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Sociology Notes On – Scientific Temper – For W.B.C.S. Mains Examination.
The genesis and development of the idea of the scientific temper is connected to ideas expressed earlier by Charles Darwin when he said, “Freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds, which follows from the advance of science,”and by Karl Marx when he said, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.Continue Reading Sociology Notes On – Scientific Temper – For W.B.C.S. Mains Examination.
It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness.
To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.”
The Scientific temper is a way of life (defined in this context as an individual and social process of thinking and acting) which uses the scientific method and which may, consequently, include questioning, observing physical reality, testing, hypothesizing, analysing, and communicating (not necessarily in that order).
“Scientific temper” describes an attitude which involves the application of logic. Discussion, argument and analysis are vital parts of scientific temper. Elements of fairness, equality and democracy are built into it.Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru was the first to use the phrase in 1946.
The first major programme under the Government of India to popularise scientific temper among the people was the Vigyan Mandir (temple of knowledge/science) experiment in 1953. It was created by S. S. Bhatnagar, at the time Head of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), in Delhi and launched by Nehru on 15 August. Its purpose was to “disseminate scientific information of interest to the rural population” and the centres were furnished with scientific tools, films, and books.
Scientific temper is prima facie the concern of the scientists, students of science or teachers of science. It is a frame of mind which a person carries with him when he enters the laboratory for scientific experience.
On the other hand, citizenship is a question of status determined by the provisions of Part II of the Constitution of India and the Citizenship Act, 1955.
CSIR started publishing a popular science periodical Vigyan Pragati (Progress in Science) in Hindi in 1952. It introduced an English monthly journal Science Reporter in 1964,and then a Urdu quarterly journal Science Ki Dunia.
In 1982, the National Council for Science and Technology Communication (NCSTC) was established under the Department of Science and Technology. NCSTC “is mandated to communicate Science and Technology to masses, stimulate scientific and technological temper and coordinate and orchestrate such efforts throughout the country.”
Nor is a particular society entitled to be called a scientific society to the exclusion of others. As archaeology, ethnology, history and sociology have demonstrated, man in every society has a certain amount of scientific knowledge. The amount, of course, varies a great deal among societies.
In other words, science is a matter of degree, with some societies having only a small amount and others having a great deal more. Viewed in the long perspective, one can always discern a history of continuity and accumulation from the earliest pre-history of man to the present, though that history has been marked by different rates of development in different times.
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