SCIENCE
– A REALITY ?
Einstein and Newton
always scared us by their scientific laws and discoveries. Perhaps Dr. Jackaul
(a character in Shaktimaan) is the only scientist we enjoyed so much. Dr.
Jackaul as a scientist had created so many things and creatures (like Plastica)
to destroy our favourite superhero Shaktimaan. But nevertheless we will never
forget his contribution in the field of Science.
But have you
ever thought that what is Science? You might be thinking that what a silly
question I am asking to you people. We know that “Science is a field in which
we find the truths, realities and the unsolved mysteries of the Universe.” This
is what I was also thinking before I came to know another interesting view
point about the definition of Science(mentioned in The Goal-By E.M. Goldratt)."Science for the vast majority of
respectable scientists is not about finding the secrets of nature or even about
truths. Science is simply the method we use to try and postulate a minimum set
of assumptions that can explain, through a straightforward logical derivation,
the existence of many phenomena of nature.”
In simple words
it is a field in which we make some assumptions to explain the existence of
various natural phenomena. Goldratt in his book gives an example:-
- The Law of Conservation of Energy of physics is not truth. It is just an assumption that is valid in explaining a tremendous amount of natural phenomena. On the other hand, it can be disproved by just a single phenomenon, which cannot be explained by this assumption. This disproving does not detract from the validity of the assumption. It just highlights the need or even the existence of another assumption that is more valid. This is the case with the assumption of the conservation of energy which was replaced by Einstein's more global-more valid postulation of the conservation of energy and mass. But it is true that Einstein's assumption is not true to the same extent that the previous one was not "true".
We can understand this from another example also:-
- Earth’s Magnetic Field due to which everything comes down when we throw it up in the sky. Although none of us has seen that magnet but we still agree with it. This is just because this assumption is valid in explaining the occurrence of a natural phenomenon.
Both these
examples present a different view point. What we will call this in management
terms, is it Out of Box Thinking? Or Common Sense? I don’t know, but I
personally think that most of the things that we tagged as “Out of Box
Thinking” are nothing but a matter of “Common Sense” which as a matter of fact
is not so common.
I hope this will
change your perception about Science and you will also start thinking from this
view point.
