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Book Review of Philosophy of Science (At the end of the Twentieth Century) by B V Sreekantan. Bengaluru: Bhavan's Gandhi Centre of Science and Human Values
Get PDFWhat more than Structure do we know?
No full textStructural realism is the view that scientific theories give us knowledge only of the structure of the unobservable world. The view faces an influential objection that was first posed by Max Newman: if our knowledge of the unobservable world were strictly limited to its structure, our knowledge turns out to be trivial, for it amounts to nothing more than knowledge of the cardinality of the world. In this paper, I shall propose a response to Newman’s objection. It shall be argued that in having epistemic access to the intrinsic nature of our conscious experiences—knowledge that structural realists allow for—we have knowledge of what it is to exist as concrete phenomena. With the plausible assumption that the relations of the unobservable world are also similarly concrete, one can address Newman’s objection. I shall further contrast this response to other similar responses that have been proposed, and also address the objection that this response is not available to structural realists
A Strategy for Migrant Workers (NIAS/SSc/IHD/U/PB/10 /2020)
Get PDFThe Covid-19 pandemic has brought sharply into focus the challenge of migrant workers in India’s post 1991 development strategy. While we still do not have meaningful estimates of the number of these workers, the magnitude of their demand to go home during the pandemic points not just to the fact that there are millions of them, but also to the reality that they do not see the cities, where they have spent many of their working years, to be their homes
The Urban Service Workforce Will Be the Next Casualty of the COVID-19 Lockdown
Get PDFSubject to the vulnerabilities of a low-income migrant’s life in the city, many service workers faced hardships as the lockdown came into force and their workplaces closed down
Imran complains of an Indian false flag march, Pakistan responds to the US criticisms on China and CPEC, violence along the Pak-Afghan and Pak-Iran borders, and the Locust threat
Get PDFElectricity (Amendment) Bill, 2020: Inviting a Bigger Crisis
Get PDFThe proposed Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2020 aims to
reduce subsidies and push for privatisation, especially in
the distribution segment of the power sector.
Undertaking structural changes in a core sector at a time
of crisis from the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic
effects defies logic. The proposed amendments are not
only anti-people, but they also fail to address the
long-term crises in the sector and will only accelerate its
deterioration. The central government must hold off on
passing any hasty legislation on the subject and adopt a
more scientific and less ideological approach to deal
with the travails of the power sector
Towards Blue Economy: A Perspective
Get PDFThe term ‘Blue Economy’ emphasizes essentially an ocean-dependent economic development to
improve quality of life of people. India committed to advance the “Blue Economy” and several programs have been
initiated to promote blue economy in the country. One of the important components of promoting blue economy is
to have adequate information about sea bed and mineral resources, in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), Legal
Continental Shelf as well as High Seas. Apart from placer minerals on the coast, we need to explore for minerals,
such as manganese nodules, polymetallic sulphides and cobalt crusts in High Seas. The availability of gas hydrates
on our continental shelf has huge potential to satisfy our ever-increasing energy requirements. We need to invest in
developing technology and human resources to utilize these resources. At the same time, the development of offshore
mineral and energy resources will need setting up of infrastructure facilities on the coast. As coastal zone is vulnerable
to many hazards such as cyclones, storm surges, tsunamis, coastal erosion, sea level rise, etc., an assessment of coastal
vulnerability to understand risks involved, has to be undertaken. Various environmental data will be required to utilize
ocean resources. An institutional framework for implementing activities related to blue economy to be set up so that
investments in building infrastructure, developing human resources, and setting up governance system shall pay rich
dividends for future generations and ensure sustainabilit
Space Newsletter: Science, Technology, applications 2(1)
Get PDFWith each passing day, Space Data is phenomenally
increasing leaps and bounds. The reasons are obvious.
Today the satellite services are ever expanding without
stop. Satellites are getting sophisticated with volley of
sensors, cameras, scanners etc providing new data.
With more nations deploying satellites , the satellites
services are becoming affordable for many nations.
Science and engineering focussed Space exploration,
journey to Mars and beyond have their own implications
in adding more to the space data. “Big Data analytics via
satellite will generate close to $17.7 billion in cumulative
revenues by 2028, owing to increasing demand from
end users in the Transportation, Government & Military,
Energy and Enterprise sectors.” (Ref:NSR’s Big Data
Analytics via Satellite, 3rd Edition (BDvS3) report, June
2019). According to this report ,space imagery data
is predicted to grow at an impressive 23.5 percent
Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) through to
2027. What a great opportunity today to our scientists,
engineers, entrepreneurs ! Sametime, we do not know
how many people fully understand the large scale use and implications of this big data. Recent advances in
robotics, ML, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are readily
available today to unravel the hidden secrets of
volumes of the petabytes of space data and to provide
value added big space data capabilities bringing out
altogether new perspectives. Satellite Operations are
being revolutionised using ML applicable to any orbit
(GEO, MEO and LEO). Today we have space application
related computational processors, and dedicated AI
chips. Through machine learning embedded flight
software, we can objectively automate satellite and implications of this big data. Recent advances in
robotics, ML, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are readily
available today to unravel the hidden secrets of
volumes of the petabytes of space data and to provide
value added big space data capabilities bringing out
altogether new perspectives. Satellite Operations are
being revolutionised using ML applicable to any orbit
(GEO, MEO and LEO). Today we have space application
related computational processors, and dedicated AI
chips. Through machine learning embedded flight
software, we can objectively automate satellite while protecting fragile natural resources on earth
Meditative introspection promotes the First-person’s science of consciousness via intuitive pathways: A hypothesis based on traditional Buddhist and contemporary Monist frameworks
No full textWhat forms the basis for validating any knowledge? Should it be always verified based on the objective and
analytical methods that we adapt according to our progressive advancements in science or is there any other way
of conceiving knowledge? This is the context where modern sophistication should embrace an ancient
perspective. Recently, there have been great advancements in the science of consciousness and meditation.
Meditation received much attention as a practice for wellbeing and as a tool for cognitive enhancement. Even
though, hundreds of objective studies have been conducted on different practices of meditation across different
traditions, there is one essential element missing in almost all of these studies: the discussion of the subjective
experience of meditation. Embracing the traditional insights on meditation, we study this element by defining
meditation based on the concept of introspection. In addition, we hypothesize that introspective meta-awareness
associated with the non-conceptual experience of meditation may result in the conceptual understanding of
natural phenomena via pathways of intuition. The proposed advancement bears implications for the ontological
and epistemological basis of experiential knowledge, as well as, for developing introspection and meditationbased interventions for self and consciousness disorders