Science: A Curse or a Blessing
We cannot say for certain whether science is a curse or a blessing. it is our use of science which would make science a curse or a Blessing. First, let us see how man has used science for his good so that it has become a blessing for him. it is science that has provided modern man the life of ease, leisure and pleasure. It has brought within reach of the common man comforts and luxuries which were available in the past only to a privileged few.
Science has invented marvelous machines. It has discovered energies which run these machines. The machines have taken drudgery out of work. Distance has been conquered. Modern means of transport and communication have made the word shrink in size. Men and things and news and views can go around the globe today with lightning speed. Man has already landed on the moon and a man-made satellite has just completed it’s voyage through the solar system.
Our life has become healthier and longer. Modern hygiene, sanitation, medicine and surgery are conquering more and more physical and mental ills day by day. We now know and experience the joys of good health and longevity. Through the cinema and the video, the TV and the tape-reorder, science has worked wonders in the spheres of education and entertainment.
Though we welcome these blessing of science, we have to consider the darker side of the picture also. Machines have led to unemployment. They have polluted water and atmosphere. Thy have caused noise pollution. Factories have led to slums where human beings live in squalor. Our moral and spiritual progress has failed to keep pace with our scientific progress. We have allowed science to master us instead of using it as our servant.
Machines make us mechanical, deaden our sensibilities, stifle our creative talents, force mechanical regularity, uniformity and boredom upon us, increase our wants and desires, and tend to make us selfish, greedy and cruel. Geographical distance has, no doubt, vanished, but the gulf between the minds and hearts of man has widened.
Machines have given man leisure, but man misuses it to get cheap and vulgar entertainment which destroys his physical and mental health. Again, science has put in our hands such fiendish weapons as the nuclear bomb, the guided missile and means of chemical and biological warfare. We are in danger of destroying ourselves with these monstrous means which, ironically, are our own creations. Rightly used science can bring heaven on earth. Wrongly used, it can trun this earth in to hell by destroying civilization.
