Scientific temper

Today, we tend to complicate our lives, due to which we are feeling insecure, restless. I believe this is because we are not adopting ourselves to the changes, not willing to accept the changes. There fore, we end up believing in superstitions, rumors, myths, astrology and start believing them blindly.
Leading Big sessions at Avaya had Jayant Narlikar to speak about ‘Scientific Temper’. It was a great Experience to hear this great 72 yrs scientist. He said Scientific Temper was talked about by Jawaharlal Nehru in his Discovery of India book.
Scientific Temper is an attitude of looking at things from statistical point of view.
Every theory should be put to test before accepting them at their face value, and avoid simplistic reasoning. He gave examples that Newton’s theories were never accepted, they were analyzed through experiments and statistics….
But today, if someone proves it , we blindly start believing it …..the most proven example is Astrology. Many of us must be reading their horoscopes. Many of us still follow some superstitions even when we know that scientifically they are not true…..we are just fooling ourselves, slowing falling into pit of restlessness.
But, it is seen that people who don’t believe in such myths, etc benefit due to such superstition driven people. A classic example is of Solar Eclipse(SE) day. It is believed that on SE day, you are not supposed to go out of the house, not supposed to have food, and perform some poojas. We were in B’lore when there was SE , our relatives had told us to do all these things a day before. We treated the day as a normal day, we went out for somework….our work got over early….:),since there was no traffic that day, that too in a city like B’lore…;)…see that’s the benefit. One of my friends gave an example of the similar day. It was difficult to get train tickets for some place. She had decided to take a general ticket and travel through general boggy. When she reached the station, she was shocked to see that the whole train was running empty and she could easily travel through an AC couch…I wish there was Solar eclipse all those days ,I travel too….:)
So, the moral of the story is, don’t fear such myths, believes, fear our stupidity. Be analytic, always put things to test and believe in statistical results than mere facts. Critical thinking is not just for scientists, we all need to apply it. He said that IT has been a key factor in spreading such bias and illogical information….(mails such as ur wish would come true if u fwd them,..ganesha drinking milk mail, etc). Truly, we have grown so much in technology, but we are still behind in our thoughts…



We all need to adapt the attitude of Scientific Temper, make ourselves tolerant and break all those artificial barriers. We need to focus on our goals than focus on such artificial barriers. Jayant Narlikar’s talk has strengthen my believes of not following things like astrology, superstitions, vastushastra, etc. It was an enlightening session for all.