Tag: writing

My Response to Kaplan

Recently, anthropic co-founder Jared Kaplan, who has a background in physics, made the following comment, which was circulated on X. Below is the excerpt:

Below is my response:

A Remarkable Human Being = Remarkable Attribute(s) + Human Being

The first term in the RHS can be replaced by AI, but not the second term, for the following reasons.

  1. Machines, including AI, can surely change the way humans think, work and live, but it will be difficult to match human connection. A machine can enhance human life, but can it inspire a human life?
  2. People inspire people. Ask a child or any adult who inspires them. It will generally be a fellow human being. Machines add value, but human beings represent a valuable life. We utilize the former, and get inspired by the latter. It is this inspiration that propels people forward to do things that may further turn out to be remarkable. This contribution is not easily quantified, but it is hard to gauge a human life without inspiration.
  3. People like Ed Witten, Ashoke Sen and Terry Tao add value to humanity not only through their work and ideas, but their lives show that human beings can think and do something remarkable. It assures human beings that, individually, our species can do something good.
    Human beings derive meaning by interacting with fellow human beings and are inspired by the interaction. They also get inspired and draw meaning by studying people from the past. A human’s search for meaning and purpose is always in the background of other human beings. We are 8 billion plus, and it is hard to ignore each other.

It will be very unusual to find a serious student of theoretical physics who says I am inspired to live by ‘ChatGPT’.

Probably a young Kaplan, too, was inspired by a fellow human being! So, my question to Mr. Kaplan.
Who inspired you to do physics?

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.

Saha and Bose translate Einstein

In physics, the general theory of relativity is one of the most remarkable achievements. It has turned out to be one of the most profound theories in the history of physics. In 1916, Albert Einstein proposed this theory, and it was confirmed in 1919.

Right after this confirmation, around 1920, two Indian gentlemen named Satyendranath Bose and Meghnad Saha translated Einstein’s German work into English. What you are seeing as an image is the remarkable book Principles of Relativity, containing the original papers by Einstein and Minkowski. This translation was done by M.N. Saha and S. N. Bose, who were then at the University College of Science, Calcutta University. It was published in 1920 by the University of Calcutta.

The book also contains a historical introduction by Mahalanobis, the celebrated statistician, although he was originally trained as a physicist himself. This historical introduction is itself quite remarkable.

If you look at the table of contents of this book, you will find the following:

  1. A historical introduction.
  2. The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, which is an important paper and is necessary for understanding what follows.
  3. A short biographical note on Albert Einstein was written by Saha.
  4. The Principle of Relativity, mainly the Minkowski papers, translated by Saha, along with an appendix.
  5. The General Principles of Relativity, Einstein’s epoch-making 1916 paper, translated by S. N. Bose, followed by notes by these gentlemen.

The historical introduction discusses the evolution of ideas that led to the fruition of the general theory of relativity. This turned out to be one of the most important expositions of the general theory of relativity, soon after the emergence of the theory and its subsequent confirmation by Eddington through his famous solar eclipse expedition. This is a remarkable document, and it is available on the Internet Archive.

On Criticism

How to criticize somebody’s work? This is a question we often ask in academia, especially while writing referee reports for articles in journals and theses submitted by students. It is important to learn constructive criticism of academic work, which makes criticism a tool that can lead to positive feedback. When we talk about positive feedback, it does not mean that you will have to applaud the work. It means that anybody who is receiving the feedback should be able to build on it and improve their work.

In this regard, the philosopher Daniel Dennett has come up with some thoughts on critical commentary of somebody’s work. One of the key points he notes: ‘You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way”’.

This way of changing the perspective on a piece of work is one of the crucial aspects of constructive criticism. It helps you to understand the role as a reviewer in not only correcting somebody’s mistake but also helping them to build on their own thoughts. Many times, criticism is looked down on as a negative thing. But done this way, it is probably one of the most enriching processes, not only for the person who is receiving the feedback, but also for the person who is criticizing the work. The correct way to criticize is to think with different perspectives and add to the body of knowledge that the author has already presented. In that way, knowledge is progressed and corrected for mistakes, if any.

Create to Understand

Below are two quotes on the blackboard of Feynman’s office in Caltech which were found just after his death.

 
The first of these quotes by Feynman is a guiding principle for anyone who wants to learn. The second quote is an idealistic one, but a good approach to becoming a ‘problem-solving’ researcher. Feynman was a master of this approach.
 
From a philosophy of science perspective, researchers can be both ‘problem creators’ and ‘problem solvers’. The latter ones are usually famous.
 
Michael Nielsen, a pioneer of quantum computing and champion of open science movement, has an essay titled: Principles of Effective Research, in which he explicitly identifies these two categories of researchers, and mentions that “they’re not really disjoint or exclusive styles of working, but rather idealizations which are useful ways of thinking about how people go about creative work.”.
 
He defines problem solvers as those “who works intensively on well-posed technical problems, often problems known (and sometimes well-known) to the entire research community in which they work.” Interesting, he connects this to sociology of researchers, and mentions that they “often attach great social cache to the level of difficulty of the problem they solve.”
 
On the other hand, problem creators, as Nielsen indicates, “ask an interesting new question, or pose an old problem in a new way, or demonstrate a simple but fruitful connection that no-one previously realized existed.”
 
He acknowledges that such bifurcation of researchers is an idealization, but a good model to “clarify our thinking about the creative process.”
 
Central to both of these processes is the problem itself, and what is a good research problem depends both on the taste of an individual and the consensus of a research community. This is one of the main reasons why researchers emphasize defining a problem so much. A counterintuitive aspect of the definition of the problem is that one does not know how good the ‘question’ is until one tries to answer and communicate it to others. This means feedback plays an important role in pursuing the problem further, and this aptly circles back to Feynman’s quote: “What I cannot create, I do not understand”.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Raman essay and Open-Access

I see that the essay I wrote on CV Raman and made open access (thanks to Resonance, which published it) has been used by several educators on YouTube, including some in Indian languages. Also, the Google AI overview shows the published essay as the main reference for a search related to Raman’s science communication (see slideshow below).

I am glad to see that making one’s writing open to all has positive effects. Open-access, not just for readers, but also for authors, is beneficial. Especially in India, paywalls for science are a detriment.

My worry is that open-access publishing has been mainly driven by commercial publishers that extract huge funds from the publishing authors. This defeats the purpose of open science, especially when the research of an author is publicly funded. Added to that, Indian researchers and writers cannot afford to pay huge sums for publishing articles and books.

The publication landscape (including journals and books) across the world needs an introspection. Open-access model is effective only when the readers and authors have access to that model. Otherwise, the model becomes a paywall for authors.

Conversation with A.R.Venkatachalapathy

Welcome to the podcast, Pratidhavani – Humanizing Science

A. R. Venkatachalapathy is a prolific historian, writer and Professor whose work explores the social and cultural history of colonial Tamil Nadu. In 2024, he was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award. 

His notable books include “In Those Days There Was No Coffee,” “The Province of the Book,” “Tamil Characters,” and “Swadeshi Steam,” which examines V.O. Chidambaram Pillai’s role in anti-colonial maritime resistance. His scholarship spans Tamil literature, publishing history, and intellectual culture, blending rigorous archival research with literary analysis.

In this episode, we explore his intellectual journey as a historian and bilingual author.