Rise and Growth of techno-science
By Tigmanshi
The world now believes majorly in modern science. There was a time previous to this global phenomenon when people believed and practiced what is known as the indigenous/traditional knowledge. For something like four hundred years now, the world has seen the rise and development of the techno-scientific movement, instilling with such huge power that it has been able to overpower and absorb the bits of knowledge of traditional knowledge frameworks around the planet. This social and authoritative triumph is in some cases seen as confirmation of the universality of scientific knowledge claims.
The locality approach focuses on the conditions under which this appearance of universality emerged and is maintained. This includes various conditions, which can be studied in the ways one country colonizes the other. India, for instance has traditionally been a country which believed in Gods and their power. These Gods and Goddesses were associated with nature which was thought to have healing powers. Even today some parts of the country which are untouched by the modern day scientific developments believe in these traditional methods of healing. Nature was the basis for science for Indians. There were ‘Gurukuls’ where this indigenous knowledge was passed on to the Brahmin Indian generations, who topped the hierarchy of castes as they were believed to possess great knowledge. This traditional method of passing on knowledge was mostly verbal and out of memory. Use of documentation was not necessary as the focus of study was to understand and utilize nature for the well being of humans. When the British colonized India, they trained the Indians in modern science. They made the Indians see the life they lived in Britain, which was obviously amusing and speedier. This caused enchantment to the Indians who were habituated to work manually. Science to them started to take meaning in the manner the British interpreted it. It was no more nature. The idea that they were able to control nature using modern day technology and instruments was so empowering that it made them believe that the western science was superior to their own. Thus, the fact that India was colonized and the people were made to see what lied behind the veil of modernity, science in the country started to take a different shape that persists even today. Today the first thing that people like to do whenever and wherever possible is to see a highly qualified allopath doctor instead of going to an ayurveda specialist. This speaks a lot about the change in belief of science that took place years ago and definitely took roots too strong to be shaken. It represents the universality of techno scientific development, which as “Chambers” very aptly says remains to be maintained even today.
The authors try to give another angle to the story by showing some of the things that can be learned when disparate knowledge systems converge. In the last couple of pages, they offer a record of scientific classification expected to delineate a portion of the things that can be realized when divergent learning frameworks are united. Science normally is the dominant knowledge framework since it is an internationally acclaimed system that is not bounded by conditions of locality as in the case of a minimized indigenous network. The authors give an example of the intricate nomenclature system that is internationally established and accepted. There is no possibility that any indigenous system’s nomenclature could be accepted at a worldwide level, no matter how much better it were because it is so much restricted to one place.
Carrying on with the example of taxonomy, the authors say that it will be interesting and important to understand how these modern day taxonomies emerged from pre European folk taxonomies. Like indigenous scientific classifications, those recorded by Aristotle and in early herbals of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries recorded around eight hundred taxa at the level of family or species. In fact, at the local level, there was no contrast among family/genus and species in light of the fact that most genera were monospecific in a given domain, and where at least two species happened, they were often morphologically extraordinary on the grounds that they were seeking different ecological strategies. The folk taxonomy transformed with several technological changes in the scientific world. A few mechanical changes changed people scientific classification. The printing press and woodcut allowed the printing of books that thought about taxa from various areas and crosswise over time. Voyages of revelation brought back substantial quantities of new specimen, which were put away in herbaria, botanical gardens, and exhibition halls. Naturalists started to work and specialize in plants or animals, and after that in more confined groups, for example, birds, fishes, or insects. This diversification brought in wider information to the field of taxonomy and related science giving way to greater number of classifications to the class of order. Thus now taxonomy moved farther from the folk taxonomy due to technological shifts.
The authors while giving this example point towards a very important difference between the folk and modern sciences. The folk science is flexible since it is limited to the locality and has to be acceptable only to that space. However, modern science which is global has to be accepted worldwide and thus requires to be strewn with some rigid code. Thus, a more principal distinction lies in the social domain: scientific categorization seeks to make a worldwide arrangement of terminology and a progressive structure, in view of an intricate arrangement of production, formal principles, and congresses. The prelude of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature expresses that “the object of the Code is to promote stability and universality,” and this stands out observably different from the adaptable utilization of terms in indigenous groupings, which are a part of the regular dialect of the network and are utilized in a wide range of settings in the locality.
Thus, sciences change and their interpretations take various shapes from time to time. Locality is a very important factor when considering the shifts in science. Indigenous knowledge may get replaced or may evolve into new sciences depending on the effect that the locality goes through. If it is a foreign knowledge that might seem to be more plausible, then the traditional knowledge system might see depreciation and thus fade away as in the case of Indian believe in medicine. However, sometimes sciences evolve from the folk knowledge as in the case of European folk taxonomies.
