The Father, the Son and the Unholy War
Talk given by A. P. Shukla
IACS, 29 July 2005
"The unequal division of property and labour, the difference of rank
and condition among mankind, are sources of power in civilized
life, its moving causes and even its very soul."
Humphry Davy (~1800 A.D.)
"Every generation aptly discovers something to condemn in the moral
record of its immediate ancestors." - Mary Douglas (~2000 A.D.)
Dear Friends,
I must thank IACS and Prof. Mukherjee for having given me this
opportunity to share my views and confusions with you. Further, it is
an honour to be asked to give the first Samarendra Nath Sen Memorial
lecture. For this honour I thank IACS, and particularly Prof. Samar
Bagchi who put me in touch with IACS.
Little that I know of Prof. Sen and his work, what has impressed me
most is his commitment to write history of science in ancient India in
Bangla. Writing scientific literature in one’s mother tongue is
very important part of one’s professional commitment, woefully
neglected by the vast
majority of the scientific community in our country. I consider the
firm resolve of the minority to undertake this task, a part of the
ongoing cultural revolution. Pioneer like Prof. Sen are a great source
of inspiration. This activity is an important part of People’s
Science Movement (PSM). Much of my talk will be about the complex, and
ever evolving relationship between the cultural revolution and PSM.
Now a bit of introduction. First about the terms used in the
Trinitarian title of my talk. The father, of course, is the famous
Prof. J.D. Bernal with whose work in PSM most of us must be familiar.
The son is Martin Bernal, the not-so-famous author of the book (Vol. I
in 1987 and Vol. II in 1991) Black Athena : Fabrication of Ancient
Greece 1785-1985”. The unholy war is the Globalized Communist
Revolution, for which I’ll repeatedly use the acronym GCR.
The cultural revolution is a part of GCR, a particularly hot episode of
which was the Chinese GPCR of the sixties and seventies. Now, my own
identity. For the present purposes I’ll describe myself as
a biologically superannuated, progressive scientific worker. Lastly,
for the choice of the title. It was when I met Prof. Bagchi on his
visit to Kanpur a few months back, that we both had common appreciation
for the insightful and controversial book of Martin Bernal. Then, when
I had this opportunity to share my views on critique of science, PSM
and cultural revolution with you, I decided that I’ll make the
sharp shift in these processes at the end of World War II, the central
theme of my presentation. The generation gap dimension of this
transition has been described well by the above quoted statement of
Prof. Douglas.
My main concern is scientific modernity, a very important aspect of
which is globally networked scientific practice. I mark the beginnings
of its long journey as the scientific revolution starting with the 30 -
year war (1618-48), and its culmination in the present stage with
cultural revolution. A convenient, though some what arbitrary marker
for the latter is William Hinton’s book “The Hundred Day
War”, dealing with a decisive, 1967 episode of the Chinese GPCR.
Here, I’ll limit myself to the 20th century interval of this
protracted process of scientific modernity, with special emphasis on
the sharp transition in the middle of the century. We will further
confine ourselves to the problem of left initiative in PSM, an aspect
both of scientific practice, and that of cultural revolution. Bernal
Sr. is a pioneer in the earlier phase of this process, at least, for
the science-in-English practitioners, which includes us. Generally,
Euro-centrism, and more particularly WASP (White Anglo-Saxon
Protestant) exaggeration of modern scientific practice is being
seriously questioned from a variety of sources. For convenience,
I’ll use the phrase WASP model for this retrogressive
exaggeration. At least in certain quarters the movement against it has
become much stronger during the current phase of post-world war II
globalization. Martin Bernal’s work has helped it by challenging
the dominant Aryan Model of Ancient Greece, and provocatively calling
it a fabrication. In the present wave of G-Americanism (Globalized
Americanism), there is a crying need to dispute this irrationality.
But, it should be noted that there are several alternatives. I neither
subscribe to the super-power nationalist option, nor to the
religio-fundamentalist revivalism of the past. I consider these
retrogressive negativities.
