The Vulnerability of Science




Deconstruction is very much in the air these days, so much so that you should not be surprised if in another three years someone comes up to you and asks you,'By the way, have you had your cat/wife/boss deconstructed?' At the rate at which we have turned to deconstruct one another, one wonders what will be left to dismantle very soon. Until we reach that time, however, there are still a few more things left for us to deconstruct, and here is something for you as you sip your weekend coffee.

I am always intrigued by this social phenomenon. There are several Indian expats in the West (mainly in the US) who are mostly software engineers and IT consultants, and have received a very high level of 'scientific' or technological education. Now we all know that one aspect of such education is that it trains you to become 'cool, dispassionate and neutral' observers of whatever it is that you are trying to see. How is it the case, then, that so many of these expats support a political party back at home which propagates, among other things, the bizzare conspiracy theory that the Hindu majority is under a threat from the Muslim minority?

Here is my own deconstruction of this phenomenon; I am sure you will have some of your own. I believe that there are two primary reasons why these technology-savvy students accept such fanciful ideas. Firstly, they extrapolate the two-valued logic that operates within the scientific domain into the trans-scientific world which is governed by a multi-valued logic. That is, scientists are accustomed to making and working with statements such as, 'Either X is positive or it is negative', 'Either Y is an electron or it is not', and 'Either Z is an endothermic reaction or it is not'. Unfortunately, the social world does not necessarily fall into such neat categories (even when we try to squeeze it into them) so that A and its apparent opposite B may not, in fact, contradict each other in this precise manner.

It is, therefore, the mistaken application of a dual logic that can lead people from a scientific background astray into thinking that if the minority (X) gains, the majority (Y) has to lose. The nature of socio-political existence, however, is infinitely more complex than such simplistic generalisations lead us to believe : it may so happen that Y stands to gain if and only if X makes some gains at the same time, or that the gains of X and Y are synchronised, or that unless X makes some substantial gains, Y will not be able to make any significant headway in any direction.

The second reason is this. Students from a scientific background can suffer from a unique kind of emotional vulnerability which is that of being unable to live with uncertainty and of demanding that everything be laid down in unequivocal terms. What they often do not realise is that they begin to develop the need for a form of security which they enjoy by asking only those questions which can be precisely answered in mathematically exact language, and by denouncing all other questions as 'irrational' and 'sentimental'. Therefore, though it is true that at the formal level the scientific enterprise is based on a healthy skepticism, it is quite rare for students of science to be actually skeptical of their own assumptions. In short, many scientists are usually not the 'open-minded' voyagers on the sea of human knowledge that some Romantics have made them out to be. Indeed, it would seem that some students can become so 'close-minded' that they are only too willing to jump at any conspiracy theory that comes tumbling their way.

The reason why these conspiracy theories is so attractive to them is that they answer to a very deep emotional need : that of being able to see the world in unequivocal 'scientific' terms through the lens of a dual logic which would state that We are in the mess that we are today because of Them. Not only does this overlook the fact that quite often in the past and in the present members of Them have lived as members of Us and vice versa, but also that our house was in civil warfare and disorder long, long, long before we ever heard of Them, or They heard of Us.