The Summer Chronicles – Prologue

Sometime near March this year, there was quite an excitement among the batchmates at our institution. Why? If you are at our institute, it would have been quite obvious: Summer Projects. Everybody was applying for one thing or the other, and the rest busy finding mentors to do some project under them or to study under them.

Me? I had decided NOT to apply to any project at all. I didn’t want to undergo some project work about which I might have got nothing out of, and would have also not have been able to benifit the mentor. In some sense, I considered projects after 1st year a waste of both my and the mentor’s time. That’s what my decision was based on. Or else I just thought so.

Then came the IAS summer research fellowships around the corner. A professor of ours sent us the application method and the deadline. Application method was pretty simple: fill up some forms, get some recommendation, choose the people you want to work under, et c. Simple, right? WRONG! The deadline was just two days away. Somehow many of our batchmates including me, had managed to get everything together, and mail it a day before the deadline. The thing about these IAS fellowships is that the mentors need to register themselves, and they are quite open to summer students, so, in a way, if they choose a person, they agree to his idea of what he wants to do with him. Consequently, they rarely choose 1st years who might know nothing deep about anything, and the ones they choose have had some proven experience of that work. This year, no fresher was selected. Either way, IAS is a good summer research fellowship programme and those who work under it benifit a lot in many terms.

IAS was ruled out. No doubt about it. Did I feel bitter about not being selected under it? Not really. There are many more oppurtunities more viable than IAS SRF (that’s what its abbreviated like), this year itself. Furthermore, I can apply for IAS SRF in the coming years. For many of you, the words “viable oppurtunities” must have struck something in your mind and you are probably asking “What oppurtunities?”

When I was in class 12, I used to visit a community science center in my city. That was the place where they conduct the regional olympiads (the NSEs). Also, that place had a good library and reading area. So, I used to come here after school and spend time in its library and used to play with the science exhibits kept outside. Wait a minute! Where am I going towards? Oh, yeah, I remember. There was once a poster of an “Advanced B.Sc. Summer Programme in Physics” conducted by the Gujarat Science City and IPR (Gandhinagar) every year. But it was for second year students of Gujarat only. Now, I was stuck, partially because in Class 12 itself, I had decided to give it a try. But I being me, asked my mother to find out about this and tell me ASAP. She did, and told me that the deadline was already through. Again, I being me, talked to a scientist I knew at PRL, and he communciated this matter to the co-ordinator (another scientist at IPR), and told him that I really wanted to attend this course, and that (somehow) it would be good to have a student from an I.I. (read eye-eye, “Indian Institute”), interact with the rest of the students and help them regarding their work. (Later, I kept my share of the promise. Just because so many people had worked to get me into it, I even went out of my way to interact with the other students and help them). So, you can imagine the situation that happened, my mother talked to the local co-ordinator at the center, and he was intimated of this, and I got about a dozen calls about the documents I have to prepare. I did, hurriedly, missed a surprise test (in chemistry), hurried again, and xeroxed and posted all the stuff that day itself. It reached the next day, and I was enrolled. I then thanked a couple of my professors who had recommended to this. I still say, that ‘D’ in chemistry was worth the trouble, I got a lot more than I lost. That’s one.

Second, which happened somewhere before this, was NIUS applications. NIUS stands for “National Initiative for Undergraduate Science” ( or maybe a “in” replaces the “for”; I really don’t care). It too had standard procedures: filling up some forms, getting some recommendations, sppr-posting, et c. The prospectus for this in the internet said that there were more chances of selection if I had a KVPY fellowship or so. I did. Later, I get a letter saying that I did get selected and that the camp started at so-and-so date. This went smooth. The fun part was: there were two of my friends who both had KVPY fellowships, and both sent only one recommendation (two were required). One got selected, the other didn’t. Weird, Isn’t it? And one another (redundant usage, I know that, don’t tell me); one another who didn’t have the fellowship got through to NIUS (but she had some other unparalled merit too). My suggestion: Don’t ask “Who?” or “What?” to these references, you’ll be wasting your time.

So, by this time, April was packing its bags, and May was moving in. I had two programmes and 1.5 months busy in my pocket. And with my fallen grades, I had to work in these programmes with constant lectures from my parents (and you know what it feels like, right?).

Little did I know what lied ahead.

 

On Being An Audiophile

This is my first attempt at a (hopefully) short blogpost.

What does it mean to be an audiophile? Does it mean that one is absolutely neurotic about the music they hear? Or does it mean that that person won’t hear anything below a particular standard of music?

Maybe, because both are extremes. I can confidently call myself a “moderate” audiophile. Now, what does that mean, you might ask. Go on, read.

