Fragments of Thought

In the first chapter of David Deutsch 's The Fabric of Reality , titled Theory of Everything , he embarks upon defining the true purpose of science by creating a distinction between knowing and understanding. He argues that while knowing allows one to predict or verify future and past experiments respectively, it does not necessarily contribute to an understanding of why those predictions work. Understanding, on the other hand, seeks to uncover the explanations behind phenomena and thereby bring us closer to identifying the underlying fabric of reality. When Deutsch intends to use the term understand, he means to say "understand everything that is understood." He states the types of scientists that are present in today's world and their respective philosophies:- Instrumentalists : These are people who believe that the primary purpose of scientific enquiry is to predict what will happen to a system, given a set of conditions, via means of equations and further verifica...

Math. A subject, an unusual one, but one that stays in a student's mind for the rest of his life, either with admiration or deep resentment. Most people fall into the latter group, primarily due to the way it is taught since a young age. The fault is not entirely in the student's mind. What schools call math isn't math at all. As an Indian, based on what I have observed, math = arithmetic for 70 - 75% of all people (and that is an understatement). To understand what I am saying, go to any person and ask what comes to their mind when they hear "mathematics," and most will imagine the holy trinity - Numbers, Calculations, and Formulas. Only a few think of creativity , or beauty , or exploration.  Now, this is again not the student's fault but the education system's. Students are 'required' to memorize tables from 2-10 before grade 2, the formulas for area and perimeter before grade 5, the quadratic equation in grade 9 along with trigonometric ratio...