(C.V.Raman)
On 22nd December 1968 Nobel Laureate Physicist
C.V.Raman while laying the foundation stone for the Community Science Centre in
Ahmedabad made a speech, an apparently simplistic speech coming from a Nobel
Laureate but loaded with scientific as well as philosophical nuances, which had
found its way to the anthologies of speeches that had changed the outlook of
the world and initiated the general masses into the scientific spirit of
enquiry. Titled ‘Why the Sky is Blue’ this speech was brought to my attention
by Dr.Ajitkumar and he promised that the text of the speech would change me for
better. Now having read that speech, I would say that Dr.Ajitkumar was
absolutely right; here I am, sitting and writing this small note as a changed
man!
C.V.Raman uses an ‘academic’ method in developing the
speech; by academic what I mean is the spirit of the Grecian academies where
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle delved deep into the philosophical issues of life
by raising rhetorical questions at times and at other times answering the real
questions put to them by their disciples who were only happy to record them for
the posterity. C.V.Raman, a Renaissance man whose influence has an unwavering effect
on the global scientific community over a century asks a simple question, ‘why
the sky is blue’ and explains it based on his life-research that had resulted
into the phenomenon called Raman Effect or Raman Scattering.
The rhetoric question here is just a pretext for the great
scientist to say a few things pertaining to the changing scenario of the world,
especially of India, a young country that had gained its independence from the
British and was trying to stand on its own despite the debilitating factors
like poverty, illiteracy and an unhappy population. The Nehruvian hopes were waning
and the growing religious disturbances were causing a thing of concern. Nehru
died as a man in despair; a country with a scientific world view was his
ambition which at every step was being thwarted by the divisive religious
forces that eyed power through vote bank politics.
C.V.Raman
was 78 when he was making this lecture; he too had a Tagorean spirit in him; at
once poetic, desperate and melancholic. One could listen to the words of hope
emanating from within the words that he articulates, may be in order to
overcome the melancholy. He reiterates need for scientific spirit. “This is a very heartening thing
because one should not think that scientific work in order to be
valuable, should be useful. Scientific work is valuable because it
will ultimately prove its value for the whole of human life and
human activity. That is the history of modem science. Science has altered
the complexion of things around us.” He was not approaching science as a ‘product’
oriented entity on the contrary he had the belief, in an Arnoldian sense, that
the disinterested pursuit of science would eventually benefit the humankind for
it has eventually ‘altered the complexion of things around us.’
Yes, science does alter things
around us but today for making monetary benefits for the corporates that fund
the scientific experiments. Hence we could say that today we have a utilitarian
science that has subordinated itself to the money machines established by the
corporates. But C.V.Raman is more appealing to us today is because he has a
contrary view about science. One should say that he has more an idealistic view
of science. He celebrates the essence of scientific enquiry than the immediate
outcome of it. He says that if one is interested in the outcome, he or she
could take a job and get a pay packet but for a scientist enquiry itself is a thing
of satisfaction. He says: “Essentially, 1 do not think there is the least
difference whatever between the urge that drives a man of science to
devote his life to science, to the search for knowledge and the urge
that makes workers in other fields devote their lives to achieving something.
The greatest thing in life is not the achievement but it is the desire to
achieve. It is the effort that we put in, that ultimately is the greatest
satisfaction.”
C.V.Raman stands very close to the
artistic spirit and in the speech he recognizes the search of an artist and
underlines what gives an artist his greatest satisfaction: “What does a poet
do? What does a painter do? What does a great sculptor do? He takes a
block of marble, chips, goes on chipping and chipping. At the end of it,
he produces the dream in the marble. We admire it. But, my young friends
please remember what a tremendous amount of concentrated effort has gone
in to producing that marble piece. It is the hope of realising something
which will last for every which we will admire forever that made him
undertake all that work.” What makes the speech more palatable is the
scientist’s attitude towards science. He does not ask anyone to sit in the
laboratories; instead he says the people to come out and look around. Science
starts where your skin ends. Science lies in your immediate surroundings. When
Tony Joseph in his path breaking book, ‘Early Indians’ says that to see the
first modern human beings who had come out of Africa 65000 years ago you need
not even look for a fossil but look at a mirror; there he/she is! We in us
carry the genes of the early human beings. Tony Joseph is not far away from
C.V.Raman’s spirit. This is the same spirit that finds its expression in Pranay
Lal’s book ‘Indica’ where he says that to see the early biological forms we
need not go far away but just turn our eyes to our surroundings. It was what
Milton stated when he wrote, ‘they also serve who stand and stare’. This is
what lies in the Proustian stream of consciousness; this is what Tagore felt
when he looked at the sunrise and sunset.
By looking at a Casuarina Tree,
Thoru Dutt could articulate the beauty of a morning. From beauty starts the
enquiry; what makes the beauty. It could take many lines and the easiest one
being the religious and metaphysical one. You don’t know so you could get into
the metaphysical ramblings and fix everything to a causative primary being who
is the negation of all what you know but the assertion of all what you are. But
science moves in a different direction. It asks a question and then pursues the
question till it opens up so many avenues of knowledge, at times useful and at
times absolutely useless. Scientific enquiry is a never ending enquiry for it
discards the absoluteness of everything and assumes the possibility of everything
getting better, evolving into new forms of existence. While metaphysics is a
dead end, science is a highway which is being laid wherever one is lacking. At
times science could get into alleyways and lanes and it could take dirt paths
and gravel roads, always with a hope to find a new place, new sight and a new
vision. And whenever it wants it could come back to the highway.
We are living in a world where
corrupted interpretations of metaphysics for the purposes of religion and
vested interested of the corporations (that cleverly use science for money
machine and metaphysics for sedation and seduction) has taken an upper hand. A
majority of the population has fallen prey to the uncanny charm of the false
science. The seduction of it is too irresistible and the irony is that this
seduction happens amidst scientific inventions. It is in these confusing times
that we need the scientific spirit of people like C.V.Raman whose enquiry
starts from a simple question, why the sky is blue and he takes us to the
nuances of atmosphere, the formation of clouds, the dust particles, the
properties of atmosphere, the transparency of it, the intensity of color
spectrum, the varying levels of intensity that the colors could absorb or
reflect sunlight, the self-absorption or dispersion of light within the atmosphere,
the properties of blue as a color, the day sky, the night sky, the stars,
galaxies, the greatness and fun of astronomy and he finally reaches the charm
of meteorology; all this by asking a simple question, why the sky is blue.
Let us develop this charming
scientific spirit and discard this divisive metaphysics masquerading as
religions and vice versa. The bigotry of the political parties could be
effectively resisted only through the development of scientific spirit among
people. It is a difficult task but it is possible. We need to have the will to
do so because we have the technology to spread the message. The seductive power
of the violent political establishments that use religion for distracting
people to its own purposes is too high and the money power the political
establishments wield is enormous; they have the military power in their hands
and the policing has become a daily reality. Nazi fiction is going to be a
reality in our country soon. Let us look around and look for the scientific
clues; let us tell ourselves that the truth is just around us and it is our
duty to ‘see’ it. Post truth is postponed truth. Let’s confront blind politics
with thousand eyed science, if not with the wondrous eyes of a child that
learns the world freshly and undoubtedly.
n
JohnyML
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