‘We’gnana !

Recently, I saw the following tweet from the well-known historian William Dalrymple.

Congrats to the listed authors, who deserve rewards (and the money) for their effort.

I have 3 adjacent points to make:

1) India badly needs to read (and write) more on science and technology. Here, I am not referring to textbooks, but some popular-level science books (at least). Generally, educated Indians are exposed to science only through their textbooks, which are mostly dull, or, in this era, YouTube videos, which have a low signal-to-noise ratio. Good quality science & tech books at a popular level can add intellectual value, excitement, and expand scientific thinking via reading, not just in students, but also in adults.

2) In India, most of the non-fiction literature is dominated by the social sciences, particularly history (as seen in the best-seller list). I have no problem with that, but non-fiction as a genre is a broad tree. Indian readers (and publishers) can and should broaden this scope and explore other branches of the tree. Modern science books (authentic ones), especially written in the Indian context, are badly in need. I hope trade publishers are reading this!

3) Most of the public and social media discourse in India does not emphasize (or underplays) the scientific viewpoint. Scientific literature and scientific discourse should become a central part of our culture. Good books have a major role to play. Remember what Sagan’s Cosmos did to American scientific outlook, and indirectly to its economic progress. The recent Nobel in economics, especially through the work of Joel Mokyr, further reinforces the connection between science, economics and human progress. This realization should be bottom-up, down to individual families and public places.

One of the great scientists, James Maxwell, is attributed to have said: “Happy is the man who can recognise in the work of today a connected portion of the work of life and an embodiment of the work of Eternity.…“

Science, with its rich, global history and philosophy, in the form of good books, can connect India (and the world) to the ‘work of eternity’, and make us look forward.

Embedding science within culture, in a humane way, can lead to progress. Science books have a central role to play in this.

विज्ञान (Vignana) should transform to ‘We’gnana !

Conversation with Vijay Chikkadi

Welcome to the podcast, Pratidhavani – Humanizing Science
Vijay is an Associate Professor of Physics at IISER Pune, and works on various aspects of Soft Matter Physics, including deformation and flow of soft matter, and active matter.

In this episode, we discuss various facets of soft matter physics and Vijay’s research on these fascinating materials.

‘Vijayakumar Chikkadi – IISER Pune’. Accessed 1 November 2025. https://www.iiserpune.ac.in/research/department/physics/people/faculty/regular-faculty/vijayakumar-chikkadi/252.

‘Soft & Active Matter Lab’. Accessed 1 November 2025. https://sites.google.com/site/vchikkadi/home.

‘Soft & Active Matter Lab – PEOPLE’. Accessed 1 November 2025. https://sites.google.com/site/vchikkadi/people.

‘‪Vijayakumar Chikkadi‬ – ‪Google Scholar‬’. Accessed 1 November 2025. https://scholar.google.co.il/citations?hl=en&user=Xex6qvIAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate.

Sahu, Ratimanasee, Mohit Sharma, Peter Schall, Sarika Maitra Bhattacharyya, and Vijayakumar Chikkadi. ‘Structural Origin of Relaxation in Dense Colloidal Suspensions’. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 121, no. 42 (2024): e2405515121. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2405515121.

Have You Seen the Bird Flying? by D. R. Bendre

ಕನ್ನಡ ರಾಜ್ಯೋತ್ಸವದ ಶುಭಾಶಯಗಳು

Reproducing one of Da. Ra. Bendre’s Kannada poems titled “ಹಕ್ಕಿ ಹಾರುತಿದೆ ನೋಡಿದಿರಾ?” which translates to Have You Seen the Bird Flying?

A comment on the poem: In my reading, this poem is a metaphor for the exploration of the universe through the exploration of a bird. The poet periodically asks: “Have you seen the bird flying?”, thereby motivating the reader to observe what the bird may be seeing and doing. It is a poem read by school children, but there is a deeper philosophical meaning in asking humans to look up at the sky and realize the flight of a bird in themselves. YouTube also has the original audio of Bendre reciting the first few lines of the poem, and it is worth listening to.

Below is the poem, followed by a decent translation.

“ಹಕ್ಕಿ ಹಾರುತಿದೆ ನೋಡಿದಿರಾ?”

