4 SOCIAL SCIENTIST reflect considerably upon the relationship of science to society which can only follow out of a knowledge of the history of science and society. An opinion commonly held in the scientific community of that time was that scientific knowledge superseded all other forms of human knowledge and investigation. This itself was a consequence of certain developments within positivism in the nineteenth century. Bemal denounced the positivistic understanding of science according to which present scientific knowledge superseded all the knowledge of the past. The additional feature ofBernaFs denunciation of positivism was that it attempted to return to scientists a social responsibility which they might have evaded. What one must not forget is that the book was written at a time when the world had been divided into two major ideological camps, Whereas the benefits of science were quite obvious, the period had also witnessed its destructive application. The idea that the application of science automatically led to an improvement of human welfare goes back to Roger and Francis Bacon. But the idea was to acquire increasing transparency during the industrial revolution: "Science has the mission by which the whole of our civilization is really being transformed". Given this understanding of science and its technological wonders, the scientist himself acquired in the minds of the populace the aura of a magician. However, when the aberrant applications of science were to manifest themselves, the scientist was hSld to be responsible for the evils that had plagued the times. Bemal was hopeful that if he were to provide an appreciation of the historical relation of science and society then it would become possible for the scientist to counter any attempt that reduced him/her to a pawn in the hands of those who misuse science. The scientific community had languished in its own naivete insofar as scientists saw their role as a purely moral one. The metaphor of disinterested research, they felt vindicated them of any social or moral responsibility. Though this attitude was understandable in the infancy of science, the attitude, was to break down later. The alternative, Bemal posed demanded a conscious active social responsibility from the scientific community. TOWARDS A DEFINITION OF SCIENCE AND ITS METHOD One of the serious problems confronting an investigation into the nature of science as a human activity is that of circumscribing its domain and thereby giving it an unequivocal definition. The roots of science go so far back that any attempt to unify this activity from antiquity to the contemporary times, would certainly miss out some of its features. In the past science was part of other domains of human investigation and it was coextensive with logic, mathematics and philosophy. It, therefore, was very difficult to delineate it from other domains of investigation. Natural philosophy fragmented into separate areas of inquiry like the natural and human sciences only in the 17th century, and it is at this juncture that science came to acquire an independent status. This independence, however, Bernal hopes, may be a temporary phase in the history of science,