Why Thinking Alone Is Not Enough: Notes and Reflections on Scientific Temper

This note is a personal summary and reflection written while listening to Prof. Iwan Pranoto’s presentation on the MALAKA YouTube channel.

Thinking vs. Reasoning

“All reasoning is thinking, but not all thinking is reasoning.”

Why Is It Called Scientific Temper?

Jawaharlal Nehru, in his book The Discovery of India, discussed the idea of scientific temper. Although it is not always defined explicitly as a technical term, Prof. Iwan explains that this idea can be understood as a way of life.

Nehru saw India’s future as highly dependent on the ability of its citizens to move beyond superstition. In this context, scientific temper is not merely the ability to think scientifically in an academic setting. It is an attitude toward life that is open to evidence, curiosity, and the willingness to revise one’s view when faced with stronger information.

Why use the word temper, instead of simply saying scientific thinking? Because the emphasis is not only on formal intellectual activity, but also on character, inner habit, and a person’s disposition when facing claims about the world.

In other words, scientific temper does not belong only to scientists. It can become anyone’s way of life.

Scientific temper is not only about reasoning. It is about a way of thinking and a way of living. It can be cultivated by everyone, not only by scientists.

Frugal Education: Luxurious in Thought, Economical in Tools

In Prof. Iwan’s presentation, education is not measured by how advanced the technology being used is, but by how sharply reasoning is trained. He emphasizes that reasoning is at the core of learning: it requires logical structure, a clear purpose, and the ability to test the validity of information.

Basic mathematics can become a “gym” for the mind: inexpensive, but effective.

Through scientific temper, as emphasized in Jawaharlal Nehru’s thought, students are encouraged to become accustomed to rational thinking, openness to evidence, and resistance to misinformation.

Reasoning makes education feel “luxurious” because it produces people who are independent, critical, and creative. Economical education does not mean poor-quality education. On the contrary, with simple and inexpensive tools, sometimes almost without cost, education can still give birth to a way of thinking that is rich, deep, and resilient in facing the challenges of the age.

In this sense, education on the margins can still have world-class quality through the principle of frugal education.

The Purpose of Education and the Model of the Whole Person

(Note: This section elaborates on the similarities between the ideas of Tan Malaka, Ki Hadjar Dewantara, and a modern concept from Stephen Covey, especially regarding the idea of leaving the world a better legacy.)

Prof. Iwan explains the idea that the purpose of education, as associated with Tan Malaka, is to sharpen the intellect, refine the feelings, and strengthen determination.

This idea has similarities with Ki Hadjar Dewantara’s concept of Tri Suci: cipta, rasa, and karsa. Cipta is related to thought, rasa to inner sensitivity, and karsa to will or determination.

In a more modern framework, this idea can also be compared with Stephen Covey’s concept of the whole person and the idea of leaving a legacy: leaving behind a better world for future generations.

Thus, education is not only about knowledge. Education also shapes character, sensitivity, determination, and a person’s ability to contribute positively to society.

Personal Reflection

This is one of the presentations that feels closest to my own assumptions about education.

Previously, I did not know that there was a term called scientific temper, an idea that emphasizes the importance of shaping a person’s character and disposition when facing claims about the world. So what is being formed is not only the formal ability to think scientifically, but also the mental attitude one brings when encountering information, evidence, uncertainty, and claims that may or may not be true.

This presentation also made me more aware of the difference between thinking and reasoning.

Before watching this video, I had an assumption that emerged from my intuition as an experienced solitary thinker 😌. In my view, basic education or secondary-level education should ideally not only transfer information to be remembered. Education also needs to make students accustomed to using the information they have remembered to solve problems that do not always appear in the form of exam questions.

Exams are indeed necessary in a formal context to assess students’ competence according to certain standards. However, exams are not enough to make students capable of solving everyday problems using the information they have learned in school or formal institutions.

Because of that, there needs to be training that is consciously encouraged by educational institutions so that students become accustomed to using information for thinking.

Before watching this video, I understood thinking as the activity of associating information stored in memory in order to solve a problem. In this sense, thinking is not only remembering, but also connecting, comparing, testing, and using information in a new context.

Humility can also be trained by itself if students become accustomed to thinking according to their competence. When someone truly uses knowledge to face a problem, they will encounter uncertainty. They will encounter problems that do not have definite answers, or problems that cannot be solved merely by remembering information learned at school.

At that point, students learn that knowing something is not the same as understanding everything. There is a distance between information and wisdom.

One question I often want to ask is this: why does biology education at school not begin with basic mathematical approaches, such as logic and set theory, to explain fundamental biological concepts? For example, the classification of living things, relationships between species, shared characteristics, structural differences, or the way a biological concept is grouped.

Why, at least from my experience, does the study of biology in basic education often seem more focused on labeling and description?

Of course, labeling is not wrong. Biology does need names. Without terms, it is difficult to point to objects with precision. But if biology is taught only as a list of names, students may assume that learning biology means memorizing as many terms as possible.

Yet biology is not merely a catalog of living things. Biology is the science of patterns, relationships, functions, structures, change, and the history of life.

The classification of living things, for instance, can actually be explained as a problem of sets. Some organisms belong to a certain group because they share certain characteristics. Some groups are subsets of larger groups. Some traits are shared, some traits distinguish one group from another, and some categorical boundaries may change when new evidence appears.

With this approach, students do not only memorize that humans belong to Mammalia, Vertebrata, Chordata, and Animalia. Students can also understand that classification is a way of reasoning about similarities, differences, and relationships among organisms.

This matters because many biological concepts are actually very close to mathematical structures of thought. Evolution relates to changes in the frequency of traits in a population. Ecology relates to networks of relationships. Genetics relates to patterns of inheritance. Taxonomy relates to grouping. Even the concept of “species” itself teaches that scientific categories are not always as simple as neat boxes in a textbook.

If students are invited from the beginning to see biology as a system of relationships, not merely a collection of labels, perhaps they will find it easier to understand why science is dynamic. They will see that science is not merely a set of ready-made answers, but a more disciplined way of organizing confusion.

This is where I see the connection between biology education and scientific temper. Students are not only taught “what is the name of this thing?”, but also “why do we classify it this way?”, “what evidence supports this classification?”, and “could this category change if new evidence appears?”

Questions like these train curiosity, the habit of demanding evidence, and humility before uncertainty.

Therefore, for me, thinking alone is indeed not enough if thinking is understood only as a free and reactive mental activity. But reasoning is also not enough if it is trained only to answer formal exam questions. Education needs to connect both: giving space for curiosity while also training structure; giving information while also training the use of information; giving answers while also preserving the ability to ask questions.

Perhaps good education is not education that makes students feel that they know many things, but education that makes students able to ask better questions.

And in that context, scientific temper feels important because it is not only about becoming a scientist. It is about becoming a person who does not easily submit to claims without evidence, is not ashamed to revise their opinion, and does not stop thinking merely because they have found the first answer.