Realm of the SCENSCI

A Confluence of Science, Politics, and Literature

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  • Abdus Salam and Galileo: The separation of science from religion (and philosophy)

    Dr Abdus Salam, the late Pakistani particle physicist is the only Muslim physicist till date to have been awarded the Nobel Prize. Dr Salam was rare among modern day scientists in that he was a devout Muslim. While most modern scientists are not concerned with religious matters, Dr Salam found his inspiration for science in religion.

    rrameez

    July 6, 2013
    Abuse of Science, History of Science, Philosophy, Science Debates
    Abdus Salam, Copernicus, Galileo, Inquisition, Lawrence Krauss, Philosophy, Ptolemy, Separation of science and religion, St. Augustine, The Assayer
  • The Ghost of Bob Dylan: On the two models of poetry

    I remember I first listened to Bob Dylan’s songs back in 2004 when I was studying in the small town of Colchester (the oldest town, and the first capital of Britain). I found myself relating to his songs in a way that I had never related to music before. The combination of his powerful lyrics […]

    rrameez

    May 26, 2013
    Arts and Modeling
    antiwar, Art for art’s sake, Bob Dylan, civil rights, Faiz, Iqbal, Joan Baez, Obama, Pablo Neruda, Poetry, Protest poetry, revolution, Sahir, sixties, The Ghost of Bob Dylan
  • Re-Modeling Iqbal: Why Iqbal is too important to be given up!

    Re-Modeling Iqbal: Why Iqbal is too important to be given up!

    Dr Muhammad Iqbal wrote one of the major national songs of India, has been declared the national poet of Pakistan, and served as one of the intellectual influences for Iran’s  revolutionaries. However, over the last few years, there has been an ever-growing allergy towards Iqbal among the liberal sections of Pakistan Iqbal is presently claimed […]

    rrameez

    May 11, 2013
    Arts and Modeling
    9/11, British Empire, Faiz, Imperialism, Indian, Iqbal, Iran, Muhammad Iqbal, Mullah, Pakistan, Poetry, Religious Fanaticism, Sir Syed, Stalin
  • Wittgenstein contra Wahhab

    Wittgenstein contra Wahhab

    The basic tenet of Salafi/Wahhabi Muslims is that the word of God, i.e., the Quran, is not open to interpretation; the meaning is apparent from what is stated and woe unto those who indulge in the needless and dangerous talk of interpretation. On the other hand, those who hold views similar to those held in […]

    rrameez

    April 27, 2013
    Modeling, Philosophy
    Bertrand Russell, Frege, Islamism, Language Game, Mutazilite, Philosophical Investigations, Picture Theory of Language, Quran, Salafi, Shia, Sunni, Tractatus, US Imperialism, Wahhab, Wahhabism, Wittgenstein
  • William James and Free Will Peril

    William James and Free Will Peril

    The problem of free will, as classically defined, is that since each event is caused by a chain of antecedent events, nothing we do is of our own free will; if we do have free will, its hard to see how it could come about. Humankind has been at this problem for millennia. Instead of

    rrameez

    April 3, 2013
    Philosophy of Science
    David Hales, Doodle Talk, Free Will, Tamas Vinko, William James
  • The Evolution of Human Behavior?

    The Evolution of Human Behavior?

    On why scientists should not make unsubstantiated claims in popular science works especially where human beings are concerned It is quite fashionable these days to try and explain human behavior as a result of evolution through natural selection. Just as a small example, I quote the following from an article by the renowned evolutionary psychologist […]

    rrameez

    March 25, 2013
    Abuse of Science, Modeling, Science Debates
    Darwin, Evolution, Evolution of Behavior, Evolution of Competition, Evolution of Cooperation, Kin Selection, Natural Selection, Reciprocal Altruism, Richard Dawkins, Robert Trivers, Steven Pinker, Storytelling, tit for tat, W.D. Hamilton
  • Bombs, Sectarianism and Blasphemy: What’s Art Got To Do With It?

    March 4, 2013 Was coming back from an “Art Event” at the Karachi Arts council. I don’t go to such events but mom insisted (emotionally blackmailed to be precise), so I went. While coming back we started getting messages and calls on our cellphones that there had been two bomb blasts a few hundred meters […]

    rrameez

    March 11, 2013
    Modeling
    art, art under duress, blasphemy, Bombings, Habib Jalib, Krishna Chandra, orwell, Pablo Neruda, resistance art, Salman Khan, Sectarianism, shakespeare, Tolstoy, war and peace, What is art
  • From Causality to the Supernatural: Babies know it all!

    From Causality to the Supernatural: Babies know it all!

    Work in cognitive psychology has shown that young infants possess the concept of causality as an innate feature of their minds. In fact, it has been shown through recent experiments that this notion is so strong that infants can infer the existence of an unseen casual interaction and even an unseen causal agent from just the motion of […]

    rrameez

    March 1, 2013
    Science
    Causality, Cognitive Science, ghosts, God, infants, johnny depp, Marlon Brando, Myna, polytheism, spirits, Supernatural
  • I ♥ Game Theory; Let’s all be irrational, shall we?

    I ♥ Game Theory; Let’s all be irrational, shall we?

    Some nights back, my flight from Karachi to Islamabad couldn’t land due to bad weather in Islamabad and instead it had to land at Lahore airport. We waited and waited, with no official intimation of takeoff plans. Hours passed. I started feeling very hungry and so I went ahead and bought something to eat in […]

    rrameez

    February 14, 2013
    Modeling, Social Science
    Cooperation, Dissident Journalists Dilemma, Game Theory, Games, Irrationality, Poor Man’s Dilemma, Prisoner’s Dilemma, Rationality, Tragedy of the Commons
  • Newton’s ‘Quantum Revolution’ and the Death Knell of Materialism

    In an earlier post on Einstein, I discussed Newton’s demolition of the mechanical philosophy. Since the topic of materialism is so widely misunderstood, I think the significance of what Newton did should be discussed at length. Unfortunately, the revolutionary import of what Newton did has still not been absorbed by many people, even after the […]

    rrameez

    February 2, 2013
    History of Science, Modeling, Philosophy of Science
    Einstein, Intelligibility, Materialism, Mechanical Philosophy, Newton, Physics, Quantum Mechanics
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