Essay, Paragraph or Speech on “Science and the Modern World” Complete English Essay, Speech for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Science and the Modern World

Scientific thought is essentially power-thought—the sort of thought whose purpose, conscious or unconscious, is to give power to its possessor. Power is a casual concept and to obtain power over any given material, one need only to understand the casual laws to which it is subjected. This is an abstract matter and the more irrelevant details we can omit from our purview, the more powerful our thoughts will become.

—Bertrand Russell

Often, with a small lamp in hand we plunge into the unknown expecting the light of the dawn. And to our disappointment, we discover rather too late that we have made deep forays into the realms of perpetual darkness. Man tries to tame nature but nature retorts in terms of floods, storms, acid rains, landslides and earthquakes. Man does not learn to live with nature and the nature punishes him.

Science is the name we give to this quest for knowledge. Man is rightly or wrongly under the impression that this, what he calls science. Is the only universally laid, accepted, agreed and all-inclusive structure which can explain the whole of human experiences and entire phenomenon of nature. 

However, the foundation of this belief is human thought, which is born out of failure and is the result of an imperfect adaptation to the environment. Science evolves a rationale and a logic of trial and errors. Man who is out in search of the better, is sitting on the edge of a vast ocean promoted by his insatiable thirst for knowledge, not prepared to abandon the search of the unknown; the unrevealed and the unintelligible.

Modern age aptly deserves the title of ‘Age of Science’. Man is now in a position to say that he has begun to understand the mysteries of nature and learnt that all that he had learnt so far, was true. However he has admitted that a lot remains beyond the realm of his knowledge and that the knowledge level acquired by him is only a tip of the iceberg of knowledge. Giving up is not a part of his character of nature and he starts anew. Science was at least as old as—if not older than—man himself and man had preferred to call ‘his’ age a ‘modem’ age. The unending chain continues—’modem’ changing to the ‘old’, and the old gliding into the ‘ancient’! The search and quest go on.

Science is a very vast field and not an exhaustive term. A systematic knowledge of natural or physical phenomena truth ascertained by observation, experiment and injunction: ordered arrangement of facts, arranged under classes or heads, the rules of invention, construction or mechanism, etc. as distinguished from art.

This definition of science is unambiguous: truly speaking there is no such thing as ‘scientific art’ or ‘artistic science’ though art does little for science. Modern science has made deep inroads into and even encroachments into the territory of art in a number of ways. The masterpieces or paintings of the period before the advent of the camera, show accuracy in imitating life. The “Chef d’ Oevres’ of the Renaissance age, the paintings of Ravi Verma in India are so true to life in colour actor depth that they are rivals to photographs.

A famous painting titled The Lady with a Lamp” at Mysore Museum cheats viewers into believing that a real lady stands at the door! A Renaissance age painting at the Louvre (Paris) of a woman bathing in a stream shows the transparency of water and the woman’s garment in water. With the invention of photography, painters shifted their emphasis to subrealism and impressionism—two forms of art in which the feelings and emotions of the viewer are stirred, though no clear form can be identified on the canvas.

Science has made human life easy. It is useful as well as harmful to man if misused. It is a potent source of power packed with enormous energy, which is capable of doing good to man. But if it is used for destroying, annihilating or degrading the human race, its habitat or other elements of the universes, it can show its teeth and destroy its creators or perpetrators in return. As there is great likelihood of its being used in the wrong way, science is certainly capable of doing more harm than good. However science has made our lives happier in many ways.

Science has revolutionised the world. Our lives have become more luxurious and comfortable. We have fast foods, fast cars and fast jets. We can surf through websites of the world through Internet. We can have all luxuries with the click of a button. We can enjoy, explore and soothe ourselves to extreme limits with the help of modern gadgets and technologies, which are products of science and technology.

Time today has been defied by high speeds. Breakfast at Delhi. lunch at Rome and dinner at New York on the same day! Satellite communications make it possible to fax news, reports and business documents in seconds to the branch of a company at the other end of the globe. A business tycoon holidaying on the sunny beaches of Seychelles Islands or in Florida conducts business around the globe through satellite telephone or Internet. Information of mind-boggling nature can he retrieved on our computers from all the corners of the earth. It seems as if the earth were a small village!

