14 SOCIAL SCIENTIST i is argued hv those who reject this dichotomy that, "social presuppositions or interests often insinuate themselves into what seem at first glance to be the most objective ideas of the investigator, with the result that it may be misleading to omit the role of environmental factors even in tracing such ideas. In other words, it is very difficult to isolate ideas in so 'pure' a state that they contain no social ingredients." Bernal, for instance, says : 'The ideas of science are not the simple products of the logic of experimental methods: they are in the first place ideas derived from the social and intellecutal background of previous times, transformed, and often only very partly transformed, by passing through the test of scientific experiment. So it was, for instance, with the idea of the natural law of Newton, which was a reflection of the establishment of a legal rather than an authoritarian form of government. Or, with the theory of natural selection and the struggle for existence of Darwinian evolution, which was a reflection of the free competition of the full capitalist era ..."3 Why does Bemal use the phrase "Science in History", or "Science and History" ? I imagine, given the controversy between internalist and externalist approaches to history of science, the above descriptive titles avoid this altogether, by clearly relating scientific and technical development to the historical social context. In these brief remarks, I draw your attention to some essential features of BernaFs vision of history as gleaned from the first five sections of "Science and History"4. In doing so, I shall be seriously concerned with the very relevant question : what bearing Bernal's views have, on the issue of "interpreting" history of science in India. In so brief a time, I can passingly refer to only some issues to indicate illustratively how perhaps, we might try to learn and draw critically the right sort of implications and raise relevant and pertinent questions when interpreting and evaluating our indigenous scientific and technological heritage. A fruitful take off perhaps is to return to the question: What is BemaFs vision of history ? This presupposes and is in a sense parasitic upon the question: What is his vision of science ? Bemal contrasts the view of science "as a process to be studied and described, a human activity linked to all other human activities and continuously interacting with them", to the view that, "inner nature of science is an autonomous system completely isolated from the social world."5 And then he goes on to say, that the latter view held in the past, and by some even today, has led to arresting science. This view believes that, "there is an intrinsic and pure knowledge — a unique approximation to an absolute truth, to be achieved by a sure method and guarded by a passionate rejection of alternative ways of looking at things." Bernal gives the example of the Aristotelian-Averroist-Thomist synthesis: this provided a dominant world view and method of science from the fourth century before Christ till the seventeenth. He concludes that "for over 2,000 years this was the pattern into which thought was frozen, and it took a violent change in the economic and political science to shake it free again."6