SECTION A
Essay
125 marks
History is a series of victories won by the scientific man over the romantic man.
WRITE IN
90 min
1,000–1,200 words
Reading the topic
The topic claims that human history is the story of reason, evidence and experiment steadily defeating myth, emotion and tradition. The examiner expects the essay to test this claim: celebrate scientific progress, but question whether the romantic impulse of imagination, values and wonder has truly been defeated, or should be.
ThesisScience has driven humanity's material victories, but history is better read as a partnership with the romantic spirit, which supplies the imagination and moral limits that science alone cannot.
Dimensions to cover
- 1Health and food: vaccines and high-yield agriculture show science defeating disease and famine that fatalism once accepted
- 2Politics: the Enlightenment's rational inquiry undermined divine right and helped produce democracy and rights
- 3Romantic counter-current: poets and thinkers who resisted industrialism warned early of alienation and environmental damage
- 4Ethics: nuclear weapons and surveillance technologies show that scientific victories without moral restraint can be catastrophic
- 5India: the Constitution makes developing scientific temper a fundamental duty, yet superstition and misinformation persist
- 6Science itself: great scientists often describe discovery as driven by wonder and imagination, blurring the line between the two 'men'
Counter-view
- The opposing reading is that the romantic man was never defeated, since nationalism, religion and identity still drive history more than reason. The essay should use this to show that progress has never been a simple victory and that both forces continually shape events
Open and close
- Open: Open with Galileo before the Inquisition in 1633, forced to recant, and then cut to the Vatican formally acknowledging its error in the 1990s, a slow victory of the telescope over the pulpit
- Close: Conclude that history's best chapters were written when the scientific mind was guided by a romantic conscience, and that the future depends on keeping both
Where marks usually go
- Writing a one-sided paean to science and technology that ignores the word 'romantic' and its values
- Equating 'romantic' with love and relationships instead of imagination, emotion and tradition
- Producing a GS answer on India's space and science achievements without engaging the philosophical claim
Examples that fit
- HistoryGalileo was tried by the Roman Inquisition in 1633 for supporting heliocentrism, yet his science ultimately prevailed over doctrine.The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History, ed. Maurice Finocchiaro (1989)
- HistoryThe WHO certified the global eradication of smallpox in 1980, a triumph of vaccination and organised science over a disease once accepted as fate.World Health Organization, smallpox eradication programme
- LiteratureMary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), written during the Romantic era, imagines a scientist whose creation escapes his control, a lasting warning about unchecked science.Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (1818)
- CaseThe 42nd Amendment in 1976 added Article 51A(h), making it a fundamental duty of citizens to develop scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry.Constitution of India, Article 51A(h)
- ThinkerIn Hind Swaraj, M.K. Gandhi criticised modern machinery and industrial civilisation, a romantic critique that remains relevant to debates on sustainability.Hind Swaraj, M.K. Gandhi (1909)