Question: What is the difference between science and technology? What is science? Where does science come from? Is science the mother of technology? Is science the logic behind technology?
Answer: Science comes from direct observation of the fact. One pays attention to the thing right in front. One looks deeply at the object without allowing thoughts to wander. One keeps away his personal opinions and biases. Only the direct present fact is respected. This is science. Do we see?
Question: And when we say that science comes from direct observation, is our observation always correct ?
Answer: So, without imagining, one looks at the pendulum in deep attention. No imaginations or fantasies. And one discovers the fact of the relation of its time period with its length. It is not imagined. It is there. As a fact.
Newton looks at the falling apple- attentively- and comes across the fact of gravity. No imaginations, just observation.
Kepler watches the planets. Somebody watches a magnet, somebody watches the flow of water, somebody watches the dispersion of light, somebody listens to echoes, somebody observes the flow of heat.
And from this unbiased, pure, attentive observation – which are tested and verified without fear or prejudice – come the various laws. We get Newton’s laws, Bernoulli’s laws, Kepler’s laws, Doppler’s effect, Bohr’s model, Rydberg’s law etc.
All coming from deep and attentive observation of the physical world.
Question: What about the instruments that are used for observation?
Answer: The first instruments that Newton uses are his eyes and mind. Falling apple. Direct observation.
Question: Sir, but Newton too must have imagined something as the result of observation. May be he needed something.
Answer: Lets learn to differentiate technology from science. In science, there is no requirement or need. Newton had no ‘need’ to observe the apple. Science is simple and pure.
However, technology is a different thing altogether. Lets come to technology now.
So, science just tells man about the facts of the physical universe. Science tells us how air pressure behaves, how the sub-atomic particles and waves behave, how forces operate inside the nucleus, how light bends, and so on.
Science stops here. It tells the facts. It reveals the secrets and stops. Science is busy with its purposeless playfulness. Science just wants to know. Its intention is to just know. And science stops at knowing the facts.
Now these facts, coming from science, fall into the hands of the greedy, ignorant and violent common man. He then exploits science. This exploitation of science we call as ‘technology’. This greedy man has just one use for science: consumption. He uses science to satisfy his urge to consume and exploit.
So, from Bernoulli’s principle and Rankine cycle and laws of thermodynamics, this man makes an airplane. This airplane is then used to drop nuclear bombs. This plane is used to make people travel to places they really do not need to travel. One may not have seen the Himalayas but wants to honeymoon in Switzerland. And businessmen fly all over the world to satisfy their greed to earn money. So much of global warming and depletion of ozone layer comes directly from airplanes and the burgeoning air traffic. The calamity of climate change has a lot to do with man’s itch to fly and wander.
Remember, this is not science. People who use the airplane mostly have nothing to do with science. Science just stated the laws. Man’s greedy and conditioned mind then turns these laws into technology for consumption.
Question: Is there any role of imagination in science?
Answer: You talked about the role of imagination.
In science, there is no role for imagination. In fact, the imaginative mind can never be a scientist. The scientist needs to be meditative and attentive, not imaginative. All imagination comes from the past, and science is the discovery of new facts.
But in technology, obviously imagination is everything. Because technology is just a repetition of man’s age-old lust, desires, fear and dissatisfaction. So, technology arises from imagination. That is why technology has today brought the world to the point of final destruction. Whatever will come out of imagination will be an agent of destruction. The more the imagination, the deeper the destructionImagination obviously exists, just as dreams, illusions and disease exist
Let nobody ever say that science depends on imagination. Science is pure and sacred. Attention.
Imagination just makes man use science to fulfill his age-old tendencies of violence, domination and consumption.
-Based on my interactions on various e-forums.
Dated: 16th January,’15
