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.

Mathematics is the music of reason

“Mathematics is the way of life. It is like air, and is present everywhere.”

- [Anonymous]

We like it or not, we cannot deny the role of mathematics in our everyday life. It is present in every conscious decision we make. It echoes in the reasoning we give for every decision, regardless of whether it is a clever or a foolish reason. Just like how pleasant rhythm captures one and the noisy beat annoys, the clever reason pleases us while the foolish ones may irritate. Thus, this makes mathematics more subjective like a music, deviating it from its traditional image of objectivity.

In this essay, we will explore about the musical nature mathematics, when mathematics turns into a noise, and finally how to strike the right note to capture audience!

Before getting started, it is crucial to understand what mathematics really means.

Most of the children in schools complain about the complexity of mathematics. Some even curse the discovery of it! But this frustration is completely understandable because traditionally, mathematics has been projected as a problem to be overcome rather than as a problem-solving tool. Mathematics provides a problem-solving toolkit, comprising of various rational tools like formulas, axioms, properties, etc which are nothing but a manifestation of reasoning. That’s why it is called as “music of reason”, as just like how a music with its rhythm gives us pleasure, the mathematics with its reasoning, pleases us by giving a solution.

Consider a situation where there are 5 children and 10 chocolates. To help one distribute the chocolates equally among children, the mathematics provides variety of reasoning, or tools. Among all those tools, one can pick the formula of simple division, so that, each child gets a fair share of 2 chocolates. Thus, the mathematics has made the children rejoice with its elegant music of reason, just like how a good song with its radiant rhyme makes them dance.

But when we talk about music, however charming it may be, still the same one feels like a noise to some. Ever wondered why?

Music is subjective

Same music might not always resonate well with everyone. It often comes down to the preferences and taste of the audience who listens to it.

Consider the example of a rap song. While it may please the Gen Z (new generation kids), their parents, the older ones may still perceive it as a noise. This subjectivity is simply because of the generation gap that has altered their taste. While the older people demand peace, the younger ones thrive well in the energetic vibes of rap, thus, making music more personalized.

Well, it might be true that music can’t be completely universal enough to please everyone. But can’t mathematics not please all? It is highly objective and gives rational solutions, right?

This is a valid question that needs answering, so that, we can effectively inspect the complexity in decision making, when done at a larger scale.

Not a pleasure always

While distributing chocolates equally is a simple decision to make, when the problem is complex, the mathematical reasoning based on narrow ‘one-size-fits-all’ values often fail to address the problem effectively, thus creating noise!

Assume that there are 40 students in a class. When we apply the formula of simple division as we did earlier in case of distributing chocolates, one teacher spends the same number of hours with all the students. While this reasoning is justified in the name of equality, in reality, it actually worsens the intellectual divide in the class. This is because, it does not consider the difference in the grasping ability of each student, where some may need more time to grasp, while others may need no time at all. So, this same formula based on the narrow ‘one-size-fits-all’ value of equality, while helps some, leaves most in noisy-shadows forever.

So, here, the mathematical formula of simple division should be altered based on the broader value of equity, to inclusively share the benefits of education for all the students. Based on that, if customized teaching is done, spending time with students according to their grasping ability, then the results will be a melody for all rather than appealing just a few. Thus, it becomes crucial for us to customize mathematical reasoning based on broader inclusive values, making its musical solution more personally appealing for all.

Now, let me demonstrate similar orchestra of mathematics in government policy-making, which deals with problems of huge magnitude. Unless the bow is drawn over the strings gently in this violin named governance, the strings might snap causing chaos instead of charm!

Hit the right note

In governance, hitting the right note is crucial to please the stakeholders involved in a problem. But often, as discussed, when the values inspiring the mathematical reasoning becomes narrow, it tunnels the benefits to please only the privileged many, leaving others in ruins, thus, snapping the strings over time.

One such issue arises from dam constructions for hydropower. In such constructions, generally, the narrow utilitarian values make the mathematical reasoning to please the country’s majority. This involves concentration of the divided benefits of such construction towards them. But such a narrow value considering only the economic prosperity of nation’s majority, historically has neglected its negative impacts on various minority groups. Not only were the tribes got displaced without a suitable rehabilitation, also, animals and birds lost their habitat. Further, environmental loss was also not compensated. This in turn manifested itself in the form of naxalism, human-animal conflicts, and, climate change. While mathematical reasoning has the capacity to distribute the benefits to all the stakeholders, narrow value preferences can lead to poor mathematical reasoning, thus creating out of mathematics a chattering chaos opposed to melodious music.

Since this narrow utilitarian value was no more in tune with the expectations of every stakeholder, the value preferences of governments across the world have substantially broadened. They adopted sustainable & inclusive development as their values. This made the mathematical reasoning focus on harm-mitigation strategies together with inclusive distribution of benefits.

It provides for Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) and Social Impact Assessment (SIA) to be conducted before such constructions to estimate the loss, based on which the rehabilitation programs are designed for the affected tribes in prior. Further, the CAMPA, Compensatory Afforestation, helps to compensate for the loss the environment has sustained through calculated plantation drives. This not only gives a new home for the displaced animals and birds, but also prevents their dangerous contact with humans. So, we can infer that while mathematics can provide us with variety of logical roadmaps or formulas; to select the right reasoning, right values are necessary, preferably ethical values. That is when one can hit the right note.

So, the mathematics is not an abstract concept, but music of reason that connects with our heart, inspiring to make better decisions. Just like how music is personalized, mathematical reasoning also is shaped by the value preferences of people. The values that inspire the mathematical reasoning should consider all the unique conditions of all its variables to attain an inclusive and just solution. Despite ‘all’ being ideal, at the least most should feel satisfied, with less being affected. Thus, when the frequency we tune is based on ethical values, mathematics will produce a magnificent melody than a malicious misnote! 

Like how music emerges from friction between strings, the democracy thrives only via constructive discussions. So, share your views below!