Current Science

Open Access Open Access  Restricted Access Subscription Access

Evolution of Science II:Insights into Working of Nature


Affiliations
1 Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai 400 005, India
 

We attempt to provide a comprehensive model for evolution of science across millennia, taking into account the contribution of intellectual traditions, cultural value systems and increasing sophistication of humans in their study of nature. We also briefly discuss the role of technology and its interplay in the evolution of science. We identify five primary approaches to the study of nature, namely, ad hoc formulations, religious approach, pragmatic approach, axiomatic approach and the logicbased approach. Each of these approaches has had its prime periods and has contributed significantly to human understanding of nature and has also overlapped within a society, playing a central role over human evolution at some stage. We surmise that the currently dominant axiomatic method will reach its limit due to its complexity and may never be fully formalized. We suggest that future progress of science will be more logic-based, where we will use experimentation and simulations, rather than axiomatic firmness, to test our understanding of nature.

Keywords

Evolution of Science, Science and Society, Understanding Science.
User
Notifications
Font Size

  • Vahia, M. N., Evolution of science I: evolution of mind. Curr. Sci., 2016, 111(9), 1456–1464.

  • Conard, N. J., A female figurine from the basal Aurignacian of Hohle Fels cave in south Western Germany. Nature, 2009, 459, 248–252.

  • Iaccarino, M., Science and Culture, European molecular biology organization. EMBO Rep., 2003, 4(3), 220–224; doi:10.1038/sj. embor.embor781

  • Narasimha, R., The Indian half of Needham’s question: some thoughts on axioms, models, algorithms, and computational positivism. Interdisciplin. Sci. Rev., 2003, 28(1), 1–13.

  • Ganeri, J., Indian Logic: A Reader, Routledge, London, 2001.

  • Wilder, R. L., The Axiomatic Method, The World of Mathematics (ed. Newman, J. A.), George Allen and Unwin London, 1960, vol. 3, pp 1647–1667.

  • Culotta, E., On the origin of religion. Science, 2009, 326, 784–787.

  • Hoodbhoy, P., Islam and Science, Religious Orthodoxy and the Battle for Rationality, Zed Bools, 1991.

  • Wade, L., Birth of moralizing gods. Science, 2015, 349, 919–922.

  • Boyer, P., Religion: bound to believe? Nature, 2008, 455, 1038–1039.

  • Ball, P., Triumph of the medieval mind. Nature, 2008, 452, 816–818.

  • Dediu, D. and Ladd, D. R., Linguistic tone is related to the population frequency of the adaptive haplogroups of two brain size genes, ASPM and Microcephalin. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., 2007, 104, 10944.

  • Dediu, D. and Levinson, S. C., On the antiquity of languages: the reinterpretation of Neanderthal linguistic capacities and its consequences. Front. Psychol., 2013, 4, 1.

  • Evans, N. and Levinson, S. C., Myth of language universals: language diversity and its importance to cognitive science. Brain Behav. Sci., 2009, 32, 429–492.

  • Chagett, M., Ancient Egyptian Science, American Philosophical Society, vol. 1–3, 1995.

  • Subbarayappa, B. V., Science in India: Past and Present, Nehru Centre, Mumbai, 2007.

  • Needham, J., Science and Civilization in China Volume (There are now 7 volumes in the series), 1954; http://www.nri.org.uk/science.html

  • Umesh, M., Nyaya Vaiseshika: Conceptions of matter in Indian Philosophy, Bharatiya Kala Prakashan (reprint of earlier edition of 1936), 2006.

  • Debasish, C., Vaiseshika Sutra by Kanada (in English), D K Printworld, New Delhi, 2003.

  • Jagdish Chandra, C., The Hindu Realism; Being an Introduction to the Metaphysics of the Nyaya–Vaiseshika System of Philosophy, reprinted by General Books, 1912; www.General-Books.net.

  • Sarukkai, S., Indian Philosophy and Philosophy of Science (ed. Chattopadhyaya, D. P.), Project of History of Indian Science, Philosophy and Culture, Centre for Studies in Civilisations, ISBN 81-87586-22-2, 2008.

  • Watson, W. H., Understanding Physics Today, Cambridge University Press, 1963.

  • Nagel, E. and Newman, J. R., The World of Mathematics Volume 3 (ed. Newman, J. A.), George Allen and Unwin London, 1960, pp. 1668–1695.

  • Raatikainen, P., Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (spring 2014 Edition) (ed. Zalta, E. N.), 2014; http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/goedel-incompleteness/

  • Franzen, T., Gödel’s Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to its Use and Abuse, A K Peters, 2005.

  • Franzen, T., The Popular Impact of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, Notes of the American Mathematical Society, 2006, 53, 440–443.

  • Wolfram, S., New Kind of Science, 2011.

  • Markov, I. L., Limits on fundamental limits to computation. Nature, 2014, 512, 147.


Abstract Views: 355

PDF Views: 106




  • Evolution of Science II:Insights into Working of Nature

Abstract Views: 355  |  PDF Views: 106

Authors

Mayank N. Vahia
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai 400 005, India

Abstract


We attempt to provide a comprehensive model for evolution of science across millennia, taking into account the contribution of intellectual traditions, cultural value systems and increasing sophistication of humans in their study of nature. We also briefly discuss the role of technology and its interplay in the evolution of science. We identify five primary approaches to the study of nature, namely, ad hoc formulations, religious approach, pragmatic approach, axiomatic approach and the logicbased approach. Each of these approaches has had its prime periods and has contributed significantly to human understanding of nature and has also overlapped within a society, playing a central role over human evolution at some stage. We surmise that the currently dominant axiomatic method will reach its limit due to its complexity and may never be fully formalized. We suggest that future progress of science will be more logic-based, where we will use experimentation and simulations, rather than axiomatic firmness, to test our understanding of nature.

Keywords


Evolution of Science, Science and Society, Understanding Science.

References





DOI: https://doi.org/10.18520/cs%2Fv111%2Fi9%2F1465-1472