National Trust lecture: ‘Sinhala attitude to knowledge’
View(s):Dr. G. Usvatte-aratchi will deliver the National Trust lecture for June at the HNB Auditorium, 22nd Floor, HNB Towers, 479 T.B. Jayah Mawatha, Colombo 10 at 6.30 p.m. on Thursday, June 29. He will speak on ‘Sinhala attitude to knowledge’.
Dr Usvatte-aratchi will examine, mainly with literary evidence, a few main features of Sinhala writings and learning to demonstrate that it did not and does not partake in that process that constitutes the expansion of knowledge resulting in the science and technology and advances in philosophy that made feasible modern societies. A major source of information are two literary works of the 15th century.
He will also refer briefly to some work in early 20th century which gave promise of a good beginning but died of purposeful neglect. He will refer to the experience in Japan which faced these problems in the latter half of the 19th century and of the Hebrew language in the 20th century.
He also finds it instructive to think of learning in Europe in the latter part of the middle ages as compared to that in Lanka in the 15th century. This is a new line of inquiry.
Dr. G. Usvatte-aratchi went to school in the 1940s and to university in the 1950s and the early sixties. He studied economics at both Peradeniya and Cambridge.
He has worked as an economist in the Central Bank of Ceylon, the Ministry of Planning and Employment, Colombo and in the United Nations Secretariat in New York and Bangkok.
He came to live in Colombo in 1996 and was Vice-chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Marga Institute. There he joined others to found People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections (PAFFREL), of which he was Chairman briefly. Later when A.S. Jayawardena was Governor he accepted an invitation to join the Central Bank as a Consultant.
About the same time he was invited by the Secretary General of the United Nations to become a member of the Committee for Development Policy, the highest body advising the Secretary on economic and social policy.