The Limits of India’s Scientific Temper

Instead of getting trapped in binaries, Indian society must learn the neutrality that genuine scientific temper demands.

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Article 51A(h) of the Indian Constitution, added through the 42nd Amendment in 1976, makes it the duty of every citizen to develop a scientific temper. The Indian education system places considerable emphasis on science and technology from an early age. Scholarships support deserving students pursuing scientific study and research. Several states have enacted anti-superstition laws to discourage blind faith and the exploitation that can flow from it. The Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) has been established to promote and align scientific research across academia and industry in pursuit of the vision of Viksit Bharat.

Yet, it is worth asking whether these efforts have truly fostered a scientific temperament among the wider public or even among the educated. Superstitions of various kinds remain widespread, cutting across levels of education, income, culture and religion. Some may be harmless to those who practise them and to society at large; others are not. Media reports regularly provide examples of how blind faith and the absence of scientific thinking can be exploited, resulting in deception, financial loss, or psychological and physical harm.

Scientific Deficiency

This form of scientific deficiency is relatively easy to recognise. But it is only half the story. Genuine scientific temperament is far more demanding than it appears. Science proceeds by formulating hypotheses based on evidence and observation, and by discarding them when contrary evidence emerges. It is a continuous process of creation, testing, validation, rejection and refinement. Scientific thinking requires that nothing be accepted as true without evidence. Yet it also requires recognising that the inability to prove something true does not automatically prove it false. Demonstrating falsehood requires evidence too.

This commitment to neutrality is among the least understood aspects of scientific temper. Consider the debate over the origins of life. Darwin’s theory explains how life evolved over millions of years from primitive organisms into the complex forms seen today. It does not, however, explain how the first living organism came into being. Modern science can recreate the structure of DNA and the precise sequencing of proteins in a laboratory. Yet it cannot bring such structures to life - at least not yet.

This uncertainty has produced two opposing camps. One attributes this unexplained realm to divine intervention, despite the absence of evidence that God created the first life form. The other dismisses any notion of divine agency as inherently unscientific because it cannot be proven. What is often overlooked is that rejecting an idea with certainty, in the absence of evidence, can be as unscientific as accepting it blindly. Someone with a genuinely scientific temperament would remain agnostic, recognising that current knowledge is insufficient either to confirm or dismiss such claims. It is entirely possible that future scientific advances may close this gap in understanding, rendering notions of divine intervention unnecessary. But that conclusion, if it comes, must emerge from evidence rather than conviction.

The challenge is hardly confined to religion or metaphysics. The same tendency is visible in public debates on matters ranging from health and climate change to economics and politics. Increasingly, individuals approach evidence not as something that may alter their views, but as something to be selectively assembled in support of conclusions they have already reached. Social media has amplified this tendency, creating echo chambers in which confirmation is rewarded and doubt is treated as weakness. Yet doubt, properly understood, lies at the heart of scientific inquiry. Every major scientific breakthrough has depended on the willingness to question prevailing assumptions, including those that once enjoyed overwhelming consensus.

Scientific temper therefore demands more than familiarity with scientific facts. A person may possess advanced degrees in science and yet lack a scientific outlook. The true test lies not in what one knows, but in how one responds when confronted with uncertainty. Intellectual humility—the willingness to say “I do not know”—is often a stronger indicator of scientific thinking than certainty itself. In an age increasingly defined by polarisation and ideological tribalism, this capacity to suspend judgment until evidence becomes available may be among the most valuable civic virtues a society can cultivate.

The tendency to accept or reject claims without evidence creates two distortions. One section of society becomes vulnerable to exploitation through unquestioned beliefs. Another ridicules every cultural tradition as necessarily irrational. In the absence of verifiable evidence, a genuinely scientific mind would do neither. It would avoid both credulity and contempt, neither surrendering to blind belief nor dismissing others’ convictions merely because they cannot yet be proven.

The same principle applies to innovation. Ancient Indian literature is replete with concepts that bear intriguing resemblance to modern technologies. The Mahabharata, the Ramayana and other texts contain descriptions that evoke missiles, anti-missile systems, weapons of mass destruction, engineered births, advanced medicine, surgery and remarkable feats of civil engineering. Likewise, concepts resembling the relationship between matter and energy appear in discussions of sthula and sukshma centuries before modern physics formulated such ideas.

Here too, debate tends to polarise. Some insist, without evidence, that these references prove the existence of highly advanced technologies in ancient times. Others dismiss them, equally without evidence, as pure fantasy. What is often missed is the quality that matters most for innovation: the ability to imagine possibilities far beyond the limits of contemporary reality. Whether or not such technologies actually existed, these texts undeniably contain ideas of striking imaginative scope. At the very least, they qualify as forms of speculative fiction that were remarkably ahead of their time.

Countries renowned for innovation rarely ridicule such imaginative leaps. They celebrate them. Arthur C. Clarke envisioned geostationary communication satellites decades before they became reality. Jules Verne’s descriptions of submarines, helicopters and space travel inspired generations of inventors. Science fiction has repeatedly stimulated technological progress. The communicators in Star Trek inspired Martin Cooper’s development of the handheld mobile phone. Tim Berners-Lee drew inspiration from Clarke’s short story Dial F for Frankenstein, which imagined an interconnected communications network. Margaret Atwood is respected not only for literary achievement but also for provoking ethical debates around technologies that later emerged in reality. Even ancient Chinese texts helped inspire the discovery of artemisinin, the Nobel Prize-winning antimalarial drug.

All societies known for their innovative capacity share another trait: they encourage curiosity from an early age. Children are expected to ask questions, challenge assumptions and probe accepted wisdom. In India, by contrast, questioning is often mistaken for arrogance or disrespect, while quiet obedience is celebrated as a virtue. This is particularly ironic given India’s own intellectual traditions. The Bhagavad Gita, one of the foundational texts of Indian civilisation, is essentially a dialogue driven by Arjuna’s questions and Krishna’s answers. The Prashna Upanishad, as its very name suggests, is built around inquiry. Cultivating scientific temper would require reviving precisely this spirit of questioning.

If India aspires to become a leading force in scientific research and innovation, its institutions—educational and otherwise—must promote a deeper understanding of what scientific temperament truly entails. Indian society must shed both the superiority complex and the inferiority complex that often colour discussions of its civilisational heritage. What is needed instead is a spirit of curiosity, objectivity and intellectual humility: the neutrality that genuine scientific temper demands.

(The writer has worked in the information technology sector. Views personal.)