India, mathematics and beauty !

"...if India didn't exist, no one would have the imagination to invent it."
An article by Mukul Kesavan in Telegraph about why India matters more and more in today's prejudiced world.

Again from Telegraph, For a True Flowering of The Mind by Partha Ghosh. I quote,
"Fourth, we must insist that they learn language and literature well. Without that, they will remain insensitive, incapable of understanding other people and other cultures, and nothing creative will ever emerge from them. Language creates the world we live in. The more sophisticated the language we use, the greater the freedom and power of our thoughts and the better the grasp of reality around us. This is why science had to invent the formal and abstract language of mathematics. Also, without the ability to read, hear, analyse and understand the constant bombardment of our ears and eyes by the media and politicians, and without the ability for clear and logical understanding and self-expression, there is no hope of any freedom of thought or democracy. Without these fundamental conditions there cannot be any scientific development."
And now time for some connection hopping ! While reading the quote above from Mukul Keshvan's article, it sounded errily familiar. A search on google reveled the famous words of G H Hardy about the theorems that Ramanujan's 1913 letter to him contained.
"Only a mathematician of the highest class could have written them. They had to be true, for if they were not, no one would have the imagination to invent them."
It so happened that I recently read the excellent essay A Mathematician's Apology by G H Hardy in which he argues passionately about mathematics as a creative art. According to him the only reason why Mathematics is worth pursuing is because it is beautiful just like the work of a painter or a poet. By an extension of this argument, though Hardy would hardly approve of this since he characterized most of the applied mathematics as dull and ugly, even science is not very far away from the creative arts. Inside the strict framework of scientific methods lies a world where individual imagination and creativity push the cutting edge of science to discover and explain various aspects of physical reality. A cold uninspired mind may be useful for doing second rate work but surely the great strides forward don't come from them. In India, we can blame our education system to a large extent where we manage to do just that, kill the curiosity, kill the sense of amazement and either scare away our young from science or produce second rate researchers. The few success stories of India can safely said to have happened in spite of our education system and not because of it. Even at the level of top technical institutes like IIT, our system is not flexible and liberal enough.

The second article above suggests some measures to cure the problems and incidentally, I came across this post by shunya some days ago. Visit the comments section for some half cooked but good discussion.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

बिछड़ते दोस्तों के नाम

यादों की माला के मनके खोते जाएंगे, हम खुद से हर रोज़ बेगाने होते जाएंगे। मिलना जुलना, हंसना रोना, दुनिया भर के हिज्जे, रफ्ता रफ्ता सब अफ़साने होते जाएंगे। "आते हैं उस तरफ कभी तो तुमसे मिलते हैं", न मिलने के यूँही बहाने होते जाएंगे। इंक़लाब की बू है अब पुर-कैफ हवाओं में, बेवजह ही लोग दीवाने होते जाएंगे। भिंची मुट्ठियों, उठे कदम, लहराती बाहों से, बिछड़े साथी का हम साथ निभाते जाएंगे। गले नही  ल गते हैं, अब बस हाथ मिलाते हैं, यार अभागा सभी सयाने होते जाएंगे।
Read more

क्या लिखूं?

छूटे कोई दीन दुखी ना, सबको करो शुमार लिखो, दबी हुई चीखों को बुन कर, कर्कश इक ललकार लिखो। धरम जो पूछे शरणागत का, जात जो पूछे साधो की, हिंदुस्तानी दिल ऐसा भी हुआ नहीं लाचार लिखो। लिखने दो उनको BSE, NSE और GDP, तुम आम आदमी की जेबों में बची चवन्नी चार लिखो। इस शोर शराबे में सहमा सा सच जो तुमको मिल जाए, एक बार लिखो, दस बार लिखो, तुम उसको बारम्बार लिखो। है वक़्त अभी कुछ कहने का, है वक़्त नहीं चुप रहने का, नफरत के तूफानों में घिरते, इंसानों को प्यार लिखो। सुनो अभागा बदल गए हैं यहाँ मायने शब्दों के, देशभक्त ऐसे हैं गर तो, खुद को तुम गद्दार लिखो।
Read more

To bend and not to fold

There are thousands of things in my mind right now that I would like to put on this blog, share with the world. But I hardly manage to find time or the kind of tranquility that I want in order to write. There is one thing however, that never fails to push me to the emotional state where words just seem to flow. Few minutes ago, I watched a video prepared by IITK students called "The Way We Were". There was nothing much in the video. Large part of the video is a music video produced in house at IITK which, I must say, is quite good. The rest of the video is brief snippets of some junta talking about how they feel about IITK and what makes it special for them. It is this part that prompted me to write this post. First to quote a dear friend of mine, the later part in the video looks rather like a "boisterous attempt at self-glorification". I somewhat agree with that and it is this feeling of agreement that forces me to think what would I have said if I was there in th...
Read more