Role Of Science In Our Life Philosophy Essay

Role Of Science In Our Life Philosophy Essay He was nothing, quite an ordinary thing, of no importance at all. But he had a powerful but hidden tool. With the passage of time, he gradually discovered this tool, used it and turned into the most powerful creature of this planet. Who was he? Yes! This is the story of human being. And that tool used by him is science. The word science was derived from Latin word scientia (means knowledge). Science means to observe natural phenomenon occurring around us for collecting useful information and use these information for the benefit of mankind. It is regardless of the method adopted by someone. Human being of this era making researches in scientific fields with modern methods and machines and the man centuries before, observing nature and recording results, are same. Brief history of science: It is said that many centuries ago, man started his struggle in scientific field by the act of burning at such a time when he was even not familiar to the word science. As Aristotle said, man is a thinking animal. Thus man started thinking about things around him. He derived useful results from observations and started using them to make his life facilitated. It was beginning of science. Time kept on passing. As the result of struggle made by thousands of people in science, life on Earth reached the current state. No doubt science directed this journey at every step. Human beings of all times participated in development of science. Remarkable progress was made by Greeks. They discovered many things. Muslims scientists also worked in this field for five to six hundred years. They made great discoveries. For example Jabir Bin Hayan was a great scientist of chemistry. He discovered sulphuric acid as well as nitric acid. Ibn- al-Hythem made progress in optics. While Alberooni was a great geologist. How science affected daily life? Now-a-days although it is not impossible but much difficult to imagine life without different scientific inventions. For example we need vehicles to travel, cell phone and internet to communicate and other such things. We cant live without them. Science made advancements in many fields for example. A few of them are described as follow. Positive effects: Increased average human life: In the beginning life was in danger all the time. It might be harmed by many factors. If one had been born two hundred years ago, he would have had one chance in eight of living to be one year old. He would have suffered from many diseases like small pox, measles, whooping cough, scarlet fever and diphtheria before he was twelve. Yellow fever, malaria, typhus, cholera once started, spread through a community and thousands of people were to lose their lives. Life was most uncertain. A person who used to live more than thirty to forty years was indeed lucky. It is unbelievable that such conditions existed so short a time ago. The advancements made by research in medical science minimized all such risks. Today babies are born in hospitals where there is a little chance of their getting disease. They are enabled to fight against many diseases by vaccination at early stage. Different types of supplements are used in their better growth. Purification of water and food is also an important thing introduced by science in this aspect. Besides this all, medical science discovered remedy for each disease man may suffer from. A person can expect to live to be almost seventy years old. In other words, more than thirty years have been added to normal human lifes length. Improved life standard: In the beginning man is assumed to have no sense of wearing clothes, building houses, growing crops and other such things. He used to live in caves, get eatables from surroundings. When he started thinking about everything around him (making progress in scientific field in other words), he observed different things and use them for his benefit. For example he started building houses, got sense of wearing clothes, started producing different eatables and so many other things. Later on he set rules for everyone living in one community for his welfare. Thus gradually he kept on improving his life style. Transport system: Hundreds of years ago, necessities of human beings were limited. Distance between man and his needs was not large. they were able to get everything he wanted from his surroundings. Men used animals kike horse while hunting and camels and some other animals while travelling from one place to another. It took sufficiently long time if they had to go to distant places. Person related to one another mostly used to live on a single piece of land in the form of tribes. Therefore they didnt have to go anywhere to meet their relatives. But later on, as population increased, the small pieces of land were unable to provide them with their basic needs. Therefore they had to go anywhere else in search of food and other things. At that time man needed something which could make travelling easier. In this way he struggled in this field and discovered wheel. It was a huge discovery. No one knows that who discovered it for first time but it is the fact it brought a great revolution. Later on with the invention of engine and other machines, travelling became easier. Now-a-days there are fastest automobiles and supersonic planes to serve us. And at the same time for transportation of goods, we have ships. Therefore it has become very easy to travel to far off places with as much stuff as we want. It provided a lot of facilities to importers and exporters as well. With the help of modern travelling means, a person is able to return home in the evening after doing his job for the whole day at a place hundreds of miles away from his home. Thus science lessened the distances and made life faster and faster. Communication: As described above, in the past, people related to each other used to live together in the form of tribes. They could easily convey their message to the person they wanted. With the passage of time, distances between individuals were increased. Therefore people used to look for some other means of communication. At early stages, they used light blinkers for giving message to someone in the form of code at night. For conveying message to a far off place, they used to send letters through men or birds. With the invention of loud speaker, it