SCIENCE, CAPITALISM AND CULTURE - III
It is true that western science has accumulated a vast body of knowledge during the last five hundred years or so. However, we have seen that, contrary to what Dr. Joseph Needham assumed, capitalism is not the cause of this body of knowledge as the beginnings of western science could be traced to a pre capitalist period. One could even argue that in a certain sense it was western science, more importantly technology associated with it, that gave rise to capitalism. In any event, western science and technology, capitalism go hand in hand, and today the former has become an important component of western cultural colonialism. As we have said on many occasions western cultural colonialism does not amount only to the destruction of places of religious worship in the country that is colonised. It is a much wider phenomenon where the culture of the coloniser is imposed on the people of the colony by various means that includes education both at schools and universities. Incidentally infamous WIDER, in Finland that could replace Norway as the agent of western colonialism in this country, that has already financed a number of "projects" to weaken Sinhalathva in the country, though unsuccessfully, perhaps due to the "quality" of the people chosen for the "projects", belongs to this wider phenomenon.
Western science is imposed on the "third world" as part of western cultural colonialism, without leaving the people in those parts of the world to absorb what is good for them in that body of knowledge, and as we said in Part II of the present series of articles that appeared on the thirteenth of August, the discipline known as philosophy of science in general is used to show that this body of knowledge is superior to any other system of knowledge. People such as Popper have served their culture by creating "theories" of the so called scientific method. However as we have shown fundamental objections could be raised against Popper's "theory of falsification" itself and even in the west there are some philosophers such as Paul Feyerabend who argue that there is no scientific method as such.
The colonial impact of western science is mostly felt, ironically, not in the so-called hard sciences but in the so-called social sciences. An economist, a sociologist or a political scientist in the "third world" is not merely an academic, if he or she has ever been able to maintain that status even for a short period. When they speak or write they express the thoughts of the masters and mistresses of their disciplines in the west. They have no "independent minds" as their minds are cramped with the theories and concepts of the westerners. For example with respect to the Tamil racism in Sri Lanka they would come up with concepts such as "two nations in one country", "internal self determination", "confederations" sometimes even without defining these terms. These are concepts that are used by the westerners to undermine a particular culture with the assistance of some other culture in a given country in Asia or Africa, sometimes to which concepts they themselves have no regard in their own countries. Even in the case that these concepts are applied in their countries, they do not make a distinction between their countries and the countries in Asia or Africa with different histories and different cultures. Most of these "social scientists" are mere minions who serve their masters for a few silvers. One such minion who pretends to be a political scientist and who echoes his masters' voice on behalf of the "rights" of the Tamils was instrumental in not allowing me to present my case before the trade union of which I was a member when my services were discontinued by the University of Colombo. So much for the concern for human rights of these minions who pretend to be professors.
However, irrespective of what these minions do and what western cultural colonialism is after, one has to admit that western science has been able to construct a vast body of knowledge and one has to give an explanation as to how the western scientists managed to create this body of knowledge. If there is no scientific method as such, what property or "quality" drives the westerners to create this system of knowledge. We have been trying to understand this phenomenon over the last fifteen years or so and as a result we too have created our own "theory" on the creation of western science. How did western science come into existence?
It is said sometimes that knowledge is universal and people from all parts of the world have been "discovering" knowledge for thousands of years. According to this scenario there is only one tree of knowledge with all the people contributing towards growing of the tree. Thus some would say that certain systems were originated in the east and that they were taken to Europe by the Arabs and others in the fourteenth century and after. They are of the opinion that as the centre of gravity with respect to knowledge has been shifted from the east to the west very soon the pendulum will swing back and the activities with respect to creation of knowledge would take place in the east. These people are awaiting an awakening in science in the east, which some would say happen within fifty years. They want the easterners to use concepts that are found in the east to create new knowledge in science. As far as they are concerned there is only one science and they would object to the use of the words such as sciences and western or eastern science. They think in terms of a universal science, and they are interested in the shifting of the centre of gravity with respect to science and knowledge in general. They may be called universalists with different centres of gravity and they only recognise the contributions to knowledge from different cultures. The do not consider the relevance of culture to knowledge except in so far as to making use of certain concepts found in a particular culture to the creation and development of knowledge.
