My subjective interpretations ‘

 To be human is to affirm one’s humanity by recognizing the humanity of others in an infinite variety of content and form’

Or

‘A human being is a human being through the otherness of other human beings’ – a Zulu maxim

 

“Yes, the above is a maxim in the culture of Zulu.”

“Zulu culture? Aren’t they the barbarians in southern Africa to whom we, the European seafarers, tried hard to teach culture and failed?”

Ok, the above conversation could not have been in the second half of the 20^th century or any time later. That was the period in which the barbarity of Europeans settled in Africa truly blossomed! Google Steve Biko, for one.

So, my interpretation of the given maxim is that the Zulus were more cultured than the Europeans. They still are, but at least some of the Europeans are catching up – those who dunked the statue of Edward Colston in the sea!

It is only by seeing other humans as one’s kindred folks, one can assert his/her humanity.  

 

 

'There is in every village a torch - the teacher; and an extinguisher - the priest' - Victor Hugo

 

It is most unfortunate the extinguisher always wins the battle. In the village of the Vatican the Roman Catholic extinguisher slew the torch-carrying monster Galileo! That history is repeating itself everywhere, no geographical or political exemptions. If one looks at the ratio of mumbo jumbo (faith-based in other words) channels to rationality based ones (if there are any) in India, it must be in high double digits.

A classmate of mine created a WhatsApp group for our graduating class and the first condition was, “Thou shalt not discuss matters on religion, politics ...”

Oh, one more thing - times are such teachers are also becoming priests!

The statement highlighted and elaborated must be modified as, “... and extinguishers – priests and the reactionaries.”  

 

‘…and so to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honour and peace, until the Gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand’ – Shakespeare

When Shakespeare is quoted, amongst my friends it is either of the following two: “to be, or not to be, that is the question” – Hamlet, or “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” – Romeo and Juliet.

When I read what I have written as the lead for this interpretation, I felt a jolt as I had formed an opinion of Shakespeare as a bigot (anti-Semite) from Merchant of Venice. This, he might as well had been, but perhaps there were other elements in his personality.

The critical part of the sentence is the strong implication that “a race” had not yet been created that can understand. It is a pity that Shakespeare, if he were alive, would continue to bemoan this point even in CE 2022.

It is that word – understand. Over the past four decades or so I have beseeched people to understand what they hear or read. One has to be able to read between lines to understand. One has to read the thoughts preceding what has been heard or read and also what follows. Anything could be understood only if the source and where the thought led us were given their due importance.

Understand is beyond the present tense and includes the past and future tenses also.

 

‘It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns [itself with] what we can say about Nature’ – Niels Bohr

The scientist who occupied the vantage point of appreciating nature basically gave up on understanding nature. One must read “...say about Nature” as “how to exploit nature”. Well, in these woke times, that word “exploit” puts Bohr at odds with environmentalists, ecologists et al. But, let that slide.

Bohr endorsed, in essence, the futility of seeking out objective reality. In any person, there is something called qualia, the way that person perceives whatever she senses. None can assert the universality of that perception. None can say, “My qualia of sky blue is the same as that of yours.” Qualia is non-fungible, there is no exchange rate.

This is exactly what the other redoubtable physicist of the 20^th century – Richard P. Feynman – said: Do not worry about what light is. Just try to understand what we can do with light! For RPF, not uitlity in the sense usually understood but predictability in uninvestigated phenomena was the touch stone of scientific methodology.

 

‘[E]ven when we have reliable results from “pure science,” we need engineers who can tell us whether and how these results apply to the situations we are dealing with’ – Gary Gutting

This statement, more than any other I have come across, defines engineering by its utility. As a consequence, even if all the idealistic theories are good at laying down the why of natural phenomena at certain level of accuracy, it takes the engineer to translate the “why” to utility-heavy “how to...” – say, use a forklift to hoist a load.

However, there is a danger. Just suppose one’s translation does not work cleanly. To clean it up, one has two ways of correcting the error. One, try by changing certain parameters and see if the translation fits the observed world. This is an empiricist’s way of doing things.

The other is to go back to theory and see where the error in translation could have crept in. This is the way of scientist-engineer.

Should there be a preferred way for anyone? Yes, it depends on the person’s qualia!

Raghuram Ekambaram