Parallel Sessions: Scientific Superstitions and Scientific Temper

From prehistoric times, humans have evolved as pattern seeking and storytelling species. While the capacity to find patterns and infer meanings had obvious advantages for survival, the brain is not always successful in distinguishing meaningful and meaningless patterns. In fact, "pattern finding" and "order seeking" mechanisms form the basis for nearly all existing myths, superstitions, cultural taboos and ritual practices all over the world. The same mechanism also makes us extremely vulnerable to all kinds of deceptions and manipulative techniques that impair our critical faculties. We may imagine things that don’t exist, make false judgments, accept uncritical claims, misinterpret facts and arrive at conclusions that are completely at odds with reality. The scientific age is riddled with intriguing contradictions and man-made follies. The technology-driven consumer culture and entertainment industry has fueled the growth of primitive superstitions, myths and new age beliefs. The need to promote a rational discussion on science, technology and equitable social development has never been so pressing. The first thing to guard against such trends is to be aware of the subtle persuasive techniques, marketing strategies and advertisement gimmicks that make us increasingly helpless consumers in the scientific age. Conveying the excitement of science and scientific discovery is no doubt an essential part of science education and public outreach activities. But equally important is to learn to draw the distinction between unsubstantiated claims and factual findings based on sound reasoning and evidence. Discerning magical thinking and vague ideas from the realm of possibilities that lie within limits of physical laws is therefore important to inculcate scientific temper. In this article, some major ways that can lead to sloppy thinking, misplaced apprehensions and faulty reasoning in our daily lives are discussed. The paper includes examples to illustrate how erroneous beliefs are formed and why healthy skepticism and critical inquiry is necessary to avoid common pitfalls. Introduction Our grand universe was born with a 'big-bang' about 13.7 billion years ago. In this marvelous expanse, earth, the only known planet to harbour life, was formed some 4.5 billion years back in the solar system. Over the last 3.7 billion years or so, life on earth has evolved from a unicellular organism to highly complex and assorted forms. In the intervening period, several million species flourished and have gone extinct. To our knowledge, in this tree of life no other species was endowed with an inquisitive brain that was sufficiently advanced to ponder over things and indulge in abstract reasoning. Hitherto, the inhabitants of earth were impervious (not by choice though) to the secrets and wonders of the Universe around. Compared to the enormous time scale, the arrival of humans on Earth is very recent. It is only about 5-8 million years back that we had split from our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, and evolved as a separate species. It wasn’t until the emergence of Homo sapiens about 200,000 years ago that the vast Universe wrapped in grand mysteries was ready to be explored. Man’s evolving brain had just begun to marvel at the impressive regularity and remarkable spectrum of events occurring in the physical world. Watching a clear night sky, dotted with seemingly innumerable stars, journeying almost like a divinely ordained fashion, must have been the most amazing and inexplicable experience for early human beings. Right from prehistoric times, people were driven by genuine curiosity and reverence arising from the observations of periodic motion of the heavenly objects. For thousands of years, humans have understood the cycle of changes occurring in the night sky, discovered familiar patterns of stars and also struggled to make sense of rare events like lunar and solar eclipses or an unexpected