Category: philosophy

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.

Writing in the age of AI

A contemporary question of interest: How can artificial intelligence (AI) influence writing?

Writing has two consequences – 1) a writer processing information and communicating it to an audience; 2) a reader processing the author’s information.

The first part has an element of personal touch, just like any art or craft (for example, pottery). One does write (or create a pot) partly because it gives some pleasure and helps one to understand something in the process. There is a gain of knowledge in writing. This pleasure and wisdom through writing cannot be replaced by an external agency like AI. This is because external tools like AI are assistants of thought, not internal replacements of thought. In that sense, no external tool can replace any amateur activity because something is done for the sake of the process. Writing as a tool of self-reflection cannot be replaced by something external.

So, where is the threat? Actually, it is professional writing which is under partial threat from AI. Wherever the end product is more important than the process of writing, AI can gain prominence, provided it is accurate. It is still a partial threat because a professional writer can create questions and combinations that may arise out of individual experiences. Those lived experiences are derived from “life“, and AI cannot be a substitute for such an internal experience.

Writing, like many human endeavors, is both internal and external. The former makes us human, and that is hard to replace. After all, the A in AI stands for artificial.

Physics Nobel 2024 – anywhere to everywhere

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2024 was awarded to John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks“. There has been much buzz surrounding this prize, especially in the context of whether these discoveries are indeed in the realm of mainstream physics. Many science commentators have questioned the choice and have provocatively dismissed it as ‘not part of mainstream physics’.

This has also brought into focus an important question: What is physics?

This question does not have a simple answer, given the rich history of the subject and its applicability over centuries. What we now call engineering is essentially an extrapolation of thinking in physics. New avenues have branched out from physics that cannot be readily identified as mainstream physics; a case in point is artificial intelligence and machine learning.

One of the aspects of mainstream physics is that the intellectual investment in the contemporary scenario is mainly driven by discoveries happening in the realm of quantum mechanics and general relativity. One of the mainstream problems in physics is to combine quantum mechanics and gravitation, which remains an unresolved task. Therefore, significant attention is paid to understanding these theories and verifying them through experimentation. Other areas and sub-disciplines in physics have become loosely connected to these two important theories.

There is another dimension to physics that is equally important and has vast applications: statistical physics. In statistical physics, the motivation comes from multi-particle systems and their applicability as models to understand our world, including biological systems. One utilizes knowledge from mathematics and statistics, combining them with physical laws to predict, invent and understand new forms and assemblies of matter. This thinking has been extrapolated to abstract assemblies and hence applied to a variety of situations. This approach has led to a revolution in how we can understand the realistic world because a statistical viewpoint is very useful for studying complex systems, such as many-body quantum mechanical aggregates (such as groups of electrons), dynamics of molecules inside a cell and the evolution of the stock market. Statistical physics plays a dominant role in all these situations. It has become a ubiquitous tool, making it difficult to directly connect it to basic principles of physics as taught in college textbooks and classrooms. It reminds me of a saying: if you are everywhere, then you are from nowhere.

This situation leads us back to the question: What is physics? John Hopfield himself offers an interesting definition related to this question, emphasizing that viewpoint is a crucial element. This perspective allows for greater freedom in using physics beyond conventional definitions. Among scientific disciplines, physics is always associated with its depth of understanding. This is a good opportunity to emphasize the breadth of physics, which is equally noteworthy.

In that light, the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics should be welcomed as an expansion of the horizon of what constitutes physics. In a day and age where basic science has been questioned regarding its applicability to modern-day life and technology, this prize serves as a welcome change to showcase that basic science has played a fundamental role in establishing a contemporary tool of primary importance to society.

This point is particularly important because policymakers and politicians tend to focus on immediate issues and ask how they can influence them by using modern-day technology. Utility is central to this form of thinking. Given that basic sciences are often viewed as ‘not immediately useful’, this viewpoint diminishes the prominence of foundational disciplines: physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics. In contrast, this prize reinforces the idea that building cutting-edge technology, which holds contemporary relevance and societal impact, has its roots in these foundational disciplines. In that sense, this prize is an important message because, like it or not, the Nobel Prize captures the attention not only of the scientific world but also of the public and, hence, of interest to politicians and policymakers.

Issac Asimov is attributed to have said: “There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.” The Nobel Prize in Physics 2024 fits that bill.

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!

Why do people climb mountains?

When I was growing up, I always wondered about this.   If the aim was to go to the top of the mountain, why not just take a helicopter and reach the summit?  Then, I gradually realized that people climb mountains for a different reason: happiness through temporary pain.  This transient, painful process of climbing motivates people to take up the challenge.  If you look at the amount of time a climber spends on reaching the summit, it will be minuscule compared to the climbing time.  The elaborate process and the preparation make climbing not only an adventure but also a meditation.  There is joy in reaching the summit, but happiness comes from the climb, which starts as a painful step.  Joy, in that way, is temporary. The climb, which is the process, is the happiness. 

