What Jayant Narlikar Wrote on Scientific Temper a Decade Ago Still Holds True

The Wire

20-05-2025

Jayant Narlikar. Photo: Wikimedia commons
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Renowned astrophysicist Jayant Narlikar passed away today (May 20). The following is the foreword written by him for The Republic of Reason, published in 2015.
A scientific outlook can serve as an antidote to superstition and intolerance and the recent incidents involving attacks on rationalists and others remind us that India, even in the early 21st century, needs intensive campaigns to promote a scientific way of thinking.
A scientific outlook should not be the exclusive trait of only professional scientists. Progress in society occurs when a scientific outlook prevails over innate conservatism. I am shocked at the attacks on those who have advocated rationalism and other incidents across the country in recent months. They reflect the persistence of superstitions and intolerance in our society. In order to avoid such incidents, we need to transform society by getting as many people as possible – even non-scientists – to adopt and campaign for a scientific and rational outlook. However, we must realize this may not be easy to achieve.
Ancient traditions and ways of thinking are deeply embedded in our social and cultural milieu. They serve as barriers to the penetration of science and rationality. It is hard to change the mindset of older people in society. So we need to focus on younger people, beginning with school-going children.
The scientific community itself should be more vocal, not just in the context of such incidents. Scientists should articulate the need for rational thinking all the time. Individually, or as part of a larger group, humans have often lived under traditional beliefs. These books are inextricably mixed with cultural and religious heritage. Conflicts arise whenever the critical appraisal inherent in the scientific temper is applied to these beliefs.
In my 2003 book, Scientific Edge, I had quoted Jawaharlal Nehru describing scientific temper this way: 'The impact of science and the modern world have brought a greater appreciation of facts, a more critical faculty, a weighing of evidence, a refusal of tradition merely because it is tradition … I .. But even today it is strange how we suddenly become overwhelmed by tradition, and the critical faculties of even intelligent men cease to function…' This was written during the British Raj, but we appear still to be a long way from achieving the scientific outlook that Nehru considered so essential for our future well-being.
The challenge for India lies in facing up to its real problems and solving them through a rational scientific approach.