To make the case more clear, let me describe an audiophile stretched to the extreme. Let that person be called ‘N’ (Don’t ask me why). N is an average extreme audiophile. He goes for no music under 320 kbps (CD quality, or each file is about 10 mb large). Even though he has grown up with Cds, and has developed a symbiotic master-slave relation with his mp3 player (obvioulsy, the master), he maintains that the audio quality on vinyl records is better. He says that your boombox is one monster of a sound system and that his ‘M’ music system costing so-and-so-much is better (M= Bose, Altec Lansing, JBL, et c.). He claims that even though most headphones and earbuds “distort” music, and that this brand that he’s claimed to have heard, is the best in headphones (even if you insist that they fall off your ears continuously). He says that today’s silicon technology is ruining music systems and claims that vacuum-tube based amplifiers are the best. He says that if he had the money, he’d go for those $7250 per metre amplifier cables that distort signals the least. Also, he’s deliberately arranged his room in such a way that “the overtones reverberate the maximum” (whatever that means). He gets disgusted with the people listening to 128 kbps mp3s, and doesn’t listen to radio unless it is the “high-quality” satellite radio. Also, his room is covered with foam to reduce “noise caused by vibrations of the walls”. He goes neurotic when people say that they don’t find the difference between the music they hear in their mp3 players, and those which he’s just showed them (some “Brand-new, new-and-improved” something). And so on.

[ For those people wanting gender-equality, please replace 'he' and “He”, with 'she' and “She” respectively, in the above paragraph.

Also, The James Randi Foundation has announced a huge bag of money to anyone who can prove that those $7250 per metre amplifier cables are not better that any good quality $72.5 per metre ones.

For a more systematic description of an extreme audiophile, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audiophile

Its more or less what I said, but if you happen to love systematicity and hierarchical descriptions, this one’s for you.]

Okay, this was a way too wild description. No audiophile has all these qualities in one single body. Moreover, most audiophiles happen to be moderate audiophiles like me (remember that bell-curve that I mentioned sometime back? Just make it more pointy towards the moderate co-ordinates.).

I don’t mind listening to 128kbps mp3s, but take it just so far that, I listen to it on “crystal-clear” headphones (some sort of oxymoron, isn’t it?). My headphones happen to be very clear (and as I mentioned, you have to make a constant effort to keep them hanging on to your ears), as compared to other’s headphones. Again, I don’t mind boombox music, but, I do mind keeping high volume levels on smaller speakers. Raising volume levels causes louder sounding noise too, or in simple terms, it produces an audible “hiss” or “buzz”. I happen to follow more of beats and rhythms of a song, rather than simply its tone or lyrics (often, i don’t get the lyrics of a good song even after listening to it dozens of times). I avoid woofers as far as possible (that is, for another reason called headache). That’s it, no more demands.

From reading this, you’ll ask me, what makes you think you are moderate? “Moderate” audiophiles don’t splurge on excessively costly items that “claim” to sound better. Also, they keep their “audiophilicity” to themselves and don’t irritate others with it (or try to force it on them).

That much I can do. Or would not do.

 

Book or eBook? That’s the question.

Okay, I agree. It is a lame title. So, let me start.

In a pretty famous newspaper, I once noticed, “….eBook, which is short for electronic book, is the digital version of the book text, accessible through personal computers….” Needless to say, many of you would have recognized that newspaper. The article was about some state education board, publishing the e-text of its textbooks, so that it is accessible to school libraries.

So, the “definition”, given by that journalist, was technically correct. But, is that the end of it? Maybe, yes. I’ll come to it a bit later.

A 1969 printed Oxford Pocket Dictionary (No, you cannot possibly carry it in your pocket), defines a book as:

1. n. Form in which a literary work is available in form of reading, now usu. a number of printed leaves fastened hinge-wise & enclosed in cover ; literary such as fills or might fill one or more or such ~s (e.g. treatise, long poem, novel, set of poems or stories, biography, dictionary ; the B~, Bible);

what follows this are descriptions regarding Bible, et c.

Books were more popular back in those days than they are now, so, I can safely assume that this dictionary gave me a functional definition, rather description, for a book. Similarly, for an eBook, the newspaper description also seems adequate. Good enough, it means that this is what people think of what a book and an eBook is. They are, in majority, correct.

What I hope to address here, is the issue of whether reading a book is same as reading an eBook or edocument. Naturally, this experience varies with person to person. But, this blog does not. So, it is going to be my views on this thing (believe me; I have, what I call, a decent collection of eBooks that I have read).