ಇರುಳಿರುಳಳಿದು ದಿನದಿನ ಬೆಳಗೆ
ಸುತ್ತಮುತ್ತಲೂ ಮೇಲಕೆ ಕೆಳಗೆ
ಗಾವುದ ಗಾವುದ ಗಾವುದ ಮುಂದಕೆ
ಎವೆ ತೆರೆದಿಕ್ಕುವ ಹೊತ್ತಿನ ಒಳಗೆ
ಹಕ್ಕಿ ಹಾರುತಿದೆ ನೋಡಿದಿರಾ?

ಕರಿನೆರೆ ಬಣ್ಣದ ಪುಚ್ಚಗಳುಂಟು
ಬಿಳಿ-ಹೊಳೆ ಬಣ್ಣದ ಗರಿ-ಗರಿಯುಂಟು
ಕೆನ್ನನ ಹೊನ್ನನ ಬಣ್ಣಬಣ್ಣಗಳ ರೆಕ್ಕೆಗಳೆರಡೂ ಪಕ್ಕದಲುಂಟು
ಹಕ್ಕಿ ಹಾರುತಿದೆ ನೋಡಿದಿರಾ?

ತಿಂಗಳಿನೂರಿನ ನೀರನು ಹೀರಿ
ಆಡಲು ಹಾಡಲು ತಾ ಹಾರಾಡಲು
ಮಂಗಳಲೋಕದ ಅಂಗಳ ಕೇರಿ
ಹಕ್ಕಿ ಹಾರುತಿದೆ ನೋಡಿದಿರಾ?

ಮುಟ್ಟಿದೆ ದಿಙ್ಮಂಡಲಗಳ ಅಂಚ
ಆಚೆಗೆ ಚಾಚಿದೆ ತನ್ನಯ ಚುಂಚ
ಬ್ರಹ್ಮಾಂಡಗಳನು ಒಡೆಯಲು ಎಂದೋ
ಬಲ್ಲರು ಯಾರಾ ಹಾಕಿದ ಹೊಂಚ
ಹಕ್ಕಿ ಹಾರುತಿದೆ ನೋಡಿದಿರಾ?

Translation (ChatGPT):

Have You Seen the Bird Flying?
(by D. R. Bendre — English rendering)

Night after night melts into day,
All around, above and below —
the world moves on and on,
as the moment of awakening opens —
Have you seen the bird flying?

It has a tail dark as rainclouds,
and feathers white, shining bright;
its wings on either side
are tinted with colors of gold and light —
Have you seen the bird flying?

It drinks the silvery water of the moon,
to play, to sing, to soar;
it enters the courtyard of the blessed world —
Have you seen the bird flying?

It’s touched the edge of the horizon,
stretched its beak to the farthest reach;
who knows — since when it has tried
to break open the universe itself —
Have you seen the bird flying?

π and population

‘There is a story about two friends, who were classmates in high school,
talking about their jobs. One of them became a statistician and was working
on population trends. He showed a reprint to his former classmate, The
reprint started, as usual, with the Gaussian distribution and the statistician
explained to his former classmate the meaning of the symbols for the actual
population, for the average population, and so on. His classmate was a
bit incredulous and was not quite sure whether the statistician was pulling
his leg. “How can you know that?” was his query. “And what is this
symbol here?” “Oh,” said the statistician, “this is π.” “What is that?”
“The ratio of the circumference of the circle to its diameter.” “Well, now
you are pushing your joke too far,” said the classmate, “surely the population has nothing to do with the circumference of the circle.”’

These are the opening lines of Wigner’s famous essay titled: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences

Conversation with Amit Agarwal

Welcome to the podcast, Pratidhavani – Humanizing Science

Amit Agarwal is a professor of physics at IIT Kanpur specializing in theoretical condensed matter physics, quantum transport, and new physical phenomena in low-dimensional systems. His research explores topological materials, collective excitations, nanoscale device modeling, and the quantum many-body effects central to emerging quantum technologies.

Amit is also the recent recipient of the Vigyan Yuva Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Physics – 2025

In this episode, we explore his intellectual journey in physics.

References:

‘QTT-IITK’. Accessed 26 October 2025. https://sites.google.com/site/amitkag1/.

‘Amit Kumar Agarwal’. Accessed 26 October 2025. https://iitk.ac.in/new/dr-amit-kumar-agarwal.

‘‪Amit Agarwal‬ – ‪Google Scholar‬’. Accessed 26 October 2025. https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=WcVpbRwAAAAJ&hl=en.

‘(6) Amit Agarwal | LinkedIn’. Accessed 26 October 2025. https://www.linkedin.com/in/amitagarwal2/.

