XXXI. Science and Caste

In contrast to their modern Western counterparts that are just a few centuries old, Indian medicine, astronomy, philosophy and scientific reasoning represent unbroken traditions that had evolved over thousands of years. As an example of its sophistication, Vaisesika, one of the six systems of Indian philosophy, deduced the planetary-like motion of sub-atomic particles thousands of years ago and reduced time mathematically by describing its smallest unit (kala) as the period taken by an atom to traverse its own unit of space; thus anticipating the atomic clock by thousands of years.

The major caste designations refer to occupational categories: Brahmin (teachers, scholars and priests), Kshatriya (rulers and warriors), Vaishya (farmers and traders), and Shudra (service providers and artisans). However, over thousands of years, the system evolved into a method of social separation based on complex system of cultural-religious rules in which hierarchical status was conferred by birth. Indeed, the word for caste, Varna, derives from the Sanskrit word for color. The yoking of science and medicine to the caste system ultimately led to a rigidity of thought that eventually stunted the process of accumulating, storing, and transmitting scientific knowledge. This happened in two ways. First, the caste system prohibited the vast majority of people, with all their intelligence and creativity, from participating in the scientific process, or even from obtaining a general education (which might lead there by “accident,” as it often does). Second, caste prohibitions made it impossible for the Brahmins to undertake things such as dissection of human corpses or even to develop anything but superficial surgical procedures. This severely impeded the advancement of biomedical science.

By the time the Europeans arrived on the scene in the 17th century India was in decline on many fronts, including the sciences. By contrast, Western science was on the verge of entering a golden age of exponential growth both methodologically and substantively. The great Indian scientist, Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, who was born in Bengal in the late 19th century, is credited with laying the Indian foundations of experimental science, hitherto considered the province of “Western intellectual tradition.” Bose understood that the Western method of submitting theory to scrupulous experimental verification could go hand-in-hand with the gift for careful observation and introspection that was his Eastern heritage; recall orthogonality. Like the dance of inductive and deductive reasoning (more on that later), the combining of Eastern and Western Traditions could lead (and, for Bose, did lead) to amazing breakthroughs across a spectacular array of the natural and physical sciences. Bose recognized that “science is neither of the East or of the West, but rather international in its universality.” And that “India [was] specially fitted to make great contributions. The burning Indian imagination, which can extort new order out from apparently contradictory facts, is held in check by the habit of concentration. This restraint confers the power to hold the mind to the pursuit of truth with an infinite patience.”

What Bose also understood, and evinced in this work, is that major scientific advances often come from individuals outside the disciplines originally called upon to either describe how things work or to find a solution to a specific problem. In some instances, this has involved the creation of entirely new disciplinary frameworks that draw from intellectual and philosophical domains theretofore not linked. Many such examples also exist in the history of science in the West, ranging from astronomy (e.g., the Copernican Revolution) to zoology (e.g., the Darwinian Revolution) to the fields that constitute public health.

Often progress in science is non-linear, resulting from breakthroughs against limits imposed on ideas that define them as "thinkable" at certain times and expansion of the intellectual options and strategies considered "available" at those times. That is, theory change in science depends more on changing intellectual circumstances and possibilities than on accumulation of knowledge within a discipline. Quotes from his meeting with Yogi Paramahansa Yogananda illustrate Bose’ keen understanding of how science progresses: “But high success is not to be obtained with a rigid exactitude. All creative scientists know that the true laboratory is the mind, where behind illusions they uncover the laws of truth.”

What Bose did not anticipate was a kind of caste system in modern science. Although an accomplished physicist, whose work on radio waves predated Marconi’s; he became interested in plant physiology. As that work progressed he “was advised to confine himself to investigations in physics rather than to encroach on their preserves…. [he] had unwittingly strayed into the domain of the unfamiliar and had offended its etiquette.” On the “religious” side he noted: “An unconscious theological bias was also present, which confounds ignorance with faith. It is often forgotten that He who has surrounded us with this ever evolving mystery of creation also implanted in us the desire to question and understand.” Both of these restrictive views are very familiar to those of us who have had to deal with the rigidity of thought within the domains of “techno-science” and “religious fundamentalism,” and the toxic combination of the two, especially over the past eight years.