What we need is an affirmative choice. I believe that it lies in
rationally discovering, imaginatively inventing, and boldly fabricating
and forging a vision of progress using the method of critical optimism,
which is a variant of the 150 year old, omnibus method of dialectical
materialism. The more we succeed in validating by practice this
alternative vision of global networking of scientific practice, more we
will be able to liberate ourselves from the debilitating dead weight of
the three negativities mentioned above.
Now as regards my credentials to talk on a messy issue like radical
left initiative in PSM. I’ve been participating, somewhat
seriously, in the left movement in IIT Kanpur for the last 35 years,
first in the Karmachari trade union, and then as a part of PSM, as well
as various other mass activities. From this what I consider worth
sharing with you is my academic work on critique of science. Much of
this developed around an elective course taught several times by Prof.
P.R.K.Rao and me to B.Tech. students. This work has continued in fits
and starts even after my retirement from IIT, through informal contacts
with academic and non-academic people. This has helped me to ponder
over the principal contradiction of PSM practice defined by the two
contending poles, namely, science-By-the-people, and
science-For-the-people. Not that we are anywhere near having resolved
this knotty problem, but my engagement with it has enhanced the meaning
of my professional and personal life enormously.
Thus what I will do now is to describe some of my practice-generated
observations and conjectures in the context of the conflict between
popularizing science on one hand, and integrating scientific modernity
into a common man’s practice on the other.
I. VISION OF THE FUTURE
One of the weaknesses of the WASP model of modernity is its simplistic
and incorrect dealing with the future. It claims to
“rationally” reconstruct the past, and integrating it with
the present, tries to mechanically predict the future by extrapolation.
The success of this procedure arose from the observation of, and
experimental manipulation of inanimate nature. With profitable
technological applications, and with the integration of scientific
modernity with ruling class ideology, it resulted in, explicitly or
implicitly, applying this logic of mechanistic determinism to human
affairs. This unscientific practice works strongly in favour of the
continuation of the status quo.
The rational procedure instead demands a synthesis of the empirical
practice in the present with the two abstractions of past and future.
They relate with the present very asymmetrically; while a very
significant part of the past can be discovered by reconstruction, the
future must be imaginatively invented. Thus while the conception of the
past has a large rationalist, objective component, that of the future
is riddled with arbitrariness. Much of one’s optimism derives
from his expectations of the future; so one’s motivational vigor
and vitality critically depend on his perception of future goals, which
has a large element of conjectural subjectivity.
Another important aspect of our vision of the future is the
exponentially accelerating integration of our practice into a
globalized process. But this very fact must make us resolutely oppose
what is called “globalization”, but is actually a new
imperialism of finance capital dictating its terms of profitability on
all movements of goods, labor, services and people. This has been
playing havoc in our country for the last 15 years. Our conception of
globalization is radically different. I call it progressive
globalization and it is a new human synthesis based on empowerment of
labor. An important fact of this process is the division of the globe
into two large land-masses. Historically, the Afro-Eurasian land-mass
has dominated progress, and populates more than three fourths of
mankind. The American land-mass gained importance only during the last
century, and that domination reached a new stage with the shift of the
centre of capitalist-imperialist power to USA after World War II. We
are living through this highly unstable phase of development, when a
nation of ~6% of people consumes ~40% of the resources. The future of
progress must be in the rapid development of the backward regions of
the Afro-Eurasian land-mass.
Half the population of this region lives in the Indian subcontinent,
China and Russia. These are some of the largest economies of the globe.
Each of them has played a decisive role in the 20th century
upheavals of globalization. And all of them have been of central
importance for the evolution of GCR. Like much of the remainder of the
globe, the revolutionary thrust of GCR has collapsed in each of them
during the last few decades. This stalemate has demoralized many
progressives and one of the aspects of inventing a vision of the future
is to be able to find hope and strength on the basis of concrete action
to improve this state of affairs. This I see in getting integrated with
the process of liberation from the trammels of G-American (Globalized
American) WASP model of modernity. I firmly believe that the agency
that will accelerate this process in the solidarity of the people of
these countries. But people must know how to unite, and democratically
act against the corruption of their states, and against the exploiting
classes of their countries. The most sophisticated modernist
rationality discovered and invented using most advanced methods of
research are needed to release the power of these forces of progress.