Most of the people say that reading an eBook is difficult. Many others have even abandoned the attempt to try. Some others say that an e-doc is good enough for reference, but not for regular reading.  There are still others left who rigidly maintain that there is no difference between the two. So, imagine a smooth bell curve between the number of people, and their comfort level with eBooks. That’s how generally all social traits go. Reading is also a social trait.

And I have to admit, I happen to be one of those who believe in referencing an e-document rather than reading it through. So, what is it that makes reading an eBook so different from reading a book? Not many of you might have thought about it. Sure, you believe that those people who think about are not normal. On the contrary, those guys who think about are the ones that make it more comfortable. For example, do you know how much thought was put in to give the iPod their characteristic shape and features? You can’t even imagine, and wouldn’t have even thought about it. Oh boy, I got distracted. Again.

Therefore, I took some time off my usual day to find out those differences. The first line of attack that I had toward this non-quantitive problem (it would have been quantitative it I had some statistical survey results or something, but I don’t), was to see one carefully and then, to see the other.

Now, what was it about reading books that makes it so comfortable? On a normal day with nothing to do, and a prospective unread book to read (say, of the dimensions of Cosmos by Carl Sagan), what would you do? It is rather vague to question, but, I’ll assume that you take the book and read it (hey! my article, my rules).

While you are reading it, a lot of things happen that you are not aware of. Not the things happening around you, the ones that happen in the process of reading the book. You hold the book, presumably, or at least keep one hand over it. You keep the book at a comfortable distance. You sit in a comfortable posture. You have a direct feel of the number of pages elapsed. In short, there are a number of factors that enrich your reading experience while you are not even aware of it. That’s why you call it experience. Any other description will fall short of some factor.

I remember a distinct incident, when I asked a professor about how we perceive numbers, and why we aren’t able calculate fast even when our brain is a much more efficient organic neural network computer, than a silicon based von Neumann computers (similar to the ones you are reading this blog on.). He gave a satisfactory reply on that, and went on to tell me about a sixth sense that we have. Yes, a sixth sense. Close your eyes and touch your nose. Open your eyes and you are touching your nose. Close your eyes and go reach out for a pen lying on a table. Most probably you won’t encounter the pen the way you expected to receive. This is to say that we are consciously aware where we are. In simple words, you know where your nose, knee, feet, et c. are. This is not philosophical, it is something neural in origin, something that could be (or, is being) scientifically modelled. However, as I mentioned, this sense does not extend to something that isn’t a part of you, say, that same pen.

But this is approximated for things that you can hold or are in contact with. It’s called learning. For example, you are unconsciously aware of your workspace, and how you live in that workspace. Say, your study table, you learn to be comfortable with your study table and then that becomes awfully familiar to you. I don’t know whether my assertion is correct, this can happen with books too. Once you get comfortable with reading certain sort of books, you can almost feel them. That book will be an extension of you (so as to speak), and you can manipulate it in your hands or on the table comfortably. This happens with most average sized books. I often see many persons getting mighty uncomfortable with huge reference books, but then again, those who get used to them feel just right.

Are there certain books, whose scent pleases you or reminds you of some time back? Often, the scent of the book is a delicate component of the “book-reading-experience”. Some old books have a faint odour and colour which reminds us of its antiquity. To put it in another way, those books have seen more readers than you’ve seen. The colour of the pages of such old books and the texture of the pages also tell us something. Even though we might never consciously think about these things, our body knows all.

As I mentioned the sixth sense, I feel an uncontrollable urge to mention all the other (usual) five senses, and how they contribute to the experience, called the book.

We keep the book at a proper distance, and can move it back or forth, so that we might be comfortable while reading. The colour of the book’s pages, as I mentioned, lets us know of its make or age. The depth of the ink used to print the pages, makes a remarkable shadow effect only perceivable to the eye. Yes, the eye is more sensitive than one can imagine.

We can feel the book, its dimensions, its size, weight, and arrange the book in such a way that we’re most comfortable with “feeling” the book. Maybe on the table, maybe on the lap or on the bed. Wherever, the book needs to feel as a part of us. Some books are deliberately designed to be bedtime-reading capable. Others are, by chance, called coffee-table books, and so on. The bottomline: the book should feel good.

As I explained, the sense of smell contributes invaluably. How often have you felt a sense of nostalgia descending on you when you pick up a book at a place like crossword or landmark? Do you know that there are perfumes manufactured at certain places which are made to smell like antique books? (okay, I’m kidding, there’s no such perfume that I know about, although, there is a place at Ahmedabad where a perfume smelling like soil after fresh rains, that is, “Mitti-ki-khushbu” is sold.)

Going on, hearing may not contribute significantly to reading, but can you flip an eBook and hear that characteristic sound? Really. But don’t flip a book too much, its corners start to turn towards the cover, and it ruins certain types of bindings in the long run.

