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Saturday, September 27, 2014

Research In Science

Research in science

I have already read many books depicting the dirty politics in the domain of science surprisingly from the so called scientific community itself hand in glove with the power centers be they kings, politically elected leaders, institutes of science etc which have done great damage to the advancement of science as well as delayed, distorted and in some cases given a death blow to scientific temperament.
It has been done in several ways through giving credit for discoveries to wrong persons, suppressing discoveries for a long time, omitting ideas and discoveries which went against certain existing or predetermined theories or hypotheses or established facts. Despite all these scientific discoveries have survived the test of times and resurfaced through some sources or at different places.
This attachment reveals in detail how the dirty politics department of sabotaging scientific advancement works even in areas and institutes which we would never suspect doing such things.
Justin Pollard’s book titled BOFINOLOGY which reveals the ugly ‘the real stories behind our greatest scientific discoveries’ like for example ‘”Archimedes never said ‘Eureka’ and hated baths anyway”, Thales “credited as ‘the father of science’, whose only real claim to fame is that he often fell into ditches” and this book reveals how eleven people have claimed to have invented the stream engine etc
However, beyond all these dirty politics and polluting trends and catastrophic cultures ,still , if there is any field of activity that has helped humanity’s advance more tangibly meaningful and life in general more comfortable and brought people out of their caves of blind beliefs and trite traditions and helped them to see and savor the world with ease and in better ways than all the rest the credit must go and still goes to scientific inventions, discoveries and the multiple technologies that they have given to the world. In short it is a supra religion, along with bold philosophical inquiries, which has pushed aside the many useless diatribes of centuries of religious edicts, narrow ethnocentric pronouncements and bluffs of history which were irrelevant to life.
So, with all the hindrances, still, one may pursue research as a hobby or at least munch it in mind and mindfully follow it up whenever one can afford it. I wish all of you read the wonderful book by Thomas Crump ‘A brief history of science as seen through the development of scientific instruments’ to get an idea as to how these inventions have shaped our lives in many ways.
Unless one is rich like Michio Kaku doing serious research is out of the reach of many well meaning middle class students for many of whom research will remain either a journey of many failed attempts to succeed or a frustrating dream, but that need not necessarily discourage anyone because researches, discoveries and inventions are always useful sometimes they result in fruitful and satisfactory outcomes to those involved and other times the credit goes to someone else or the fruits or benefits of research come out through some other source from somewhere else, it benefits humanity all the same.
So criticism of all the ugly aspects of research is not to discourage researchers and research works but either do away with these ugly aspects or proceed with researches ignoring these ugly aspects and politics.
Life is an unmapped atlas which gets its maps based on our choices, beliefs, actions, reactions, thoughts, attitudes etc and it is our hands to make each one of these continents as great and as good as possible.

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