Familiarity with the long and diversified 150 year old tradition of
GCR, the successes and failures of the revolutions, starting, say, with
the French revolution, and a critical realization of our strength and
weakness starting from the individual to large collectives are our
guides. Only to the extent that we can translate these ideas into our
lives, do we have any right to cast aspersions on WASP model of
modernity.
II CULTURAL REVOLUTION AND WAR AGAINST PATRIARCHY
Progressive power of any class, whether capitalist or proletarian has
three components - economic, political and cultural. My vision of
future is a synthesis of progress through these movements as autonomous
and disparate parts of GCR. I express this belief in the following
conjecture :-
Political power grows and develops out of the barrel of the gun, if and
only if it is firmly based on economic power of new forces of
production, and cultural power crawls on the tips of grass-root class
struggle at the family and neighborhood levels.
Even a cursory look at the history of GCR shows that it has been long
on the war against economic exploitation, but very, very short on its
struggle against patriarchy. Any meaningful democratic life is possible
only with a serious struggle against this ailment of society, which is
as old as the disease of exploitation by private property. Much of what
is known as the left consists of an orthodoxy, a ‘men only’
affair, largely confined to work-place conflicts, and with an age
restriction of 20 or older. This excludes some three-fourth of the
population from active participation, a very serious weakness indeed. A
sharp realization of this problem came to some of us while working to
integrate the movement of a worker’s cooperative in IIT, Kanpur,
with movement for social change. Three of us with a middle class
background, worked with this small
organization of about hundred workers for about ten years. The
organization is confined largely to economic issues, and is growing
exponentially in size due to the reputation of its leadership being
‘honest’. All our efforts to sensitize this small number of
workers, aimed at democratizing their organization and their family
lives fell on deaf years. From the ordinary members to the top
leadership, no one found these efforts of any value. This indifference
to cultural initiative breeds an
atmosphere of competitive, consumerist economism. We were convinced of
the dire need for a strong cultural initiative against the patriarchal
hierarchy, so dominant in the traditional way of life. The superficial
liberal modernity confined to the workplace only hides this
backwardness. G-American WASP modernity while championing the cause of
gender democracy is steadily weakening the family, causing a serious
emotional crisis. This orthogonality, and complementarity between
economic exploitation, patriarchal oppression, and political liberation
is crucial for the future synthesis of human practice, a precondition
for any meaningful progress. Search for this synthesis is a great
challenge for scientific modernity. I must admit that in our best
efforts, we have failed to find a solution. My guess is that
healthier human nature grows and thrives in an environment which has an
appropriate proportion of each generation and both genders among its
population. Mary Douglas’s statement quoted in the beginning
points to the role of generation differentiation in the evolution of
morality, as well as, to the complexity of generation interaction
for affirmative growth. The fast rise of nuclear family has made the
problem so much the worse. Broadening the social base of the family by
its integration with the neighborhood leading to a modernist and more
rational sharing of resources can help correcting this distortion.
Another aspect of culture is a conscious and critical integration of
the ultimate in life, both individually and collectively. At the
present juncture the 3-fold conflict is between almighty God, almighty
dollar and almighty labour power, the third having been added to the
list by GCR. Unfortunately, its 150-year history shows that this
culture is very weak. One reason could be that the cultural
transformation is much slower than economic or political
transformation, and so it is more evolutionary than revolutionary.
III. TRANSFORMING MIDDLE CLASS CONTRADICTIONS INTO A PROGRESSIVE FORCE
“A member of the middle class is at once both bourgeois and man
of the people. He glorified contradiction because contradiction is the
essence of his existence. He is simply social contradiction in action.
And so he will form an integral part of all the impending social
revolutions”.
- Marx (1846)
I’ve been greatly impressed by the insightful overarching
generalization of young Marx about our (and his own) middle class
identity even before he and Engels wrote the manifesto. The quote above
is an abridged and a slightly adapted version of Marx’s polemic
with Proudhon’s middle class sentimentality. Much water has flown
down Volga, Ganga, Amazon and other symols of vitality, over the last
150 years, and yet the perpetually growing, evolving, omnipresent and
‘omniscient’, if not omnipotent middle class is
conditioning social change, whether status quoist or revolutionary.
