A tribute to rubidium
And to Paul Feyerabend…
Paul Feyerabend
12 posts
Scientists' conduct affects science
Nature News has published an excellent feature by Edwin Cartlidge on the "wall of scepticism" that arose in response to the latest superconductivity claim from Ranga Dias et al., purportedly…
Defending philosophy of science
From Carl Bergstrom's Twitter thread about a new book called How Irrationality Created Modern Science, by Michael Strevens: The Iron Rule from the book is, in Bergstrom's retelling, "n…
Good luck with your Maggi
You know when you're cooking a packet of Maggi noodles in a saucepan, and you haven't used enough water or don't move the stuff soon enough from the pan to a plate once it's done cooki…
Ayurveda is not a science – but what does that mean?
This post has benefited immensely with inputs from Om Prasad. Calling something 'not a science' has become a pejorative, an insult. You say Ayurveda is not a science and suddenly, its loudest…
The real story of 'The Old Guard'
Spoiler alert: Don't read this post if you intend to watch The Old Guard but haven't done so yet. The Old Guard, an action film starring Charlize Theron among others, released on Netflix on J…
The rationalists' eclipse
The annular solar eclipse over South India on December 26 provided sufficient cause for casual and/or inchoate rationalism to make a rare public appearance – rarer than the average person who had deci…
The calculus of creative discipline
Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over world-building. World-building is dull. World-building literalises the urge to invent. World-building gives an unnece…
The alleged politicisation of science
"Don't politicise X" has become the defence of choice for a class of scientists and public intellectuals in India whose class and caste privilege utterly blinds them to various inequitie…
Some thoughts on the Mack/Dorigo Twitter exchange, and Zivkovic, Feyerabend, etc.
Aspirants flock to role models. The 'underlying human' must not jeopardise their conversation by being a dick.…
Can science and philosophy mix constructively?
Quantum mechanics can sometimes be very hard to understand, so much so that even thinking about it becomes difficult. This could be because its foundations lay in the action-centric depiction of reali…
Can science and philosophy mix constructively?
Quantum mechanics can sometimes be very hard to understand, so much so that even thinking about it becomes difficult. This could be because its foundations lay in the action-centric depiction of reali…