PEREGRINATIONS

Original, novel, hitherto unheard of, unthought of. Why are humans so obsessed with originality? Have we always been so obsessed? It has been said, by these same humans, that whatever needs to be said has been said, whatever has to be written, has already been written, in the scriptures, with Bible, in the Koran. But there too, the claim is not a denial of originality. It is rather an acknowledgement of ideas once original, once revolutionary. It is only a warning that all original thought has been thought already, there is no more to be said. But it has only spurred humans on, has always challenged someone new to think something new, newer still. Whenever man has journeyed far into new and novel places and reached his island of comfort, there have always been some kids who stood at the beach, shaded their eyes and looked at the vast open ocean and said let’s set sail again, find something new, yet again. From the men and women who tramped across the globe in their animal skins to peop...

  Recently chanced upon a discussion on Twitter about how to present science. The contention was whether writing a paper means telling a story or not. Physicists seemed to think that story is for people whose data is incomplete. That set me thinking. I am a reader and teller and listener of stories. If there is no story it does not interest me. If there is no story to tell, it makes me feel inadequate. So, what's the best way to present science? How can there be any science or economics or sociology or history without a story? Mathematics? Now that I do not have an intuitive feel for. Pure mathematics, I don't know whether it lends to a story or not. But everything else that I can think of tells a story. All that we learn new fits into a jigsaw, a tapestry, of something we knew before and something more we anticipate finding. A past, a present and a future. There is usually a question we had, some findings we made and some new questions raised. Some whats and hows and whys and ...