What is science? According to its definition “Science
is a branch of knowledge concerned with the
material world conducted on objective principles
involving the systematised observation of, and
experiment with physical phenomenon.”
Science has divided the world of knowledge into
two parts—knowledge of things and knowledge of
truths. According to this division, science has
confined its study only to a part of the world and
not to the entire world. A scientist has rightly
remarked that “science gives us but a partial
knowledge of reality.”
This means that science being confined in its scope
to the physical aspect of the world, has kept itself
aloof from higher spiritual matters. No scientist has
ever claimed that science attempts to find out the
absolute truth. All scientists humbly submit that the
“search for truth” is not their target. They are
simply trying to understand how the objective
world functions and not why it functions. For
instance, the chemistry of a flower may be
chemically analyzed, but not its odour.
Chemistry can describe how water may be turned
into steam power, but not why a miraculous lifegiving
element such as water came to exist in our
world. Similarly, while science is concerned with
the biological aspect of man, it is not the aim of
science to try to discover the secret of the strange
phenomena commonly known as the mind and
spirit.
Science has never claimed that its objective is to
discover the total truth or absolute reality. The
concerns of science are basically descriptive, and
not teleological. Although science has failed to give
a satisfactory answer to the quest for truth, it is not
to be disparaged, for this has never been its
motivation.
Many people had pinned their hopes on science
providing them with the superior life they had
sought for so long. But after more than two
hundred years, it has dawned upon recent
generations that science has fallen very far short of
fulfilling man’s hopes and aspirations, even in the
material sense. Now it has been generally
acknowledged that, although science has many plus
points for human betterment, it has many minus
points as well.
Science gave us machines, but along with them it
also gave us a new kind of social problem:
unemployment. Science gave us comfortable motor
cars but at the same time it polluted the air, making
it difficult for human beings to inhale fresh air, just
as with the rise of modern industry, there came the
pollution of life giving water. Production may have
been speeded up, but at the cost of adversely
affecting our whole social structure.
If the object of science was to provide man with the
answer to his search for truth it had obviously
failed. If the search for truth was not within the
province of science, there was no reason for it to
figure in such discussions at all. In other words,
science cannot be legitimately blamed for not
helping man to grasp the ultimate reality, for this
was not something expected of it. Indeed the reality
lies far beyond the boundaries of science.
--Maulana Wahiduddin Khan
( Ref - Search For Truth )