However the universalists with different centres of gravity are creationists as well. They believe that knowledge is constructed or created, and look at knowledge as a social construction. According to them, it appears that, though knowledge is constructed in a particular country or society, sometimes making use of concepts and ideas found in that particular society, it acquires a universal character. Now there seems to be an internal contradiction in this scheme. When they state that in constructing knowledge one should try to make use of concepts and ideas found in a particular locality, it is implied that these particular concepts are not universal and found only in certain cultures. As these particular concepts have also been created , this means that of the knowledge created there are some concepts, theories and others that are universal while some others do not acquire a universal character.
The universalists in general do not talk of absorptions of concepts and theories into a particular culture as they consider knowledge to be universal. In contrast to the universalists with different centres of gravity, there are universalists who do not believe in shifting of centres of gravity. They are global universalists in the sense that they do not believe in centres of gravity of knowledge. The globalism believed by them prevents them from formulating centres of gravity of knowledge and as far as they are concerned knowledge is not only universal but has no centre of gravity. They tend to believe that though different parts of the world may have been more active at different times in the past with respect to construction of knowledge, soon these activities would be spread across the globe with no centre of gravity as such.
The global universalists, in turn can be classified under two categories. There are the constructionists among them who go along with the idea that knowledge is constructed, and the discoverists who think that knowledge is there to be discovered. The discoverists believe that the theory of gravitation had been there from the beginning of the world, whether as an act of God or as the result of the big bang, and it was left to Isaac Newton to discover this theory in the seventeenth century with or without the help of Robert Hooke who has been apparently denied his due share of credit in the "discovery of the inverse square law". (Newton's Tyranny: The Suppressed Scientific Discoveries of Stephen Gray and John Flamsteed by David Clark and Stephen P. H. Clark). The discoverists are in general global universalists as they believe in discoveries that are independent of culture. However, the discoverists face a problem in giving an explanation as to why discoveries take place in certain times if not in certain cultures as well. For example the question could be asked as to why the world had to wait for Newton to discover the theory of gravitation. If it was only a discovery a person living in Asia or Africa in the seventeenth century BC could have discovered it. If Asians, Africans and the native Americans are denied this "power of discovery", at least Archimedes the Greek, who is now considered to be the greatest "scientist" ever born in preference to Newton and Einstein, could have discovered this all important law. If somebody were to suggest that the time, and probably space, was not ripe for such a discovery then it would imply that the discoveries could be made only at specific times, and probably in particular geographical locations.
If that was the case, then "discoveries of scientific theories" lose some of the so-called objectivity that is usually attached to the discoveries. In any event these so called discoveries are thrown away after sometime and are replaced by "better theories" discovered later. This implies that the former theories were in error leading to the "phenomenon of discovering wrong theories". For example Newton's much celebrated theory of gravitation (sometimes called universal gravitation!) was discarded later and Einstein's theory of general relativity was accepted. As Feyerabend has shown Einstein's theory is not an improvement on Newton's theory. The conceptual frameworks of the two theories are different from each other and they have shown to be incommensurable. Even in the case of Einstein's theory of special relativity what is formulated is a relativity different from Galilean relativity. Galileo Galilei introduced the concept of relativity of motion against the Aristotelian concept of absolute motion in objects that are dealt in mechanics whereas Einstein was more concerned with motion of charged particles in electromagnetic fields. One would say that Einstein generalised the concept of relativity to include all physics, not confining to mechanics as in the case of Galilean relativity, and that when the speeds of the particles are small compared with the speed of light, Einstein's relativity gives the same results as Galilean relativity. However, the conceptual frame works are different and by his theory Einstein has introduced a different paradigm in Kuhn's general sense of the word and not in the sense of seminar circuit pundits who talk of "paradigm shifts". In the theory of Einstein there is an upper limit to the speed of communication (for non quantum particles), namely the speed of light, whereas in Newtonian mechanics and Galilean relativity there was no such limit. As the old theories are discarded since they are in error and even the new theories would be discarded in the future for the same reason, it is clear that what are discovered are "wrong theories". The discoverists have this enormous task of explaining why only "wrong theories" are discovered in science.
(To be continued.)
Professor Nalin de Silva
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