Introduction
It is often said that
science transcends all national boundaries. The properties of water or electron
or the quark are the same wherever these are measured in a scientific way.
There is nothing like an Indian neutron or American or Russian neutron. The sun
and the stars are not going to alter their character from whatever point in
space they may be observed. Observational data are the sole basis for
interpretative understanding of the objective world. That truly becomes a
secure foundation on which the theoretical edifice of science is built. Indeed,
in it is the high prestige of science.
We have here a procedure to make progress in
our understanding of things in a surer detached way. It is likely that the quality
of observation may differ from place to place or it may improve with the
passage of time. But the basic approach remains the same. In the sequel,
thought and proficiency augment each other.
Observation and rational thinking are taken
for granted as the fundamental character of science. Yet the assertion of a
national science need not be a rhetorical claim or affirmation, a misplaced
enthusiasm for things that are our own. Still certain characteristic national
or civilisational features could enter into the study of the physical world.
Possibly objectivity itself could have those surer bearings. It could be
participative also.
Historical Perspectives
Before we take up the
concept of Indian science let us first see two extreme examples. In the ancient
Greek approach there was the conviction that nature would play fair by being
rational. She would not be capricious and change the course of events
mid-stream. This immediately suggested that we could put questions to her and,
in the process, come to know about her secrets. She would not talk in a
language of probabilistic behaviour. Perhaps this is what Einstein meant when
he said: “God may be subtle, but He is not malicious.” This is a beautiful
statement and it rules out unpredictability. That natural laws are discoverable
and can be understood was the satisfying gain. The Aristotelian sense of causes
leading to the final cause becomes a triumph-march.
The birth of ancient Greek science is
generally credited to Thales of Miletus who worked in the branches of science,
mathematics, and philosophy. Herodotus tells us of a solar eclipse that was
predicted by him. When it did occur on 28 May 585 B.C. it frightened the Medes
and Lydians who were on the point of advancing into battle. Thales convinced
them of the beauties of peace. A treaty was signed and the armies returned
home. It is likely that Thales learned this science from the Babylonians. He
was perhaps the first to have measured the height of an Egyptian pyramid. He
did it by measuring the ratio of lengths of the shadow of the pyramid and that
of the stick in his hand.
There is a story narrated by Plato: “Thales
was walking on a road in his native place but was engrossed in the study of the
stars. The result was, he fell into a well. An old woman coming in response to
his cries helped him to come out; but she also said with contempt: ‘Here is a
man who would study the stars and cannot see what lies at his feet.’ ” The
irony is multifold. It was the professional hazard that he had accepted! How
wonderful to be engrossed in one’s occupation unmindful of the danger!
In contrast to this, the
However, the Hellenic
approach was essentially speculative-philosophical. One had to wait for the
post-Renaissance period for it to come again,—but now with empirical
rationalism as its chief inspiration. Its positivism marks an impressive
Newtonian departure from the method of those ancient philosophers.
The Manhattan Project
Today science is carried out in a big way. We have moved from room-size
research laboratories to complex establishments with thousands of scientists
and professionals engaged in difficult problems. This is a new culture that has
primarily come from the American approach in investigation. It thinks big and
does big. While it has become universal after the World War II, the traits
could be seen even in the early experiments. As early as in 1887 Michelson and
Morley performed the ether-drift experiment which belonged to this class. They
had taken a heavy sandstone slab 5-ft square as the base for the interferometer
parts. This in turn floated on a mercury pool to avoid disturbances reaching
the sensitive optical components. The entire apparatus was put on a solid
masonry structure in the basement of the laboratory.
The Wartime Manhattan Project brought a total change in the collective
science,—and later in the collective mode of our life. It had a twofold task:
to carry out research in nuclear fission and related fields with the
War-objective in mind, to produce an offensive weapon that should prove
decisive on the battlefield. The early work was done at the US Army Corps of
Engineers in
By 1945 the project had nearly 40 laboratories and factories which employed
200,000 people. That was more than the total amount of people employed in the
The details of the atomic
devices/bombs are as follows: the first experimental bomb as a trial gadget
exploded on 16 July 1945 at Alamogordo; The Little Boy dropped on
Hiroshima on 6 August 1945; The Fat Man on Nagasaki on 9 August 1945;
bomb number 4 remained unused. While The Little Boy used enriched
uranium as the fuel The Fat Man was plutonium-based. The total cost was
$31.5 billion, with the average as $5 billion per bomb/device. After witnessing
the
Soon following the War a chain of Radiation Laboratories was set up. Not
too long afterwards came in phenomenal numbers accelerators, accelerators of
giant-size totally beyond the imagination of technologists fifty years
ago. The transformation is beyond our
own comprehension. Experimental discoveries made with these tools forced new
theories to appear. A new culture was born from the hot ashes of the War. Never
in history did such far-reaching changes occur in the sweep of activities as
witnessed in the present era. The power of destruction that was demonstrated by
the atom also showed the power of locked creativity and it is that which had
sprang up from its womb. It had to emerge in the march of events. The past was
removed and the future opened out. This should really be seen as the gain of
the War. The dreadful event brought out another life-vision, as though behind
it worked a higher power.
