Prof Kroto mentioned Carl Sagan in one of his talks today. His book and video titled "Demons haunted world"...
I am listening to his videos. He is blasting all pseudoscience in the most composed way. Telling us how to withhold our beliefs until we find a compelling evidence either way. Talking about virtually anything, if we have the evidence to believe something, believe it; if we dont, withhold the belief. Dont disbelieve. The implications are far larger in contemporary world with the deadly combination of ignorance and technology...
And the way he is talking about the disease that he has which could turn into leukemia if not treated. I am deeply moved.
Cheers to science and the power that it gives us, to understand.
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Cribbing
"Why dont we stop looking at certain things?", I casually said to one of my juniors who was pissed of at the questions ppl were asking Nobel laureates here.
Very easy for me to say but difficult to follow. But honestly thats one thing I want to believe in and compel myself to do (and I am rapidly improving). To stop looking at certain things that are stupid and dont really matter to me.
Actually I should see them, but I should understand why things are like that (which I already do) and try to change them. It will definitely save a lot of energy (probably at the cost of relations to certain people) and help me invest in things that really matter. This particular investment is very critical to do what I enjoy doing.
So the key is:
1. Stop Cribbing.
2. Find what it takes to nurture ideas- look at the right things.
Joy of Science
The most important thing to me being here in Allahabad at the Science Conclave, meeting Nobel laureates was the reinforcement in belief of the reason to do science and that there are people who share this pov with me (couldnt get over Darwin).
Prof. Friedman replied "the feeling that you are the first person in this civilization (I loved this word, this dimension to the issue) to find something out is just irresistible!" And of course the joy in understanding, pure understanding. I had no direct connection to the questions about quarks (apart from the fact that we all are made up of quarks, still mysterious particles that make up the protons), but just to understand something is utopic, and something so fundamental...sigh.
Some pretty questions that I could ask him:
1. Why does the attractive force between quarks increase as the distance between them increases? This is so opposite to the way forces between larger particle work. (Couldnt completely understand what he said but i realised that he took the question to the finer level by saying that the color of quarks increases as they go apart and color is analogous to charge and that is why the force increases. But then why does color increase as they go apart??)
2. Would the laws of physics have been different if the universe would have started in a different way than the "Big Bang"? ("Great question", he genuinely said.)
3. Why did he chose to do science? (This was the one where he replied about the joy of understanding.)
Value of Knowledge and Science
Knowledge is of no real value if all it can tell us what happened yesterday. It is necessary to tell what will happen tomorrow -not only necessary, but fun. All you have to do is just stick your neck out.
The Meaning of it All
Richard Feynman
The Meaning of it All
Richard Feynman
Imagination and Science
It is surprising that people do not believe there is imagination in science. It is a very interesting kind of imagination, unlike that of an artist. The great difficulty is in trying to imagine something that you have never seen, that is consistent with what has already been seen, and that is different from what has been thought of; furthermore, it must be definite and not a vague proposition. That is indeed difficult.
The Meaning of it All
Richard Feynman
The Meaning of it All
Richard Feynman
REFLECTIONS ON SCIENCE
REFLECTIONS:
I am excited again!
It is a book by Sir Peter Medawar: “The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice”. Classic essays in Science.
I am fascinated by the second essay, titled Hypotheses and Imagination, about the methodologies of Science and the origin of scientific discoveries.
I think this is what I was looking for. Something that might be pulling me to science.
“We may collect and classify facts, we may marvel at curiosities and idly wonder what accounts for them, but the activity that is characteristically scientific begins with an explanatory conjuncture which at once becomes the subject of an energetic critical analysis. It is an instance of a far more general stratagem that underlies every enlargement of general understanding and every new solution of the problem of finding our way about the world. The regulation and control of hypothesis is more usefully described as a cybernetic than as a logical process: the adjustment and reformulation of hypothesis through an examination of their deductive consequences is simply another setting for the ubiquitous phenomenon of negative feedback. The purely logical element in scientific discovery is comparatively small one, and the idea of a logic of scientific discovery is acceptable only in an older and wider use of ‘logic’ than is current among formal logicians today.