Humphry Davy, Bernal Sr. and Bernal Jr. all are typical members of
their middle class milieus and their works point to different phases
and contexts of power struggle between the ruling classes at one pole,
and the exploited classes at the other. Much that is visible and
recorded in the GCR is also made public consciousness by members of the
middle class, and so is very strongly coloured by our class
interests. From the progressive vantage point, here I wish to talk
about only one aspect of these interests, and the attendant
contradiction. Most of us are armchair politicians pontificating on the
miserable state of the society; ‘the point however is to change
it’ Our dilemma is that most of us lack the courage to do heroic
things; and believe that, obviously, doing small things is only
frittering oneself away. So we end up blaming the circumstances, which
alone have been responsible for our inability to make history.
An inspiration from the scientific method has helped me fight this
dilemma. A scientific worker has a firm and unwavering commitment to
his professional paradigm, learnt through a prolonged period of
rigorous training. The paradigm must claim much and think big to fire
the imagination of the youth, and to make them persevere over some
length of time. With all this promise, the practitioner picks some
small, but precise puzzle, and uses all his skills to resolve it. Being
assured of a solution, his motivation is high. The emotional security
and self-confidence achieved by successfully solving such small puzzles
arises from the integration of the individual with his community of
experts. Kuhn, and following him many others including Bernal Jr. point
out very well the importance and limitation of this puzzle-paradigmatic
research.
Adapting this mode of practice, the crisis of meaning of our middle
class identity can be resolved by realistically articulating an
individual’s relationship with the movement-for-social-change at
all, but highly differentiated levels. Practice is complexly networked
from the individual to the global scale. This helps one face his
weakness as honestly as one’s strength. With an emotionally
secure appreciation of one’s limitations, one can relate
democratically with poorer citizens around him, who are just one notch
below him in class hierarchy. The science-BY-the-people movement is
essentially about this democratic practice; the style of work of the
science-FOR-the-people movement is that of patronizing the poor
citizens with our expert superiority middle class conceit. Our
democratic sensitivity is enhanced by the realization that in a class
divided society one of the functions of the middle class is to act as a
buffer between the mass of poor citizens and the ultimate law, be it
the realm of economic, political or cultural struggle. If we do not
have a concrete realization of the above kind about our class position
in society, we end up being saddled with the implicit, default option
which is that, come what may, we must defend the status quo, in some
role of a power broker. The above quote of Marx points to the
possibility, and the inevitability of our participation in the process
of revolutionary change.
Instead of talking generalities let me share some personal experience.
Some where along the line I discovered that my most appropriate
role in the movement-for-social-change can be in the field of modern
scientific rationality. My option got further narrowed down by the
Chinese cultural revolution of 60s and 70s that I talked about above. I
found that to work effectively in the science-BY-the-people movement I
needed two things. Firstly, I must be competent to talk about
science-based modernity without being simplistic or superficial. My
training, first as a physicist, and then as a scientific worker helped
this. Secondly, I needed to understand the complexities of the left
movement, namely, the available options and the deviations. My
participation in the left movement from 1970 onwards helped me in this.
Now I will talk about this in more detail.
A big hurdle for a middle class person to participate in the
progressive PSM is the orthodoxies of the left. I will describe two of
them. The first one I call Marxist orthodoxy, which believes that the
all powerful formulations of Marx got derailed because of inapt
theorists like Engels, and opportunist politicians like Lenin, and
barbarian dictators like Stalin etc. If we can cleanse Marxism of these
distortions and mistakes, Marx’s ideas can be saved and updated,
and a new world can be ushered in on their basis. This is like Martin
Luther trying to save Christianity from the corruption of the Church by
going back to Bible. The WASP model makes much of this exaggerating the
importance of the Protestant movement.