Big Science comes to India
In the context of Indian research and
development, we may take three examples. These are atomic energy, particle
physics, and technology. The advent of big science in the country owes quite a
lot to Homi Bhabha. He gave to it a modern dimension in the context of the
age-old tradition that was basically university-bound and academic, a colonial
hangover.
On 12 March 1944 Bhabha submitted to the Sir
Dorabji Tata Trust a proposal to start an institute to carry out fundamental
research in mathematics and physical sciences. Soon, towards the end of 1945,
was inaugurated the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai. After the
War when atomic energy began to be used for peaceful purposes, Bhabha was quick
to recognise its importance in national development. He had the confidence that
such a programme could be initiated in
India now ranks as one of the first ten
countries in the world with advanced science and technology at its command. Its
strength in several professions is also equally impressive. The underground
atomic detonations and launching of the geosynchronous satellite are visible
signs of this accomplishment.
The Department of Atomic Energy was set up in
August 1954 through a Presidential Order. A copy of the pertinent resolution
was placed on the table of the Lok Sabha on 24 March 1958. The entire effort
rapidly assumed the size of a multi-branching tree in the Indian soil. All that
matters to atomic development is now being carried out in this Department. It
is a multi-disciplinary full-grown organisation engaged in basic and applied
research, in technology development and its translation into industrial
applications. It designs and builds its own nuclear reactors and associated
nuclear fuel cycle facilities, is one of the leading producers of radioisotopes
for use in nuclear research, industry, medicine, agriculture and has
established itself in hi-tech areas relating to accelerators, advanced
materials, super-computers, lasers, and sophisticated instrumentation. At one
time it appeared to be a lonely beautiful oasis in the
On the front of basic
research we may take the example of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research.
The experimental high-energy physics group of the Institute has been having,
since the 1960s, a rewarding association with the corresponding group at CERN.
During the early years it carried out extensive research in cosmic rays.
Interaction characteristics of pions, kaons and protons were studied. The
production and decay characteristics of hypernuclei were other types of
investigation made.
In the 1970s the group
was engaged in various bubble chamber experiments; these were carried out in
collaboration with several groups at CERN. The experiments are aimed at studying the production characteristics of
mesons and strange baryons which come from the interactions of antiprotons and
kaons with protons. Some other investigations carried out included the study of
strange particles and Bose-Einstein correlations.
When in 1989 the Large
Electron Positron Collider was commis-sioned at CERN, the TIFR group participated in its experimental
programme. In this programme some 500 physicists belonging to 45 institutions
all over the world took part. At present the teams have become very large,
essentially because one has to study rare phenomena with smaller
cross-sections. Thus, if the study of charm particles meant measurements of
cross-sections of micro-barns, weak interactions have to deal with
cross-sections even less than nano-barns. This means that experiments have
become more complex, more difficult, more sophisticated. Naturally, the
pragmatics of operation demands the coming together of several laboratories and
countries with their scientific and financial contributions. The understanding
of electroweak parameters of the carriers of weak force, the Z and W particles,
is a result of this effort. The number of light neutrino species is determined
to be 3 with an error of 1%. The TIFR group, more specifically, is
responsible for carrying out the Z-line shape analysis. Theoretical framework
of quantum chromodynamics is put to its use. It has also made noteworthy
contributions in the Higgs search following ideas of the Standard Model and the
Super-symmetric Model.
However, one wonders if
this is what physics is up to. Are we caught in a trap or our own making?