Tasting a book is something that I don’t recommend doing anywhere, especially in the public.

That’s how you read a book. Now, what about an eBook? Clearly, the eBook lacks many of these features. Some scanned eBooks can resemble page colour. And sometimes, the ink shadow effect is mimicked by the scanner light. But for those documents generated using a computer, all these things simply don’t happen. Again, there not much you can do about the reading distance, as the screen brightness will affect the comfort. There’s no “feel” for an edocument, it’s just an image appearing on the screen. It’s almost impossible to read on a CRT screen for more than half-an-hour. On some TFT screens, it is a little more comfortable because of lesser glare ratio. On laptop LCDs, it’s a headache. Then, there’s no “personal touch” to an eBook, to sum it up in a few words. (Okay, it is advisable not to try tasting e-text also, but because of another reason than embarrassment, called, “possible electrocution”). Also, you lose the capability to switch back instantaneously to a page you were reading before, while you were reading some other part of the book. The “feel” of the quantity of pages elapsed while reading the book is instantaneously lost. What more do I need to say? To express it another way, an eBooks feels like a “ghost” or “dummy” which serves the purpose, but we know that it isn’t the real deal.

It is a different story that this eBook revolution has caused a lot of copyright and piracy issues, with eBook piracy being almost on the same level as music piracy. But do you know that if you lend your book to a friend, it is a form of copyright violation. You are also not supposed to sell your used books to second-hand dealers. Actually, as per copyright, all second-hand book dealers can be considered as book pirates. What is this? While publishers keep increasing the prices of “genuine” books, to an unaffordable level, they expect us to be “ideal citizens”, whatever. This way, I find the open-source and copyleft movements to be better. If publishers were a bit less selfish, I am sure there would be a higher percentage of educated people.

Also, an eBook doesn’t take much paper to make. So eBooks are the sure-fire future, Even today, there are eBook readers, small touchpad screens that resemble a book by e-ink technology, that is, ink segregated on the screen by electrical impulses. Those readers give a good feel of the depth and shade of the print. If this goes well, then one can expect better eBooks.

The bottomline: eBooks and books aren’t the same at all. Maybe, in future virtual reality (VR) could develop a bit that all these senses can be satisfied by neural stimulators. And that day, an eBook would be a book. But that day is a bit far from today. And even VR is just a first-order approximation. Even today, we can clearly distinguish between a photograph or painting and its real counterpart. That’s because the photo or painting is a 2-D, limited colour variation, projection of the subject. That’s one step. As we have faster public processors (like the ones AMD or Intel makes), we’ll be able to satisfy higher orders of approximation to the real world. One day, our body might not be able to justify any difference between the real world and the approximation that we have created (seen The Matrix series?). That day, an eBook will be a book, and will save a lot of manufacturing costs. If such an infinite order VR becomes true, I have an open question: Will we prefer the delusions we’ve created or real world will, even then, stir wonder in us?

P.S. The reason I mentioned iPod, somewhere in the post, is that, say, an iPod costs about 10,000 bucks (I know that I am being optimistic, but, hey), then 9000 is the design payback, only about 1000 is the component and assembly cost. Those guys get paid for being paranoid about design features! This happens with all mass consumer electronics.

 

A Treatise On Squirrels (and a lot more)……

I live in a housing colony. What distinguishes this particular building from the rest around the neighbourhood (if you could call it that), is that it is taller than most buildings in the locality. About 6 floors tall (you’ve not seen my locality, I presume). Second is that it has been painted with a mosaic paint that is paint made up of dried paint chips of various colours, mixed in a random, though, a pleasingly uniform mixture. The overall colour of the mixture from a distance looks like a pleasant shade of brown. That’s not necessary. What’s more interesting is that those mosaic painted walls are rough, containing various layers of chippings overlapping on each other in a grainy fashion. Believe it or not, it may seem smooth enough for us humans, not much concerned with something away from our daily routine lives.

Nature doesn’t care much about humans or their mundane constructions. Nor do Squirrels.

For those guys, our building is just an extension of their life from a tree. A lot of branches (read: walls) that look really broad and rigid. Having a terrace garden on the second floor extension helps magnify the similarity. A lot of crevices and cavities that resemble or mimic natural tree cavities. The terrace garden I was talking about gives them the feel of ground (although elevated 2 storeys above), near a tree. Ample supply of food in that “ground”, and comparatively, a rather safe environment. But don’t mistake me, that safe environment is “safe” only for the reason that they have lesser predators to worry about, and also that they have a decent quantity of food readily available. That actually makes them more vulnerable to surprise attacks from cats and some crows (they can fend off crows easily; furthermore, those “surprise” attacks are rather common for normal ground squirrels). Ok, coming back to the similarity description, that terrace garden contains plants and a lot of grass, that helps them see the whole structure as nothing more than a weird, but rather homely, tree.

