The future belongs to science and those who make friends with science.
- Jawaharlal Nehru

Nehru’s birthday, November 14, as we all know, is celebrated as Children’s Day every year in India. On this occasion, it is appropriate to pay tribute to a formative leader of India who illuminated a lot during his lifetime and beyond. Through his intellectual legacy, he continues until this day to guide India on the path of liberal democracy. His vision of India was that of a secular and modern nation. A flamboyant personality and yet a clear thinker, he held his own during much of the freedom struggle.

Nehru led from the front, expressing his positions during the course of various constitutional, political and other debates in the colonial period thereby indelibly stamping free India-to-come with his vision. He became India’s first Prime Minister and held that post for almost 17 years. He has been described severally as architect of modern India, world statesman and great administrator.

In the days that freedom fighters were incarcerated, many of them took to writing. Nehru showed his capacity as a historian of the first order, even though his own first degree at Trinity College, Cambridge, England was in the natural sciences. The strength of his scholarship lingers on in the form of the ‘Discovery of India’, ‘Glimpses of World History’ and ‘An Autobiography.’ It is difficult to condense the thought of such a complex body of work in such a short space. In this post, I choose to focus on the concept of “scientific temper” that was very dear to Nehru. He considered science to be rational, universal and inspired by the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment.

This was not to be mistaken with scientific expertise or building resources in science and technology, the latter having been pursued in different ways. For Nehru, who was an agnostic, science had multiple functions to perform: not only was it an instrument to solve the economic problems of a developing society like ours, it also had to make India a strong and self-reliant country with scientists competent to hold their own in the world scientific community. Part of this policy was the building of top-notch scientific educational and research institutions that Nehru promoted like the IIT’s, CSIR, ICMR, ICAR,  and, aided by business houses, institutions like the IISc and the TIFR.

While many celebrate the fact today that its India’s large pool of managerial and scientific manpower that is winning accolades worldwide and also bringing in the moolah, very few acknowledge that it was Nehru’s educational and scientific policies that made possible such an achievement including the Indian “IT revolution” [R. Guha, p. 1962]. That makes him a great visionary who though much derided for his economic policies could peep into the future and build the foundation for the Knowledge-based Economy (KBE) that we are all busy celebrating as the current and future source of wealth-generation.

What was important to Nehru was not just the change in the mere economic status of his country but also a change in the attitudes or the narrow-mindedness of its citizens. He said, “It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, of a rich country inhabited by starving people. . . . Who indeed could afford to ignore science today? At every turn we have to seek its aid.”

But what did he mean by scientific temper? Srirupa Roy in her book “Beyond belief: India and the politics of postcolonial nationalism” notes that Nehru’s emphasis on the need for scientific temper predated independence (p.123). The features of scientific temper were mainly two-fold as Roy elaborates:

1. Scientific temper referred to a mentality or an outlook rather than a specialized body of knowledge. It addressed itself to universalist concerns of “values of life” rather than to narrow and specialized questions of scientific research and application (Roy, p.124)

2. Unlike scientific expertise alone, the project of scientific temper was a call for the diffusion of “science mindedness” throughout the population. The growth of scientific temper was measured by the extent to which ordinary people were using the methods of science to life’s problems (Roy, p.125)

Clearly what the above meant was that science would not just play a role in building scientific expertise but also help reject superstition, prejudice and injustice As Prof. Yashpal has noted, “science will also have to come forward in changing our thoughts and eradicating various social evils, including casteism, extremism…”(Times of India, 16th May 2005). India, in Nehru’s vision, could become a great country if the people adopted such a ‘scientific temper.’ Nehru pointed to the contradictions in the lives of scientists themselves who uphold science in the laboratories but discard science in everything else they do in their life.

Beyond Nehru’s lifetime, the propagation of the concept of ‘scientific temper’ was negligible and became reduced to a debate among intellectuals of various hues. As part of the 42nd amendment to the Indian Constitution in 1976, ‘scientific temper’ joined the list of Fundamental Duties of every Indian citizen vide Part IV-A, Article 51-A (h): ‘to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform.’

A group of intellectuals led by P. N. Haksar released a “Statement on Scientific Temper” in October 1980. It has on and off been noticed at the highest levels of governance as a concept bearing great transformative potential. In his first Independence Day address to the nation from the Red Fort in 2004, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also called for the promotion of scientific temper, which he added must become a “national movement” and not a prisoner of bureaucracy or ideology.

