History is a series of victories won by the scientific man over the romantic man

Many students perceive history as just a record of dates, personalities, and events. Yet, our past is more than just a chronicle of facts – it is a series of wars fought between scientific and romantic humans trying to influence the world. Though traditionally viewed as black and white, in reality, the true victor has often emerged from shades of grey – a rational person with an ethical heart who blends science with romance!

This essay explores how science dominates the historical rhetoric over romance and why its victory is dangerous if not confined by moral romance. Let’s get started!

Science-Romance Differentiation

The confrontations of scientific and romantic humans can be better understood by knowing their meanings. Science involves rational and critical thinking before performing an action, while romance refers to irrational, cultural, and emotional reasons for doing the same. Generally, a same action has both scientific and romantic backings. For example, greeting others through “Namaskar” is being followed as an Indian tradition. But due to no hand-to-hand contact, it also prevents transmission of diseases as seen in COVID-19!

However, actions and events in history did not have an equal blend of both. In fact, till the time of the scientific renaissance (revolution), romantic thoughts prevailed. While it certainly helped to bring morality into society at first, it soon transformed into a tool of oppression under power-hungry elites who tried to keep society under their control. To win over their irrational manifestative reasoning and bring in universal prosperity, many scientific wars in different forms were fought throughout history in which science ultimately triumphed.

Science Triumphed Over Romance

Throughout our past, victories of science have been distributed among various fields and aspects to comprehensively move towards this scientific world.

There was a time when economic relationships in many places were predominantly based on trust. Eventually, the exploitation of innocent workers by so-called trusted employers started to increase, giving rise to the workers’ movement. This movement was truly a scientific intervention, as it helped in formalizing labour rights by defining working hours, the pay scale, rules, etc. through written contracts, thus giving them a voice in history, which was earlier choked in the name of romantic trust! 

Politics was another major domain of elite rule and the 19^th and early 20^th century USA was a notable example. Until scientific interventions by US President Wilson, and many other scholars, including Weber, politics was corrupt, nepotism prevailed over merits in public service, and exploitation multiplied due to poor checks and balances. Their efforts gave rise to a scientific bureaucracy, restoring rationality in the political structure that mitigated the sufferings of common people.

Society is an arena where frequent scientific revaluation of reasoning for social practices becomes important to prevent injustices. While the varna system in the Vedic period was mobile, the elite intervention over the period made it rigid, attributing the caste to the birth. Not until the original Vedic scriptures were scientifically reinterpreted by social reformers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Swami Vivekananda, etc., did the people understand the truth that the caste is based on their profession and even that profession is based on their choice and not hereditary.

Further, Science itself is a field where science must war against romance. There was a time when people believed in geocentric theory which held that celestial bodies, including the sun, revolved around the earth. Any critic on this view was challenged by the Roman Catholic Church as they believed it opposed their long-standing intellectual and theological authority. It was only after the efforts of scholars, including Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Johannes Kepler, that the rational heliocentric model, where planets including earth revolve around the sun, was accepted. This became an important chapter of European history for accelerating the scientific revolution by breaking dogmatic authority.

The expectation of the education system to blindly accept adults’ sayings without asking why, was also culturally masked in the name of respect. This led to the domination of the elderly, thus prioritising blind compliance over creativity. Again, scientific humans like Socrates were needed to bring back the scientific temper and courage to challenge the irrationals and negatives.

While all the above cases may make us believe that the scientific world is the most just world, this is only partially true. In fact, history has illustrated that science with no romance is a double-edged sword. It can pierce even the good if wielded by an immoral hand!

Romance as a Guide

The scramble for Africa is a classic example of how science can exploit innocents if driven by corrupt forces. The technological advances fuelled by imperialistic and economic ambitions led the European colonial powers to artificially divide Africa among themselves, paying no regard to the innocent African souls. Effects of such scientific colonial exploitation are still being reflected today, as we can see from Africa’s malnourished children, underdeveloped infrastructures, terrorizing coups, and continued economic and political instabilities. What went missing here was not rational thoughts, but empathetic minds.

The cases that we discussed before, from legalizing labour rights to rationalizing bureaucracy, from reinterpreting religion to questioning authority, all seem to heroize science over romance. On contrary, this African Scramble example seems to warn against science. Finally, all these cases keep the focus on the victory between science and romance. But the meaningfulness of that victory has always been determined on whether the victor was rooted in moral romance or not.

That is, every heroic scientific intervention, from labour rights to questioning authority, was backed not only by rationality, but also rooted in morality and justice, which is nothing but moral romance. Without such moral foundation, mere scientific victory seemed destructive as seen in the case of Africa. So, battles in history were truly won by rational humans, who were grounded in morality. 

And further as we advance in science, such battles will be replicated at a huge magnitude. That too in this AI age, which attempts to replace human thinking with that of machines, rooting science in ethical values is never the more relevant.

So, although history is a triumph of empirical fighters over emotional ones, it also shows how even such scientific warriors can lose in the battle of desire, if not guided by a moral compass. Opposed to solely scientific ones, the future needs virtuous technocratic commandos who can lead their people into a glorious age of responsible prosperity!

This is our turn for bringing scientific renaissance. Give your scientific temper a boost. Share your logical thoughts in the comment section below.