Then, can the climber focus on the climb and forget about the summit and destiny?  Over the years, I have realized that any journey requires a point of reference, a temporary destiny.  It tells the climber roughly which direction they must head towards to reach the summit – destiny.  However, once this reference point is decided, it is better to forget about the summit and focus on the next step.  Interestingly, each step becomes a mini-goal, keeping the motivation alive.  The way to reach the summit is through multiple steps.  Therefore, it is the repetition of steps that makes the journey.  Even as they approach the summit, it is only through the individual step that they reach it.  As they reach the summit, what has taken up the climber is still a tiny step.  But this step was preceded by another step, and another preceded that.  Then, they realize these steps are permanent, and the summit is a temporary stop.  There is the realization that the summit is transient and the steps are permanent.  Somehow, a tiny bit of discomfort with each step culminated in happiness.  A transformation has happened.    

Conversation with Sundar Sarukkai

Sundar Sarukkai is a philosopher who specializes in the natural and social sciences.

His webpage : https://www.sundarsarukkai.in/

As a professor and visiting faculty at various institutions, he has made significant contributions to the field. Sarukkai is the author of numerous books, including “Philosophy for Children,” “Translating the World,” “Philosophy of Symmetry,” and “What is Science?” He has also co-authored works exploring Indian philosophy, caste, and democracy. Sarukkai is the founder of Barefoot Philosophers, an initiative to bring philosophy to children and the public. With his diverse expertise and passion for accessible philosophy, Sarukkai is a captivating thinker in the intellectual landscape.

Listen, as we humanize science.

Note: The audio in the first 10 min is of lower quality

References :

  1. “Sundar Sarukkai, Philosopher, Writer | Barefoot Philosophers.” n.d. Sundar Sarukkai. Accessed May 4, 2024. https://www.sundarsarukkai.in.
  2. Barefoot Philosophers, dir. 2024. A Conversation with Sundar Sarukkai – Philosophy of Science Workshop (2024). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XszjdsCvCV4.
  3. Christ University, Bangalore, dir. 2023. Dr Sundar Sarukkai Talk on Philosophy and Literature. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tL1GbPYkfs.
  4. DC Books, dir. 2024. The Cracked Mirror: An Indian Debate on Experience and Theory | Sundar Sarukkai | Babu Thaliath |KLF. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMMoI0ZQgS0.
  5. Toor, Sanchit. 2023. “‘The Challenge Was to Produce a Language, Not Just Use What Is Accepted as Correct’: Sundar Sarukkai.” Text. Scroll.In. https://scroll.in. April 22, 2023. https://scroll.in/article/1047684/the-challenge-was-to-produce-a-language-not-just-use-what-is-accepted-as-correct-sundar-sarukkai.

Meditation on Questioning

Why do humans ask questions?

This question fascinates me.

Here is what I have been learning from my observations :

1) Children tend to ask questions that are driven by curiosity. If these questions are refined, they turn out to be philosophical. Eg: Why do we live?

2) Adults tend to ask questions that are generally connected to economics. On average, their questions are more on ‘how’ than on ‘why’.

3) A dialogue is actually a volley of questions and answers. We somehow tend to under-appreciate this. What we generally ascribe to Socrates is something present in all cultures. It is worth exploring this questioning tradition in all cultures. Eg.: Tarka shastra.

4) A great way to engage with a book is to read it as a series of answers to implicit questions. I am amazed to see how interesting and active reading becomes. This also works for research papers and sometimes even on fiction.

5) A collection of questions is a sub-set of knowledge. The answers derived from these questions can lead to further questions. Following this process will give you a ‘body of knowledge’. There is some fractal nature to this.

6) Scientific thinking is essentially a systematic way of asking questions. The operational word here is ‘systematic’. The structure of these questions is such that it fosters further enquiry, but it is also open-ended. That way, it gives us room for creative thinking.

7) Creative thinking, in essence, is a question of effective combination. It becomes ‘creative’ when the sum of parts creates something new AND relevant. The conjunction is its vitality.

8) Finding an error in our thinking also originates in questioning. In fact, error analysis is a form of questioning from a different viewpoint. It requires us to shift our perspective, and the central question is where and when to shift?

9) Questioning is an inherent human quality. Fostering this is not only existential but also very useful. Etymologically “systematic treatment of an art, craft, or technique” means technology. If you observe, its roots are connected to scientific thinking (see 6).

10) Questioning is generally considered a part of the means to an end. If you observe, it is a means that never ends. Worth asking – Why?