I’ve got a hypothesis. Most squirrels in their lifetime, stick to only one or two trees. Therefore, they grow up with those trees together. When, say a new branch grows, they see it grow every day, and hence, get used to going around it quickly. Or, if they move out of a tree (in a manner of speaking), to a newer one, they do not do it abruptly. They keep moving in between those trees for many days, slowly drifting more towards the newer tree, and then finally abandoning the older one. It is seldom that easy for humans. Those guys are actually smarter than we are. This can be seen in my building, when there is some new construction, they get confused, and sniff around that area a lot of time before they actually start going around that area. This happens often when someone installs a new A/C or when some plumbing work is done.

It gave me the shock and amusement worth a lifetime when I discovered that squirrels live in nests. They painstakingly build their nest with soft straw and fibres collected meticulously over a long period of time. This explains who started ripping off bits of cotton off an old pillow we kept outside our balcony. Their nests are rather complex, considering that it has specific sized “compartments” or “rooms” for baby squirrels and their mother. They generally build their nests in a discreet cavity of the building. I suppose it’s only human nature to show off their houses, not the squirrels, no sir. (we have lesser predators to worry about, actually no predators, except some co-humans called neighbours.) Those “nests” are called dreys. These dreys are rather soft and delicate as compared to many bird-nests (no offence to bird-watchers; it is in the nature of the squirrel, as Aristotle would have said. But Aristotle being himself didn’t concern himself with “earthly” squirrels/matter. If he had concerned himself with squirrels, probably science would have progressed faster.)

Baby squirrels look almost with fat lizards, with a hair-less tail, rotund bodies, and closed eyes. Yes, many rodent babies do not open their eyes for a considerable period after birth. Mothers bring them food from somewhere to the nest and has to feed them. This is one of those examples of early and strong bonding between mother and children. Typical mammalian behaviour. These babies only know to run, and learn climbing pretty quickly. Probably being a squirrel means running is in your blood. Most squirrels can climb faster than they can run. That’s their only defence: Running and Climbing. When they are not running or climbing, they are generally sleeping. They are most vulnerable during that. It probably explains the discreet choice of the nesting area.

By the time these guys come out of their nests, these babies are now developed young squirrels. A long formed, and bushy tail, small bodies with proportionately longer and leaner limbs, and a curiosity that is common even among human children. Mothers keep a watch on their children for a while. For example, there is a nest near my window. The mother does not let the children out of sight and out of the window sill area, where those guys are learning to see a bit of the outside world. It’s the same with humans, children are offered a protected and controlled environment by their parents, which they feel for a while, is the outside world. Later in life, these guys learn to venture out on their own, look for their own food, find safe spots for living, and do other squirrel-stuff.

Ok, why did I describe my building at the very beginning? I mean, what’s so special about its paint, and what’s it got to do with squirrels? As I said, the paint seems smooth to us, but in the milli-scale has got dents and crevices which a squirrel nails can comfortably cling to. And mosaic paint is such an ideal substitute for tree bark. And thus, our building is a virtual tree for them. (even for us, as we’re supposed to have descended from our arboreal ancestors.) Thus, my building has a considerable number of squirrels (and yeah, why do they call it a “building” when it’s already built?).

A wild squirrel’s life is governed by the average distance of the food from the tree, the closer the food the more chances of a longer life. The farther it goes from its home tree, the more the danger  of it being hunted down by an efficient hunter (read: cats and dogs). A squrrel’s lifetime is an epic tale of struggle between obtaining food and evading dangers. So, in my building, they’ve got lesser predators which can hunt them (on second floor), and also, I forgot to mention, many huge trees to in which many squirrels live and come to the second floor garden for food. For these guys, it’s their universe where they’ve got to live.

As a result of the safe environment, there are many old ones too. This is a rarity you can’t generally see in regular tree based squirrels. Also, squirrels chirp. Less people see it, but they chirp for various things like territory announcement, danger calls. One such example that I can give you is that, once, a cat nearly hunted down a squirrel, but, luckily (for the squirrel), it escaped at the last moment. Then, all the squirrels in that area chirped with a common intonation for about half-an-hour. Also, during some particular seasons, males chase females vigorously, probably the mating season, but it also happens one more time in a year (this behaviour is seen in humans too, particularly, some of my batchmates.). And one more oddity some squirrel-watchers will see is that many squirrels (actually most) are rather slow for this particular species. This is probably because of the safe environment that’s been given to them, and there is a considerable proportion of veteran squirrels.