I call the other left orthodoxy, Bolshevism which has many
variants. These ‘Bolsheviks’ believe that the only way to
create a communist society is by armed overthrow of state power by
waging armed struggle competently and heroically. Thus they make a
great virtue of conspiratorial organizational methods. My view is
different. I believe neither in going back to Gandhi, nor to Marx, nor
to the Vedas. I believe that the key to our liberation from the misery
of our middle class contradictions lies with the 21st century citizens
- first at the national level, and then at the global level. A very
important aspect of the empowerment of 21st century citizens is the
process of forging a united front between the poor citizens and the
middle class citizens with our baggage of all the contradictions. The
concrete nature of this united front, along with many other social
institutions and processes, will be essentially determined by a
radically new constitution. The objective and subjective aspects of
this process are beyond the scope of the present discussion. To carry
the argument further, it is best that I should share with you some of
my local experience. The fast collapsing state machinery in our Ulta
Pradesh, most visible and closest to the citizens in its municipal
functions such as civic amenities (electric power), health, education,
sewage disposal, and law and order is well advertised. But I find it to
be a blessing in disguise, because it forces the need of neighborhood
and community solidarity on at least 90% or more of the citizens. This
grass-root initiative in a hi-tech socio-economic environment must be
integrated with the cultural revolution, as well as the
science-BY-the-people movement. We must learn to protect ourselves from
the vote-bank wallahs, the NGO wallahs and the ‘Kranti’
wallahs. We the people very much includes us the propertyless middle
class, with our heavy burden of contradictious, which makes us walking
and talking lies of the G-American social order.
IV. NEW SYNTHESIS OF SCIENTIFIC PHILOSOPHY: FROM RUDE SCIENCE OF
WASP MODERNITY TO NATURALISM OF GCR
Above I talked about some political aspects of the transition from
Father phase to the Son phase. Now I’ll discuss some of its
natural philosophical aspects. Before the transition, the dominance of
the discipline of physics over the rest of scientific profession was
nearly complete. It is this arrogance that is reflected in
Rutherford’s statement about two kinds of science, namely,
physics and stamp collecting. I enumerate now some of the quarters from
where the ‘solid’ foundation of Newtonian mathematical
physics were shaken:-
(1) Gödel’s theorem of 1931 is a landmark
in logic. It led to serious doubt on Aristotelian logic’s basic
law called “the law of the excluded middle”. What this law
implies is that formal logic can uniquely settle the truth status of
any logical proposition, namely, whether it is true or false. This made
proof by contradiction a very useful tool for proving theorems of
mathematics and mathematical physics. But Godel showed with his theorem
that it is possible to formulate a third category of propositions,
namely, those whose truth or falsity is undecidable. This weakened the
scope of application of deductive logic seriously.
(2) Sir Karl Popper published his book “Logic
of Scientific Discovery” in 1934, overthrowing the almighty
‘inductive logic’, and replaced it with
‘falsificationist logic’ as a procedure for scientific
progress. In one blow the scientific profession was deprived of the
solid bedrock of absolutely true natural laws. The revolutionary claim
that popper made was that no scientific law can ever be proved to be
true. All that the scientific community does is, trying to prove that a
hypothesis proposed by a scientist as a law is false. Thus Popper
succeeded in saving the ‘logical’ supremacy of hard
sciences, headed by physics, in the hierarchy of disciplines, and
dismissed Darwinian biology, Freudian psycho- analysis, and GCR’s
diamat as non-sciences, even though each one of them has a very
significant number of practitioners in their respective areas of social
activity. Popper was equally assertive with his political conservatism,
when he went on with his anti-communist propaganda in 1944. This was a
time when GCR was locked in a survival struggle against the Nazi attack
on Soviet Union.
(3) Lord Keynes bought Newton’s non-scientific
manuscripts and ‘saved’ them from being carted away to
America. After he donated them to the Cambridge University, academic
scholars got a first glimpse of the darker side of their 300 year old
hero. The fact that their impeccable icon wrote much more on magical
science and theology, than he did on mathematics and physics, was a
rude shock to the champions of WASP modernity. For some the simple
truth stood naked that ‘science sells itself by selling its
heros’.
