MAN AND THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES 33 in relation to a knowledge that has arisen from his own creativity. Max Born, referring to the scientists responsible for the production of the Hydrogen Bomb, expresses this sentiment : It is satisfying to have had such clever and efficient pupils, but I wish they had shown less cleverness and more wisdom. I feel that I am to blame if all they learnt from me were methods of research, and nothing else. Now their cleverness has precipitated the world into a desperate situation.1 This response, met so frequently that it seems to be 'sound commons-ense', claims that man must be enslaved by the experimental result, in relation to his needs which has made human choice and progress possible so far. It is not only the unsuspecting 'lay man3 who has fallen victim to this view ; scientists have exhibited an inability to overcome it. To quote the complaint of a practising scientist : For us Galileo's law is that of a falling stone for which we may substitute in our imagination a simple formula, but never a picture of a bomb dropped from an aeroplane, carrying destruction and death.2 This approach has been decried as being contrary to scientific method : No scientist thinks in formulae. A scientist in the moment of creation must have acted as the realist does, accepting emotionally the reality of the outside world.3 The two approaches to scientific knowledge and practice expressed above sharply emphasise the dual character that science has been made to assume, since its inception, as the modern science that we speak of, around the 16th century. The first of the two viewpoints is indicative of what is aptly termed the 'authority of science5. Within its scope lies the presentation of scientific knowledge as a series of prohibitive formalisms, as flexible as the religious dictates, whose authority they increasingly replaced. Along with the 'free will3 granted to man by a benign God, to permit man the pleasure of straying and God the pleasure of putting him on probation, this view does away with a human choice altogether, reducing man to the position of a pawn at the mercy of "natural laws934. Perhaps this approach can best be grasped as a case of man teaching himself to be a more efficient slave. Man is, of course, 'free3 to make choices that are no more than arbitary and hence futile exercises on the part of the individual. Stating that, "In abstract, nothing prevents man from sprouting wings and flying off like a bird33, D D Kosambi indicates the factors that operate on the actual process of exercising human choice : "Mankind was not free to fly until the flying machine was invented. Today any one can fly provided he has the means to enter an aeroplane.335 The second, and sharply opposed, viewpoint is recognisably that of the 'role of science3. Historically, the growth of scientific knowledge l can be seen to be integrally linked with human purpose, with the ^reality'