Transition from one paradigm to another via revolution is the usual developmental pattern of mature science. This is the profound observation of Thomas Kuhn, whom we passingly mentioned earlier. The observation that made him famous, if not his raison d'être.
He is not the presiding deity in the philosophy of science, accept for a minority. But people still use the terminology of revolution in the context of science. As we have mentioned that when one talks of science then physics is taken as the prototype. Last century saw the most exhilarating roller coaster ride of developments in physics. This contained at least two revolutions. One is special relativity and another is quantum mechanics. General relativity is no less a revolution but if we include that then we have to include a few more names.
The main point of the post is that both of above revolutions took place firmly in twentieth century. The century in which Aligarh Movement was in its full swing including the Aligarh College, later AMU. Some of the significant developments, even if only a small part, should have come in our share. It was not to be the case.
To be fare some consideration can be made for the fact that European and American explosion of twentieth century science benefited from earlier continuous developments of two hundred and fifty years. That is the time when our ancestors were slowly succumbing to and were, later on, firmly under the grip of colonialism.
What did come in our share? We can only think of this article on The Theory of Valency : Developments and Problems. It is by Rudolf Samuel. That it is from a borrowed intellectual is not the only rub. Valency is an extremely important concept, particularly in chemistry, but it is not among those concepts that can be counted among the revolutions of science. Samuel was a man of spectroscopy and he did what he could do best. One can hazard that if he had turned his attention inward, towards the nucleus or in a marginally different direction, the condensed matter physics then may be more significant things could have come in our share. But this is rather unfair to him. This is not the job of a man of spectroscopy. And one should not ignore his contributions to that field.
The story of India at large is not much different from ours. But we shall leave that out to more competent and more interested people.
He is not the presiding deity in the philosophy of science, accept for a minority. But people still use the terminology of revolution in the context of science. As we have mentioned that when one talks of science then physics is taken as the prototype. Last century saw the most exhilarating roller coaster ride of developments in physics. This contained at least two revolutions. One is special relativity and another is quantum mechanics. General relativity is no less a revolution but if we include that then we have to include a few more names.
The main point of the post is that both of above revolutions took place firmly in twentieth century. The century in which Aligarh Movement was in its full swing including the Aligarh College, later AMU. Some of the significant developments, even if only a small part, should have come in our share. It was not to be the case.
To be fare some consideration can be made for the fact that European and American explosion of twentieth century science benefited from earlier continuous developments of two hundred and fifty years. That is the time when our ancestors were slowly succumbing to and were, later on, firmly under the grip of colonialism.
What did come in our share? We can only think of this article on The Theory of Valency : Developments and Problems. It is by Rudolf Samuel. That it is from a borrowed intellectual is not the only rub. Valency is an extremely important concept, particularly in chemistry, but it is not among those concepts that can be counted among the revolutions of science. Samuel was a man of spectroscopy and he did what he could do best. One can hazard that if he had turned his attention inward, towards the nucleus or in a marginally different direction, the condensed matter physics then may be more significant things could have come in our share. But this is rather unfair to him. This is not the job of a man of spectroscopy. And one should not ignore his contributions to that field.
The story of India at large is not much different from ours. But we shall leave that out to more competent and more interested people.