(4) Persevering as Einstein was, through the EPR
paradox of 1935 he sharpened his attack on what, according to him, were
the shortcomings of quantum mechanics. The authors of EPR claimed that
the quantum mechanical formalism violates local realism, which to them
was an all important, inviolable concept of the physical world. The way
I look at their objections is as follows. The particles like photons or
electrons can interact in a manner so that a part of their interaction
does not decrease with increasing distance. This implies that in such
situations foundational concepts of Newtonian mechanics like free
particle and inertial frame of reference are no longer true. This was
one more blow against the claims of universality of Newton's laws.
(5) The doctrine of DNA got started in 1953 with the
work of Crick and Watson. The molecular structure of DNA explained the
mechanism of replication of biological molecules very successfully.
This went a long way in demystifying biological concepts like genes,
and provided a very effective molecular explanation for inheritance in
biological reproduction. But it also initiated a very powerful
professional and cultural consensus among biologists which some have
termed as ‘all-in-our-genes’ doctrine. This reductionist
molecular biology opened the flood gates for a billion dollar industry
of genetic engineering. These excesses resulted in the polarization of
the community of biologists into a reductionist camp headed by Dawkins,
Wilson etc., and the other pole of synthetic evolutionary biologists
headed by people like S.J. Gould, E. Mayr, R. Levins, R. Lewontin and
others .
I’ve just described some events and processes which help
understanding the nature and depth of the transition from the Father
phase to the Son phase. Now I’ll describe the work of Mayr,
Kuhn and Bernal Jr. as examples of pathways pointing to the nature of
the scientific synthesis in progress
during the Son phase.
Mayr’s dissatisfaction with the old philosophy of science in the context of biology is given below in his own words:-
“Classical
physical sciences, on which the classical philosophy
of science was based, were dominated by a set of ideas inappropriate to
the study of organisms: these included ESSENTIALISM, DETERMINISM,
UNIVERSALISM, and REDUCTIONISM. Biology, properly understood comprises
population thinking, probability, chance, pluralism, emergence and
historical narratives. What was needed was a new philosophy of science
that could incorporate the approaches of all sciences, including
physics and
biology.
E.MAYR (1997)
(emphasis added-APS)
I formed the acronym RUDE rearranging the 4 categories Reductiomism,
Universalism, Determinism and Essentialism considered by Mayr to be the
most important aspects of classical philosophy of science. Further, the
six categories, namely, population thinking … etc. that Mayr
considers as the basis of a new synthesis of all the sciences, provides
an effective starting point to critique the RUDE science, a very
important aspect of WASP G-Americanism.
Kuhn’s work on philosophy of science is well known. Here I wish
to point only that a very important feature of his work is the fact
that a significant part of valid scientific knowledge is the collective
subjectivity of the community of experts. This claim leads to a
rejection of the WASP myth of absolute objectivity, which resulted in
the strong school of positivism. The realization of the importance of
subjectivity, obviously, does not means a free license of anarchist
conceptions like ‘anything goes’. The correct method is the
resolution of the complex contradiction between objective and
subjective ontologies, which is highly context-specific. Correct
solution of this puzzle will be a significant advance in dialectical
materialism.
Now I will elaborate two aspects of Bernal Jr’s work which he
emphasizes in his book mentioned earlier. First is the resistance of
the community of experts in critically debating his provocative thesis.
This lack of open mindedness is partly a product of professional
inertia, and partly due to the professional insecurity in accepting the
innovations of a new-comer. The second point relates to the socially
injurious prejudices born out of plain and simple vested interests;
this is what is called class antagonisms in the parlance of GCR. The
case discussed by Bernal Jr. is that of the banal racism of the 19th
century Victorian era of imperialism.
Earlier I discussed some instances of the 20th century development in
the critique of RUDE philosophy of WASP modernity. What I aspire for as
an alternative is the dialectics of population practice as the language
and method of conscious change in the context of GCR. The earlier
discussion makes it amply clear that we have a long way to go.
CONCLUSION
I’ll like to conclude with the problem of progressive PSM. It is
about integrating scientific modernity into our social milieu. Earlier
I argued that there are two varieties of scientific modernity –
the WASP variety and the GCR variety. Both have powerful traditions,
but the former has the military might of imperialism at its disposal.
