IRANIAN PHYSICIST EXPLAINS NUCLEAR FIXATION

by The Anglo American | September 19, 2007 at 08:41 am

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Former Iranian Minister, Reza Mansouri, a top physics scholar and science policy expert, told a forum co-sponsored by AAAS that people in his nation see science as a top priority—and that many see a nuclear program as the apex of scientific practice.

This article was publsihed on the American Association for the Advancement of Science website late in 2006. Mansouri, Iran's Science Minister between 2001 and 2006 brings insight and understanding to the Iranian people's keen interest in science and neuclear power.

.... he told the audience, there is broad confusion in Iran about the nature of science, its methods and its aims, and science remains largely subservient to theology. And, he added, Iranians at many levels of society have come to see the nuclear program as an emblem of national pride—and one they would be reluctant to relinquish.

"I'm really sorry to say that it is the case that our people now believe that achieving nuclear technology is the top of the science that they could achieve," Mansouri said.

Mansouri, who was educated in the west, who did not talk about the standoff with the west in any detail, but about science and its history in Persian culture.

For years after the 1979 revolution, Mansouri said, Iranian leaders and the public assumed that they would catch up to the West, scientifically and technologically, within 10 years. Only recently has the consensus shifted to the belief that their nation may be 50 years behind the West.

Mansouri explained how education has changed since the revolution.

Illiteracy before the revolution was around 50 percent, but it is 10 to 15 percent now. There were less than 200 books in Farsi published in Iran in the year before the revolution; now, almost 30,000 books of all sorts are being published annually. Before the revolution, there were fewer than 10 public libraries in the country; today, there are more than 2,000. Before the revolution, he said, there were 150,000 students in 14 or 15 universities; today, there are 2.8 million students in over 100 universities. And 62 percent of the students are women.

But Mansouri explains that there is no word for "science" in Farsi - the word used implies learned old men in seminaries.

That underscores a fundamental difference between the West and the Muslim world. "Science is surely subordinate to theology in any of our Muslim counties," he explained. "As a result, rationality in the Muslim world is not based on science, but on religion—you have to understand that. The culture and social values of the society are almost completely determined by religion....We could not accept the modern notion of science even though we have almost 200 years of influences from the West."

Mansouri argues that the lack of modern rationality was preventing peaceful neuclear science development in isolation {from defense for example... TAM}. The Iranian people now see science itself as neuclear science - all encompasing, and are impatient of scientists who only speak of neuclear development in terms of energy.

Thanks to Mr. Bush, president of the U.S.A., this is the reaction of our people," he said. "It is very difficult for us at the Physical Society to publish any statement anymore. People say, 'You are crazy, you do not understand what science is. This is science!"

But Mansouri finsished on an optimistic note in that he believed that education and science would bring Iran closer to the West.