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The Origin Of Rural Technology System :
If we go 1500 years back in history, India
was not an underdeveloped country. India was at the forefront of
civilization, and having a fully developed exchange with the other advanced
countries of that time. What happened in these last 1500 years, that India
lost this front line status and slipped to the back benches?
The Head
And The Hand
In
those days there was no science, only natural philosophy. The difference was
that philosophers observed nature and put down their thoughts as
hypotheses. Science brought in the concept of experimentation - doing. From
the time of Galileo, this "doing" became the basis of thought and
science became a sequence of doing and thinking, a joint program of the
hand and the head. Similarly, there was no technology, but only arts and
crafts. These were skills and empirically gathered knowledge, passed down
from generation to generation.
We
had our "Rishis" who contributed to astronomy, mathematics,
grammar, philosophy and all the other subjects, where a single mind could
contribute in isolation. Crafts like textiles, brassware, metallurgy, and
even surgery developed in skilled hands. Metallurgy and surgery were then
crafts. These crafts had no knowledge inputs from the thinkers, but only
empirical observations from the craftsmen themselves. Thus, we did not have
the coordination between the thinkers and the doers; between the head and
the hand. Science is based on this head and hand coordination. We as a
nation are poor in this head and hand joint action and have therefore
lagged behind, in the present technology-dominated age. Technology today is
the application of live science and even the empirical observations from
the "Doing", give rise to further study in the thinking
"Science".
Thus
what India
needs for its development, is this ability to do and think in coordination
- the marriage of the head and the hand. If 90% of our population lives by
the hand alone, then it is better for us to reach the head through the
hand. We must adopt the "learning by doing" approach. It is also
my belief that working with hand stimulates thinking. That concrete aids
the abstract is the basis of this belief.
This
belief is now supported by the extensive work of Jean Piaget, who devoted
nearly 40 years study to develop his theory of development of intelligence
in the child and the adolescent.
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philosophy of Vigyan Ashram
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