The weakness of the hypothetico-deductive system, in so far as it might profess to offer a complete account of the scientific process lies in its disclaiming any power to explain how hypothesis come into being. By “inspiration”, surely: by the ‘spontaneous conjectures of instinctive reasoning’, said Pierce: but what then? It has often been suggested that the act of creation is the same in art as it is in science: certainly ‘having an idea’—the formulation of a hypothesis—resembles other forms of inspirational activity in the circumstances that favour it, the suddenness with which it comes about, the wholeness of the conception it embodies, and the fact that the mental events which lead to it happen below the surface of the mind. But there, to my mind, the resemblance ends. No one questions the inspirational character of musical or poetic invention because of the delight and exaltation that go with it somehow communicate themselves to others. Something travels: we are carried away. But science is not an art form in this sense; scientific discovery is a private event, and the delight that accompanies it or the despair of finding it illusory, does not travel. One scientist may get great satisfaction from another’s work and admire it deeply; it may give him great intellectual pleasure; but it gives him no sense of participation in the discovery, it does not carry him away, and his appreciation of it does not depend on his being carried away. If it were otherwise the inspirational origin of scientific discovery would never have been in doubt.”
Is there anything common to this and the other things I am ‘passionate’ about? I think it is the feeling of creating something; unravelling a broad scheme which exists, if not executing it. The genesis of a hypothesis, however mystical, is an act of
unravelling a scheme, which might exist.
What about the testing a hypothesis? There is an aura of uncertainty around a hypothesis. And thus an urge to find out, if the scheme you have just conceived is true. Does it pass the tests of reasoning, logic and reality?
And this I think is what makes science so exciting and beautiful for me.
I am excited again!
It is a book by Sir Peter Medawar: “The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice”. Classic essays in Science.
I am fascinated by the second essay, titled Hypotheses and Imagination, about the methodologies of Science and the origin of scientific discoveries.
I think this is what I was looking for. Something that might be pulling me to science.
“We may collect and classify facts, we may marvel at curiosities and idly wonder what accounts for them, but the activity that is characteristically scientific begins with an explanatory conjuncture which at once becomes the subject of an energetic critical analysis. It is an instance of a far more general stratagem that underlies every enlargement of general understanding and every new solution of the problem of finding our way about the world. The regulation and control of hypothesis is more usefully described as a cybernetic than as a logical process: the adjustment and reformulation of hypothesis through an examination of their deductive consequences is simply another setting for the ubiquitous phenomenon of negative feedback. The purely logical element in scientific discovery is comparatively small one, and the idea of a logic of scientific discovery is acceptable only in an older and wider use of ‘logic’ than is current among formal logicians today.
The weakness of the hypothetico-deductive system, in so far as it might profess to offer a complete account of the scientific process lies in its disclaiming any power to explain how hypothesis come into being. By “inspiration”, surely: by the ‘spontaneous conjectures of instinctive reasoning’, said Pierce: but what then? It has often been suggested that the act of creation is the same in art as it is in science: certainly ‘having an idea’—the formulation of a hypothesis—resembles other forms of inspirational activity in the circumstances that favour it, the suddenness with which it comes about, the wholeness of the conception it embodies, and the fact that the mental events which lead to it happen below the surface of the mind. But there, to my mind, the resemblance ends. No one questions the inspirational character of musical or poetic invention because of the delight and exaltation that go with it somehow communicate themselves to others. Something travels: we are carried away. But science is not an art form in this sense; scientific discovery is a private event, and the delight that accompanies it or the despair of finding it illusory, does not travel. One scientist may get great satisfaction from another’s work and admire it deeply; it may give him great intellectual pleasure; but it gives him no sense of participation in the discovery, it does not carry him away, and his appreciation of it does not depend on his being carried away. If it were otherwise the inspirational origin of scientific discovery would never have been in doubt.”
Is there anything common to this and the other things I am ‘passionate’ about? I think it is the feeling of creating something; unravelling a broad scheme which exists, if not executing it. The genesis of a hypothesis, however mystical, is an act of
unravelling a scheme, which might exist.
What about the testing a hypothesis? There is an aura of uncertainty around a hypothesis. And thus an urge to find out, if the scheme you have just conceived is true. Does it pass the tests of reasoning, logic and reality?
And this I think is what makes science so exciting and beautiful for me.
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