Mangalore: Two-day Workshop on Darwin's Theory Inaugurated at SAC
News Source: The Hindu
Pics by Dayanand Kukkaje
Mangalore, Dec 18: “We scientists do not claim that everything can be explained by science. Instead, we argue that everything can be looked at from a scientific perspective,” Vidyanand Nanjundaiah, scientist at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, has said.
Quoting the famous social critic Bertrand Russell, he said, “It is part of scientific attitude that the pronouncements of science do not claim to be certain, but only to be the most probable based on present evidence.”
Mr. Nanjundaiah was in the city to deliver the inaugural lecture, “How we understand evolution”, during a two-day workshop on Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution, at St. Aloysius College here on Thursday. The workshop was organised by the Postgraduate Department of Biotechnology to mark Darwin’s 200th birth anniversary and the 150th anniversary of the publication of “Origin of Species”.
Mr. Nanjundaiah said that the scientific thought process was often at crossroads with supernatural and mystical beliefs. Commenting on the “Origin of Species”, he said, “The book showed that the living world could be explained on the basis of natural laws and thereby made it clear that mystic or supernatural beliefs were out of place in trying to understand life.”
Seeking to explain the strong opposition to evolutionary ideas from certain quarters, he said, “A belief in the literal truth of religious pronouncements is one reason. Related to that is the feeling that blind, purposeless chance could never serve as an explanation for life in all its variety.”
He also said that most conventional approaches to explaining life always placed the human being at the centre of all evolutionary activity. He said, “Many feel uneasy when confronted by a theory which seems to deprive human beings of any privileged position among animals.”