VISMAYA: History & Philosophy of Physics

Category: academia

  • How does it connect to a measurement?

    Dear students of science, especially physics. As you study a scientific concept, ask:

    How does it connect to a measurement?

    This is the first step in expanding your thinking into the realm of experiments, other branches of science, engineering, economics & society.

    I am not saying that you should become an expert in engineering or economics, but you should have a basic understanding of the outward connection of the concept. You will be surprised to know how ‘context’ can bring a new perspective to your studies.

    Even if you want to become a theoretical physicist/scientist, this way of thinking will help you to expand your intuition. Your theories/models may find relevance beyond your immediate peers. Importantly, this exposure will bring feedback – vital when you are exploring the unknowns.

    Many scientists, including some great theoretical physicists, have taken this approach. For example, Feynman, Einstein, Bethe, and Penrose come to my mind. The 2024 Nobel winners in Physics, especially John Hopfield, is an excellent contemporary example of this way of thinking.

    An unanticipated consequence of this way of thinking is that you may end up contributing significantly to a field of research that you were not associated with initially. Guess what: most of the creativity is about the connection of ideas. A useful connection has a deep impact on the outward world: other branches of science, engineering, economics & society.

  • Gerhard Herzberg – scientific life


    References:

    Pavan Kumar, G. V. “Gerhard Herzberg (1904–1999): A Pioneer in Molecular Spectroscopy.” Resonance 29 (2024): 1339. https://www.ias.ac.in/describe/article/reso/029/10/1339-1345.

    Stoicheff, Boris. Gerhard Herzberg: An Illustrious Life in Science. Ottawa : Montréal ; Ithaca N.Y.: Canadian Forest Service,Canada, 2002.

    Stoicheff, Boris P. “Gerhard Herzberg PC CC. 25 December 1904 – 3 March 1999.” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 49 (December 2003): 179–95. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbm.2003.0011.

  • Lilavati’s daughters – book link

    Here is a copy of the full book: LILAVATI’S DAUGHTERS coedited by Rohini Godbole & Ram Ramaswamy https://archive.org/details/A0560IASLeelavathisDaughterFullBook/mode/1up… Internet Archives zindabad!

  • meeting Niek after ~17 yrs

    Met Niek van Hulst after almost 17 years…at TIFR H

    I was a postdoc in Niek’s lab at ICFO…Niek is a Dutch who has made Barcelona his home..

    Reminising all the good stuff i learnt on near-field photonics of single molecules…and the deadly techniques of Fourier imaging..

  • Open access : a few thoughts and books

    I think that knowledge, especially academic knowledge, should be openly accessible to fellow researchers and the public. Given that most of the academic research in India is public-funded, it is imperative that our work is made available for anyone interested in reading and utilizing the knowledge. This makes a strong case for making our work open to access. Unfortunately, the open-access publication venture has been hijacked by some commercial publishers, who have misused the enthusiasm of academic researchers by converting it into a money-making opportunity via so-called ‘gold’ open-access models, where authors pay exorbitant article processing charges (APCs) to publish their work in the journals.

    I have been searching literature to understand the philosophy and economics of open-access publishing models, and recently, by chance, I came across a couple of books by Peter Suber.

    First is an open-access book on Open Access. Peter Suber has been a philosopher & open-access advocate for a long time. In this book, he explains what it really means to have open access to knowledge & the related philosophy, including its economics. Link to the book.

    Second is a collection of writings on open-access publication (link), and as the online blurb says :

    Influential writings make the case for open access to research, explore its implications, and document the early struggles and successes of the open access movement.

    The green open-access model is very interesting and pertinent to countries such as India, and as per wiki it is defined as :

    Green OA, is the practice of placing a version of an author’s manuscript into a repository, making it freely accessible for the scientific community.

    The primary motivation of Open Access was
    to provide Open Access to Knowledge to the READER of Publications and; to allow Open Access to AUTHORS Publication (unbiased publication of Knowledge)

    Open access in the true sense, should neither have barriers to knowledge consumption nor to knowledge generation and dissemination. Therefore, APCs are a major hurdle to researchers and authors who do not have monetary support. This is most of the global south, and hence, a fair policy is needed to make it more democratic.

  • Physics is a point of view about the world

    picture from : Hopfield, John J. “Whatever Happened to Solid State Physics?” Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics 5, no. Volume 5, 2014 (March 10, 2014): 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-031113-133924.

    The title of this blog is the closing line of an autobiographical essay written by John Hopfield (pictured above), one of the physics Nobel laureates today: “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.”

    In this essay, he retraces his trajectory across various sub-disciplines of physics and how he eventually used his knowledge of physics to work on a problem in neurobiology that further connects to machine learning.

    The title of the essay is provocative(see below) but worth reading to understand how physics has evolved over the years and its profound impact on various disciplines.

    Reference: Hopfield, John J. “Whatever Happened to Solid State Physics?” Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics 5, no. Volume 5, 2014 (March 10, 2014): 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-031113-133924.

    Thanks to Gautam Menon for bringing the essay to my notice.

    By the way, Hopfield and Deepak Dhar shared the 2022 Boltzmann medal, and after the award, he gave a wonderful online talk at IMSc, Chennai. Thanks to Arnab Pal of IMSc for bringing this to my notice on X.

    Let me end this post quoting Hopfield from the mentioned essay:

    What is physics? To me—growing up with a father and mother who were both physicists—physics was not subject matter. The atom, the troposphere, the nucleus, a piece of glass, the washing machine, my bicycle, the phonograph, a magnet—these were all incidentally the subject matter. The central idea was that the world is understandable, that you should be able to take anything apart, understand the relationships between its constituents, do experiments, and on that basis be able to develop a quantitative understanding of its behavior. Physics was a point of view that the world around us is, with effort, ingenuity, and adequate resources, understandable in a predictive and reasonably quantitative fashion. Being a physicist is a dedication to the quest for this kind of understanding.

    Let that quest never die!

  • Quote by Gauss

    It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but
    the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.


    — Carl Friedrich Gauss

  • How Optics is Transforming Our World

    Recently, I appeared on a video podcast: The ONE’s Changing The WORLD

    I discussed opportunities in optics and why exploring the history of science is useful.

  • The net forward..

    Scientific progress is 2 steps forward and 1 step backward.
    The public perceives only the net forward step. But it is that backward step that makes science authentic.
    The origins of scientific temper is in that 3rd step. Science is incomplete without that step.

  • Questions as a class assignment

    Over the years, I have been giving student assignments to write about their questions (rather than answers to my Qs).

    Snapshot of email to my class below.

    I have found some gems in the process and importantly reduces the ‘burden’ of single right answers. Student feedback on this process has been positive.

    Even in the ChatGPT era, it is the quality of Qs that determines the answer, and in this assignment, students are free to choose their Qs as per their interest and experience connected to what I teach…something harder for ChatGPT to grasp (as of now).

    Interesting times ahead.