History and Philosophy of Science
In July this year, the world is celebrating 200 years of Gregor Mendel’s birth, widely accepted as the father of genetics for his discovery of the laws of inheritance. His experiments with peas, published in … Read more
The new Webb telescope has shown that NASA’s $10 billion investment and 26 years are finally delivering their promise: pictures of the cosmos in depth, detail and quality far beyond what we had. The first … Read more
The normally bi-annual All India Peoples Science Congress (AIPSC) postponed by two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was held in Bhopal on June 6-9, 2022. Readers may remember that the All India Peoples Science … Read more
THREE journal publishers have filed a case in Delhi High Court for blocking Sci-Hub and Libgen in India. These two websites provide free downloads of research publications and books to research scholars and students. This … Read more
The story of Indian science generally focuses on the country’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and the scientific institutions that were built to help India industrialise. This story is incomplete, as it does not take … Read more
TWO recent studies on ancient DNA and migrations into South Asia appeared at the same time in two of the most prestigious journals of their disciplines, one in Science, and one in Cell. Both share a number … Read more
INDIA became a republic on January 26, 1950, when the constitution, steered by Babasaheb Ambedkar in the Constituent Assembly, came into effect. It is the constitution that guarantees that all sections of people – irrespective … Read more
THIS year also, the Indian Science Congress held in Jalandhar, covered itself with shame; as it has been doing for the last few years. Venkataramanan Ramakrishnan, the Nobel Prize winning scientist, had called it a … Read more
Most of those who led the charge against science explaining nature, are now surprised that climate-change deniers have stolen their theme song. Immersed in the assault on science, this group of thinkers simply overlooked the … Read more
The Bakhshali Manuscripts, a collection of 70 odd leaves of birch bark, containing a wealth of mathematical methods, have finally been dated. The oldest of the three samples tested was written as early as the … Read more
The belief of Aryan superiority and identifying Aryans with white skin and blue eyes was a strong component of Nazi Germany’s racial beliefs. It was intimately connected to the larger racial construction underlying imperialism. A … Read more
Racism is intimately connected with imperialism and serves as one of its ideological underpinnings. The growth of racism in the West has been historically co-terminus with the growth of colonialism. Colonising Africa, Asia and the … Read more