Thou shall not be saved without wisdom
"Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive", wrote William Wordsworth, referring to the stirring times of the French Revolution. Who would not say much the same words about our own world, which science and technology have transformed to match the fantasy world of our dreams?

Constantly outstripping itself, science has been accelerating at geometric ratio, the strides it makes growing faster and longer as time progresses. The progress science was able to bring about during the past fifty years has indeed been phenomenal. Perhaps a good proportion of this progress belongs to the last ten years. And there is no telling what science's achievements will be like during the next ten years.

Shakespeare may well say about man "how infinite in faculty ..in action how like an angel" but man is indeed circumscribed and limited, intellectually and physically. But science has been helping man to get over these in-built inadequacies, both intellectual and physical. For example, the maximum distance man' s legs can carry him during one day is about fifty kilometers. But modern means of transportation, such as motorcars, jet planes and the space shuttle, have helped him to conquer time, and journeys that used to take months or even years to perform are now only a matter of a few hours. In 1492 Vasco da Gama took more than a year to reach the Indian shore at Calicut but now even the farthest point on the earth is not more than a day's journey away. Limited though man' s brain is, he has given to himself powerful computers so that he can now think faster and more efficiently. In the past it was thought the principle of diminishing returns would operate to cut down the production of food. But modern means of technology have taught man how to double food production every twenty-five years. Added to this is the advancement in the field of medical science. The formidable killer diseases-at least most of them-have all but surrendered to man. New medical techniques such as organ transplant, keyhole surgery and computerized tomography have given to the doctor's hands a new dexterity undreamt of in years past. It is almost as if science has validated Shakespeare's description of man as "infinite in faculties".

But humankind is not much better, at least in a certain sense, despite the blessings science has lavished on it. The progress of science and technology has not made man better off either spiritually or in terms of social fulfillment. We now discover to our dismay that all these years science has been the Aladdin's Lamp in man's hands. And heavily indeed have we paid for the benefits we derived from science. Science put wonderful inventions in the hands of man but by doing so it destroyed the simplicity of his life and made him live in fear. Computers may store huge amounts of information and solve complicated problems but now computers are at the mercy of man-made virus. Satellites do a wonderful job in the sky for us, helping us in ways without number but they double-cross us by serving as spies for whoever placed them there.

Indeed, we are living in fear-fear of what evil people, aided by science, may do to us. Think of what happened in America on 11 Sept., 2001. On that day terrorists rammed two aircraft into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. The towers fell, their steel frames melting in the intense heat. When I consider such outrages, I call to mind what Dr Radhakrishnan, former President of India, once said:

The disproportionate emphasis on science and technology has been causing concern to thinking men all over the world. The great crimes against civilizations are committed not by the primitive and the uneducated but by the highly educated and the civilized. One recalls the statement that the most civilized state is no farther from barbarism than the most polished steel is from rust.

As Bertrand Russell has said, mere increase in human knowledge alone will not help us. It will lead only to more miseries unless we temper the newly gained knowledge with wisdom. All knowledge derives from God and true wisdom is the awareness of the purpose for which God has put such vast funds of knowledge in the hands of man. As Will Durant said: "We are being destroyed by our knowledge which has made us drunk with our power and we shall not be saved without wisdom. "