::: Star Campus :::

Feature

The galaxy of knowledge and evolving complexities

Dr. Ahmad Neaz

Today, when the galaxy of knowedge, be it social, political, economic or scientific is expanding at an unprecedented pace, new questions and new interests require us to enter into a new search for a new answer. Old theories and ideas, although important, cannot be taken as a corollary due to this unprecedented pace of change taking place in the contemporary world. At present, conception and understanding of a subject is undergoing a radical change towards the multiple, the temporal and the complex. A new paradigm is taking shape introducing multiple choices, self-organization, trans-disciplinary and complex dynamics. Consequently, knowledge has become very complex. It has become imperative to prioritize the actual need and effective mix of evidence based research, learning and practices to respond to scientific and technological requirements. Moreover, there has been a paramount importance to deal with changing socio-cultural context addressing human needs, social justice ensuring the quality of life of human beings. It has been our belief that today, the greatest desire of mankind should be the creation of a civilization in which utmost respect is paid to the human beings themselves. This goal can only be achieved by developing knowledge base and its practices through inter-disciplinary approaches and cooperation of the many intellectuals belonging to various fields of disciplines.

The Complexities of Knowledge:
Human vision may not proceed too far from the socio-economic dimension within which they are to live. Some theories proved to be true for a generation or less. In this regard Newton may be considered as one of the few exceptions. The Newtonian vision of the world is still alive. The idea of deterministic and time reversal laws where the world was seen as a vast automaton; and man appeared as being outside nature as a free agent in a mechanical universe was the obvious outcome of the Newtonian paradigm. The search for objectivity was the philosophical foundation that really forced social scientists to introduce scientific method in its application. Classical and neo-classical economists also pretended to follow the Newtonian hypothesis by considering a closed autonomous system, ruled by endogenous factors of a highly selective nature, self-regulating and moving to a determinate predictable point of equilibrium. The social scientists greatly influenced by Newton, pursued their theory building mechanism in terms of linear, stable and equilibrium analyses, resulting their departure from the reality where the situation is non-linear, unstable and disequilibrium. The epoch-making statement of Einstein that 'all scientific enquiry aims at minimizing the gap between the world of ideas and the world of phenomena' is still relevant in today's scientific enquiry.

Evolving Complexities:
As we know, the early stage of capitalism had been envisioned by Adam-Smith and Ricardo who conceived the idea of a laissez-faire economy, where a rational individual would be trying to maximize his profit in an open and free competition. Their world had been dominated by the problem of scarcity and uncertainty and that being so, they pursued their theories in the direction of production and supply to reach the point of equilibrium. Jacque Rousseau tried to minimize the conflict between liberal and egalitarian conviction by maintaining that “liberty and equality are compatible and consistent” but in vain.

Karl Marx saw the rising trend of capitalism and identified its unstable and disequilibrium condition that led him to advocate the idea of socialism and communism. With the development of capitalism, changing structure of age-old society became more adaptive to the response of scientific and technological progress that enormously increased the capacity to exploit resources and to induce a powerful explosion in production. As a result the economic problem changed from production and supply to consumption and distribution. Under such circumstances, JM Keynes identified the chronic tendency of the laissez-fare market economy to generate involuntary unemployment and he prescribed governmental intervention for boosting up effective demand to avert the tendency.

The whole process may lead to an intellectual exercise without hardly any practical implication. Many problems are in fact multi-disciplinary in nature. Experts belonging to specific disciplines try to keep the problem under its own domain and interpret the issues applying existing knowledge base. In some cases they form a multidisciplinary team, publish a report containing several articles, but then fail to develop a trans-disciplinary concept which is a prerequisite for dealing with multi-disciplinary problems.

As we know the subject development did not evolve as an independent field of study until the 2nd world war, when a group of economists who quickly identified them as an off-spring of the Keynesian mainstream, created a new branch of economics known as 'development economics'. The development economics exclusively considered employment and income and latter on pursued only per capita income as a measuring rod of development ignoring equality/equity issues which were supposed to be taken care of through the 'trickle down processes. Their assumption of 'inevitability of inequality' in the early stage of development (Kuznet) and the 'trickle down processes' proved to be universally inapplicable. M. K.Gandhi contradicts the idea of economics as a value free subject saying “I must confess that I do not draw a sharp or any distinction between economics and ethics. Economics that hurt the moral well being of an individual or a nation are immoral, therefore sinful. Thus the economics that permit one country to prey upon another are immortal” “The economics that disregard moral and sentimental considerations are like waxworks that, being life like, still lack the life of the living flesh.”

Amartya Sen identified the causes and consequences of famine that led him to develop the concept of 'exchange entitlement' contrary to the 'demand supply theory' one of the basic laws of economics. Sen came under serious criticism when he tried to introduce 'value' in economics since economist claims the subject as a value free science. Many economists did not even consider Sen as an economist particularly when he published 'Utilitarianism and Beyond' jointly with John Rowl where 'utility theory' which is the foundation of economics, is challenged. Amartya Sen frequently uses the term 'economic imperialism' because of economists endeavor to confine the multi-disciplinary topics like development, under the grip of economic laws.

Consequently, human dimension of development was lost under the narrowly focused economic determinants like income alone.

Challenge Ahead:
During 1970s a new stream of development thoughts came in to supplement income approach by 'human development approach' to be achieved within stipulated time frame. Adelman and Morris first tried to theorize this concept in the form of Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI). Landmark studies like A Blueprint for survival, Growth with Redistribution, Catastrophe or New Society, What Now-Another Development. Basic Needs Approach, Reshaping the International Order and the Cocoyoc Declaration contributed substantially to beef up 'Human Development Approach. During the 1980s and 1990s International Conferences sponsored by the UN like Earth Summit, Convention on Rights of Child, International Conference on Population and Development, Fourth World Conference on Women, Social Summit and Millennium Development Goals further reinforced the Human Development Approach. Moreover, UNDP annually publish Human Development Report on a regular basis.

The enormous growth of knowledge and its dissemination through electronic and print media created tremendous capacity as well as incapacity for human beings to cope with the pace and its diversity. For example, the contradiction between different school of thoughts, between science and absolute values, between centrality and diversity of knowledge, between empiricism and idealism, between theocracy and epistemology, between universality and specificity under time and space dimension and so on. Today, researchers are very dependent on the internet. It is beyond doubt that the internet revolution is the most significant progress that has changed the world order, but in some cases individual innovative capacity and indigenous epistemology is being threatened by too much dependence on communication media particularly on internet. The epoch making report published by UNESCO entitled “Many Voices One World” shows that less developed nations are trading off their rich culture at the cost of importing poverty of culture from other nations due to one way communication channel pushing them towards “cultural dependence”.

In spite of ever expanding knowledge base our world still seems to be under the grip of poverty, inequality and inhumanity. Un Secretary General Kofi Anan maintains that “so long as every fifth inhabitant of our planet lives in absolute poverty, there can be no real stability in the world.” Observing this dilemma Joseph Stiglitz contends that in order to make globalization work for the poor, a radical rethinking is needed to help countries grow and ensure that growth achieved is shared more equitably. Amartya Sen further emphasize that the concern over “global inequality lies at the core of developing a system of global ethics for the emergence of a truly global community.” In fact we are living in an increasingly insecure world. Amnesty International Report 2004 contends that “powerful governments are violating international laws in the blind pursuit of global security.” Considering these realities, human vision and the galaxy of knowledge needs to be further broadening to accommodate knowledge base with human values-a transformation from 'Human Development' to 'Humane Development'. This transformation is directed towards fulfillment of human hopes, aspirations and values