From one fine day onwards, one of my human neighbours started putting out birdseed at a particular location (about 7ft by 7ft square), for pigeons and parrots (there’re many parrots in my particular locality). These squirrels started harvesting this continuously replenishing source of food along with the birds. For some reason, squirrels get along with pigeons (grey ones, not the ones like “masakalli” in Delhi 6; grey pigeons are an invasive species.), but not with the parrots. These guys always tackled and hit the parrots often. But parrots are damn intelligent. They started having their share of food before complete sunrise when not many squirrels had food. Squirrels have food in groups; that’s their strength against a skilled predator. And in that 7×7 location, not more than 7 squirrels could peacefully have food. Put an eight one, and there is a mass rearrangement driving one  squirrel out. Add a pigeon or a parrot, no difference. Add an eight squirrel and Boom! Maybe it’s their social structure. I say it is better than ours (not many who believe it, but ardent squirrel watchers will.)

These guys are smart. They know exactly where the boundary between their grounds and human houses are. Through binoculars, I have seen that even when a person isn’t present, they think twice about and before they try entering in a human house. Experience, I guess. They’ll at most, come near the balcony to commute toward some other part of the building. Also, they recognize some humans. They learn very quickly; they’ve learnt not to fear me up to a distance of 1 feet, but other neighbours scare them very quickly. They are lesser intelligent than mice and rats, but for their own good. They recognize each other through smell, and communicate (probably) bilaterally through nose and mouth movements. Mass communication channel is reserved for their high-pitch, high-intensity chirps. Fun fact: while chirping, each of their chirp pulse is accompanied by a tail-twitch or tail-rise, probably to signal the position of the broadcast.

As I said earlier, these cat-attacks confuse them often, as  they are in our building. It’s their universe. It’s what they feel they live in and care about. As baby squirrels learn to see the world as localized place with their mother seeing them, the adults see it as a building and a bunch of trees. Not one step further. Their sense of universe ends there, what lies beyond is beyond their scope of thought. This seems ridiculous, doesn’t it?

Why? Why do you, the reader, think you know the world better? You’ve been brought up world-proof by your parents, and continue to live in what you think is your “world”. You’ve, like me, not seen many things in this world. For even those who think they’ve seen everything, they’ve seen nothing over the protective blanket of atmosphere, over a rocky, watery world we call “earth”. Those who have seen that are reminded of their humble origins on this third planet from the sun.

These small, insignificant to many, squirrels tell us many things about ourselves we take for granted. Never underestimate the power of nature to stir our imagination, and remind us that we are a part of it. Whatever we are today is a outcome of millions, correction, billions of years of work by nature against entropy. Respect that. Save the planet, when you have the time.

 

So, It Isn’t Supposed to Be “Turtles All the Way Down”??

With or without the quotes, we seriously know that it isn’t. I mean, with quotes, you can see that my blog name happens to have “shoulders” instead of “turtles”. And without the quotes, we already we know that earth isn’t suppported on huge turtles (or tortoises). By the way, those huge turtles are called “Terrapins”. (Surprisingly, “Terrapin”, “Unicorn” or “Pegasus” doesn’t produce a wrong spelling indication in Microsoft Word. And boy, “Hadron” creates a spelling mistake. Microsoft only lets you write those things which do not exist. To be on the safe side, probably……. )

For a good idea of what a supposed world supported over four elephants standing on the back of a tortoise would have looked like, read a bit of the “Discworld” fiction series (by Terry Pratchett).

Ok now, Shoulder??

Ok, where does that stray “shoulder” come from? I don’t know. At least, not now. (Thou shalt be granted that knowledge at a more favorable time)

Once upon a time, there was a plague. A very horrible plague. Because of that some universities closed, and the students were sent home. A certain student, given some time from the humdrum of his routine life, allegedly, saw an apple fall. Yeah, that’s right, it was Isaac Newton. Skipping his biography, I proceed: after acheiving a lot from his life, he said, “If I have seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.”

(Actually, this was written to a letter to Robert Hooke, and is transliterated roughly as, “If I have seen further, it is by standing upon the shoulders of Giants.” Got this in the footnote of an old Resnick and Halliday (1980) that I have.)

Today, Newtonian mechanics happens to be the most basic stuff taught in physics (for proof, see a class IX science textbook). In a typical introductory textbook, they talk about Newton’s three laws, and demand to ask questions like, “Which of the laws is the most basic one?” , and “What does momentum measure?” Also, a student has to remember stuff like, “Force is defined to be the rate of change of momentum.” (I still remember my classmates encircling this sentence in their textbooks, writing V.Imp. next to it.)

