Issue1. Vol.1 (April, 2013) - IIT Mandi

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ESSENT Society for Collaborative Research and Innovation, IIT Mandicircumstances. When the same circumstancesleads to identical experience (there may betraining required sometimes for suchexperiencing) irrespective of the individualinvolved, leading to the same perception, suchperception qualifies as scientific knowledge.The starting point of a scientific knowledge isan experience or experiment, which may also becontrolled experience, simulated sometimesinside the laboratory. This conception ofscientific knowledge rooted in experienceevolved over time. Towards the end of thesixteenth century, it was Galileo, whoestablished experiment as the foundation ofscientific knowledge. This profoundcontribution has been acknowledged by MaxBorn [1] in his Nobel lecture in these words -“The scientific attitude and the methods ofexperimental and theoretical research have beenthe same through the centuries since Galileo andwill remain so.” Before Galileo, since the daysof Plato and Aristotle, experience or experimentwas considered superficial and reason alone, intheir opinion, has the capability of penetratingdeep into the mystery of nature. Experience wasconsidered superficial and unreliable since itinvolves individual perception. In those days,both science and philosophy were together inthe domain of natural philosophy. Aristotlepropounded the sciences of astronomy andmechanics presumably on the basis of reasonalone. Interestingly, Aristotelian sciences had along run and dominated life till sixteenthcentury, strengthened by their adoption in thetheology of Judaism, Islam and Christianity.There is no better example of how couldapplication of reason alone may mislead scienceinto fiction and reliable science could onlyemerge from experiment, to be followedthereafter by reasoning (theory). The predictionsof theory need to be checked by experiments sothat theory may not stray into unreality.Since the days of Galileo we gather knowledgeabout nature by first carrying out experimentseveral times and arrive at a perception byapplication of inductive logic. Suppose we wantto understand interaction between like charges.We may do it by noting the outcome of unitpositive charge being brought near anotherpositively charged species of known amount ofcharge. They repel each other and the repulsiveforce is more when the distance between thesecharges becomes smaller. The experiments maybe conducted to measure the repulsive force forseveral predetermined distances. Similarexperiments may be carried out for the negativecharges as well for different distances. Theexperiments may be repeated several times tocheck reproducibility of the results. Afterperusing the outcome of repulsive force in allthe experiments, we apply inductive logic (donot confuse it with the principle of induction inmathematics) to arrive at the general conclusionfrom the results of particular experiments – “likecharges repel each other”. The forces ofrepulsion measured at several distances willallow one to apply deductive logic(mathematics) to evolve Coulomb law forelectrostatic repulsion, which may be employedin the analysis of numerous circumstanceswhere it has relevance and the outcome mayagain be experimentally verified. This is howexperiment and theory (reason) are intertwinedin scientific research.Research to gather knowledge about the worldaround started from the dawn of humansettlement when we learnt to use stones as toolsand to light fire. Thereafter, we learnt to breakand grind stones to make sharp tools andeventually discovered animal husbandry andagriculture to secure supply of food. Nobodyknows the names of these discoverers but theimpact of their discoveries on our civilization isno less compared to those of the great scientistsof present times. In science we generally haveshort memory of the contribution of individualscientists and so, it is often said that there isdepreciation of history in science. What isimportant is the knowledge and the individualscontributing to it are secondary. The ancientdiscoveries mentioned earlier made profoundchanges in the quality of life, paving the way formany ancient civilizations including those atMesopotamia, Indus Valley, China and Greece,12 ESSENT|Issue1|Vol1
ESSENT Society for Collaborative Research and Innovation, IIT Mandito name a few. Each of these civilizations madesignificant progress in knowledge throughresearch. Mesopotamia is known for itsinnovation of ploughing leading to surplus ofgrains which possibly inspired them to inventboats for commerce. Indus valley civilization ismarked by their excellent knowledge ofplanning the habitats. There is evidence ofcommerce between Mesopotamia and Indusvalley civilization made possible by navigationin the sea along the coast. Sailing across theocean became increasingly important withprogress of time as commerce developedbetween Asia and the Arabic world on the onehand and Arabic world and the Europe on theother. Maritime activities were guided by theposition of celestial bodies and there was needfor reliable astronomical chart, which led to thedevelopment of astronomy in the early days.India in the Vedic ages collected enormous dataon the movement of celestial bodies as it wasimportant for their religious rites. Geometryemerged in Egyptian civilization to facilitatereallocation of land after flooding by the riverNile and it was developed further in Greece andalso in India due to its importance in the Vedicrituals. The world also owes it to India for thedevelopment of decimal system and theprofound concepts of zero and infinity. Withoutthese contributions the modern science couldnot have emerged because of inability to handlelarge numbers, which was limited in Greek andRoman civilizations. Significant amount ofknowledge had been lost because of limiting itwithin a restricted group, often within a familyand also, due to absence of facilities for properdocumentation and transmission. The printingtechnology developed by Chinese civilizationand its diffusion to Europe, made it possible forprinting scientific knowledge for circulation sothat it could be shared and jointly pursued,leading to the scientific revolution in Europe inthe sixteenth and seventeenth century. Thus,research is a cooperative enterprise acrosscivilizations in different geographical regions,culminating in knowledge which is the jointlegacy of the entire mankind.13 ESSENT|Issue1|Vol1Earlier there were no textbooks giving aconsolidated account of the status of knowledgein an area. The natural philosophers or scientistsoften wrote books to highlight their contributionand establish the current status of knowledge inan area as Ptolemy did it in the book titled‘Almagest’, Newton in ‘Principia’ and ‘Optika’,Franklin in ‘Electricity’, Lavoisier in‘Chemistry’ and Lyell in ‘Geology’. Aroundthese books, a consistent framework forscientific thought, including law, theory,application and instrumentation together,emerged and this framework, called a paradigm,provided the basis for further scientific research.Different areas of science were established asphysics, chemistry, Geology, Electrical scienceetc., having their distinct paradigms, which,according to Kuhn [2], should satisfy thefollowing two characteristics:(i)(ii)The paradigm should have an enduringgroup of scientists accepting itFollowing the paradigm, the scientistsshould be able to resolve all kinds ofproblems within its frameworkNow-a-days the current paradigm in an area isgiven in textbooks, which are used to train thestudents to become scientists to carry outresearch in future as a member of the scientificcommunity, which shares the same paradigmcommitting to the same rules and standards forscientific practice. Paradigm does not allow freeflight of thoughts and it restricts the visionwithin the inflexible box of the currentparadigm, in which the nature has to fit.Normally, the scientists devote their entirecareer in fitting the different problems of naturewithin the paradigm. What are the differentkinds of experimental research normallyundertaken? Generally, the researchinvestigations have one of these three aims – (i)to Increase accuracy and scope of the mostrevealing facts within the paradigm, (ii) toverify the predictions of the theory evolving in aparadigm and (iii) to apply the paradigm toresidual problems yet to be solved. Thetheoretical investigations, in addition to what is
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Issue1. Vol.1 (April, 2013) - IIT Mandi

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