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By
Oweyegha-Afunaduula, F. C.
There is contradiction in pursuing Science and the public virtue of Patriotism simultaneously. Jean Jacques Rousseau saw this way back in the 18th Century. He said that the very spirit of Science undermines patriotism because science tends to be cosmopolitan whereas patriotism has a strong attachment to own society.
Science is a disintegrating trend in society. Too much commitment to science can pave the way for despotism. Besides, as Rousseau observed, science, like philosophy, seeks to discover universal truth, which has virtually no relevance to local knowledge but to world science. It corrupts the uniqueness and genius of the local society -its special local set of values.
The pursuit of universal truth by science sidelines the local wisdoms as insignificant and destroys their authority in society. For example, the active use of industrial fertilisers and pesticides, and growing of monoculture crops, increasingly GMOs being promoted by science as civilised crop production, are destroying the local wisdom embedded in indigenous agro-ecological farming systems, which use local manure as fertiliser, do not use industrial fertilizers and pesticides, and reproduce their own seeds and do not buy seeds from the market, which farmers must do if they grow GMOs.
Many GM seeds are terminal seeds (that is, they can only be grown in one season). One growing them is compelled to buy such seeds of science from the market, meaning that one is enslaved to the market and further removed from the genepool of indigenous seeds. The more this happens the more indigenous seeds disappear because the are no longer repeoduced by the local people. That is the cost of unquestioning faith in world science.
Science as pursued normally by individuals, has other problems. First, if just ensures the self-actualisation and self-glorification of those who have the scientific knowledge m and expertise, with minimal benefit to society. Second, because the economy may not absorb them, they run off to foreign lands after wasting time, energy and money training internally at societal cost. So local society loses in the brain drain. Third, Science emphasises the requirement of proof and evidence, yet the dominant local wisdoms about the most important subjects cannot be demonstrated beyond doubt as science demands.
Therefore, the pursuit of science at the expense of social, cultural, moral and ethical consideration in the falsehood that it must be pure, will end up eroding the binding force of local wisdoms that have been time-tested and proved useful in assuring environmental, ecological, social, ethical, spiritual and moral integrity. The attitude of doubt, which science requires, contradicts the societal mood of ready acceptance of wisdoms.
As Rousseau says what keeps societies together is faith, not knowledge. Science, like philosophy, suspends faith during pursuit of knowledge. If doubt us spread through society by the over-glorification and mystification of science, people will become gripped by skepticism and lose confidence in their own society. The society will become vulnerable to foreign values.
Therefore, leaders in the 21st century who want the people to remain part and parcel of human global human society as wholesome beings should not have overexaggerated faith in world science and think that it is progress to destroy the local knowledge base. They should lead their people in questioning every new science or innovation. At best, let them embrace integration of knowledge or the sciences (indigenous science, social science, natural science and the arts), which integration takes local scientific knowledge as critical to the survival of humanity in the less industrialises world. It is true that timetested local knowledge in the field of health is crossfertilising the progress in global health. Ignoring it in favour of world science makes strides in global health sterile.
If you have read this article from beginning to end, you will have detected that I do not believe that it is wisdom in the 21st century to advocate for natural science at the expense of indigenous science, social science, and the arts. Such advocacy does not add value to the survival of humanity but paves the way for the extinction a big component of the communities of the poor world.
All knowledge, all science has a big contribution to make to the advancement of humanity well into the future. No knowledge, no science should be despised and no since should be overglorified. This should be a warning to Ugandans who are beginning to think and popularise the false view that we do not need the arts and the social sciences for development to take place. Patriotism should mean mobilising all the sciences and investing in human in all the sciences for human development. Anything short of this will lead to high-handedness in development, which will marginalise the majority from the development process.
I would like you to give a very critical thought to this article and analyse it critically too so that you can see why I am thinking and reasoning the way I am. The unilateral pursuit of Science at the expense of the Arts and the Social Sciences gives the impression that we can build a pure society based on pure science. That is deceptive because science is one -social, natural and human. Unless the aim is to tear up a country knowledge-wise and physically, there no value in overglorifying and mystifying science. All sciences are useful to survival of society.
The Writer Is a Ugandan Scientist And Environmentalist
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