A Random Crawl

BBC NEWS | Technology | Paper battery offers future power: "Flexible paper batteries could meet the energy demands of the next generation of gadgets, says a team of researchers. They have produced a sample slightly larger than a postage stamp that can release about 2.3 volts, enough to illuminate a small light."

Simple, elegant, cool use of physics. Wow! Enough said.

Indians predated Newton ‘discovery’ by 250 years: "A little known school of scholars in southwest India discovered one of the founding principles of modern mathematics hundreds of years before Newton according to new research"

Most of the comments focus on the fact that yet another white male’s accomplishments are being questioned. However, what is of interest to me, which is not discussed in the article, is what other conceptual achievements Kerala school innovated. The fact that there was the potential of cultural transmission of mathematical ideas makes me wonder about the universality of the concepts. There is a sense of wonder associated with the idea that multiple individuals from distinct cultural contexts innovated the same mathematical concepts. The universal feel to such a statement makes religions interest in mathematical and scientific pursuits comprehensible. In a way, this is not about Newton’s achievements but rather about the mystery of universality.

Freeman Dyson: “As a scientist I do not have much faith in predictions. Science is organized unpredictability. The best scientists like to arrange things in an experiment to be as unpredictable as possible, and then they do the experiment to see what will happen. You might say that if something is predictable then it is not science. When I make predictions, I am not speaking as a scientist. I am speaking as a story-teller, and my predictions are science-fiction rather than science. The predictions of science-fiction writers are notoriously inaccurate. Their purpose is to imagine what might happen rather than to describe what will happen. I will be telling stories that challenge the prevailing dogmas of today. The prevailing dogmas may be right, but they still need to be challenged. I am proud to be a heretic. The world always needs heretics to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies. Since I am heretic, I am accustomed to being in the minority. If I could persuade everyone to agree with me, I would not be a heretic.”

What is the job of a scientist? One metaphor depicts a scientist as a warrior doing battle with mother nature, forcing her to give up her secrets. Another depicts a scientist as a painter constructing a portrait of mother nature using shades of evidence. What is common to the metaphors of science, perhaps only implicitly, is that the product of science is understanding. A scientist is a seeker, a creator, a discover, and a reasoner. But if this is the case then perhaps the product of science is not just understanding but rather a means of understanding. I would argue that the means of understanding offered by science is as much a social contribution as the particular understandings that this means produces. In this way, I resonate with Freeman Dyson’s call for heretics. That is, his call for those who question in a way to produce new understandings. Perhaps, just perhaps, science is just a process of understanding generation, and thus, to abandon this process for the mundane contentment of an understanding is to cease being a scientist.