humanity from the
animal kingdom.
Actually, emergence of science and modernity is intimately connected with the emergence of humanity out of the animal kingdom.
Reason and
human agency
are the seeds from which science and modernity are bound to sprout
sooner or later. The same seeds are also the drivers of humanity’s
separation from the animal kingdom.
The flowering of science and modernity, however, has taken time. It
had to wait till the onset of the modern era. Their mutual interaction
played a decisive role in their simultaneous flowering. Science provided
intellectual foundations as well as practical tools for modernity to
overcome pre-modern systems and ideas. In turn, modernity helped science
gain wider cultural acceptance and intellectual authority.
No one can argue that the modern times have been an era of
unadulterated bliss. On the contrary, it has been an era of capitalism,
colonialism, imperialism and wars – an era driven by exploitation and
domination and suffused with inequality, oppression and injustice. It is
a historical fact that modernity has been entangled with capitalism
from birth. This makes it all the more necessary to disentangle them.
One should not throw the baby with the bathwater.
Science is a human product but the final arbiter for its claims and
methods is Nature. It is historical but its deeds are judged in a court
that is trans-historical. The sociological studies of scientists, who
are immersed in the
system through their interests and
institutions, can be useful for many other purposes, but not for
uncovering the basic nature of science.
Modernity too is historical, and much more so than science. In this
case a trans-historical court of judgment is not available. Modernity
must be judged in the court of history. It must, however, be
differentiated from the
system. It cannot be convicted for the crimes of the
system
it lives under. There can be a good modern system and there can be a
bad one. The former realizes the potentials of modernity better than the
latter. A bad modern system must be replaced by a good modern system.
Ailments of capitalism and its tyrannies do not originate in science and
modernity. They originate in the logic of capital. This is what needs
to be replaced.
Science and modernity have cleared large patches of ground – both
natural and social-cultural – for humans to walk free. They have also
enabled humans to claim and exercise this freedom. This is much more
than the pre-moderns could have ever imagined. But humans often decide
to wear chains on their feet when walking the ground cleared for their
freedom. They create systems of unfreedom that enchain them; they turn
science and modernity into instruments of capital and empire. Of course,
it is not the doing of all humanity. A large part of it is forced into
it. But, looking at it from another vantage point and in the final
analysis, history is the making of entire humanity. Science and
modernity are historical and in this sense products of humanity. If
their full potential for enlarging human freedom is not realized, the
responsibility must lie with humanity. It cannot be put at the doors of
science and modernity.
Just as the proverbial scientist-believer who creates science but
chooses to wrap himself in faith and superstition, humanity has created,
through science and modernity, conditions for freedom, but chooses to
walk in chains. But, then, humans are known as much for their follies as
for their triumphs. And, often, they make history and notch further
triumphs by fighting their own creations and overcoming their own
follies.
(courtesy-kafila.org)
