It defines science as not necessarily solely coincident with the scientific practice of Europe and America today or in the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries, the time when the scientific revolution is said to have taken root in Europe. It defines the scientific pursuit in a much wider sense, as the search for valid explanations of physical reality. Included in this search for physical reality are not only the physical sciences but also the social sciences, in which man's interactions with man are studied.
Aspects of physical reality described by modern science in quantum physics and relativity, however, transcend the simple Cartesian dichotomy and question the simplistic separation of two worlds: the scientific observer on the one hand, and the observed physical reality on the other.
Defined in such broad terms, a formalized search for physical knowledge - as well as a search for knowledge in general - has occurred in West, South and East Asia from very early times. Specialized communities developed in each of these areas and devoted considerable time to the search for this reality.
Some Pre-Colonial Paradigms and World Views
I have taken a broad definition of science in this chapter, namely the search for valid knowledge of material reality, embracing both the physical and the social sciences. In the pre-colonial period, knowledge in the non-European world encompassed knowledge systems of two kinds: firstly, of physical elements that may be manipulated by means and instruments available at the time; secondly, the mental maps and knowledge systems that man constructed about phenomena outside the realm of the immediately manipulable. I will limit my field of enquiry - because of my own limitations - to the world-views and concepts of the physical world developed in South Asia. The Indian physical concepts were also integrated with 'religious' philosophical and psychological systems so that a unified view of the world was presented. The doctrine of the five elements pervaded all strands of South Asian thought and explanatory systems.
The Nyaya Vaisesika atoms are in constant motion and they are capable of combination to form dyads. The atom, according to this system, is sometimes active and sometimes not. Atoms were thought to be constantly undergoing change. Different physical bodies have different elements and so are perceived differently. The core South Asian impetus concept dates from the Vaisesika period, that is, circa the 7th Century BC; it developed into a recognizable form by the 5th Century AD (ibid.). In the pancha bhutas concept, akasa occupies a non-material place. Together with akasa, space and time are non-material elements of the physical world which are important in the South Asian system.
The Jains had, in addition, a deeper concept of time, a nominal time which underlay this simpler phenomenal concept of time. In contrast to both the Jain and Nyaya Vaisesika concepts of time, the Buddhists appeared to deny the existence of time as an objective reality.
Other physical concepts, such as heat, light, and sound, have also been dealt with in the South Asian tradition. In the Nyaya Vaisesika system, heat and light are explained in terms of one of the pancha bhutas, namely fire (tejas). Sound in the Nyaya Vaisesika system is divided into modulated and articulated, sound and noise (ibid. p. 481). In the above discussion, I have isolated some key conceptual elements used to describe physical reality in the South Asian region.
And what are the chances that the benefits of this new technology will benefit everybody? Zero. Provided that this new tech follows a roughly Moore-ish curve and they become commonplace, the upper-middle class might benefit by not having to run to the store to pick up a spatula that they can make at home, while the already poor will benefit from the lack of jobs at the spatula factory.
TumugonBurahinI believe that we have seen only the beginning of true inequality in our societies, as more and more of those jobs usually relegated to the manual labor classes become automated, and we depart down a dark road toward permanent underclass.