What
is science? According to its definition "Science is a branch of knowledge
concerned with the material world conducted on objective principles involving
the systematised observation of, and experiment with physical phenomenon."
Science
has divided the world of knowledge into two parts - knowledge of things and
knowledge of truths. According to this division, science has confined its study
only to a part of the world and not to the entire world. A scientist has
rightly remarked that "science gives us but a partial knowledge of
reality."
This
means that science being confined in its scope to the physical aspect of the
world, has kept itself aloof from higher spiritual matters. No scientist has
ever claimed that science attempts to find out the absolute truth. All
scientists humbly submit that the “search for truth” is not their target. They
are simply trying to understand how the objective world functions and not why
it functions. For instance, the chemistry of a flower may be chemically
analyzed, but not its odour.
Chemistry
can describe how water may be turned into steam power, but not why a miraculous
life-giving element such as water came to exist in our world. Similarly, while
science is concerned with the biological aspect of man, it is not the aim of
science to try to discover the secret of the strange phenomena commonly known
as the mind and spirit.
Science
has never claimed that its objective is to discover the total truth of absolute
reality. The concern of science are basically descriptive, and not
teleological. Although science has failed to give a satisfactory answer to the
quest for truth, it is not to be disparaged, for this has never been its
motivation.
Many
people had pinned their hopes on science providing them with the superior life
they had sought for so long. But after more than two hundred years, it has dawn
upon recent generations that science has fallen very far short of fulfilling
man’s hopes and aspiration, even in material sense. Now it has been generally
acknowledge that, although science has many plus points for human betterment,
it has many minus as well.
Science
gave us machines, but along with them it also gave us a new kind of social
problem: unemployment. Science gave us confortable motor cars but at the same
time it polluted the air, making it difficult for human beings to inhale fresh
air, just as with the rise of modern industry, there came the pollution of life
living water. Production may have been speeded up, but at the cost of adversely
affecting our whole social structure,
If
the object of science was to provide man with the answer to his search for
truth it had obviously failed. If the search for truth was not within the
province of science, there was no reason for it to figure in such discussions
at all. In other words, science cannot be legitimately blamed for not helping
man to grasp the ultimate reality, for this was not soothing expected of it.
Indeed the reality lies far beyond the boundaries of science.
