I rarely want to say anything about something which I do not really know about. If I feel strongly about something that I do not quite know, I will probably play different scenarios in my head and evoke different responses. Imagine doing that every time something viral came up, it will be very tiring. I certainly do not want to live my life as such, making one's life revolving around others.
I consciously make the choice of only saying things, mostly when it greatly affects my own personal life. For instance, the last two weeks I get to know some remarks made indirectly about some personal choices I have made on my research. One is from abroad, which is on our choice of picking up topics that are not quite in the mainstream of quantum information, and as such is probably deemed useless to many in the field. Such choice is made because our group is pretty isolated and can't be as fast paced like other more active groups. Until our group grows bigger and more focused, it is difficult to pick a niche that is more popular, without good support. The next thing I got to know is about our new staff intake. The comment there is to select one doing theory, who is not near to my type of research (my guess is mathematical physics). I guess, I can pretty much conclude that my type of work is not really welcomed here. Same old story, the story of my life. Anyway, it is good then that I will be leaving, so that the power brokers can do whatever they wish and gear the local community to their own design.
Moving to a larger scale, the social media has been rife with viral posts about religious personalities making comments about science. Usually, I tend to ignore such posts, reading them only for the sake of awareness of what is going on. My past experience finding science-religion intersections with religious figures, has not been that pleasant, to the point that I concluded it is more meaningful to do our work separately. The viral event that appeared last week, somehow got my attention a little bit more. I decided to listen to the religious preacher (pretty popular) on what he said. After listening for a while, I had to stop because I can't stomach the errors he made and the way he is trying to deceive the audience. I didn't hear or get to the point where he said scientists lie (claimed by some responses). The religious preacher has pretty much decided that scientists are wrong. With respect to the false impression that he is building, that there is dissonance between what is mentioned in the Qur'an and what scientists have to say, one has to clearly differentiate between what is really in the Qur'an and the way he thinks he understood some verses. His challenge to the scientists to investigate what is meant by the Qur'anic verses rings hollow, given that he himself has not quite done this job itself. There are Muslim scientists who have studied the problems he is alluding to, both in the past and at present (see Bruno Guiderdoni, for instance), if he cares to read a little more. Anyway, I feel sorry for those who stood up and defended the religious preacher, without properly understanding the claims on science that he had made. As far as I am concerned, I would prefer to listen to other preachers who are more scholarly in behaviour.
In the issue of geocentric universe versus heliocentric universe, let me recall an experience I had. There was once a student from the Indian subcontinent, who approached me to seek supervision for PhD studies. I asked him what is his interest and he blurted out that he is certain he can prove that the Earth is the centre of the universe. My alarm bells rang off. Not to cut off his enthusiasm, I asked him what is his latest reading on this matter but he seems to be evading to answer this directly but my own perception then is that he only knows Newtonian physics. When I told this story to the late Prof. Twareque, I was allowing the possibility that the student might know that there are theories about cosmic voids of which we (our local galaxy) are probably situated in, and that special situation may give us the observation of an accelerating universe. Prof. Twareque then replied saying that I was giving too much credit to the student. To the student, I redirected the student to other researchers who may have interest on history of science (say on geocentric versus heliocentric debates) or on philosophy and metaphysics, so that he could probably learn better on these, since my interest then was not on those.
So for my relativity class yesterday, I remembered I had the following text in my notes.
I thought of highlighting the issue of geocentric universe versus heliocentric universe. However I did not manage to reach to this point but only taught about Galilean relativity. However I did say to the students, the need for their knowledge to expand, to generalize the knowledge that we had before (in this case it is Newtonian physics). I touched a bit about misconceptions that can arise if the knowledge that one has is limited (say of high school physics or even everyday experience, which are really special cases). I referred to the viral event of the comments on science from the religious preacher (not named) and hope that they get some lessons from the matter.
On yesterday viral news .... aren't people tired of the matter? The ministry and the relevant institution know about it and they are the ones who can act (the rest of us mostly blabber). With Ramadhan coming in a few days, I think we could use some peace and quiet.
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