Making India a scientific and an intellectual powerhouse: Why we should also help everyone else

Description

Humans have let their creative juices flow since early times; the invention of fire, proto-writing, pottery,
arts and crafts, agriculture and metal-making would bear ample testimony to this. Among early
contributions to science and technology, the contributions made by early Mesopotamians are highly
impressive. They made stellar contributions to metal-working, glass and lamp making, architecture, the
production of textiles and weaving, flood control, water storage and irrigation. They also invented the
earliest form of true writing, namely Cuneiform in the middle of the fourth millennium before Christ.
Writing was usually mastered by scribes who were small in number in relation to the total population,
and was composed on clay tablets. The Epic of Gilgamesh is among the world’s earliest literature, and is
attributed to ancient Mesopotamia. Libraries are also believed to have existed in Ancient Mesopotamia.
Mesopotamians made stellar contributions to mathematics, map making, medicine and astronomy too,
though true intellectualism in the modern sense of the term probably did not exist then.............

About the Author

Sujay Rao Mandavilli is an IT professional (Governance Risk and Compliance) (Still practising as of 2024; Served major clients such as Tata Group, Mahindra Group, NECAM, Verizon and BAT, and also previously worked in IBM) and a born-again Anthropologist and researcher with major contributions to various fields of Anthropology and Social Sciences. He completed his Masters in Anthropology from the prestigious Indira Gandhi National Open University in New Delhi, India in 2020 with a first class. He has made major contributions to Anthropological Economics, the Sociology of Science, theories of socio-cultural change, Identity theory, Historiography, language dynamics, scientific method, Indo-European studies, the Aryan Problem, and the identity of the Harappans. His hypothesis is that most fields of Social sciences which are based on a study on social and cultural variables, are based on old Eurocentric paradigms, and that better theories can only come from intellectual multipolarity, and Ethnographic data collected from different parts of the world. He believes this will lead to better scientific research, and greatly boost scientific output in different parts of the world that have hitherto lagged behind the West in scientific research. He has also attempted to synthesize Anthropological theory with other fields of Social Sciences such as Economics and Pedagogy, generating several new paradigms as a result. He strongly believes that the ‘Globalization of Science’, with a particular emphasis on the social sciences, must become one of the major movements of the Twenty-first century. He has called for an "Indian Enlightenment" as well as similar renaissances in the developing world through a horizontal collaboration among developing nations. He is the Founder-Director of the Institute for the Study of the Globalization of Science (ISGOS) (Registered in India as the Globalization of Science Trust) which is has already started empaneling a group of researchers and scientists to plan its next course of action. In 2023, he launched the "Scholars and intellectuals for mankind" (SCHIMA) forum, which is reaching out to scholars and intellectuals from throughout the world to draft a common agenda. In 2024, he also created the blog "Abhilasha: This is not Utopia" to discuss burning and pressing issues of the day, particularly in relation to science, knowledge and society.

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