Dear Compatriots,
Over the past years, many people have had wrong notions of who a scientist really is. The scientist himself has forgotten who he is supposed to be in real life, especially his impacts on society.
Using easily accessible and basic reference point, wikipedia.com, for my referencing, a scientist is a person who engages in systematic activities to acquire knowledge. Scientists undertake researches with the aim of providing a more comprehensive understanding of nature, including the physical, mathematical and social realms.
In the view of the general public, engineers and scientists are often confused. While scientists explore nature in order to discover general principles, engineers apply established principles drawn from science in order to create new inventions and improve upon the old ones. However, there are many instances where significant accomplishments are made in both fields by the same individual.
When a scientist also has engineering education, the same individual would explore principles in nature to solve problems and design new technologies philosophy can be seen as a distinct activity which is almost seen as a more comprehensive way of understanding intangible aspects of reality and experiences that cannot be physically measured.
The world is basically made up of two types of scientists. The first is what I called ‘the history readers’ and the second ‘the history makers’. The ‘history readers’ are the kind of scientists who read and recap on laws, ideas and inventions created by the ancient scientists. They boast about ‘hollow’ qualifications (first degree, masters and doctorates) that do not significantly solve societal problems.
The ‘history makers’ are those scientists who postulate laws, and invent machines and other prototypes. They are the people who activate their ‘other mind’ and reach the ‘God sphere’ in their lives. They make the world very habitable but are mostly misjudged!
Thomas Alva Edison is a great name among scientists who had only three months of formal education but had over 100 patents. Some of his famous works are the electric bulb and phonograph. A true scientist is a person who can invent machines and formulate scientific laws from his inner realm of consciousness by studying nature and his environment. He does not need lists of degrees as evidence of his education.
Henry Ford is a man who cannot be ignored when people who through their thinking and intuition have changed the course of the world are mentioned. He was accused of many things and many people tagged him with illiteracy because of his low formal educational background. He proved to the world that formal education is just a medium of learning recorded scientific histories (theories and ideas of other people).
Galileo Galilee is one of the ancient scientists whose effort cannot be underestimated. He is the man who officially invented the spyglass which later metamorphosed into telescope. He contributed a lot to astronomy. He died in 1642 with a lot of accusations. He was seen as a heretic and enemy during his lifetime all because he had propounded a theory that the world did not understand at his time. That is his theories about the planetary bodies and the centre of the universe.
Apostle Dr Kwadwo Safo, the founder and leader of Kristo Asafo Mission of Ghana (KAMOG) is Africa’s son who is categorised among the scientists who ‘make history’. He deciphers the world of science and bring things that are scientific breakthroughs into reality. He has organic weedicide, block moulding machine, ‘Kantanka hand clapping television’, voice recognition systems, biometric recognition system for cars, etc to his credit.
In the field of agriculture, he has produced herbal infusion which makes rabbits extremely productive. Rabbits produce more than 14 bunnies when introduced to his herbal extracts. He also has wooden incubators that hatches 600 chicks in 14 days and was the first African to officially use accumulators to power car without internal combustion engine.
History, they say repeat, but in a different geographic location of the world. He has been accused of many things. A lot of the ‘history readers’ have been saying he has not had formal education and that he is just re-engineering; his approaches are unscientific and make him a quack. These ‘history readers’ have forgotten that theories are just there for referencing. Napoleon Hill once said ,”college degrees are not valued more highly. They represent nothing but miscellaneous knowledge.’
Whether Kantanka is a scientist or not, he does the works of a scientist. Let us change our attitude towards scientists when they are living among us. Ghana needs Apostle Dr Kwakdwo Safo and his likes just as we need air if we really want to develop socio-economically.
Thank you.
Regards,
Boadu
Note: Article was originally written by Boadu and was published under the title, “Who is a scientist”, in The Mirror Newspaper on Saturday, March 9, 2013.