Science is a Good Servant but A Bad Master
Science has transformed human life beyond all imagination. Thanks to the efforts of a few scientists, man is no longer a helpless toy in the hands of Nature but the proud master of three worlds of land, air and water. Science has changed our outlook, our mental make-up, our thoughts and ideas, our dreams and our hopes. We live, move and breathe science today.
The triumph of science is seen everywhere in life. According to Bertrand Russell, science has changed the face of the earth and the world has changed more during the last 150 years than during the 4000 years previous to that. In fact, we have ceased to look upon trains or motor
cars, electric light or telegraph or radio as marvels of science. Can we visualise the shape of things before the birth of science? People living fifty miles from London had hardly seen the world’s largest city. Books were few and were copied by hand by costly scribes and so they remained the preserve of the rich few. Communication was almost non-existent, except for those who could afford to send special messengers. Smallpox reaped a great harvest. Cholera and plague held their terror for man. In short, disease, ignorance and suspicion were prevalent everywhere.
Science has spanned the sky, measured the oceans and wrested from nature many of her hidden treasures. It has relieved human suffering by discovering secrets of health and disease. It has annihilated time and space and made communication and contact with world easier and quicker. It has extended the frontiers of our knowledge in various ways and various directions. It has enabled us to fight natural calamities and to revolutionise industrial and agricultural processes. Indeed, when we think of the triumphs of science, we gape in wonder and admiration.
However, there is the other side of picture. Science has done the greatest disservice to mankind in the field of armaments and destructive engines of war. The invention of gunpowder was hailed as a great achievement, but humanity should rue the day on which this invention took place. Steadily and relentlessly gunpowder has been used and perfected into a hundred new and more destructive weapons, so that today artillery, gun fire, shells and bombs have become hellish terror to everybody. Curiously enough, in the laboratories of different nations some of the best scientific brains are vying with one another in production of newer and newer weapons of death and destruction. And so, the question arises, “Is science a bane or a boon?”
If science meant for man’s happiness is employed by man for his own death and destruction, who can help him? It is certainly not the fault of science, if we go on multiplying engines of destruction. Again, if science has invented ingenious methods of death and destruction, it has not been slow to invent effective means of counteracting them. Thus, against gas there is the gas mask, against tank, the anti-tank gun, and against aerial bombing, anti-aircraft gun. It is reported that some effective weapons have been made to tame the fury of the nuclear bomb. It is not science which is responsible for war, it is the beast in man. Alfred Nobel invented dynamite to help workers in mines and to construct roads in hilly areas, but not to blow up men and their property. In holding science responsible for the havocs of modern war, we do it a great injustice.
It has been found that the energy generated by the release of an atom bomb is sufficient to burn about four square kilometers of land, and kill about 80,000 people. But if the same energy is applied for constructive purposes, it is capable of working wonders. One pound of uranium, when converted into nuclear power is equivalent to 15,000 tonnes of coal. Therefore, the lovers of peace denounce the atomic weapons and not atomic energy which industry and as a source of power on limited scale. is at present being applied in the field of agriculture, medicine,
Before us now lies a new era in which the power of atomic energy has been released. That age will either be of complete devastation or one in which new sources of power will lighten the labour of mankind and increase the standard of living all over the world. It is for us to decide whether we will destroy the world with atomic bomb or rebuild it with atomic energy.
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