In man’s fight against disease, science has considerably helped him. Misfortune and stars are now blamed for far fewer calamities because science has armed us with remedies which have helped us arrive at a position wherefrom we can smile at disease and death. Diseases co far considered incurable have been overpowered and cured. The dreaded diseases like TB, smallpox and many natural physical deficiencies have been eradicated. Anaesthetics and new technologies have made surgeries painless, more efficient and safer. We have not been able to conquer AIDS, leukaemia, many types of cancer and some other ailments. But we would be able to solve these riddles very soon. The human genome has been mapped. We would soon be able to identify and mark the diseased genes and eliminate them altogether. Science has completely changed our outlook towards life; our approach to it is now absolutely different from the earlier ones.

Science has brought entertainment into our houses. Cinema, video, television and cable networks are different means of entertainment which serve us round-the-clock. Science has given a death blow to superstitions and ignorance. The new surgeons and their sophisticated medical equipment have helped many patients around the globe. Ultrasound, EEC and EEG can diagnose ailments in the body without even touching it. Gallstones can be removed by laser, which breaks the stones without pain. Laser can operate on the eye and the brain, which no surgeon’s knife could touch, without harming the intricate neural networks.

We do not rely on our stars and the occult predictions of seers and we do not let the vagaries of weather, disease and natural calamity easily destroy us. Remote sensing satellites warn us of floods and earthquakes and we are able to evacuate people in distress well in time.

The International Space Station (ISS-alpha) is fully operational. It is our first colony in space The discovery of atomic energy is the greatest achievement of the human intellect since the dawn of history. This discovery has given a new lease of life to human race as fossil fuels would be exhausted within 250 years. Nuclear power generation in seven Indian nuclear plants is an ample proof of our commitment towards nuclear power generation in the new millennium.

Nevertheless, the opposite side of the picture is obnoxiously horrible when we analyse the sufferings caused by the misuse of scientific inventions. Science has been used for serving the political interests and has produced formidable weapons of destruction. It has produced bombs and poisonous gases: The latter were responsible for the death of millions of Men, women and children during the Second World War. Hydrogen Bomb and atom bomb could sound the death knell of human happiness and humanity itself.

Science is also a modem curse because it destroys all values of human life. Even in everyday-life, science has been misused. The Press and the radio are used to carry on vicious propaganda against rivals. Truth is suppressed and rumours are spread. As a result of false propaganda, bad blood is created between nations. How can there be peace and amity when people are living in an atmosphere of suspicion, mistrust and misunderstanding? This shows that ‘fruits’ of knowledge are still fraught with dangerous probabilities. Power, which knowledge has brought for us, is being misused by the mankind for selfish and base ends.

The evil caused by science is not limited to the earth only. It has spread its tentacles towards the space as well. Now, the space around earth has been polluted by the garbage of ‘dead’ satellites which continue to orbit earth. Recently, the Russian space station, Mir, plunged into the ocean. Moreover, scientists have designs to create “human colonies’ in the space, indicating that they would not let the space have better fate than that of the earth and it could be even worse. Further, sky satellites and star wars satellites hover over earth and could initiate a world war, which could annihilate earth and her inhabitants. The NMD (National Missile Defence) programme of the USA is also a dangerous proposal.

On the one hand, science has helped us conquer disease. has to fight an endless battle against new diseases. New diseases like AIDS have raised their ugly heads, thanks to human negligence. The battle against cancer goes on. Though men are aware of scientific facts, they still fight other on the basis of class, caste, religion, community and colour of the skin. The reason here is not the lack of a scientific awareness; the actual reasons are economic and political. Science brings in its wake, an imbalance in the course of nature. Rapid development upsets nature’s laws and we cannot ignore its consequences. It has recently been-found that cellular phones, which emit high frequency sound waves cause brain tumours.

To sum up, man’s searching mind was projected into the realm of the unknown after many social and political upheavals. Man had somewhat stabilised himself. But as said above science treads on two parallel roads—leading to the targets of doing good to mankind and also doing harm to it.

We have to make progress in the direction of virtues and retreat from the direction of the vices. Therein lies the redemption of mankind and its salvation—if vie do not check the latter and tread the path of evils. our mother earth is likely to be doomed. Science can be used in both the ways—it must be used in a way that leads to human happiness and prosperity and not in a way that leads to human agonies, chaos and decimation of the blue-green planet. Science must take us away from the abysmal depths of despair, death and destruction.