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Yes, that's the tradition :) Former Isro chairman G Madhavan Nair on Monday said, “This has been a tradition. I had also gone to Tirupati before the Chandrayaa
by swatkat 13y ago
Yes, that's the tradition :)
Former Isro chairman G Madhavan Nair on Monday said, “This has been a tradition. I had also gone to Tirupati before the Chandrayaan mission.”
But more than religious beliefs, he said these temple visits helped des-stress the mind and offer clarity.
But beyond this, do superstitions and other beliefs have a hold on the scientists?
“Not really,” said Mylswamy Annadurai, the project director of moon missions Chandrayaan 1 and Chandrayaan 2. “I read a page of Bhagawad Gita daily and will do so on Tuesday.”
He added, “But yes I have just got a jar of peanuts and a good luck card from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory-Nasa. This is a very nice gesture. I will distribute these peanuts in my office on Tuesday morning.”
Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) consider circulation of peanuts auspicious.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news-feed/science/ahead-of-mars-mission-temple-run-goes-hand-in-hand-with-rocket-science/article1-1147077.aspx http://www.hindustantimes.com/news-feed/science/ahead-of-mar...
- maaku 13y agoRegarding the peanuts (in case this was lost on others): it's a JPL tradition that mission control open and share a jar of nuts right before the launch / orbital insertion / landing, for good luck. The point, obviously, is that space programs everywhere have good luck superstitions, many of them making less sense than a religious ritual.
- sateesh 13y ago>> is that space programs everywhere have good luck superstitions, many of them making less sense than a religious ritual. Why so ? How does a religious ritual makes more sense than good luck superstitions ?
- amalag 13y agoReligious rituals are meant to connect with the divine. The idea being they are not inventions of ordinary people. Some created superstition just gives some order in someone's life and is just a shadow of a proper ritual.
- sateesh 13y agoYou seems to be reasoning that rituals are _not_ inventions of ordinary people where as superstitions are, hence one should give more credence/weight to rituals. My point is rituals are creations of ordinary people, just that they are ceremonious doesn't make them any higher truth.
- wrongc0ntinent 13y agoIt does, to those practicing them.
- lmm 13y agoReligious rituals tend to have a more developed sense of internal consistency, and a framework or at least a rationale that makes several different rituals fit together. Simple good-luck superstitions tend to be more ad-hoc. (All IME)
- sateesh 13y agoAs I see it rituals are set of elaborate steps involving a lot of ceremony, where as most of superstitions are usually in form of pithy aphorisms. A lot of ceremony doesn't necessarily mean consistency, though it might give a semblance of being so.
- svasan 13y agoForgive my naivete, but what is the point you are trying to make here? Or is this an attempt at creating some kind of fallacy?
- sateesh 13y agoMy point is there is no rational bias to distinguish between ritual and superstition and to tell that one form makes better sense than the other. In my opinion both doesn't make any good sense.
- dragonwriter 13y agoRitual is a description of a kind of routinized action; superstition is a description of belief. You might engage in ritual because of superstition, but they are very much not the same thing, and you can have ritual without superstition and superstition without ritual.
- sateesh 13y agoAgreed, ritual and superstition are not the same. But both are similar in nature that one cannot rationally question the set of steps that are followed (as in ritual) or the belief (superstition). Most of the times they are supposed to be accepted as given/prescribed. Any challenge to them and deviation from them is not well tolerated. Also the probable rationale attached to them might have been have been relevant during a distant past and might be no longer relevant in present day.