Recast(e)ing scientific temper in a democracy: The eccentricities of ambedkarian science
- Sociological Bulletin
- 69(2), Aug, 2020: p.174-190
Histories of modern science in India have been written in which Ambedkar receives barely a mention or in which he appears as a latecomer to ideas about the social function of science that others had pioneered. This article uses seminal ideas of Bhimrao Ambedkar (1891–1956) to interrogate the nature and representation of science in modern India. Ambedkarian science (AS) can be accessed through Ambedkar’s own speeches and writings and through the wider project of science, which he identified—critiquing colonialism, challenging Hindu metaphysics and cosmology and the ethics of natural inequality they sanction. The article makes a case for looking at AS as a way of structuring the predicament of postcolonial science, particularly in relation to understanding the authority of science and its evaluation in terms of its capacity to deliver social and economic change. It accordingly seeks to outline AS while revisiting the concept of scientific temper. - Reproduced