Tag: books

Book alert – Science, Pseudoscience, and the Demarcation Problem

There is a new book (88 pages) on the philosophy of science that discusses the demarcation problem between science and pseudoscience. The topics look interesting, and have relevance in a day and age where science has been appropriated for various purposes, including spirituality.

One will have to ask how to differentiate science from something that may sound like science but, with further exploration, turns out to be a hoax?

This book tries to address this issue from a philosophical viewpoint.

The book is free to read for 2 weeks (starting 9th March 2025).

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.

Article on Gerhard Herzberg

The October 2024 issue of Resonance, Journal of Science Education

highlights the life and science of Gerhard Herzberg.

He was one of the greatest molecular spectroscopists who laid the foundation of atomic and molecular quantum mechanics and deeply impacted molecular astrophysics and astrochemistry.

He lived an extraordinary life, first in Europe learning quantum mechanics and then escaping 1930s Germany as his wife was of Jewish origin. Then, he settled in Canada to build and lead his lab, which was considered the ‘mecca of spectroscopy’ at NRC, Ottowa.

I wrote a sci-biography article about him in this issue

Link to full edition: https://www.ias.ac.in/listing/articles/reso/029/10

If you don’t know – Resonance is a pedagogical journal published by the Indian Academy of Sciences. It is a true open-access journal. Free to read and does not charge the authors to publish.

Do explore the past editions. There are some absolute gems. https://www.ias.ac.in/listing/issues/reso

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.

Conversation with Chinmay Tumbe

Chinmay is an author, historian and associate professor at IIM Ahmedabad: https://sites.google.com/site/chinmaytumbe/home.

We explored his intellectual landscape of becoming a writer and a historian. We discuss his writing process and his experience of researching and teaching business history in a scientific & engaging way.

Many related strands…

Listen as we humanize science with history…

References:

  1. “Chinmay Tumbe.” Accessed October 15, 2024. https://sites.google.com/site/chinmaytumbe/home.
  2. “Chinmay Tumbe | IIMA.” Accessed October 15, 2024. https://www.iima.ac.in/faculty-research/faculty-directory/Chinmay-Tumbe.
  3. “‪Chinmay Tumbe – ‪Google Scholar.” Accessed October 15, 2024. https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&btnA=1&user=MyvxhAUAAAAJ.
  4. “Chinmay Tumbe – History.” Accessed October 16, 2024. https://sites.google.com/site/chinmaytumbe/home/history.
  5. Diamond, Jared, and James A. Robinson. Natural Experiments of History. Reprint edition. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2011.
  6. Jha, Prabhat, Yashwant Deshmukh, Chinmay Tumbe, Wilson Suraweera, Aditi Bhowmick, Sankalp Sharma, Paul Novosad, et al. “COVID Mortality in India: National Survey Data and Health Facility Deaths.” Science 375, no. 6581 (February 11, 2022): 667–71. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abm5154.
  7. “Literature Festivals: India’s Vibrant History Scene.” Accessed October 15, 2024. https://historylitfest.com/.
  8. Tumbe, Chinmay. Age Of Pandemics (1817-1920): How They Shaped India and the World, 2020.
  9. ———. India Moving: A History of Migration. Vintage Books, 2018.
  10. X (formerly Twitter). “(1) Chinmay Tumbe (@ChinmayTumbe) / X,” June 9, 2024. https://x.com/chinmaytumbe.
  11. X (formerly Twitter). “HITCH (@BizEconHist) / X,” September 15, 2022. https://x.com/bizeconhist.