THERE is an old Bengali saying that knowledge is a very special commodity: the more you give, the more you have. Science, broadly speaking, is the cultivation of that commodity. 杏吧原创s learn from each other, and knowledge grows by give and take. Although there clearly are scientists who are thinly disguised businessmen, the general culture of science is one of sharing, rather than buying and selling. I would like to argue that aside from the value of the specific fruits of that discipline鈥攖he accomplishments of science鈥攖he organising principles underlying it have something very substantial to offer in the battle against the terrible maladies of the contemporary world, including pervasive poverty and deprivation, and the conflicts that result from global confrontations.
Contrast the sharing that underpins science with the transactional nature of market relations. The market mechanism is not only an important social institution, it is also an organisational ideology. Its success鈥攑erceived as well as real鈥攃an help stifle independent thinking about interactive relations of other kinds, including that of give and take. The gaps it leaves are worth filling since sharing is not only crucial to science, it is also central to development.
Let me illustrate. Development does not consist only of accumulation of capital or growth of gross national product. It is, more foundationally, a process of expansion of human freedom. This can, of course, be greatly helped by well-functioning markets, but it also requires other forms of association. Freedoms are of different kinds. On one side, there is freedom from hunger, unnecessary disease and premature death. On the other side are political and civil rights, opportunities of social participation and of cultural creativity. It is not hard to see why political and social participation and cultural creativity, which are conjoint activities, may require sharing, rather than just buying and selling. But sharing can be important also for avoiding illness, since contagions spread from person to person (without a price tag), and prevention too has to be a joint endeavour. Even famines can be prevented by a better sharing of food, through using public policy to expand the entitlements of potential victims.
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What about the market mechanism itself, the importance of which for successful development cannot be doubted? Trade and exchange of commodities at market prices differ, naturally, from the give and take on which science tends to rely. However, to make good use of the market mechanism, people must be able to enter the market, and to participate in and benefit from market transactions. Entry is hard to achieve when they have no assets other than their own labour power, no access to credit, and no capital that can serve as collateral for borrowing. Public intervention for land reform, the promotion of micro-credit facilities and other ways of redistributing resources can make it easier to enter the market, and empirical studies have shown how such measures can help make the market economy work. Sharing of participation is a precondition of benefiting from the market process.
Other preconditions include education and healthcare. Good basic education and general healthcare not only directly enhance the substantive freedoms of people (the freedom to read, write, count, communicate, and to lead healthy and long lives), they also make it easier for people to use the market mechanism and to share in its opportunities. It can be hard to get a good job if one is illiterate and innumerate. Bad health, too, can be a barrier to market participation. The sharing of the benefits of the market mechanism demands more than just 鈥渇reeing the markets鈥�, on which some market enthusiasts concentrate.
Another barrier to development is the global system of intellectual property rights. The existing patent laws鈥攇lobal as well as local鈥攐ften have a profoundly negative effect on the lives and freedoms of many deprived people in the world. They tend, for example, to inhibit the use of life-saving medicine鈥攙ital for diseases like AIDS鈥攂y making inexpensively produced drugs remarkably expensive through high royalties. These royalties are meant to be justified by intellectual property rights.
There are two quite different ways of defending such rights, which must be clearly distinguished. The first is the entitlement argument: knowledge developed by a person or an institution belongs to that person or institution, and the 鈥渙wners鈥� must be free to charge what they can get for its use. The second is the incentive argument: patent rights give the developers of knowledge vitally needed incentives to do the developing, and these rights can be justified by their good results, which benefit the public at large.
The entitlement argument goes right against the spirit of scientific enterprise, and against the idea that knowledge is for all, rather than for the profit of some 鈥渙wner鈥� of that knowledge. I am glad that differential equations鈥攐r for that matter multiplication tables鈥攚ere not patented, and I will refrain from asking myself whether it is my duty as an Indian citizen to contemplate the marvellous benefits that would have followed had the decimal system been patented before it spread across the world.
The incentive argument, in contrast, must be taken extremely seriously. But the present patent laws can hardly be seen as socially effective. Poor AIDS patients in the Third World are prevented from using known drugs (even though that preclusion gives little money to the drugs companies, since unpurchased drugs do not yield royalties). Also, the lack of adequate market incentives to develop non-repeating medicine for prevention, such as vaccines against AIDS, must be seen as a failure of the existing system. There is an urgent need for reforming the patent laws, particularly for medicine, focusing on ways and means of developing and sharing the medicines that are needed most.
In all of this, it is important to see science as a global tradition. Globalisation is often seen as a form of global Westernisation, and there is clearly an 鈥渁nti-Western鈥� element in parts of the anti-globalisation movement. In the so-called cultural clashes throughout the world, the celebration of non-Western identities of various types, often based on faith and religion, can take a very confrontational form. The sense of confrontation is also fed by Western chauvinism and a proprietary approach to 鈥淲estern science鈥�, to be sharply distinguished from 鈥渙ther鈥� cultures.
There needs to be greater recognition that what is called Western science drew on a world heritage, on the basis of sharing ideas that make science what it is. Chinese science and technology, Indian and Arab mathematics, and other such 鈥渘on-Western鈥� traditions added to Europe鈥檚 own stock of accomplishments. Even the terminology bears testimony to global sharing. For example, when modern mathematicians in Europe or America invoke an algorithm to solve a computational problem, they may not be aware that they are helping to commemorate the ninth-century Arab mathematician Al-Khwarizmi, from whose name the term algorithm is derived (and whose book Al Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah led to the term 鈥渁lgebra鈥�). The West must get full credit for its remarkable achievements over the past few centuries, but the idea of an immaculate Western conception is an imaginative fantasy.
On the other side, the fact that anti-Western activists focus so exclusively on religion and non-scientific culture makes the confrontations needlessly sharp. There is just as much Arab and Muslim heritage in the mathematics of Al-Khwarizmi and many other Arab mathematicians as in the theological recollections that are used for confrontational purposes. Turning to a more local issue, as Britain goes down the slippery slope of encouraging faith-based schools (Islamic and Sikh schools are already established and Hindu ones might come soon), the sad effect of narrowing the intellectual horizon of young children (often new Britons of subcontinental origin) is compounded by the confusion of civilisation with religion. In addition, the chosen method of allegedly giving each community its own culture places religious and theological authorities in substantial control, while silencing and muffling the voices of others from these many-sided civilisations.
The sharing culture of science must be recognised as an important organisational tradition, which has been influential in world history and continues to be significant today. As an organisational approach, there is much to learn from it in addressing problems of poverty, deprivation and conflicts in the contemporary world. Principles, oddly enough, can be quite important.