My observations in this foreign land

So here I am in USofA, sitting in my apartment with my laptop in front of me, penning down my thoughts, six months after I arrived here. Affording all this, as a graduate student in India is almost impossible. By this I guess, anyone would know that there is absolutely no reason for me to complain about anything remotely related to my finances (presently). This is invariably true with most Indians who have come to US to pursue a career, which could not have been possible back home due to the prevailing circumstances.

As a recent non immigrant, I am obviously exposed to culture shocks (which in no way can be compared to what kids experience if they had come here during their childhood). Nevertheless it is a part of the sea changes that one observes after arriving here, having traveled half the globe. Non-chaotic environment, super pleasant demeanor of people around me (which I believe is done mostly through habit rather than through expression), girls(!), etc. are a few things that anyone would find uncomfortable living with, but eventually all of us learn to enjoy all the above(yeah...including the girls). Since there are so many Indians around me, I guess all the above mentioned changes which makes one feel out of home at every instant, are a temporary worry, until one finds his way into one of the Indian communities which are distributed everywhere, and which I eventually did. After this, no matter how long I stay here, I am pretty sure that I would never blend into this country and I can go on record saying that this is mostly true for most Indians who have arrived here after their adolescents. I believe, this is primarily because of our culture that binds us, and which, one has to relinquish in order to blend into this society. So without wasting much time on these trivial observations, I would like to delve into certain things that I had observed through my academic life and things which might go unnoticed by many immigrant Indians.

Before I can start off, I would like to confess that most of this thought process is a result of a recent reading of a book - "Identity and Violence" by Amartya Sen. As the names suggests this book is no way related to the field of economics which we relate Sen to. The primary question that this book addresses is the question of identity that an individual assigns to himself and the necessity to relate to multiple identities, which can even be contradictory but which can still coexist. Proceeding in these lines, Sen logically explains the reasons for the various problems, the present day man faces and had faced in the past. Out of many such discussion, the one which has most appealed to me, is on the development of science. Through this I would like to relate the role of culture which plays a crucial role on scientific development.

In my desperate attempt to define culture (the way I understand it), I am more than willing to modify my definition, if anyone can suggest me a better one. I would like to first define a 'way of life' as any set of 'practices'. Any particular action of any individual can be called a 'practice' (for ex. I being a vegetarian is a practice that I follow). From this, 'a way of life of a particular individual' is defined as the set of 'all practices', a particular individual follows (my way of life - non-vegetarian, lazy, short-tempered,...and the list goes on). A 'community' can be defined as a set of individuals. Now, a common set of practices followed by a set of individuals (or a community) is defined as a 'Culture'. Hence, from the above definitions, 'Culture' is a 'way of life of a community' (ex. The practice of not eating meat is a Culture, followed by all vegetarians and it is a way of life). Hence there are many cultures a particular individual can relate himself to, and this is a very crucial point to Sen's book. So is this is the culture I was talking about earlier? No! and I need a more precise definition for the culture I was talking about.

Note that as new 'practices' are added to a set of practices, the number of people in the new 'culture' that this new set defines, decreases. Hence the cultures that I had mentioned previously, pertains to only those cultures, which have large number of people with large number of practices. Although the last line is a little vague, we can easily relate to this definition - All Indians relate to the Indian culture which has many practices. All muslims relate to the Islamic culture. The anti-western culture which is proliferating in the present day, is a culture which many nations subjugated under the white man's rule in the past, relate to. With this definition of a culture, I would like to now explicate the role that culture played in the development of science in the past.