Apropos of the New Physics for the New
Century TD Lee and NP Samios reflected to the following effect:
“In the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory
inter-action of quarks and gluons and their reformation into the hadrons of
which we are made will be studied. Enormous scientific advances that have taken
place these past 100 years have given us a new world altogether. The advent of
quantum electro-dynamics enabled precise calculations and comparison with
experiments dealing with particles and photons. Recently it has been formulated
to describe interactions between quarks and gluons. Accelerating ions to 100
GeV/nucleon—20 TeV for gold nucleus—and collision between two such ions will
make the individual protons and neutrons lose their identity. Compression of
matter in these experiments can be such that the temperature will be 10¹² K,
thus forming a quark-gluon plasma. Such a study can bring the reality of the
Big Bang closer for examination. The BNL Accelerator is 3.8 km in circumference
and uses super-conducting magnets at 4.1 K producing 3.5 KGauss magnetic
fields. Four experimental detectors, 900 scientists from 19 countries and 90
institutions, 0.6 teraflop parallel processor computer constitute the
paraphernalia to do this new physics.”
Bewildering surely this is. Or could it be
that we are creating a new myth of matter? The German philosopher Martin
Heidegger asked the basic question: “What is it to be? Man the being, as
Being?” The answer will determine man’s destiny. It seems that science is rather
fascinated by its own professionalism and, unfortunately in the process, has
lost the sight of search that gave it such eminence and such value. This is
perturbing when all the other disciplines tend to borrow its prestige, its
methodology, its name as in the case of science of language, social science,
political science, science of economics, etc. At one time it was considered as
a branch of philosophy as we witness from Newton’s great work. In those days
everything belonged to philosophy; now it belongs to science. But disturbing it
becomes when we see that the scientia-aspect is sadly lacking in it.
Has the quest for the reality of matter taken
the back seat? It may be argued that we should accept life as it is and leave
all vague philosophical queries to others as they are of no consequence or are
of no avail to the scientific pursuit. Comtéan positivism proved immensely
fruitful and it is better to benefit from that positivism. After all, science
has come to this glorious position by adopting a hard-nosed policy and, surely
enough, that is its merit. Are these considerations also applicable to Indian
science? Again, the pragmatics persuades us to accept the universality of this
approach. But if positivism is good, then it looks as though that good itself
is coming in the way of being great. Let us see, albeit quickly, to what extent
we can overcome the difficulty.
Research in India
Firstly, it is essential that we pursue the
methodology of science, reasonability of its procedures. This has been the gain
of mankind and it should not be lost. Yet we have to ask the question as to
what is it that constitutes the materiality of matter? What is substance? The
word “substance” means, etymologically, the support underneath the physical
world. Should it not be the urge of Indian physics to bring such a substance in
the purview of scientific investigation? In its inadmissibility the thrust
should be to find out the causes of that inadmissibility, so that these can be
removed. In that eventuality a whole new world of research can come into sudden
view. We should keep these windows open if we have to make authentic progress.
It is said that the period 1920-1930 was the
golden era of physics in India. Four
important discoveries were made during those ten years. These are the Saha
ionisation formula, Bose statistics, the Raman effect, and the Chandrashekhar
limit. That was physics in its trueness. Yet the Indian gold appears to be less
bright than the gold that was mainly coming out from Western Europe of the time.
Over there, quantum mechanics was discovered, anti-matter came into existence,
the wave-particle duality deepened into microscopic domain of matter, causality
started getting suspect if not replaced, the universe began to expand and our
origin in the Big Bang made its hesitant appearance. In this rush of
epoch-making contributions, comprehensive in their significance,
In the meanwhile, however, let us have a
cursory look at the work of one or two contemporaries of the time.
Meghnad Saha published a paper in 1920 that
became a turning point in his life. He writes: “It was while pondering over the
problems of astrophysics and teaching thermodynamics and spectroscopy to the MSc classes that the theory of thermal ionisation took a definite shape in my
mind in 1919. I was a regular reader of German journals… and in the course of
these studies… I came across a paper explaining the high ionisation in stars
due to high temperatures… I saw at once the importance of introducing the value
of the ionisation potential in the formula.” By any measure this must be
considered as a great professional achievement that turned a new leaf in
observations of the stars. One may not be using the Saha formula much these
days, but it did give a remarkable insight into the stellar spectra.
About the discovery of nuclear fission Saha
gave a lecture in March 1941 and pointed out that “…a process may be discovered
which would render the reactions to proceed with explosive violence… A tablet
of U-235, no more than a homeopathic globule in size, may blow off a mighty
Super Dreadnought—a feat which can at the present time be performed only by a
torpedo carrying several tons of explosives...” But none in
Bhabha’s early research work was in the field
of particle physics in which he saw an opportunity to test the theoretical basis
of Dirac’s quantum electrodynamics. He considered the creation of
electron-positron pairs as a possibility in the collision of fast charged
particles. The situation is visualised as follows. The electromagnetic field of
the two colliding charged particles causes perturbation in the negative energy
sea postulated by Dirac while formulating the relativistic quantum mechanical
equation. This perturbation can give rise to the production of
particle-antiparticle pair. The scattering formula derived by Bhabha is a
crowning achievement in the field of positron physics, an insight that brings
other insights.
