Tag: education
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Popper’s first teacher
In his formative years, Karl Popper, the celebrated philosopher of science, had a cabinetmaker as his first teacher. His introduction to epistemology was through an apprenticeship in a furniture shop.
As he mentions: “I believe I learned more about the theory of knowledge from my dear omniscient master Adalbert Pösch than from any other of my teachers. None did so much to turn me into a disciple of Socrates. For it was my master who taught me not only how very little I knew but also that any wisdom to which I might ever aspire could consist only in realizing more fully the infinity of my ignorance.” (Popper, 2002, p. 2)
Hands + Mind, you see.
ref: Popper, Karl R.; Unended Quest, p 2 (2002)
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C1, C2 and life…
Dear Young People,
Below is a brief lesson that I share with those who ask me for career advice. I hope it will be useful to you.
Category 1 (C1): Honesty, humility, discipline, effort and compassion
is as important as
Category 2 (C2): Irreverence, creativity, drive, communication and risk-taking.
In this era, C1 may look boring and sound cynical, but C1 can give you as much of a competitive advantage as C2, especially in the long run.
Importantly, C1 will build your character. C1 is probably the best way to build self-confidence, and hence self-respect.
This is not to underplay C2, which is equally important. Just that C1 and C2 are not zero-sums.
C1 and C2 are incomplete lists, and you can always expand them and keep referring to them for directions in life.
Best Wishes,
from a fellow student -
Bose in Rajya Sabha – a video
Here, I briefly describe SN Bose’s speech in the Indian Parliament (Rajya Sabha – 1954-55)
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Oppenheimer on teaching..
Oppenheimer on why scientists must teach…from a 1954 lecture…
The New York Times published some parts of the lecture.
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3 Thoughts on Scholarship in an AI-driven Age
One of the important issues to be addressed in recent (AI-driven) times is: how can research scholars acquire knowledge and simultaneously contribute to and communicate with society? Related to this question is: What is the role of scholarship in contemporary times?
Below are three thoughts that I wrote mainly with young researchers in mind. I am hoping that it may find use even among others.
1) Pursuit and utility of knowledge is the primary task of a scholar, and managing the perception of that knowledge is secondary. This means a scholar should use a majority of their time, resources and energy in enhancing scholarly knowledge, and in cases where there is utility, applying that knowledge in the outside ‘noisy’ world. This is your personal knowledge based on your efforts and experiences, and cannot be replaced instantaneously. This also brings uniqueness. Once you have this, you can venture into creating a realistic perception of your knowledge. Remember that learning and researching, to a large extent, are under your control; whereas how the outside world perceives your knowledge is not. Therefore, it would be prudent to pay more attention to learning and doing rather than creating a perception. Note that I am not saying that perception is unimportant. All I am saying is that perception is secondary in importance.
2) One of the key learnings in research and education is that the world is always open to good knowledge and ideas, be it in academia or industry. People are always interested in interacting with and hiring people with a sound knowledge base. It may take a while for somebody to discover your knowledge, but if you have a strong foundation and then go out to the world and interact with it, it is very difficult for the world to ignore you. This means that, having done good work, you should be able to share that work with the outside world. This can be a research paper or an engineering prototype, or any form of science, art or talent that you have. The crucial point here is to first do the hard work and then venture into the sharing of that work.
3) In your work, do not compromise on rigor. If you are a researcher, your first commitment should be towards addressing your scholarly peers or the specialized industry and then broadening your communication. Within scholarly communication, you will have to address questions within the research community. This means you will be basing your work on a large body of knowledge and subjecting yourself to internal and external criticism. This is where rigor comes in handy. Here, rigor does not mean unclear communication. It means to have thought through the questions, nuances and complications of a problem and have a broad and balanced view of the research problem. The general audience sometimes perceives rigorous scholarly communication as filled with jargon and complications. Therefore, it is always better to create two versions of your work: one for your peers and one for the general audience. In the age of AI, the second version is easier to create. Remember that your expertise will be vital in creating the second version for the general audience. That is where you can bring your authenticity and creativity. This can also broaden the scope of your knowledge without compromising your scholarship.
These are a few fleeting thoughts. You can criticize, edit, expand and adapt it to make your own version of it. After all, that is how knowledge moves forward 😊
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C V Raman and long term thinking
A small sampling of Raman’s publication. These papers are related to light scattering and form the foundation on which he made his famous discovery. Raman wrote more than 400 research papers in his lifetime (apart from monographs, lectures and public talks). Writing such a series of papers on a particular topic can be observed throughout his career.
A note to young scholars: intellectual monuments are built this way: thought after thought, day after day, paper after paper. Never underestimate what can be achieved with consistent, honest effort.