X (Formerly Twitter). ‘Amit Agarwal (@amit_phy) / X’. 12 October 2024. https://x.com/amit_phy.

Ability to Wonder

More than 25 years ago, Prof. G. Srinivasan (RRI, Bengaluru), in an astrophysics class, narrated something that has stuck in my mind. 

I am paraphrasing here. 

He told us about a conversation he had with Prof. Jocelyn Bell, the discoverer of pulsars (rotating neutron stars). 

When Jocelyn was asked: What is the most important quality to do scientific research? 

She replied: ‘ability to wonder’. 

Pursuit of Radiance – musical & philosophical

What happens when Carnatic music, eastern and western philosophy and optics come together?

Well….if you ask my friend Karthik Raveendran, who is a Carnatic vocalist and a physicist, he will say Kānthimathīm – which is his musical video perspective on ‘Pursuit of Radiance’.

Below I post his spectacular art, which includes his music and philosophical thoughts on the mentioned topics. All this visualized through Indian architecture, Finnish lakes and auroras over its sky.

He has been very kind to acknowledge me in his video for my minor input on scientific philosophy. I am truly honored.

Do watch+listen (~ 14 min)

A telescope built over 20 years

For ages, human beings have been curious about stars. Telescopes as observational tools have changed how human beings have studied and understood astronomical objects. Below is a snapshot from a 1947 edition of popular mechanics that features someone named John Cartlidge from USA. He was a mechanical engineer and an amateur astronomer. The story reveals that he took 20 years to build the telescope, and the description text from the magazine is an interesting read. An amount of $600 plus, for that era, sounds expensive. But what is astonishing is the 20-year effort to build a telescope.

This instance of human effort to pursue curiosity connects well to a wonderful poem: ‘Curiosity’ by David Jilk, and below I reproduce a stanza from it:

“Your greatest teacher is the world itself
and glory comes to those who find her codes;
for she is coy, no book upon a shelf,
and must be queried via crab-walk modes:
your question is, which questions make inroads?
Instruction thus proceeds aesthetically
with obverse strokes of creativity.“

Amateur astronomy fosters that strokes of creativity. After all, sky is the only limit !

Light pressure – Lebedev coin

Today, in my optics class, I discussed optical forces due to momentum in electromagnetic waves. Towards the late 1800s, it was realized that light can impart momentum. This manifested as radiation pressure in the electromagnetic theory proposed by James Maxwell.

Pyotr Nikolaevich Lebedev (24 February 1866 – 1 March 1912) was one of the earliest to experimentally measure (~1899) the radiation pressure on a surface (link to his 1900 paper in German). In 1991, the Soviet Union released a 1 ruble coin (pictured above) to commemorate Lebedev’s scientific achievement.

The formula expresses the total momentum transferred per unit time ( radiation pressure, P) by a beam of N photons, each of energy hν, that is incident on a surface with a coefficient of reflectivity ρ. The constant, c, is the speed of light.

The discussion in the class was mainly related to Ashkin’s work. I have written about this in the past.

Shared below is a delightful lecture given by Ashkin at the age of ~96, after he received his Nobel prize.

Some writing advice (mainly physics) for UG students

Some writing advice (mainly physics) I shared with my undergraduate class. This may be useful to others.

  1. Equations, data and figures make meaning when you include a context. This context is expressed using words. Symbols and data by themselves cannot complete the meaning of an argument, unless one knows the context. A common mistake undergraduates make in an exam is to answer questions using only symbols and figures and assume the reader can understand the context.
  2. One way to treat writing in physics (in this case, an exam paper or an assignment) is to imagine you are talking to a fellow physics student who is not part of the course you are writing about. This means you can assume some knowledge, but not the context. Anticipate their questions and address them in the text you are writing. This model also works while writing research papers with some caveats.
  3. While you refer to equations, data and figures in your assignment, make sure you cite the reference at the location of the content you are discussing. Merely listing the references at the end of the document does not make the connection. Remember, while talking, you never do this kind of referencing.
  4. It is useful to structure your arguments with headings, sub-headings and a numbered list. This gives a visual representation of your arguments. You may not find this kind of structured writing in novels, other forms of fictional writing and also in some literature related to social sciences, but in natural sciences with dense information, this will be very useful. Always remember, while writing science (or any form of nonfiction writing), clarity comes before aesthetics.

Also, below is another blog related to written assignments.

Basic advice to undergrads: written assignments