At the recommendation of CV Raman, Bhabha
became a Fellow of the Royal Society when he was working in the Indian
Institute of Science at
Bhabha cherished a vision to build in the
country a school of physics comparable to the finest in the Western world. But
equally was he concerned with sophisticated technology and instrumentation
development. This was something new to the country, but also something that was
very desirable. His twin degrees in mechanical engineering and physics had already
put an indelible stamp on his work.
Speaking about Bhabha, CV Raman once said:
“Bhabha is a great lover of music, a gifted artist, a brilliant engineer and an
outstanding scientist… He is the modern equivalent of Leonardo da Vinci.” The
exaggeration apart, there is a great truth in it. Bhabha himself maintained
that, while science is one aspect of one’s personality, there are many other
aspects which are equally important. He upheld that the arts make life worth
living. But perhaps Bhabha was none of what Raman mentioned. He was simply a
genius and a genius that had the capacity to apply himself to work. He was a
scientific epitome of the renascent soul of
A comparison between some of the notables is
as follows: “The contrasts between Bhabha and Raman, Saha and Bose on the one
hand and with Chandrasekhar on the other are quite striking. Raman, Saha and
Bose were all products of the Indian ‘backwaters’. They were essentially
self-taught and lacked the discipline of a formal training such as one gets in
a place like
However, what we notice in the work of all
these eminent persons is that they essentially did the Western science, be it
in
A Challenge to the Indian
Genius
It may be apposite to remember here Satyendra Bose’s remark. Three
decades ago this is what he wondered at: “It is a perpetual challenge to the
Indian genius as to how, even though the country is endowed with such natural
resources, even though the country has had such a brilliant history, it
continues to remain third rate in spite of so many resources and so much
manpower.”
Perhaps what is suggested is that we have to discover authentic roots in
our own psyche. Unfortunately, our institutions do not seem to be our own
institutions. And, then, there is the lure of the West for us in many ways. If
this is to continue we will have to abandon all hope. But if we carry a
passionate urge to be true to our own genius, then we will discover ourselves
and grow in ourselves. A kind of deep soul-searching with matching pursuit is
called for. A conscientious will has to be put into it.
It may not be altogether wrong to say that the
science we are doing is basically British-American science with a distinct
accent on application. Its operative Mantra is the Baconian “Knowledge is
Power.” This cannot be a very high ideal for us. We might also make a
comparison, even if hurriedly, with German and French ways of doing science.
The former is, unmistakably, rich in overtones of philosophy in it, in contrast
to the intuitive thinking of the latter. If this is a valid observation, then
there could also be an Indian science with its own insight. Spiritual truths
seen in the depths of this vast mysterious physical creation have been waiting
to be explored and realized in it. We have to develop the necessary ideas and
tools for their scientific discovery.
The authentic Indian psyche perceives the
spectacle of today’s Man greatly dwarfed by his own creation. Despite the fact
that he has shot himself out into the sky, he yet remains peewee and clumsy.
The sweep of philosophy or the stride of epic or the felicity of aesthetic
creation or the repose in faith has been sacrificed at the altar of the
utilitarian mentality.
If only the engines of production are to drive
these lofty ideals, then material attainments will bring in their trail the
negative results of another kind, of subjugation, of ruin. Care should
therefore be taken that we do not turn out to be sophisticated drudges of science.
We should not be caught vulnerably in the digital web-net of existence. In the
strictest sense science itself has remained rather Newtonian-Cartesian,
analytically rigid and one-dimensional, programmed and
machinelike—notwithstanding the assertions of the quantum mechanical
uncertainty. But in a strange way the universality of scientific propositions
has also brought to us the aspect of non-existence of the individual. That is a
greater risk and we ought to avoid it. If not, empirical rationalism will then
soon give rise to “intellectualised titanic barbarism” on a collective level.
One wonders whether we recognize the danger lurking in it. Science has happily
displaced our dogmatism, our retrograde infra-rationality, our quackery, our
getting befooled by black magic, getting hoodwinked; but it will be
dispiriting, unwelcome, if it should block the subjective supra-rationality
that is dawning on us.
RY Deshpande