Living Joyfully with Complexity in Chemistry and Culture

There are many reasons for speaking about science to the general public. One motivation could be to attract more people to our profession. More important is that it is impossible for a democratic society such as India to function without the broadest possible awareness of some of the basic ideas of science by the general public. Scientists form only about one percent of our population. Research is possible only when the other 99% of society understand what scientists do. People ultimately make the decisions. They may seek the advice of experts, but experts can be martialled on the side of any issue in the world. It is important that people themselves learn at least some basic ideas of science, so that they can judge the words of experts and listen to them critically, as well as to the words of politicians. It is very important for the functioning of a democratic society that people know about science.

There is another reason, a psychological one. If we do not know how the world around us works, we create, in the tradition of human beings over ages, mysterious explanations and superstitions around the workings of that world. In the old days those things were created around the motion of the planets, around eclipses, comets and other phenomena – what is interesting today is that science and technology have surrounded us with all kinds of things that we don't understand. Do you know what goes on inside a CD player or inside your modern automatic camera? Those mysteries can well separate us from the things that we use, and so soon we are alienated, in the psychological sense, from the world around us.