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Science means rocking the boat
Reverence And Questions
Touching elders' feet is a good tradition, and Chetan Bhagat encourages his own kids to do it. It also creates reverence: you are above me, I am below you, I cannot question you. In class the teacher is not to be questioned, and students take orders. That produces a subordinate kind of society. Science by definition asks whether something is really true, measures it, and challenges the status quo.
A Society That Stays Put
That upsets the societal order, and the economy stays below its potential, which people have been saying is huge for 40 years. The grown-ups in a family do not want to be challenged. That is why India has no boy band, no Britney Spears, no Taylor Swift who comes from nowhere and takes the country over in two seconds, not even as the child of an actor. Don't break the norm.
Astrology And Science
Belief in astrology is strong, and an astrology company is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The country wants science only after it has been packaged into a nice iPhone.
How does deference affect a society's science?
Dutch psychologist Geert Hofstede used surveys of IBM employees across dozens of countries in the 1960s and 1970s to define power distance, the degree to which people accept unequal power. India scored high on that scale in his data. Research on organizations links high power distance to less upward disagreement and fewer questions put to those in charge. Science advances by testing and rejecting accepted claims, which depends on that disagreement.
Why does science depend on challenging authority?
The Royal Society of London, founded in 1660, adopted the motto Nullius in verba, usually translated as take nobody's word for it. Its early members insisted on demonstrating claims through experiments before witnesses. Galileo's trial in 1633 had shown the cost of contradicting established authority. The society's experimental method became a model for scientific institutions across Europe.
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