This man is the leader of RSS and carries considerable political clout in India.
Unbelievable!
How about imprisoning all the religious fundamentalist leaders from India in one cell for about a week? What will happen?
Why it is a win-win for Infosys Consulting and the like...
Watched Black over the weekend... Sorry to say, the movie failed to impress emotionally for the content it handled... Bansali needs a better script writer...
But can appreciate the amount of effort that has gone into the movie... Particularly to make it un-bollywood like... Won't say it succeeded though...
It was science lecture time again here in Seattle. This time it was Simon Singh (famous for his book and award-winning video on Fermat's Last Theorem and it's proof). He talked mainly about the Big Bang Theory. However he did touch upon other topics such as some famous pseudo-scientific ones - like the Codes imbedded in the Bible and (guess-what) theory of Intelligent Design (no, not again!).
Once when I told a senior colleague of mine that there is this phenomenon (in a way similar to deja vu) wherein you first come across something (usually a new concept, news) and then that keeps coming back to you again and again in some form or fashion. My colleague, who is also trained in psychology, retorted that it is not that it keeps coming back due to some mysterious intervention of God, but just that you start noticing it more and more. He also said it is a well-researched and documented aspect of psychology.
Back to the lecture, it was short but very interesting. He seemed to be a funny guy (with a funny hairstyle) and his lecture was full of little experiments that made you laugh and think. There were only about 25 people in the audience and I thought a lecture of this sort would have interested high-school students and the like, if only they knew about it. It was simple, yet thought provoking. And yes, he came across as a very simple man too.
After a recent recommendation, watched the documentary "N is a Number" on Paul Erdos. Very touching. I remember reading a few pages of the book "My brain is open" on one of those boring afternoons in the MatScience library in Chennai. (When I say I read a book, it means few pages. When I say few pages, you can roughly equate it to the preface and may be the first few pages of the first chapter). For some reason, Erdos came across as kind of a jack of all trades in that book. Or so I thought. After seeing this documentary, I have a totally different opinion - such purity, such fragility and yet so mathematically powerful.
Dear Mr. Kasthuri Srinivasan,
Here are some elementary views of mine on your post in the matter of Evolution vs. Intelligent Design. I want to stress elementary - because there has been much fog generated in this debate and I dont want to get anywhere into that. Recently I saw a panel discussion on Larry King Live on this topic and I have to humbly admit that most of what was talked there was above and beyond my reasoning abilities. This is just a counter for one point you have raised in your post which is that it is possible that evolution and intelligent design can go hand-in-hand and your implicit conclusion that they can be taught together (which of course is the central point of the political debate).
I think the basic difference between the two theories is that the theory of evolution bases itself on existing evidence which conforms to the scientific method - observe, analyze, propose theory. And based on that method it is able to explain "certain" things regarding the nature of life in the universe. On the other hand, the corner stone of intelligent design seems to be that (1) the existing "scientific theory" cannot explain "certain other" things (Agree). (2) Thus a superior theory is in order (Agree). (3) The superior theory is the existence of an intelligent designer (No reason to agree).
You can visibly see that the jump from statement 2 to statement 3 above is unaccounted. It is not a logical consequence of any preceding assumption/conclusion/evidence. And that is where university heads and renowned scientists/scientific philosophers cringe. This "theory" (if it can be called one) is based on a giant leap of faith that can make science irrelevant and that is why these two theories simply cannot go hand-in-hand like you seem to suggest.
To take the often-cited cliched example, the shortcomings of classical Newtonian mechanics were well known by the late 19th century. Einstein proposed special relativity to address certain shortcomings. It was a natural extension of an existing theory (however remarkable it might have been at that time) to explain specific shortcomings. This is what is typically demanded of new "scientific" theories. Only so much should be assumed as is necessary - and you very well know how critical a principle this is in most areas of scientific inquiry (Occam's Razor). Taking this argument to an extreme, by assuming 2 = 3, you know that we can prove all mathematical truths and falsehoods. However, you and I won't do that - atleast not in Kulkarni's class.
So my take on your claim that evolution and intelligent design can go hand-in-hand is that, they simply can't because of the fundamental difference pointed out above. Now, to the topic of controversy. Considering the above arguments, taking this giant leap of faith to the classrooms and placing it side by side with evolution seems like a repulsive idea to me, as it does for other teachers and science professors. Of course, I can't oppose learning about such beliefs in a religion class. It will probably be a good debating topic there. However I will oppose learning them as science or on par with science. In my opinion, kids of age 13 will only be confused when we put science and evolution on par with such a "faith" based theory.
The term "scientific theory" itself, is a well-defined one (you can look it up on the Internet) and can only be attributed to certain types of hypothesis-conclusion cycles - not all. Everyone knows that Newtonian mechanics has limitations when it comes to predicting the motion of sub-atomic particles. However no one attributes their motion to the Intelligent Designer (atleast I haven't heard of anyone doing that). Of course, if someone does, Intelligent Design will definitely be able to explain sub-atomic particle movement and behaviour too. But as I said before, it is an unnecessary hypothesis.
At this time, it is once again good to recall what Laplace said.
