To appreciate scientific inventions,
develop rational approach and use science for nation building
Today
we are celebrating National Science Day all over India with great in order to
commemorate the invention of the Raman Effect by the Indian physicist and Nobel
laureate, Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman on this very same day in the year
1928.
Sir
Raman was awarded and honoured with the Nobel Prize in the Physics in the year
1930.
National
Council for Science and Technology Communication (NCSTC) in the year 1986
requested the Indian Government to designate 28th of February to be commemorated as
National Science Day in India. Since then it is being celebrated as National
Science day.
To
increase the awareness and appreciation of scientific and rational outlook,
what can we do? Although we have nearly 75% literate population now, but does that
mean that all those who are literate will have appreciation of scientific
approach and rationality in life.
Day to day activities
and events are affected by the principals which are scientifically proven. But
do we appreciate the science behind those events and activities.
We know sun rises and
sets every day but do we all really appreciate and know the science behind this
event. It can be considered a divine phenomenon. Indeed, it is considered even
today.
Did we till recently not
believed that sun revolved around earth and that is why day and nights
occurred, but that is now changed. We now relate it with earth’s rotation.
Copernicus heliocentric proposition in 1500s described that planets revolved
around sun and earth roatetd at its axis. His famous book “On the revolution of
planets:”changed how we view our Universe but it took lot of time to accept
that fact. Europe at that time was marred with debates and unacceptance of
newer fact anti to church beliefs. The period was labelled as “great debate” Geocentrism was hard to be given up as earth
was considered to be centre of universe and heaven was supposed to be up and
above. But we now know and appreciate that science has given us a better
understanding how our world came to be and how does it operates today!
But, Here in our
country, even today Millions of our elderly worship sun god at the emergence in
the wee hours of morning. People have been doing it routinely and worshiping
rising sun. Sun rays have been found to have healing effect. In case of Vitamin
deficiency, sun rays have been found to promote Vit D Synthesis. If we are late
we miss a very natural source of Vit D, for which we do not need to eat anything
costly say fruits, vegetable etc.
Take another example of
jaundice in new born babies, there could be many reasons why jaundice occurs,
but in new born it mostly due to partly developed liver, especially in preemies,
that they are not able to degrade the bilirubin pigment from dead RBC and thus
it deposits in the skin under fat layer… gives yellowish hue to skin and eye.
In western world such new born are treated with what is called phototherapy, process of using light to eliminate
bilirubin in the blood.
Advancements in technology have led to a new phototherapy system, Bili blanket, provides the highest level
of therapeutic light available to treat your baby. The biliblanket can be used
24 hours a day to provide continuous treatment if prescribed by your doctor.
Blood may be drawn and tested during treatment to check bilirubin levels and
determine when normal levels are reached.
But neither we have that technique nor we can afford it here in India…
so what’s the alternative?
This form of light is also found in sunlight.
The strength of light from the bili blanket is about the same, as you would get
in the shade on a sunny day. The sun light waves change bilirubin into harmless substances and cures the jaundice in new born.
Should
we not appreciate it that science has given us understanding that how rays of
morning sun helps us in many ways! …. So get up in the morning and get going…
The
sun is science: do we agree and appreciate?
Sun is astrophysics
(astrology), sun is geography, sun is chemistry, sun is physics (Gravitational
force among stars), and you saw how sun affects biology, for Sun sustains life on
earth.
We should appreciate
the knowledge our forefathers have generated and gathered over the millennia
and use that knowledge to create and upgrade more new information for the
betterment of humanity and development of our nation. For no invention,
howsoever ingenious, is delinked to what has come before. We, in fact are
standing on the shoulders of giants who have given so much insight into these
events.
Creating a domain of
new knowledge helps develop the nation by helping improve people’s life, how we
do our work, increase efficiency. Say
for example we used to learn as children, if one former plough the land in 2
days, how many farmer will plough the same land in 1 day? Now as you know this
question has become redundant in many countries, it’s being done by tractors,
machines are being used for farming, of course people run those machines but
one man can easily run a tractor or other machines used in farming. Other
people may do more important other things, or just enjoy life by following
their passion, actually thanks to science they can afford to explore those
things.
See, actually the
development of tools has helped us human to become human. We have branched off
from the evolutionary trunk that had chimpanzees as our nearest cousins. You
can see many roaming around this campus.
We have today many
inventions to count as one of the great, WWW, camera, planes, pacemakers,
antibiotics and many other, we may recall many indeed, thank to science! But do
you recall the invention of the wheel, which is called one of the greatest
invention ever by humans. You now know what role that wheel has played for
humanity! Then many other tools, techniques and weapons for hunting and
gathering food items. Imagine if our ancestors did not make those early tools,
which helped them increase food gathering efficiency so that they could get
some free time to paint on the walls, make beautiful drawings, increase the
living by making abodes. You today know the importance of those paintings,
drawings, abodes, tools in helping us understand how our ancestors lived. You see how tools have helped us become human
that we are today and see our evolutionary cousins, they still are running to
collect the food for whole day. We
should and we must appreciate how science has helped us to become the best
creation of the evolutionary forces or say nature.
Do
you think evolution has stopped?
Look around. You will
hear quite often that kids these days are borne with digital gadgets in their
hands. Some years from now you will read that some gene has been discovered
which dispose some kinds to be more proficient in handing the digital devices!
It could impact the hand and eye articulation, how fast you transfer your
thoughts into action on a device. We already have examples. The Mark Zuckerberg
says coding is although a learned behaviour, some kids have it in them from
birth.
So, science is shaping
our future. My worry is that are we, as a country and as people, moving with
the same pace as the rest of the world is moving. Are we still trapped with our
past, is that good or bad? How we decide? Should we not discuss more of these
thing in our discourse than other things which not only divides us on various
grounds but also pushes us back in time. You see scientifically and
technologically, we are far behind than many of the other developed countries.
I reason and vision that if we need to alleviate our people from destitution,
from diseases, from backwardness, and many other anomalies, we should begin to
adopt the scientific temper in our day to day lives, we should appreciate what
we have received from the great scientists people like that of Sir, CV Raman, Dr Khurana (deciphererd the genetic code), Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (born 1952), who shared the Nobel
Prize in Chemistry with Thomas
A. Steitz and Ada
Yonath (2009), "for studies of the structure and
function of the ribosome;
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar "For his theoretical studies of the
physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the
stars…and so on… whether they won Nobel or not, their contribution has changed
how we think today about those things they discovered then.
So let’s resolve that we see reason and rationality and develop
scientific outlook towards things in our own life and in the life of our nation
and contribute to it as much as possible.