What I understood about Things Others Said

 

The following are a few statements I picked up from books, newspapers, magazines YouTube lectures, etc. I found meanings possibly lying below the surface, not necessarily agreeing or countering the meaning in the context the statements were made. I am avoiding stating the authorship of the statements as that could amount to name-dropping.

‘We should teach by questions and not answers’

This is how one may understand the achievements of a great physicist of the 20^th century – thinking hard on the subject matter and proceeding in his own way; not for him what others had done earlier. I almost agree, with some caveats. One, talking about teaching in a classroom, the questions that would teach have to be melded smoothly yet be distinct with concepts that have been discussed in class. Two, I still believe in the power of the minds that preceded mine. So, to me “thinking hard” means addressing those students, without leaving others behind, who are attentive in class and make them ready to tackle the questions in their tests–go back to Isaac Newton, D’Alembert, Fleming, Amonton Castigliano… Yet, I do not teach to test. What I do is try to make students understand ideas barely outside of the “syllabus” after focusing on the foundational ideas. This does not come out of the part of the statement.

To vouch for myself, over the past nine years and a few months, I spent a significant share of my lecture hours on concepts, fewer on problems, asking questions on why such and such a thing allows you to solve a problem, or can we solve the problem any other way. Perhaps, about a quarter of the students liked my teaching.

‘[A] way of defining simplicity. Perhaps a thing is simple if you can describe it fully in that several different ways without immediately knowing you are describing the same thing’

I use this trick in classes in a number of instances as I teach solid mechanics from first year solid mechanics to PG level. My favorite one – first year mechanics class – is to start off describing the path, over beach sand and water, a lifeguard takes to reach a swimmer struggling in water – more on sand, more in water, or a straight line between the swimmer and the life guard. I ask the students which of the above paths the lifeguard would take, keeping in mind that the critical parameter is the time it takes for the lifeguard to reach the swimmer. The actual path would be determined by the relative speeds of the lifeguard – obviously, more on sand and less in water. This is exactly the path a light ray would take between the two points if the medium of transmission encounters a discontinuity, like between air and glass in a classroom demonstration in high school. The speed of light in glass is less than that in air. I have taught refractive index of glass through a seemingly unrelated physical phenomenon, taught in high school and forgotten by engineering students in an engineering college.

‘[T]he victors would emerge from a conflict inevitably resembling their defeated opponents far more than anyone today is willing to admit or able to imagine’

The above refers, I believe, in a physical fight or in warfare. In the Hindu tale of Mahabharata, after the war, did the Pandavs behave like the defeated Kauravs? I don’t know.

But, what if the disputants are involved in a logical argument? I do not agree with the quoted statement. Of course, the disputants have to start at the same point, and agree at every step. I believe that this is why neither atheists nor theists/deists can ever reach a common destination. Of course, they may, “Agree to disagree”, so unctuous.

‘Until we ourselves are students ready to learn, are we eligible to be teachers?’

I believe in this completely. I take the phrase “ready to learn” to mean “challenge oneself” in the case of the teacher. I have tried to instill this ethos in my colleagues at the university, but with minimal effect. I have seen enough number of Ph.D dissertations that do not indicate that the researcher has learnt anything at all, except getting experience in some statistical software package. Sad.

‘If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn’t’

This begs the question that, at whatever level of difficulty, we should be able to (human hubris) understand the workings of our brain. What we may do at best is to try to understand the working of the brain incrementally, but with the understanding that if we fail, that really is not a failure.

Raghuram Ekambaram