A full and proper assessment of the impact of ‘scientific temper’ in the 62 years since independence is yet to be made. There is countervailing data that superstition, occult, irrationality, prejudice, gender inequality and injustices are very resilient in Indian private and public life, in other words, the idea of ‘scientific temper’ has not sufficiently penetrated Indian society. These days, because of the electronic media, news travels faster and there is greater awareness of these issues. A positive fallout of such media analysis and debates might be greater skepticism of superstitions and their peddlers. A moot point for research could be the ways in which the concept has panned out in the context of urbanization.

In the final analysis, to do justice to Nehru’s vision for India, ‘scientific temper could be a useful concept in ‘deschooling’ our society from received wisdom about obscurantist and superstitious practices that it is led to believe is in its interest. Scientific temper has to be an essential component of the socialization of our populace and needs to be promoted as an integral approach to nation-building. If that succeeds, then there can be no greater tribute to Jawaharlal Nehru and the millions of children who form the destiny of our nation.

References:

1. R. Guha, ‘Verdicts on Nehru’, Economic and Political Weekly, May 7, 2005.
2. Srirupa Roy, “Beyond belief: India and the politics of postcolonial nationalism”(Duke University Press, USA: 2007).

***An important recent contribution to the discussion on scientific temper is Prof. Amartya Sen’s The Argumentative Indian : Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity (Penguin, 2006).
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FTOTW [Fine Tastings of the Week]

Dina talks about a wonderful innovation from Nokia that could have a major impact on rural India.  A brilliant 4.5 min video on how to find and pursue your passion by Randy Komisar (via @athick2) [Flashback - can passion can be taught? ].

Prolog

Today, thanks to a friend,  i had the good fortune to attend the launch event of a learning company called  iDiscoveri. They are trying to revolutionize grade school teaching methods using their XSEED methodology. Some School Leaders, who have tried the XSEED system in their schools,  spoke in glowing and inspiring terms about the system.

As i was waiting for the event to start, i had an interesting conversation with one of the attendees.  We discussed a number of things about training programs in the corporations and also in general about learning.  One question she asked stuck in my mind – do you keep track of learnings and how do you know you have learnt something new?

Learning

Later in the evening today, i and Priya Raju had a discussion on this subject. There seem to be 2 broad kinds of learnings – one is what we called the regular or routine kind – say we learn how to cook a dish or to ride a bicycle.

We feel it is the second kind of learning – which are breakthrough learnings that we distinctly remember as learnings. These breakthrough learnings are the ones we usually refer to  by the term “Aha Moment”.

Aha Moment

The question is – when do these Aha Moments occur?  We went over some examples:

1.  We keep thinking about a problem or a question long and hard and all of a sudden something clicks in our brain and we find the answer.  For example, my single arm bangle hypothesis is one such.

2.  While  cooking a dish, sometimes, by mistake, we skip a step  or add the wrong ingredient. But if the dish turns out great,  it results in an  Aha Moment – a new recipe got created.

3. In grade school, we hear a lot about the solar system and how planets move around the sun in an elliptical orbit.  Then when we hear about Pluto’s unusual orbit, it creates an Aha Moment.

4.  A few years back, stereograms became popular.  You had to squint and bring your eyes to a particular position  - lo & behold, you can see a  3D image.  When she first came across these, Priya Raju thought it was a scam because after several tries, she couldn’t see the 3D effect. But one day, she picked up the stereogram and somehow  the eyes came into the correct position and she was able to see the 3D effect. An Aha Moment.

As with most ideas in the world,  there is even a website dedicated to Aha Moments.  The featured Aha Moments on the site are pretty good.

Epilog

What are your Aha Moments? Are there other categories of Aha Moments that we have not considered?  From the answers, we want to construct a model for how and when these occur. If we are successful in doing that, we can use that in constructing better learning programs.

Updated 2 May 2009: Received some wisdom from twitterers – @Shogun1947 @priyraju @akumaran

Prolog

On my internal to company blog i had introduced a new idea a few months back – in the prolog section of every blog post, i provide a link to interesting posts i had read that week. To my surprise, this has become very popular. This is somewhat like the FTOTW (fine tastings of the week) series i used to run on this blog. I decided to try the same idea on this blog also.

FTOTW

First, A. Prem, one of Cognizant’s Social CRM experts, blogs regularly about Social CRM on his blog. He has a tremendous grasp of the subject. He writes one of the leading blogs inside the company as well.  Rachel Laudan, one of my food anthropology blog friends, lives and blogs from Mexico. She has some great updates on the Swine Flu epidemic.  Bob Sutton paraphrases Scott Berkun to explain how managers become a**holes. How Apple Cofounder Steve Wozniak gets things done.  Saraswathi, a former colleague, who now works in the social sector, had written a brilliant post on relationships a while back. must read.

