Part - I

It is difficult to tell how long after creation man acquired the sense to feel the beauty of nature, but it is almost certain that the sense of fear and the intuitive sense of protecting himself from impending danger preceded it, as also paved the way to probe the mysteries of nature. Knowledge came with such probe. Much later with the development of mind, his sense of understanding and judging things got more refined. It was only then that the charms of nature appealed to his inner mind in a more meaningful way. Sense of fear came to him as knowledge by necessity and compulsion, while the ability to appreciate beauty and finer things of life crept into him as knowledge for its own sake and as an innate higher urge of his nature. While natural phenomena like the earthquakes, volcanoes, thunderstorms, devastating floods, high velocity storms and the fall of meteorites from the sky must have struck him with awe, the sight of calm and serene state of nature must have filled him with profound joy.

In the early days, knowledge of all kind and from all sources came under the name of religion. The name 'Science' given to enquiries about the behaviour of external world consisting of inert matter as also living beings is relatively a recent affair. Religion relied heavily on unfounded beliefs, hearsay, mythologies and personal experiences of respectable people of the society. If there was a first principle in religion, it was never to question the authority of the holy scriptures or doubt the worth of the words from the so-called holy persons of the religious community.

However, daring the last couple of centuries, science not religion, is now a dominant factor in determining the beliefs of the enlightened masses. It has now revolutionized the belief pattern and transformed human life. By scientific temper is meant intellectual questioning to accept anything without scrutiny, the capacity to doubt assertions and freedom to ask questions of inquiry. It welcomes new knowledge born out of new experiences. Such a temper is the key to all adventures and experiments. This spirit has given us an amazing mastery of the material environment. Science contributed to the progress of the civilization by dispelling unfounded beliefs and primitive superstitions, like animal sacrifices for winning God's favour or pacifying angry demons. Eclipses were the earliest natural phenomena to escape from superstitions into science. The appearance of comets in the sky was believed to foretell bad days for a country and its ruler. But Newton and Halley were the first to disprove such false notions.

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* Contributed by: -
Dr. Ram Shankar Rath,
PhD, Professor of Mathematics (Retired),
Ex-Director, Department of Correspondence Courses,
Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, Orissa.