Page 20 - Academic and Research Book_WEB

the innate behaviour component is of less significance for the sustenance of the human social systems.
Instead, adaptive learning has been the essential cornerstone for the human society’s evolution and
success. Such adaptive learning, however, has also facilitated the acquisition of selfish behaviours and
actions that run counter to the larger society’s well-being. In order to mitigate the entropy-enhancing
consequences of such selfish behaviours and actions, human societies formulated various rules and
regulations (religious and legal). In addition, each society also codifies certain moral principles
(do’s and don’ts) to further reduce the inherent entropy in a multi-component system. Such ethical
behaviour, based on moral principles, is often self-formulated by a given social group.

What is Research?

The ability to wonder, especially the ability to wonder at our ability to wonder, is a unique feature of
mankind. Curiosity and the self-driven efforts to satisfy the curiosity lie at the root of research, which
involves systematic and creative investigations in any domain of knowledge. These can be related to
philosophy or matter, or anything in this Universe that can be perceived by our senses. Research has
owner/s who actually find something new, and recipients, who learn about the new discovery when
the owner communicates the new information/knowledge to the larger group.
The unique ability of humans to wonder is an evolutionary outcome enabled by the greater complexity
of brain in higher organisms like vertebrates. The greater complexity of brain’s functional organization
facilitates and co-ordinates the increasing biological complexity in different groups of vertebrates.
Birds and mammals (including the human species) have more complex nervous systems than other
vertebrates such as fishes, amphibians, and reptiles, and also display more complex behavioural
patterns. The evolution of complex spoken and written languages, unique to human species, occurred
in parallel with the enlarging size of brain as the primitive human species evolved into the extant
Homo sapiens species. The brain size and acquisition of language and other skills in the human species
are interdependent. Human curiosity has evolved far beyond any other animal species because spoken
and written languages continuously expand the knowledge base, often on an exponential scale. The
relentless exploratory behaviour of a toddler, who wants to know about everything that it encounters
in the surroundings to expand his/her knowledge base, exemplifies the human curiosity to know the
unknown. The more we learn about something, we instinctively become more curious about what still
remains unknown. Thus the philosophy underlying the human learning is: the more we know, we get
to know what we still do not know. Research is nothing but curiosity driven pursuit of the unknown.
Centuries ago, Aristotle stated “The more you know the more you know you don’t know”. Likewise
Albert Einstein said, “The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.”

The word research indicates that we are re-searching a phenomenon that in reality already exists
and operates in nature or in the universe but whose underlying principles, mechanisms, or other
qualities have so far remained elusive to us. Research is an attempt to transform these unknowns into
‘known’, and to demystify the ‘mystery’ associated with a phenomenon. Research follows systematic
and rational methodologies, which involve defining the question (based on what is presently known),
hypothesizing, making unbiased observations, analysing the observations, and finally interpreting the
results to support or reject the hypothesis. A measure of success of research effort is the quality of new
questions that research outcome generates.

Research as a Social Responsibility

Engaging in research and dissemination of its output is a social responsibility. While the research
output is self-satisfying for the researchers as owners of the new knowledge/understanding, and

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