When a student is through this, they proceed on to, what is called, more “advanced” topics in mechanics. They learn all this stuff by heart, and at the end of final exams, they won’t remember a single thing. Boy, they don’t even know what they have missed.

Okay , I got too much deviated from what I wanted to say. The point is, there is a lot of stuff in Newtonian mechanics itself to cover before you can actually even claim to “know” Newton’s Laws. Even today, a lot of mechanical engineering is just based on those simple fundamentals set up by Newton, and the ideas that developed before him. Thanking an example, the idea of using a flywheel in a crank-shaft to keep a wheel rotating during the bottom-most and top-most points of rotation (in the internal combustion engine), dates back centuries before Newton (as per what I’ve heard). There were many more such essential ideas. Galileo’s experiments with a wheel going down a ramp, and him measuring the time taken to traverse the ramp, is such an example. Those were the shoulders that Newton needed (I mean, in addition to the ones he already had). Those were his famed giants. Galileo was such a giant.

To understand anything at all in physics, one must stand on Newton’s shoulders. Somebody did. Only after that was a lot of stuff developed in science and engineering.

Developments aside, how can you expect to make any progress unless your descending generation knows it? That’s true. Teaching is more important today than anybody ever thought. Do you know that there is a section for “Physics Education Research (PER)”, in some American Jorunals? There are even entire journals devoted to “Science Education”.

Recently, I asked a professor, “Sir, What do you need to go through to do physics pedagogy?”

He replied, “For that, you need to pronunce it correctly first!” (I pronunced pedagogy as “pay-duh-gau-gi”), going on, he added, “It is called pay-duh-gau-gee.” My instinctive reply was to repeat (monkey-see-monkey-do), “Okay sir, pay-duh-gau-gee. What do I need to do in order to work on physics pedagogy?” “You mean, you want to teach physics? The best way to become a good teacher ,” he said, “is to know your subject well.”

That is, in the sequence, what I want to emphasize on. In order to teach the subject to ones students, that person, in turn, must know his subject well. Somebody, in order to teach Newton’s ideas to 9^th graders, must have been well versed in physics. That somebody must have learned the subject just too well. For that, the person will have known to apply those ideas to his/her of work. (Just because I have written “his/her” and not “her/his” doesn’t make me gender biased. Some of the best physicists like Lise Meitner, Marie Curie, were women, and their work tells us a lot more………..you get the idea, don’t you?)

Back to the general theme, in order to teach young people about such a wonderful idea, they in turn, must have been standing on someone else’s shoulders (probably their teachers or some good authors). Those people make it big because they actually know and enjoy whatever they are teaching. That enthusiasm is, in turn, reciprocated by their students, who go on to become the future of science and engineering (many other become managers and CEO’s, but, that’s a different essay, not this one).

That’s why, its Shoulders all the way down……..Down from your teacher, to the book writer……….down a few more generations to Newton, who himself admits standing on Giant’s shoulders. Its Shoulders All the Way Down.

References & Acknowledgements: There is a book by Donald Simanek and John Holden called “Science Askew”. There they use the statement by Newton in a parody, where Archimedes says, “Give me a place to stand, and I will move the earth.” They humour about what Archimedes would have stood on and what he could have used as a lever. The excerpt is as follows:

“Turtle physics

In pre-scientific times the Hindus pictured the world as supported by elephants who had nothing better to do than to stand on the back of a huge turtle. We view such ideas with amusement today. They are interesting as history, literature and metaphor, but they are certainly not scientific models.

The eager student inquires of his master ‘‘What holds up the earth?’’ His wise teacher, steeped in the wisdom of the ancients, answers: ‘‘The earth is a flat disk supported on the strong backs of many elephants.’’

The student ponders this, then asks, ‘‘But what do these elephants stand upon?’’ ‘‘They stand on the back of a very large turtle.’’ ‘‘But doesn’t this turtle need something to rest upon?’’ the inquiring student asks. ‘‘It sits on another turtle, in the very same manner as the first,’’ the all-wise teacher replies.

‘‘Well, then,’’ the student says, ‘‘The same question arises as before: What does this turtle rest upon?’’

‘‘And the same logic must apply as before. The turtle sits on another turtle, which sits on another turtle, and from there on it’s turtles all the way down.’’ The student is quite impressed by the consistency of this logic, but is still not satisfied. ‘‘Great master, the enormity of this system puzzles me. Please tell me, should not the same logic apply in the other direction? If each turtle has a turtle on its back,might there also be turtles all the way up? And what need is there for the elephants?’’ The wise teacher smiled, and replied ‘‘You have much to learn, my boy. You have begun the infinite search for ultimate truth. You can only progress toward this truth by asking questions. But you will learn that each answer leads to another and more subtle question, which then leads to another. Great truths lie at each end of this chain of questions and answers, but they are ultimately no more profound than the chain itself.’’

