Category: History of Science
-
Polarized Pakistan and the Disconnected Global Left: Reflections on a crazy viral blog post
How a blog post aimed at defending Prof. Chomsky revealed the extreme fault lines in Pakistani society and underlined the broken relationship between North and South Left So how does it feel to know that you are the reason your intellectual idol is currently inundated with mail, a lot of it hate, from all sorts…
-
CHOMSKY SAYS NO MEANINGFUL EVIDENCE OF COUP AGAINST IMRAN KHAN!
The famed leftwing political activist says that using the threatening letter as evidence of a coup is “meaningless”! I have for long admired and followed Prof. Chomsky’s work. Among the people he has never met, I am probably one of the few with whom it was Prof. Chomsky who initiated an email correspondence! Well, technically.…
-
Fake News Or Ground Truth? Alice And The Queen of Hearts
If an analysis of computing texts were to be done, I am willing to bet that ‘Alice in Wonderland’ would rank at the top (or near the top) of the list of most highly quoted books by computer scientists (think Chapter beginnings or fancy quotations below titles etc, or any place where us computer guys…
-
Viva Castro, the Michelangelo of revolutionaries!
The towering personality of the 20th century has passed away. His achievements and those of Cuba under him are monumental. Forget the fact that he led the charge against the brutal imperial power in the hemisphere. Forget how he and the country survived the ruthless embargo imposed by their monstrous neighbor and not only built…
-
Father Berrigan: For the Children and the Bread
Father Dan Berrigan died yesterday (April 30, 2016). He was one of the leading lights of the antiwar and civil rights movements of the 60s and 70s. Father Berrigan continued his activism till the last days of his life, in recent years protesting against the latest imperialist ventures including the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. During…
-
Patrice Lumumba-Never to forgive, never to forget
The Jewish culture has this very powerful saying, which many Jews especially repeat on a day called the holocaust memorial day: Never to forgive, never to forget. On face value, this statement might seem a bit extreme, especially the “never to forgive” part.
-
Paris Attacks: Collective Moral Blindness Spells Collective Doom
What happened in Paris was heart-wrenching and tragic. My first reaction was intense anger at the monstrous perpetrators. Soon after, it was accompanied by an equally intense anger and sense of frustration at the western reactions that had already started coming in. As a Pakistani who has been living in Europe for some time, there was also…
-
Rational Fools
Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen, coined the term “Rational Fools” nearly 35 years ago. In his famous paper, Sen criticized the first principle of economics: “Every agent is actuated by only self-interest”. On top of this axiom of rational self-interest lie rational action and rational expectations, leading all the way up to the efficiency…
-
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.
-
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…
Realm of the SCENSCI 