SCIENTISTS AND PHILOSOPHERS

Will Durant, the celebrated Historian and Philosopher, once made a classic distinction between a Scientist and a Philosopher. “A Scientist”, says Will Durant, “is one who knows more and more about less and less things and a Philosopher, less and less about more and more things”. From the plethora of information that we gather, through the Internet, thanks to the powerful search engines, many of us need to be classified as Philosophers with a few exceptions, who would qualify to be scientists. A visit to some of the Blogs would bear me out.

Through out the whole of last century, with the possible exception of the last one or two decades, the Indian Administrative Service cadre officers, who all fall undoubtedly under the umbrella of Durant’s ‘Philosopher’, had been at the helm of affairs in Administration and with the placing of Public Sector at the ‘commanding height of economy’, they were also guiding the destiny of a large number of our corporations. Only a few great scientists like Homi Babha, Vikhram Sarabhai , Prof. M.G.K.Menon and M.S.Swaminathan were heading Institutions. In the Financial Sector, perhaps Dr.I.G.Patel and Dr.Manmohan Singh, highly trained economists of International repute, had headed Reserve Bank of India. Thus, with the exception of a few institutions, Defence Services and judiciary, almost everywhere, Philosophers were the guiding force. If we look at the genesis of these generalist officers, we would find that many of them had offered History or Literature as the optional paper in their IAS examinations. Only a few can boast that they opted for Mathematics. And yet, many of them being sharp and the quality of training imparted to them being of the highest quality,' whatever they touched, they adorned'. Like the 'Aasthana Vidvans of All India Radio', they were ideal for stop gap arrangement, till a truely professional one was located. At the same time, if a qualified Scientist or technocrat is given an opportunity in his/her area of specialization, to innovate and to improve upon, he/she certainly can also do wonders. E.Sridharan of Konkan Railway and Delhi Metro has displayed many engineering marvels. A travel through Konkan Railway would bear testimony to this – an example of a ‘Scientist’ scoring over a ‘Philosopher’. It would be of some relevance to mention that T.N.Seshan and E.Sridharan were college mates at the Intrmediate level, and whereas one became a successful technocrat, the other, an highly acclaimed government official.

Since the last two decades of 20th century, technocrats, particularly in the software sector, have been demonstrating what specialized skills can deliver. The top four Companies in the software sector, employ more people than the two financial sector giants - State Bank of India & LIC. They have conquered and assimilated alien culture, understood the intricacies of the economy at the international level and perfected the art of comprehending the commercial needs and delivering in time to customers around the Globe. Reliance ceased to be a mere textile manufacturer and is today one of the world leaders in Petroleum products and organic chemicals, and Mukesh Ambani being a Chemical Engineer from an institute of repute in Mumbai, has no less significant contribution in this.
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At the same time, we also see the emergence of Philosophers again in a different disguise. Like the top notch ICS/IAS Officers of yester years, MBAs today lead the corporate world. Many of the IIM alumni have an engineering degree from one of the IITs, or BITS Pilani/Regional engineering Colleges as their first degree and generally being outstanding students, switching over from designing a product to designing a delivery system comes to them naturally, with a wealth of case studies as their main support systems. They gain domain knowledge in their areas of operations and display excellence in realizing their objectives – Philosophers in scientific pursuits, perhaps. What more, apart from employing the MBAs, many corporate pursue retired Senior Public Sector and Government Officials to head their various units. This morning’s newspapers say that the present Finance Secretary, who would be retiring by the end of this month, has already been sounded by Hyundai Motors to enter its precinct as its President, immediately thereafter. The quest for the 'know it all' continues.

Plato in his Ideal Republic wanted Kings to be Philosophers or Philosophers to become Kings. Today we have Philosophers heading the corporate and some of our Ministers, if not Monarchs, are Philosophers in the sense Will Durant described them.

Though I belong to the breed of 'less and less about more and more things', I always feel that in this country, expertise in any field is less accepted than the generalised gloss over.