When Archimedes was trying to ‘‘sell’’ folks on the idea of his law of the lever, he boasted ‘‘Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth!’’ But what would he stand upon? Sir Isaac Newton supplied the metaphor when he said: ‘‘If I have seen farther than others it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants.’’ Voila! The gedanken experiment is solved! Archimedes could stand on the shoulders of his philosopher-predecessors, Aristarchus, Euclid, Epicurus, Theophrastus, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Democritus, Zeno, Ptolemy . . . And it’s philosophers all the way down. He would need more than something to stand on. He’d need a fulcrum as well. Perhaps an infinite stack of turtles would make a good fulcrum.”

This was from pages 101, and 102 of that book. Curious isn’t it? Stephen Hawking’s version goes as follows:

“A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: “What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.” The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, “What is the tortoise standing on.” “You’re very clever, young man, very clever,” said the old lady. “But it’s turtles all the way down!” ”

This was from the 1^st page of the 1^st chapter of the book “A Brief History of Time” (I agree, I don’t remember too well about texts that I have read, but my recollection was fair enough.)

Either way, this just seems to be a story, and has no roots that either authors could justify. (There is this Hindu concept of “Diggaja” which are the 10 elephants representing the 10 principal directions, but really I don’t know what they meant by a Hindu picture.) Whatever be the case, these are just stories. This is the first thing I wanted to show.

The second this is: there is an independent discussion in the same book “Science Askew” about the literary usage of the phrase “On the shoulders of Giants.” Here goes:

“A quote note

We couldn’t resist sprinkling our favorite quotations throughout this collection. It’s helpful to know who first uttered or wrote a quotable quote, something about the person, when he or she lived, and when it was said. So we have tried to indicate those facts where we’ve been able to track them down. Unfortunately, some quotes, too good to omit, came from sources which provided no more than a name, and we were unable to identify the author. To those folks (if they are still living) we apologize, and welcome additional information from anyone who knows more about them. Quote collections are notoriously prone to errors. Any clever saying someone invents which is catchy enough to be widely quoted was very likely said by someone earlier. When a celebrity utters a popular, commonly known saying, that person is forever after credited with it. Consider the often-repeated comment of Newton in a letter to Hooke, 5 Feb. 1676. (Corres I, 416): If I have seen further [than others] it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants. Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) English mathematician and physicist. Compare: Pygmies placed on the shoulders of giants see more than the giants themselves. Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus) (39–65) Roman poet, born in Spain Much later, in the 12th century Bernard of Chartres observes: Nos esse quasi nanos gigantum humeris insidientes. (We are as dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants.) Robert Merton did a comprehensive study of this quote, finding 26 other authors who used it between the time of Bernard and Newton. And that’s only those persons who achieved some literary recognition.”

This is an excerpt from the Acknowledgements section of that book. Co-incidentally, this is my acknowledgements section for them. Next to this article was cartoon showing people standing on top of each other, one upon another’s shoulders (obviously). The caption to this cartoon was “Its shoulders all the way up” and was meant to poke fun at that phrase. I borrowed it, and changed ‘up’ to ‘down’, because, my purpose was to show that all we are learning today is due to innumerable contributions from people before us, more than 90% of whom we do not even know. By the way, the phrase “shoulders all the way down” reminds me of the festival in which people form human towers in order to get a shot at a pot of butter placed about 3 to 4 storeys above them. So, these were the main thing that led me to naming my blog that way. Thanks for reading.

Do read the Wikipedia page on “Turtles all the way down”.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

 

Isn’t It Supposed to Be “Turtles All the Way Down”?

So, you have stumbled on my blog (Oh yeah, MY blog), and also happened to have read the first page of  ”A Breif History of Time”.

Great,….so you know something about that story which goes “Bertrand Russell was once lecturing on how earth is a sphere and how gravity keeps us stuck on to the surface….”, then an old lady in the audience refuses to believe that earth is spherical and retorts by saying, “Young Man! You are wrong. Earth is a flat surface supported by four elephants standing on a turtle.” Calmly, Bertrand Russell contra-questions, “What is the turtle standing on?”, for which her reply is, “You are very clever, young man, but , its turtles all the way down.”

So, Having read this, you ask, “Isn’t it supposed to be turtles all the way down?” (this sounds funny without the italics )

Indeed, Why is it not?……………………..