The point is that man is a much larger entity than some specialized people think. The modern world wants to turn man into small machines and computers to lose touch of the environment entirely and serve the general scheme of things controlled by some higher government policy makers. So they would much rather prefer scientists, so purely scientists, that they don’t know anything of the world outside. They will gain of course.
To some extent that individual will also gain and to some extent the people whom he is ultimately going to serve, they would gain. But he will lose a much higher value that is of an individual. To enjoy life as an individual, to understand the phenomena of life, to serve nobler purposes, he’ll be deprived of that. There are few people who can at the same time maintain these two parts together. Like Dr. Abdus Salaam, he’s one of those genius people who maintains both these departments intact and pays his dues to both his personality as a religion, as a social person and as a scientist. And scientifically he has not lost. Why? Because despite the fact that you lose something of the time you might have spent on science, you gain something of the vision which you could not have gained if you had devoted yourself entirely to that narrow subject.
So science in itself is the product of a larger vision in which other aspects of life also help find out results, come out with new inventions and things. So a broader base is necessary for development in a single line. So you should concentrate generally on science but without sacrificing your part as a human being. And as a human being, your first and prime responsibility would lie in the direction of religion because it does not only pertain to the life on earth, it’s a department which is much more important to an individual.
Of course there is an if involved. If there is a God, then there is religion. And if there is a religion, then you can’t gainsay the idea I am suggesting, that in that case religion becomes much more important than anything else because it covers your interests in this world as well as the world to come. And much larger span of life is lying ahead, beyond death. So if that is correct, obviously the natural crawlery would be this, that you can’t ignore this. So keep, try to make, strike a compromise between religion, your duties towards religion and your duties towards your special field.
But just do not get yourself lost in one narrow field, ultimately to be a tool in the hands of some people you are serving and you don’t know what’s happening to you.
