Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Remember Kepler’s laws from my earlier series and how they predicted that planets would have elliptical orbits? Then came Newton and his theory of gravitation, predicting that the orbits shouldn’t be perfectly elliptical because, hey, the planets would exert a pull on each other thereby “distorting” the orbit a bit. In his book, The Character of Physical Law , Richard Feynman pointed out a very interesting aspect of the laws of physics: “When a law is right it can be used to find another one… This process has developed into an avalanche of discoveries.” Feynman used Newton’s laws of gravitation to explain things with 2 examples: 1)       Uranus’ orbit didn’t match the predicted “distortion” from the perfect ellipse for Uranus. Did that mean Newton’s law was wrong? Or, was the law right, in which case it implied the existence of a yet-to-be-discovered planet that was causing the “funny behavior”? It turned out Newton’s law was right; and thus we foun...

In his brilliant book, Homo Deus , Yuval Noah Harari talks about the new religion in town, Dataism. What follows may seem tongue in cheek, but it also reflects present day reality and may well be where we are headed. What are life forms, including us humans? “The life sciences have come to see organisms as biochemical algorithms.” Dataism is just Algorithm 2.0, says Harari: “(Dataism) expects electronic algorithms to eventually decipher and outperform biochemical algorithms.” Like all religions, Dataism can “explain” all of human history in a nutshell by giving parallels with its core concepts data and data processing: 1)       More processors -> More population 2)      More variety of processors ->Rise of specialized occupations 3)      More connections between processors -> Writing, money, trade 4)      More freedom to move along existing connections ->Transportatio...

Even at the best of times, the media is never really unbiased on political topics. As Tim Harford wrote back in 2010 , about the British election: “It was a typical election for the newspapers, each one setting out its political stall in its own style… But why do newspapers take strong political positions?... The obvious explanation is that proprietors use papers as political tools… An alternative view is that readers do not want a determinedly unbiased reporting of dry facts, but wish to be entertained and to have our biases confirmed.” Could it be otherwise, wonders Harford: “In a world full of left- and right-leaning customers, perhaps impartiality is a luxury a commercial newspaper can ill-afford.” But outside of election time, the media did try to strike some sort of balance (How far they succeeded is another question). As Barrack Obama joked during one of his comedy routines at the White House: “I admire [CNN's] commitment to covering all sides of a story...just ...

Having gone down the pattern based roads with no success , Johann Kepler was now ready to evaluate Tycho’s data to see what it told, writes Kitty Ferguson in Tycho and Kepler . Kepler analyzed Tycho’s data on Mars in a very innovative way to infer what the orbit of Earth would like to an observer on Mars! To his surprise, he found that Earth too sped up as it moved closer to the Sun. Hence he concluded: “Earth, at least in this regard, is nothing unique. It is just a planet.” Kepler then found the criteria to differentiate between Ptolemy’s and Copernicus’s models: “If in their geometrical conclusions two hypotheses coincide, nevertheless in physics each will have its own peculiar additional consequences.” In other words, the “why” question mattered after all. Kepler could see that the “why” seemed to have something to do with the Sun… But Kepler still felt (hoped?) it was not an either/or choice: “Kepler did not think that mathematical rigor, ideals of symmetry and ...

So Johann Kepler now had Tycho’s data . As Kitty Ferguson wrote in Tycho and Kepler , Kepler was very poor and a devout Protestant in a Catholic dominated society, both of which caused enormous problems throughout his life. Kepler described his nature thus: “There was nothing I could state that I could not also contradict.” Back then, mankind knew of 6 planets. Why 6, wondered Kepler? Why were the orbits at those distances, not others? Why did they have certain speeds and why did those change? As the author put it: “Part of Kepler’s genius was that these questions nagged him.” And: “For him, the most fundamental attribute of nature was geometry.” Sometimes, those very tendencies would led him down the wrong trail… Kepler noticed that there are only 5 “perfect solids”: solids in which all the edges have the same length; and all the sides are of the same shape. Aha, he thought, the reason there were 6 planets was that there are only 5 perfect solids to dictate their r...

Refer to my blog on the planetary models of the old days. This blog, again based on Kitty Ferguson’s Tycho and Kepler , focuses on the first half of the Tycho-Kepler pair, a Danish nobleman cum astronomer par excellence: “Tycho Brahe was renowned throughout Europe as a prince among astronomers and an astronomer among princes.” Tycho believed that “the future of astronomy lay in numerous and exact observations”. To that purpose, he designed sophisticated instruments, many of which required “highly skilled, specialist instrument makers”. In 1572, he saw a new object in the sky, brighter than any other star or planet: -          He determined that it wasn’t a comet. -          He figured it lay beyond the Moon, a contradiction to Aristotle’s point that nothing changed in the regions beyond the Moon. He published all this in a book, De Stella Nova , meaning The New Star. An ironic title given t...

