OF Heroes - Act I Scene II : Science and Religion
Act I Scene II
Zoom to IIT Madras. The tech-fest had featured a quiz which was very popular. The week after the tech-fest, a physics class has suddenly come abuzz. The discussion is on Perpetual Motion Machines.
Prof: PPMs are impossible. The one shown here [slide show moves to a picture of Maxwell’s daemon] fails because it violates the third law of thermodynamics. You simply cannot generate negative entropy through an event.
Student: Sir. I have a tangential question actually. Why are the laws of physics so sanctimonious? Aren’t laws meant to be broken?
Prof: [silencing the ensuing sniggering] Because this is Science, not Sociology!
Student: I’m not trying to be funny. I’m trying to understand Sir. I’ve had this question in my mind for seven years now. Why is it that Science as taught in classrooms frowns upon doubts on the accuracy or credibility of its laws? Isn’t it true that progress in science has been made not linearly but in leaps and bounds, and that these leaps have always been preceded by an experiment or evidence that actually questioned the validity of what was hitherto thought of as a law?
Prof: The evidence comes first, does it not? The laws of physics are suitably changed to accommodate the new evidence. Relativity being a case in the point.
Student: Precisely Sir. Michelson-Morley’s experiment proved once and for all, that velocities did not add up algebraically. The law had to be changed to incorporate this factor called the speed of light. The point is that the interferometer experiment was a climax of scientific thought on relativity(though it wasn’t the end point of that line of study). The experiment was definitely not the beginning of the thought process.
Prof: what are you getting at? [visibly interested]
Student: What I’m getting at is this. The thought experiment came as a result of a belief that the law of simple vector addition of relative velocities was questionable. If it wasn’t, then it wouldn’t have been questioned.
Prof: That is not necessarily true of scientific experiments. Consider the gold-foil experiment. Rutherford’s experiment was a totally random one. There was no reason to believe that it WOULD work.
Student: Sir, there HAD to be some reason to believe that the experiment MIGHT work. Otherwise the experiment wouldn’t have been conducted. Rutherford didn’t reach the position he did - one of the premier scientists of the 20th century - by being whimsical! I’m not saying that Rutherford did not believe the prevalent scientific standpoint regarding the composition of the atom. I’m saying he had reason to believe that there was a possibility that the theory might not stand up to rigourous examination. Granted the possibility was low, hence the test was conducted by Geiger and Marsden, not by the man himself. Though, of course, Rutherford did take... Um... get the credit!
[More coughing and sniggering ensues in class. It is a well-documented belief that the number of papers which have a professor's name as the author is directly proportional to the number of research students the professor has. Professors have a long history of taking credit for work done by researchers working under them.]
Prof: [silences the class once again. This time he is visibly annoyed.]
Student: What I’m saying Sir, is this. Unless an accepted theory is questioned and an alternate one is proposed, there is no meaning to Science. If there is no procedure for questioning and re-evaluating our axioms, what is the difference between Science and Religion?
Prof: We’ll tackle this later. Its time for the next class. [The class is over.]
Zoom to IIT Madras. The tech-fest had featured a quiz which was very popular. The week after the tech-fest, a physics class has suddenly come abuzz. The discussion is on Perpetual Motion Machines.
Prof: PPMs are impossible. The one shown here [slide show moves to a picture of Maxwell’s daemon] fails because it violates the third law of thermodynamics. You simply cannot generate negative entropy through an event.
Student: Sir. I have a tangential question actually. Why are the laws of physics so sanctimonious? Aren’t laws meant to be broken?
Prof: [silencing the ensuing sniggering] Because this is Science, not Sociology!
Student: I’m not trying to be funny. I’m trying to understand Sir. I’ve had this question in my mind for seven years now. Why is it that Science as taught in classrooms frowns upon doubts on the accuracy or credibility of its laws? Isn’t it true that progress in science has been made not linearly but in leaps and bounds, and that these leaps have always been preceded by an experiment or evidence that actually questioned the validity of what was hitherto thought of as a law?
Prof: The evidence comes first, does it not? The laws of physics are suitably changed to accommodate the new evidence. Relativity being a case in the point.
Student: Precisely Sir. Michelson-Morley’s experiment proved once and for all, that velocities did not add up algebraically. The law had to be changed to incorporate this factor called the speed of light. The point is that the interferometer experiment was a climax of scientific thought on relativity(though it wasn’t the end point of that line of study). The experiment was definitely not the beginning of the thought process.
Prof: what are you getting at? [visibly interested]
Student: What I’m getting at is this. The thought experiment came as a result of a belief that the law of simple vector addition of relative velocities was questionable. If it wasn’t, then it wouldn’t have been questioned.
Prof: That is not necessarily true of scientific experiments. Consider the gold-foil experiment. Rutherford’s experiment was a totally random one. There was no reason to believe that it WOULD work.
Student: Sir, there HAD to be some reason to believe that the experiment MIGHT work. Otherwise the experiment wouldn’t have been conducted. Rutherford didn’t reach the position he did - one of the premier scientists of the 20th century - by being whimsical! I’m not saying that Rutherford did not believe the prevalent scientific standpoint regarding the composition of the atom. I’m saying he had reason to believe that there was a possibility that the theory might not stand up to rigourous examination. Granted the possibility was low, hence the test was conducted by Geiger and Marsden, not by the man himself. Though, of course, Rutherford did take... Um... get the credit!
[More coughing and sniggering ensues in class. It is a well-documented belief that the number of papers which have a professor's name as the author is directly proportional to the number of research students the professor has. Professors have a long history of taking credit for work done by researchers working under them.]
Prof: [silences the class once again. This time he is visibly annoyed.]
Student: What I’m saying Sir, is this. Unless an accepted theory is questioned and an alternate one is proposed, there is no meaning to Science. If there is no procedure for questioning and re-evaluating our axioms, what is the difference between Science and Religion?
Prof: We’ll tackle this later. Its time for the next class. [The class is over.]
posted by Sriharsha Salagrama at
8:55 am
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