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Why do not Iranians honor their scientists, scholars, and history in such ways?
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Ebn e Sina
Ebn e Sina, or as known to westerners Avicenna, was a Persian man of knowledge and wisdom for his era. He was born in a village close to Bukhara, in today's Uzbekistan, buried in Hamedan, Iran, and wrote his books and article, in topics ranging from astronomy to medicine, in his era's scholarly language, Arabic. So, today many from Uzbaks to Iranians and the Islamic world take pride in him as their own. What I did not know and learned recently was that he is on bills of Tajikistan of all places!
Why do not Iranians honor their scientists, scholars, and history in such ways?
Why do not Iranians honor their scientists, scholars, and history in such ways?
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Hi Nargess, yes, thats indeed a good question. But also scientists of present day received much less attention than TV celebrities, football players or politicians. The comfort feeling for scientists, though, might be that their discoveries remain forever, and people in later generations will always remember them. Ibn Sina (or Avicenna) was not living an easy life, but his achievements in philosophy, medicine and science gained more and more attention with the centuries. Who, in contrast, will remember George Bush, or Katie Perry, or Leonardo Messi in a hundred years from now ?
ReplyDeleteNice blog, but I am always frustrated to see that so few people respond to blogs that, like yours, go a bit beyond the frequent subjects of Fashion, Cooking, Nasty Photographs.
best regards, Michael
Thanks for reading this blog and your comment. How did you learn about this blog?
ReplyDeleteWell, I do not know, George Bush will sure be in history books as a U.S. president with big decisions he made, good or bad.
You should not get so frustrated about such blogs getting fewer responses because as you said in your first paragraph, society pays more attention to celebrities and politicians than scientists. I think scientists also have the responsibility of communicating their science to the public, make the public see the relevance and importance of their work in their lives or their children's lives, etc, instead of just relying on history to take care of it. In this day and age, much more scientific research and development funds can be received if a project has the public's support.
I found the link to your other blog (http://baaomid.blogspot.de) listed on the website "Just-talking-out-loud". I assume this one is also written by an Iranian ex-pat. My original interest in the stories of people who left their Iranian home came through some friends and colleagues here at work, who's stories and problems and memories to their home country reminded me of very similar experiences I had in East-Germany during the first 28 years of my life. Very similar conflicts between the desire to keep the friends and family relation, but a political system that forced many to leave the country. And the absurdity of an ever-present political indoctrination, that decided about the future of the people, but completely ignored that people are individuals and all have their own dreams and want to build their own life.
ReplyDeleteAfter the green rebellion in 2009 and hearing and reading about so many brave political activists who were imprissoned in Evin, I set up a website http://evin-rosetta.persian-cat.de to translate and publish letters that prisoners send to their families.
But apart from this, I very much enjoy reading blogs like yours, since in contrary to your criticism of a missing recognition of ancient persian scientist (like Ibn Sina) I got the impression that the spirit of the great persian poets/philosophers/scientists like Omar Khayyam or Hafiz, Rumi and Ferdosi is still very present in peoples mind and in their stories. In particular the tension in Omar Khayyams writings, between his very abstract scientific studies and the beautiful phantasies in his poems and his life-long conflicts with the political and religious authorities is so present and makes him so modern in my eyes, that every nation should be grateful to have somebody like him in its history.
The frustration that I mentioned about a miss-representation of science in comparison to sports or politics celebreties might be a special case for Germany. Modern science in almost any field is watched here with a lot of scepticism: Genetics and molecular biology is considered to interfere with the devine creation (DNA is always made responsible for any type of horror one can imagine), high-energy physics is considered only absorbing money and contributing to nuclear disasters, space-research is also considered too expensive and not providing immediate benefit for daily life. In Germany, perhaps more than anywere else in the world, there is currently very little spirit that considers scientific research as something that has eternal values, cause it provides knowledge about the world we live in. Science is only tolerated if it provides short term profit, but not if it contributes only knowledge. I am pretty sure that if Albert Einstein or Max Planck or Heisenberg would live today, they would have extreme difficulties to get funding to develop quantum mechanics or the theory of relativity.
bets regards, Michael
PS: if you think that the political statements above bear a risk for your blog, I would understand if you don't want to leave them on.
That is interesting information, somewhat surprising to me, about Germany considering them having so many research institutes such as Max-Planck centers and their heavy participation in organizations such as ESA. In general, public perception of science is sometimes different from governments' support of it in first world countries where scientists are more involved in decision making processes and determining direction of research and development (thank Goodness for that).
ReplyDeleteAt the moment, German scientists are in the unusual situation that the government is more willing to invest in basic research than the people on the street would like. And this is not only since Mrs. A. Merkle (who did her PhD in quantum chemistry) became prime minister. There is among most of politicians the concensus that without support in basic research and technological development we cannot compete in a future world.
ReplyDeleteBut this is by far not common sense among the people. As compared to other countries, there is a lot of scepticism here: fear of gene technology, fear of nuclear technology, no understanding of space research, worries about genetics and so on.
Therefore, although the working conditions in scientifc research are more or less excellent (apart from the beaurocrazy) and more and more young scientists from all over the world are oming here, in the public perception it is barely visible.
You wrote in your comment above that it is our "... responsibility to communicate science to the public ...". Thats absolutely right, and I try it occasionally (we had something called "Science Slam", but from our big research center, there were only three people participating). And then there is the problem of adjusting the language and terminology, depending on the audience. Trying to use the appropriate scientific terms in a normal scientific talk in English, as opposed to use slightly more common terms in a lecture for students, as opposed to use really common peoples language when talking to non-scientists in German (in a school or so). I think that Carl Sagan in the US was excellent in this, he really managed to mesmerize the ordinary people for the beauty and importance of science. But to be honest, I think that Ebn Sina was a very different character: I would guess that he was very introvert. Of course we will perhaps never know for sure. But what do you think about him ?
best wishes, Michael
I understand; It is good that Germany is in good hands that value science and innovation.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea what kind of personality Ebn e Sina had; I recall having read some poems from him in elementary school, so he might have been a good science communicator or advocate at least to the general public:
دل گرچه در این بادیه بسیار شتافت یک موی ندانست ولی موی شکافت
اندر دل من هزارخورشید بتافت آخربه کمال ذرهای راه نیافت
Here under his personality they say he was tough and sometimes rude to scientists in his own era!
http://fa.wikipedia.org/wiki/ابن_سینا
But there is always a big difference between the historical records of a person, and how this person considered him/her self. And usually the truths lays somewhere in between, or even miles away from both. And on the long run, we judge people by what they left behind. Artists, scientist, philosophers: at the end we praise them for their devine creations and their beautiful ideas, and forget that sometimes they were despotes or little cowards in private life.
ReplyDeleteIt would be good to have both, the freedom to do creative work for eternity and the luxury to be a nice, generous, respected person in daily life.
Wish you a happy day and good ideas,
Michael