Why India Needs More Science Graduates (And Not Engineers)
Consider instrumentalism. It is essentially a doctrine of science that focuses on the outcomes of phenomena. It is not concerned about whether the mental models that people have about a phenomenon is true or not; it is concerned only about whether the output of the model approximates reality. “Instrumentalism is the view that scientific theories are useful tools for predicting phenomena instead of true or approximately true descriptions.”
Essentially, instrumentalism boils down to the study of measurements of phenomena — the idea being that the explanation of phenomena needs to be practically applicable in some way. Explanations are useful only if they are practically understood and empirically validated — the underlying reason is not necessary to be understood.
This mode of thinking does have some useful applications — a relentless study of existing technologies, and experiments with variants of it thereof produce incremental and rarely exponential increases in knowledge. The increases in knowledge, however, are generally vertical as opposed to horizontal — they go deeper rather than broader. They tend to be convergent around some particular theme or idea. As an example, the first printing press by Gutenberg (actually the second; the first was invented in China in the 11th century but it fizzled out) was fairly wondrous and could do an incredibly lot more compared to other machines at that time. It was a huge leap in technology. Advances made post the first invention made the same printing press better and more efficient. The first one had alphabets embossed on each metal block — subsequent iterations had entire pages embossed on each metal block such that whole pages could be copied faster. An essential difference is that the first one was universal — it could be used to create any possible type of text whereas the ones with entire pages could reproduce only those pages. Instrumentalism dictates how to make printing presses more efficient — the study of the output of the press would result in an understanding of how the arriving of the output could be done better.
However, this approach would not care about the fact that the first printing press — the alphabetical one — is universal. It can be applied to create any form of text whatsoever, thereby replicating any natural human language, therefore it is universal in application.
This same analogue carries for computation as well. Computation is essentially the application of a set of rules and logic on a given set of entities — in most cases, numbers. So, too, is any language — It is a set of rules and conventions applied on a base set of words that are further derived from a base and discrete set of letters — consonants and vowels. Therefore, a machine capable of executing a universal operation for letters can easily be transcribed into a machine capable of performing universal computations, since they are essentially dealing with the same type of structure.
An instrumentalism sort of approach will make focus on making the printing press more efficient and would not bother about the implications of the universality of the machine since the very concept of universality would not be recognised as the focus is on the output of the phenomena and the underlying meaning and causes of it. Therefore, an instrumentalism type of approach will not realise that a machine applying operations on words is quintessentially the same as a machine applying operations on numbers, and therefore the jump from a universal printing press to a universal calculator would not be difficult. Yet, the printing press predated the first universal calculator ( Charles Babbage and Lady Lovelace’s) by almost 2 centuries.
On the other hand, a deep study of the underlying physics and meaning of the printing press would incorporate this idea. A study of principles will lead to the discovery of the concept of universality, as that is the natural progression of the logical exploration of the implications of the phenomenon of the printing press. Having understood the meaning of universality in the context of the printing press machine, the natural next step would be to at least create a computational machine based on the same principles — which is indeed what happened a couple of centuries later. This type of study is far more fundamental and therefore more divergent. Instead of focussing on what the printing press is doing, the focus is on why the printing press is able to do what it does. The value of creating a more efficient printing press through instrumentalism thinking is very inferior compared to the value gained by focusing on the fundamentals and using the knowledge of those fundamentals to create a computational device. This divergent and exploratory thinking by focusing on the fundamental science behind why things work as opposed to focusing on higher-level functions of this things, therefore, creates a lot more value for society due to the higher rate of better and disruptive discoveries and innovations.
The engineers of today’s India are taught a lot about existing market products, high-level workings of devices and are generally focussed on output of the devices. A study in pure science, however, lets the student understand the fundamental nature of the things they deal with. This enables a student of pure science to apply knowledge in altogether new and different ways — when the quantum state of matter was first proposed, quantum computing was barely something scientists even had an inkling about. Yet, quantum computers are set to disrupt our civilisation as we know it. These advancements happened because the scientists first understand the underlying science behind the quantum state of nature, and then explored all the things possible through this phenomenon. It was an exploratory process. The current engineering approach, on the other hand, is to lock onto one of the existing outcomes/processes and then focus only on incremental innovations of that.
Any high-functioning society needs an optimal mix of both Convergent and Divergent thinkers to ensure continual technological advancements — maybe its time India starts realising this and makes sure that the lakhs of engineers it produces every year are able to think both in a convergent and a divergent manner. And to ensure, moreover, that the quality of graduates of pure science courses (Bachelor of Science) substantially increase in quality and quantity. A mix of B.Sc (Bachelor in Science) and B.Tech (Bachelor in Technology) graduates are needed to drive the next wave of innovation. Or we will be left optimising existing ideas incrementally rather than making dents in the universe.
