Category: Einstein

Humanizing Science – A Conversation with a Student

Recently, I was talking to a college student who had read some of my blogs. He was interested in knowing what it means to humanize science. I told him that there are at least three aspects to it.

First is to bring out the wonder and curiosity in a human being in the pursuit of science. The second was to emphasize human qualities such as compassion, effort, mistakes, wrong directions, greed, competition and humour in the pursuit of science. The third thing was to bring out the utilitarian perspective.

The student was able to understand the first two points but wondered why utility was important in the pursuit of humanizing science. I mentioned that the origins of curiosity and various human tendencies can also be intertwined with the ability to use ideas. Some of the great discoveries and inventions, including those in the so-called “pure science” categories, have happened in the process of addressing a question that had its origin in some form of an application.

Some of the remarkable ideas in science have emerged in the process of applying another idea. Two great examples came into my mind: the invention of LASERs, and pasteurization.

I mentioned that economics has had a major role in influencing human ideas – directly or indirectly. As we conversed, I told the student that there is sometimes a tendency among young people who are motivated to do science to look down upon ideas that may have application and utility. I said that this needs a change in the mindset, and one way to do so is to study the history, philosophy and economics of science. I said that there are umpteen examples in history where applications have led to great ideas, both experimental and theoretical in nature, including mathematics.

Further, the student asked me for a few references, and I suggested a few sources. Specifically, I quoted to him what Einstein had said:

 “….So many people today—and even professional scientists—seem to me like someone who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is—in my opinion—the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth..”

The student was pleasantly surprised and asked me how this is connected to economics. I mentioned that physicists like Marie Curie, Einstein and Feynman did think of applications and referred to the famous lecture by Feynman titled “There is Plenty of Room at the Bottom” (1959).

To give a gist of his thinking, I showed what Feynman had to say on miniaturization:

“There may even be an economic point to this business of making things very small. Let me remind you of some of the problems of computing machines. In computers we have to store an enormous amount of information. The kind of writing that I was mentioning before, in which I had everything down as a distribution of metal, is permanent. Much more interesting to a computer is a way of writing, erasing, and writing something else. (This is usually because we don’t want to waste the material on which we have just written. Yet if we could write it in a very small space, it wouldn’t make any difference; it could just be thrown away after it was read. It doesn’t cost very much for the material).”

I mentioned that this line of thinking on minaturization is now a major area of physics and has reached the quantum limit. The student was excited and left after noting the references.

On reflecting on the conversation, now I think that there is plenty of room to humanize science.

Meghnad Saha – lest we forget

Meghnad Saha (6 October 1893 – 16 February 1956), of the fame of Saha’s ionization formula, was born this day. In 1993, a postage stamp in India was released commemorating his birth centenary.

Saha was an astrophysicist with a broad knowledge and appreciation of various branches of physics. One of the earliest English translations (1920) of the papers on relativity by Einstein and Minkowski was written by Meghnad Saha and S.N.Bose.

At the beginning of the book, Mahalanobis introduces the topic with a historical introduction. He begins with a thoughtful discussion on experiments that eventually ruled out the presence of ether, and it sets the stage as follows:

“Lord Kelvin writing in 1893 in hig preface to the English edition of Hertz’s Researches on Electric Waves, says many workers and many thinkers have helped to build up the nineteenth century school of plenum, one ether for light, heat, electricity, magnetism; and the German and English volumes containing Hertz’s electrical papers, given to the world in the last decade of the century, will be a permanent monument of the splendid consummation now realised.”

Ten years later, in 1905, we find Einstein declaring that “the ether will be proved to be superflous”. At first sight the revolution in scientific thought brought about in the course of a single decade appears to be almost too violent. A more careful even though a rapid review of the subject will, however, show how the Theory of Relativity gradually became a historical necessity.

Towards the beginning of the nineteenth century, the luminiferous ether came into prominence as a result of the brilliant successes of the wave theory in the hands of Young and Fresnel. In its stationary aspect, the elastic solid ether was the outcome of the search for a medium in which the light waves may “undulate.” This stationary ether, as shown by Young, also afforded a satisfactory explanation of astronomical aberration. But its very success gave rise to a host of new questions all bearing on the central problem of relative motion of ether and matter.“

Saha, in various capacities, took a stance against British colonialism. Although it affected some opportunities, he continued to do science and was recognized for his outstanding contributions. As Rajesh Kochhar mentions:

“Saha had wanted to join the government service, but was refused permission because of his pronounced anti-British stance. For the same reason, the British government would have liked The Royal Society to exclude Saha. It goes to the credit of the Society that it ignored the pressures and the hints, and elected him a fellow, in 1927. This recognition brought him an annual research grant of £300 from the Indian government followed by the Royal Society’s grant of £250 in 1929 (DeVorkin 1994, p. 164).“

Saha led a tough life. He not only had to face suppressive British colonial rule but also academic politics and battles (versus Raman, no less). His knowledge of physics, his contributions to Indian science, and his commitment to people (he was a politician too) were significant. Let me end the blog with a few lines from Arnab Rai Choudhuri’s article, which nicely summarizes Saha’s work (specifically his ionization formula), and his scientific life:

“Saha’s tale of extraordinary scientific achievements is simultaneously a tale of triumph and defeat, a tale both uplifting and tragic. Saha showed what a man coming from a humble background in an impoverished colony far from the active centres of science could achieve by the sheer intellectual power of his mind. But his inability to follow the trail which he himself had blazed makes it clear that there are limits to what even an exceptionally brilliant person could achieve in science under very adverse circumstances.“

India and Indian science should remember Meghnad Saha.

Einstein – Science and its History & Philosophy

I have been interested in the views of Einstein related to the history and philosophy of science (HPS). The more I read about his work, the more I find that his inclination is to combine science with its historical and philosophical evolution. I am in search of his correspondence with fellow scientists and intellectuals, and have been looking at clues towards this combinational approach to science.

The above image is the title of the Physics Today article.

Recently, I came across an article in Physics Today1 that reproduced a part of Einstein’s letter2. Here it is:

I fully agree with you about the significance and educational value of methodology as well as history and philosophy of science. So many people today—and even professional scientists—seem to me like someone who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is—in my opinion—the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth

It is clear that Einstein liked this combination and thought that it should be part of one’s scientific education. There is a lot more on this topic in the Physics Today article, and it is an excellent read to understand the thoughts of Einstein on this topic. More on this in a future blog…

  1. Howard, Don A. “Albert Einstein as a Philosopher of Science.” Physics Today 58, no. 12 (December 1, 2005): 34–40. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2169442. ↩︎
  2. A. Einstein to R. A. Thornton, unpublished letter dated 7 December 1944
     (EA 6-574), Einstein Archive, Hebrew University, Jerusalem ↩︎