Science  & Technology Careers in America

As someone who had lived in the USA for 10 years, i feel sad about the fact that American kids don’t take up science & technology careers as much as America needs them to.  The huge skills shortage that America faces is either filled by immigration or by outsourcing to other countries like India and China.

The stats from graduate programs and PhD programs also don’t bode that well. As of 2006, over 51% in grad programs in EE were foreign nationals and 71% in PhD programs were foreign. I don’t know how accurate these stats are. But the general perception in America is that Americans don’t like science & technology careers.

Paradise of Science

During our time in America, we used to wonder about, the kind of resources that are available to an American kid that Indian kids can not even dream. Every small city has a well-stocked library, a science center in the vicinity, several museums.

Even if one is a wee bit scientifically minded, there is plenty of resources to tap into.

By contrast, a city that plays host to over 6 MM people, Chennai, India does not have one well equipped museum or science center or library.

But Indian middle class kids, are taught right from when they are in the womb, that science  & technology careers are the be-all and end-all of living in this world.  Yes, this does create a large stereotypical population. But hey, how does that matter? When we want to find folks for science & technology jobs, we can find them easily without having to import them.

I am trying to find out, why American kids consider science & technology careers boring or geeky or nerdy or whatever?

What can be done to change this attitude of the American kids?

Epilog

If i am lucky, i may get to work in a project to improve American kids’ attitude towards science & technology careers. Please help me with your wisdom.

Updated May 11, 2008: Archana Raghuram joined the conversation with a nice book review of Phantoms in the Brain.

Prolog:

Last week we covered what the ultimate belief system would look like using Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit. Thank you all for the stimulating discussion. As i said in my previous post, i want to keep God and belief in a religion outside the scope of this discussion. Ganesh’s comment captures the essential difference between Faith and Belief extremely well. We all liked the quote from Buddha that Arun gave us. NK Sreedhar captures the approach of a sceptic (i am one as well) beautifully in his comment. Scpeticism is a great quality to cultivate for a better belief system. I will talk about another idea in that regard that may be helpful to all. The main purpose of this post is to look at the neuroscientific view to understand what challenges our brain poses.

Left Brain Vs. Right Brain

Dr. V.S. Ramachandran, one of the world’s foremost neuroscience experts discovers, through a series of experiments on patients suffering from a brain disorder called Anosognosia , that the left brain essentially forces us into keeping our current beliefs intact, whereas the right brain plays the role of the devil’s advocate. If you are passionate about Neuroscience, and want to understand how he reached the conclusions that he reached, you may want to read Chapter 7 in Dr. Ramachandran’s brilliant book – Phantoms in the Brain.

To illustrate this, Dr. Ramachandran gives a beautiful example:

Imagine, for example, a military general about to wage war on the enemy. It is late at night and he is in the war room planning strategies for the next day. Scouts keep coming into the room to give him information about the lay of the land, terrain, light level and so forth. They also tell him that the enemy has five hundred tanks and that he has six hundred tanks, a fact that prompts the general to decide to wage war. He positions all his troops in strategic locations and decides to launch battle exactly at sunrise at 600AM.

Imagine further at 5.55AM, one little scout comes running into the war room and says, “General, I have bad news.” With minutes to go until battle, the general asks, “What is that?” and the scout replies, “I just looked through binoculars and saw that the enemy has seven hundred tanks, not five hundred”.

At this point a typical General would like to ignore/rationalize/deny this new bit of information and proceed with his battle plans. Dr. Ramachandran says this is typically what the left brain does – protects us from lots of divergent information creating chaos in our mind by allowing us to delude ourselves. Now, Dr. Ramachandran, asks – what if a scout comes in and says that the enemy has nuclear weapons. That would call for a complete reevaluation of the battle plan obviously. At this point the right brain kicks in and calls for a paradigm shift to handle this new information. Dr. Ramachandran says (it is only a hypothesis now but it makes a lot of sense), the right brain keeps looking at anomalies that come our way and when a threshold level is breached, it kicks in to call for a complete revision of the belief.

Taking time for forming beliefs

Let us say, we formed a belief in our mind, without first considering many points of view (the first step in Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit), we risk forming an incorrect belief. But then even more troublingly for us, the left brain will keep making us believe in the incorrect belief by ignoring/denying counter examples. This is called Confirmation Bias - we only look at data that confirms our beliefs because of the left brain’s need to preserve our beliefs.