Tycho Brahe and Johann Kepler are one of the great pairs of science. The former collected immaculate data from his observations of the skies; which the latter then analyzed to come up with his famous laws of planetary motion. Very fairy tale like, right? Except that reality was far more complicated, as Kitty Ferguson describes in Tycho and Kepler , her awesome biography of the two men, their personal lives and their science. This blog, the first in a four-part series, explains the prevailing astronomical views before Brahe and Kepler changed our understanding forever. There was Ptolemy’s model, with the Earth at the center, and everything else orbiting the Earth. In this model, planets seemed to slow down and accelerate at times and even reverse direction: this is because we on Earth are moving in a circle while observing the other planets. Hence the concept of epicycles (circles within circles) was added to the model: How did the epicycles help describe the observed m...

Godwin’s Law is a very famous adage of the Internet. It asserts that : “If an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Hitler.” When it comes to using such (or similar) terms about politicians, most people in democracies go overboard. People tend to forget what the blogger Regie said : “There’s a difference between an abrasive leader who makes you uncomfortable …and a despot.” Critics would do well to remember that line the next time they criticize a politician they dislike. And what if a real despot was doing it for the best of reasons, says Regie: “The American president who could’ve actually been likened to Hitler (before Hitler) in some of his methods was …wait for it …Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln broke more constitutional law than any other president in U.S history. He imprisoned political opponents without due process. He suspended habeas corpus. He was personally responsible f...

Anyone who’s seen both the US and Western Europe knows that they are very different places, an ocean apart literally and figuratively. Andrew Sullivan, a Brit journalist who turned American points out the many, many differences . The first difference is the past v/s future looking tendency: “(America) is often simply of an escape from the past into a country addicted to the future… Most nations, especially the England I knew, are defined by history, saturated in its remnants, places where one is never far from the echoes of those who have come before.” That mindset extends into the individual level as well: “(In America) Where you had come from was nowhere near as interesting as where you were going… (as opposed to) the way Europeans defined themselves by what they were rather than what they could become.” This mindset may also explain why America is a melting pot: “I wanted no group identity. I wanted — and I was utterly unconflicted and unembarrassed about this — assimila...

Forget Donald Trump’s policy controversies, though some of them violate even American law! Instead, look at the frequency with which he lies. Why then doesn’t he become the boy who cried wolf, someone (most) people stop believing altogether? Maria Konnikova has this to say : “It doesn’t matter how implausible the statements are; throw out enough of them, and people will inevitably absorb some .” Then there are the “lies” he keeps repeating, which as Goebbels knew, eventually become the truth. But wait, it gets even worse: “Repetition of any kind— even to refute the statement in question—only serves to solidify it.” Then there’s human psychology at play in emotive and polarizing topics: “If false information comports with preexisting beliefs—something that is often true in partisan arguments—attempts to refute it can actually   backfire, planting it   even more firmly   in a person’s mind.” Scott Adams, author of Dilbert, wonders though if there is a metho...

Refer to my previous blog to see how Julius Caesar got eyeball to eyeball with Rome. Based on Simon Baker’s Ancient Rome , the questions were: would Caesar topple the government? Or could a compromise be worked out? The Senate turned to Pompey the Great for help, and granted him sole consulship. It meant that the earlier alliance between Pompey and Caesar was now broken. Meanwhile, spotting the opportunity created by the Roman v/s Roman standoff, the Gauls revolted. Caesar responded with lightning speed. He rode back to Gaul and with his usual ruthless, single-minded, tactical genius as a general, put down the revolt. And then he returned to the outskirts of Italy again. Caesar offered a deal: since he was not eligible to stand for consul again until 10 years from his first tenure, he asked that his tenure in Gaul be extended. Upon his return, he would then stand for consul again. The people’s assemblies OK’ed the legislation: his popularity after the Gaul conquest was sky ...

Refer to my previous blog for the backdrop to what follows, taken from Simon Baker’s Ancient Rome . Pompey the Great was a general whose military brilliance was there to see during his campaigns. He appointed kings here, and struck peace treaties there. Upon his return to Rome, the Senate was terrified: would he and his army seize absolute power? But Pompey had no such ambition. He disbanded his army; but he asked the Senate to ratify the treaties he had signed; and that his soldiers be awarded plots of land. The Senate was in a quandary: “To agree to these terms would be to acknowledge the preeminence of Pompey in the republic. It would confirm that he had won the personal loyalty both of the Roman army and of kings, potentates and peoples in the east.” So they stalled and avoided making a decision. Pompey and his disbanded army were bitter. The decision to not make a decision would haunt the senators soon. Julius Caesar, a high born senator, was a “suave and debonair p...