An explicit expression of the same is in the statement of Humphry Davy
quoted at the beginning. With the onset of GCR 150 years back, the
polarization has sharpened, and there is less room for hybrid
modernities mixing up the tradition with modernity. In the recent past
the Nehruvian tradition, and the Hindutva-based modernity have been two
examples of such hybrids. Here as in much else of my talk I will
confine myself to the WASP and GCR varieties which define the
polarization. Generally, scientific modernity is concerned with
consciously changing nature to our advantage. The WASP variety does
this through technology. And the main support for science comes as a
means to creating ever more powerful technologies. The control of our
lives by military
and consumerist technologies is a result of this
dominance of WASP modernity.
In contrast the GCR variety is concerned with the well-being of the
vast majority, and so its aim is improvement of population practice in
all walks of life. For this it depends on the method of revolutionary
change. Unfortunately, a simplistic understanding of revolutionary
change as exclusively armed political struggle has led to great
misfortune. I’ll give some of my thoughts on this.
The changes can be divided between discrete and continuous. The WASP
variety of modernity heavily rests on the physics of continuous change.
So it is only natural for it to claim that any discrete change is
undesirable. This applies specially to discrete political changes. On
the other hand, in the GCR variety discrete change, including political
revolution, plays an important role. At times this has been exaggerated
with disastrous consequences as mentioned earlier.
Fortunately, the 20th century developments have thrown up a wide
variety of discrete changes. Thus we have a whole spectrum of
revolutions such as politico-economic, paradigmatic-scientific,
cultural, philosophical etc. Two other sources of discrete changes with
sophisticated theorization have been in quantum mechanics, and with the
development of computer technology which is based on switching of
electromagnetic field, and networking of far and near computers. These
changes have made revolutionary change more acceptable to many people.
Yet, GCR is a consensus among a small minority of people, and it has a
difficult road to travel, to win the support and enthusiasm of the
majority.
To end my talk on an optimistic note, let me quote from a poem of
Shaheed Paash of Punjab which draws sharply the distinction between the
WASP variety and the GCR variety mentioned earlier :-
“Where does this journey start?
Or what is the ultimate goal?
Or how many colors of dust
one encounters during the journey?
Or any other question.
Please go and ask some sophist
scholar like Plato.
I’m a plain inurbane traveler.
And I can say only this
that in the dictionary of travelers
the word farewell does not exist.
Travelling is pure joy without any pain.
In the journey death is not a halt ,
And the concept of goal is meaningless.”
(My adaptation of an abridgement from the English translation of the poem “Safar” by Shaheed Paash)
*******************************************************
ACRONYMS & ABBREVIATIONS used
GCR Globalized Communist Revolution
G-American Globalized American
PSM People’s Science Movement
RUDE Reductionism, Universalism, Determinism, Essentialism
WASP White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
***********************************************************************
REFERENCES:-
1. H. DAVY:- In the article “The Scientist and
the Underdeveloped Countries”, by P.M.S. Blackett, on p. 42 of
the book “The Science of Science: Science in the Technological
Age”, ed. By M. Goldsmith and A. Mackay, Published by Souvenir
Press (1964)
2. M. DOUGLAS:- In the article “Traditional
Culture – Let’s Hear No More about It” by M. Douglas
on p.85 of the book ”Culture and Public Action”, ed. By V.
Rao and M. Walton, Published by Permanent Black (2004).
3. K. MARX:- In a letter “From Marx to
P.V. Annenkov”, on p.39 of the book “Selected
Correspondence”, by Marx and Engels, Published by Progress
Publishers (Moscow).
4. E. MAYR:- On pp. xiii-xiv of the book
“This Is Biology: The Science of the Living World”, by E.
Mayr, Published by Belknap Press of Harvard University (1964).
5. SHAHEED PAASH:- On pp. 72-73 of the Hindi translation of the
collection of his poems titled “Beech Ka Rasta Naheen
Hota”, Published by Rajkamal Prakashan (1989).
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