Let's leave science alone, let the great Darwin's soul rest in peace

               Evolution is as true and right as the plural of goose is geese

              I write this week on our worthy minister getting it all so wrong

             I don’t know whether to laugh or cry or sing a baleful song

      When Charles Darwin turned in his grave                               

Friends, Charles Darwin turned in his grave. This happened two weeks ago because a minister in the central government suffering from foot-in-the-mouth syndrome waxed eloquent on man’s evolution. This he did, not in a casual, off-hand manner in some cocktail party sipping scotch but at a public function. Origin of species is scientifically wrong, he boomed before the mike. No one, not even our ancestors, have seen an ape turning into a man; humans appeared on earth as humans, he said. Going a step further, the worthy minister of state for Human Resource Development, Mr Satyapal Singh then asserted that since this was the case therefore necessary changes should be introduced in the school and college curricula. The cocky, over-zealous minster did not stop here. He repeated his misplaced notions at another public function soon after and justified them further by claiming that since he is himself a Chemistry postgraduate, he knows science.  Therefore what he says is a scientific fact. As was natural, the entire scientific community squirmed and uttered a collective sigh of shock and surprise at the minister trying to turn the well-established theory of origin of man on its head with just one sweeping statement. A body of 2000 scientists therefore had to issue a joint statement to contradict and reject what the ‘scientific-minded’ minister had tried to push down nation’s throat. And his own superior, the HRD minister Mr Javadekar, had to ask him to desist from trespassing into a field (of science) that he knows little about.

Like all, I too have been shocked and surprised at the brazenness and the gumption shown by the minister in making such a  stunning assertion on  a universally-accepted, time-tested scientific concept like human evolution. For,  to say something wrong is one thing. But to try to  justify a baseless and fanciful argument and peddle it as a fact of science merely  on the boast of your own scientific background - after you have dealt science a body blow – is ludicrous and hard to swallow. Needless to say, it needs hard scientific evidence to prove a theory wrong and not an irresponsible comment at a public function.

Charles Darwin didn’t enunciate his theory sitting in a cosy, cushioned chair in an AC-cooled, swanky ministerial chamber. He set sail  in a ship ‘HMS Beagle’ on 27 December 1831 on a rainy morning enduring all kinds of hardships on a long voyage to South America and the Galapagos Islands brimming with diversity of life. There he made thorough observations, collected samples, made elaborate notes. Back home he pondered over what he had seen, collected, observed and written. Then after years of meditative reflection, debate and scientific enquiry did the light of knowledge and discovery illuminate  his mind, leading him to pen down and spell out page by page the theory of evolution in his book:  ‘ On the Origin of species…’ which he published on 24 November 1859.  That was not the end. His trailblazing ideas came under severest scrutiny in the scientific world. He also faced stiff resistance from the orthodox Church which thought it blasphemous because it ran counter to the misplaced idea of all creation being an act of God.  But Darwin’s concept was scientifically robust. It stood the test of time. And is now an irrefutable fact of biology beyond doubt which only the superstitious, the dogmatic and the ignorant alone would dispute.

Now let’s answer the minister. He says that the theory of evolution is wrong because no one – not even our ancestors - have seen an ape turning into a man. Well, Mr Minister, this is because evolution is not an act of magic. It is not that by merely waving a magic wand an ape will transform itself into a man in the twinkling of an eye. It takes many thousands and millions of years for the process of Natural Selection to work its way. Under its slow, invisible ‘hand’, small little changes accumulate and then a species different from an original one takes shape. That’s why the ancestral man - the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons - some 200,000 years ago, were so different from us. Any biology book of a plus two student will tell us that.

Therefore, may I please respectfully say this:

Let's please leave science alone, and with those who belong to it  and do their work. For, such utterances demoralize us, give a bad name to the country and make it a laughing stock. We have enough of superstition in our society already to get rid of and are still miles away from fostering scientific tamper in the country.

                                               

                                                                 

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