became very easy to address to a gigantic crowed. A remarkable advancement in this field was made by Graham Bell. He was the man who invented telephone for the first time. That device namely telephone was improved later on. It served mankind in a great way. Modern cell phones are most modified form of that device. Another device namely Radio also proved very useful in communicating many people at the same time. It was for one way communication only. Its major advantage was no use of wire in communication. Thomas was the person who invented a device called T.V. It was an awesome achievement in the history of information technology. Now people were able to enjoy both sound and picture. News paper is another source of news transmission. With the help of all these sources, current updates and a lot of entertainment is available all the time for everyone. Another huge thing in the history of telecommunication is inter-net. Internet is like an ocean o f information, people and much more. One can find answer of any question by using it. He may contact to anyone, anywhere in the world. Any type of information can be shared at any level. All of these things were achieved with the help of science. Power development: It was science who taught us how to use energy available in different forms around us. Man used to burn woods to get heat (energy). All the energy from sun was wasted. By using scientific methods, we developed different techniques to make use of energy. For example, discovery of the electric current was a great job in this aspect. Later on we discovered how to convert different type of energy into electrical energy. Now we are able to use mechanical energy, solar energy and bio mass for current production. Nuclear power plants are based upon a comparatively new technology. With the help of this we make use of huge amount of energy evolved during fission and fusion. Electric current made life much facilitated and luxurious. Besides these, running vehicles by burning fuel is also an example of using chemical energy for useful purposes. Negative effects: This is a natural thing that everything which has some advantages must necessarily have some disadvantages as well. In exactly the same way, science has some negative effects too. As said by Isaac Asimov, the saddest aspect of life right now is the science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. Although most of them are not much prominent or easily understandable but this is the fact that science is leading this planet towards a state which is quite unpredictable. That may be horrible enough not to support life. Let us see what negative effects of science are. Youngsters, being affected by media: We used science and made a lot of progress in I.T. Now-a-days almost everyone is familiar to the television, computer, cell phone and other such appliances. Especially our young generation uses to spend most of the time in texting, chatting on internet and watching programs on T.V. These are the requirements to be fulfilled if one wants to call himself Modern. They are not aware of importance of limited time. They use to spend their time in such useless things and take it to be a source of honor. It is a kind of addiction. They cant give this up. They, living in an imaginary world, feel many difficulties in real life because real life is much different than that shown on screen. They are unable to concentrate upon their studies. Most of them are aimless. They try to follow the characters shown to them in movies, plays and video games. Sometimes its not a fair practice. They use to adopt many bad habits. This is an alarming situation. Another related effect of media is stopping youngs ters from outdoor activities. They spend most of the time in front of PCs and are losing their interest in outdoor games. This results the physical weakness as well as the feeling of loneliness. They are losing their confidence. Some of them feel shy while facing people. Thus excessive use of these useful inventions is creating a new generation with strange qualities. Development of destructive weapons: Another great misuse of science is weaponsdevelopment. Man started making weapons for hunting and defense purposes. As science raised everything, weapons also kept on being more and more harmful with the passage of time. Unaware of the results, man even made nuclear bomb for his own destruction. Mahatma Gandhi said, Science without humanity is a sin. But nuclear bomb has been handed over to wild politicians who are using it as a tool to show off their power. Bombs may blow the planet up in minutes, a few blastsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦. and deep silence forever! Just imagine! Science made future of planet earth so uncertain. Pollution: Many scientific activities and appliances are participating in causing pollution. For example burning of fuel in vehicles and factories causes many harmful factors polluting environment. Most common of them are carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. Both of these are suffocating. Carbon dioxide is playing main role in global warming. Another pollutant ClCF2 was found responsible for ozone layer destruction. It is produced by air conditioners and refrigerators commonly used on earth. The polluted water from industries gets mixed with water used for drinking and causes lots of diseases. Waste materials from factories also change acidity of soil as well. Vehicles, making noise, also participate in noise pollution. Drugs: Use of science in drug development is another frightening thing. Science made drugs cheaper and thus easily available. New drugs are being introduced by using various scientific methods. Almost everyone use to smoke and snuff. Other drugs like opium and heroin are also being used frequently. All this shows that science is indeed a great power. It has magical effects. Everyone can make progress in this field. Everything around us is a mystery. We just have to reveal these secrets. As Marie Curie said, Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fearless. There is an order in occurrence of each phenomenon in the universe. As Elbert Einstein said God does not play dice with universe. We just have to understand that order. This is science. The direction of this journey must always be set by religion. Because religion allows us to take steps for human welfare only.