Journal of Gyansagar Science Foundation 2013 04 01

Author(s): Sanjeev Sogani, Vimal Jain
Publisher: Gyansagar Science Foundation

Page 75

Dr. Surendra Singh Pokharna, Volume 1 Issue 1 April 2013
in making this world truly global. However, they have also resulted into an increase in population, depletion of natural resources, damage to the environment, increase in terrorism, threats of nuclear wars and so on. However, because of these changes and domination of science and technology in all walks of life, an impression has been created that scientific knowledge is the supreme and anything other, which does not fall into this domain is not very relevant. But Science and technology are just two hundred years old only and there was a concept of knowledge and technology even before the modern science came into existence.
One finds that population increase, increase in consumerism, along with overemphasis on only on economic development are the major causes of many of these problems. However, these three are ultimately related with scientific advancements their technological and economic exploitation by human beings in last 200 years. Actually to define development in terms of economic term only, has done tremendous damage to the environment because it has encouraged consumerism and has confined the economic powers to certain individuals or groups or nations who took a lead in the direction of this type of development (Wolf Gang Sach). Not only this further spreading of this concept of development took place in the whole world by the western world through agencies like World Bank, United Nations and International Monetary Fund and others. In this process, other concepts of development like spiritual development and other ethical systems have been left aside or are getting diluted.
Actually, if one goes into details of these problems then one finds that actually scientific methods developed to study physical systems are not adequate when biological systems, social systems and human systems are considered (Goldsmith 1990, Penrose 1990, John Gigch, 1978, Bertalanffy, 1976, Pokharna 2009), because all biological systems are essentially irreversible in nature, that is they grow and decay and they are also open systems compared to the physical systems which are closed systems. So the biological and social systems can not be strictly subjected to the process of measurement and hence they are not exactly describable in the strict terminology of the physical, sciences (Goldsmith 1990, Jones 1990 and Penrose 1990). Also any type of experimentation is not possible in case of human system as they have memory, free will, creativity, tendency to interact strongly with other fellow beings and the environment. Furthermore there are micro controls in the form of thought processes which cannot be easily adjusted in any planned "scientific experiment". They
70
also have a property of infinite amplification (Rudy, 1983) because of the thought processes, which makes it difficult to study human beings in a strictly scientific way. Expressed in a different way, it is now felt that the standard concepts used in any scientific study have their basis in compartmentalization, reductionism, causality, mechanism, induction, empiricism and passivism etc. (Goldsmith, 1990, Jones 1990) so they cannot be used to strictly study the biological systems and social systems in general and human systems in particular. Hence even the study of interaction of human systems with physical systems needs closer examination.
Not only this the basic parameters used in science like energy, mass, linear momentum and angular momentum are defined basically for isolated closed systems, so they may not be the best choice for describing the biological and social systems (Penrose, 1990). Hence alternative concepts like order, entropy and information will be better for understanding of the modern problems. Limitations of scientific methodology are also brought into light through the Godel's incompleteness theorems (Penrose, 1990, Pokharna, 2006), which have compelled the scientists to consider the concept of consciousness in a more serious way and also revise the concept of knowledge in a fundamental way (Goldsmith, 1900, Pokharna 2006 and Pokharna 2009). It appears that the concept of knowledge as mentioned in the Indian philosophy needs to be closely examined in view of the these problems mentioned above. As per the Indian philosophy in general and Jain philosophy in particular, knowledge is structured in the consciousness and what we discuss as scientific knowledge could be just a small part of this grand knowledge.
Finally Darwin's principle of evolution which talks only of natural selection and too much emphasis on its education has also done tremendous damage to the environment (Goldsmith 1990 and Dennet 1995) because other ethical systems based on the rules like "Live and Let Live" have been ignored by the scientific community and educationists (Pokharna2006).
Hence General Systems Theory (GST) should be used for better understanding of the whole problem because by its intrinsic nature, GST can give a better picture of the interconnectedness of various components of the Human-Earth-atmospheric system (John Gigch, 1978, Bertalanffy, 1976, Stephen and Handmer 1992). It is finally a problem of order and knowledge (Pokharna, 1985, Pokharna 2006) at all levels and we should talk of development of order and evolution of order for complete understanding of development.