There exist all sorts of challenges to excite the keenest minds in our vicinity and in our surroundings. To meet these challenges one would have to. Devise new techniques,
new instruments and new approaches, which could easily open a window into the hitherto unknown areas of nature, and lead us to work at the frontiers of science and contribute to the world pool of knowledge. It is extremely important for the developing nations of the world to understand that all problems at the frontiers of science are not necessarily those dictated by fashions set elsewhere in the world.
The vital aspect relating to the establishment of sciences is a living vital force in society itself, making it truly secular and classless. With an advent of an upward spiraling nuclear armament race, many scientists all over the world began to realise that they should concern themselves with the fate of mankind in the atomic age.
As a result of this realization, several scientific associations began to play an active role in trying to establish an important and effective channel of communication between scientists of different nations, particularly between scientists from the great power blocs of the east and west Individual scientists, well- known and otherwise, have in response to their conscience, come out and taken a stand on questions relating to science and society.
But the PUG-WASH movement born out of the awareness that mankind might have to face a nuclear holocaust, was the first international group of scientists to come together, in answer to their social conscience – not just to warn society but to strive for co-operation, for betterment of international understanding and relations, for disarmament and to ensure that the type of understanding that led to the growth of science might be fostered for other endeavors, vital to human survival, for the creation of a secure world in which the beneficial application of science can be fully developed.
It is agreed that we must make a conscious effort to decrease the value in society of white- collar work, increase the respect and regard in which we hold the farmer, the artisan and the craftsman, and the man who can actually do a productive, professional and technical job.
It is this lopsided value system in society which is creating a mad rush on artificial type of higher education which does not represent true education for the human being in any sense of the word. It enables the individuals, through the acquisition of the pieces of paper such as degrees and diplomas, to be classified as scholars and to obtain white collar jobs. It is clear to everyone that the educational system inherited from our ancient tradition and the colonial past cannot be the environment for organic scientific growth, and that radical changes are called for.
Throughout man’s history, there has always been an attempt to bring about increasingly a rational approach to life and living. There is of course, a considerable degree of irrationality in all of us as human beings, who are moved by impulse and emotion.
A lack of understanding of the environment and inability to control it, introduced basic elements of fear and superstition. With the steady growth of science and improvement in one’s understanding of the way nature functioned many of the fears and superstitions of the earlier period of man’s history have disappeared, though to some extent they perhaps remain part of the subconscious. But from time to time new elements of fear, superstition, and mysticism build up.
Apart from the human being as an individual, we have to remember that as a collection of them, the society has many other traditional and structural features, which are rigid and archaic, belonging to past periods and are inappropriate to contemporary conditions.
In India, we also saw the introduction of rationality through religion by Ram Mohan Roy. But basically the path to the national spirit is through science and undoubtedly Jawaharlal Nehru was me of the foremost political thinkers of this century in this regard, He once said: “I too have worshipped at the shrine of science and counted myself as one of its votaries.
I realized that science was not only a pleasant diversion and abstraction but was the very texture of life, without which our modern world would vanish away. Politics led me to economics and this led me inevitably to science and the scientific approach to all our problems and to life it-self… Science ultimately is a way of training the minds, and of whole life functioning according to the ways and methods of science.” And throughout his life Jawaharlal Nehru strove to inculcate the importance of the scientific temper in the Indian people.