For example, instead of trying to find data with a starting position – All XYZ = ABC, you should collect all points of view about XYZ and then form a belief. Even after you do that, when you come across completely contradictory information, you need to revisit the belief again to reevaluate. This is a better strategy and one that sceptics practice. The reason your starting point is important because, given the amount of information we have on the Internet, it will be fairly easy to find supporting data for any belief you may have. Therefore it is important to start with collecting data and then form the belief instead of the other way around.

Strong Opinions Weakly Held

Having strong opinions is a leadership trait and is essential to make decisions about moving foreward. But these strong opinions should be weakly held – that is whenever contradictory information is presented, we order a revamp. I came across this from Bob Sutton’s blog – I am a big fan of his writings. This powerful idea of strong opinions weakly held and a strategy to avoid confirmation bias are 2 big cornerstones of a sound belief system. As we have seen, thanks to the brain, this type of belief system is hard to practice.

Epilog:

It must be pretty clear from the above, that our brain forces us to have confirmation bias, what do you all do to avoid it?

Prolog:

Dharampal’s Beautiful Tree is a 457 page book. I have read it once before i did my last post. But for me to summarize the book accurately i need to read it at least 2 more times and i am in the middle of my 2nd pass. Meanwhile, i thought i will cover something that has been bothering me lately – my belief system. This is something i have been thinking about for atleast 20 years now. The kind of comments i have received on the history series have brought this thinking about belief systems to the fore. In other words, why should you believe what i write or more troublingly why should i believe what i believe? As i interact with so many people, i realize this is a problem that most thinking individuals grapple with. Therefore i decided to present you some of my thoughts. Given the complexity of this subject, i can only make an attempt in the hope that the highly intelligent community that congregates on this blog, will contribute and make it better. Please support me.

Barack Obama does not believe in the US National Anthem

Some of you may have seen this circulating in emails about Obama.

As an Obama supporter, this shocked me. I recalled Obama’s Rev.Wright Defense speech and this picture below in the Time magazine where Obama is seen without the hand on his heart as is the protocol.

Thankfully i have developed a habit these days – Whenever I see such emails, i make it a point to check Snopes which has been playing the exemplary role of digging up the truth. Okay, this Obama email above is false. Here is Snopes uncovering the truth for you.

Made to Stick

I chose to present an Urban Legend above because these are great examples of how easy it is to believe in the untruth. If you analyzed why I believe in it, it adhered to all the 6 principles the Heath brothers lay out in their brilliant book – Made to Stick. The email is simple covering one item, it is unexpected from a presidential candidate, it is concrete, it is credible because it ostensibly ties with Obama’s previously disclosed stances i point out above, it is emotional because the national anthem/flag are emotional issues, and it is a powerful short story.

As we have seen, there are sources like Snopes which you can use to puncture urban legends. But then not all belief issues are as simple. Before we get much further, what does the ultimate belief system look like and what does it entail?

Ability to detect Baloney

Given my general experience with myself and people that i have interacted with, there are very few people who i have come across, who have an extremely sound belief system. And rarer still seem to be people that embody the belief system in everything they do. In my view, that ultimate belief system is something Carl Sagan famously outlined in a popular book and it goes by the name -
Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit. It is a small set of principles that are easy to understand but hard to follow. In my experience, i can say that anything other than belief in God can be subjected to this kit and help test your beliefs.

Chain of Evidence

One of the key principles that Sagan outlines in the kit is – “If there is a chain of argument every link in the chain must work”. For instance, in the Obama example, while at the surface the email seems to be true, one can easily see that the source is not disclosed and it turns out to be a political satire someone wrote which is being passed off as authentic. Snopes also goes further and shows videos, photos of Obama respecting the flag, singing the anthem, pledge of allegiance thereby confirming the point that the photo i showed above is not the whole truth. Unfortunately, most people succumb to the seeming surface level truths because it has been presented in a made-to-stick fashion.

Sweeping Generalizations

This is another weak area for people. It seldom occurs to people that Sweeping Generalizations are the easiest to disprove. For instance, if i said <Substitute your hated ethnicity/followers of a religion> are terrorists. I only need to show one person of that ethnicity/religion that is not a terrorist as a counter example and that statement i made earlier becomes false. But it will be surprising how many people fall for these generalizations because the generalizations adhere to the Made-to-Stick code – they prey on your insecurities deep in your mind, maybe some negative experiences of yourself or near/dear, or popularly covered terrorist incidents etc.

What are your experiences with your belief system, what is hard to do for you?

I will cover next week, how our brain conspires against having the ultimate belief system. That is a critically important consideration because without understanding how belief systems work neuroscientifically, our ability to get closer to the ultimate belief system will be very hard.