On February 4th through the 7th there is going to be a celebration of the life and work of an extraordinarily erudite son of a legendary figure in Goan intellectual history, the Abhimanyu of an Arjun, as someone has said about Damodar Kosambi and his father Dharmanand. Damodar Kosambi was a world-renowned mathematician, historian, indologist and Vedic scholar. Dharmanand Kosambi was a sage in the literal sense, a Pali and Buddhist scholar.
This festival of ideas is also an opportunity to hear what another gifted son of Goa, Vivek Monteiro has to say, presumably, about how science might be an essential thinking tool for everybody. Vivek Monteiro will give a talk on "Science as the cognition of necessity", a proposal with which, I suspect, I would fully agree. I have held him in high regard since my school days, even though I have never met him. I had heard a great deal about him from the late principal of our (his and mine) alma mater, People's High School, Panaji. I was inspired by the audacity of a scholar with a Harvard doctorate abandoning a brilliant career in Theoretical Physics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research to teach Maths and Science to poor kids living in the slums of Mumbai, and then becoming a trade unionist. He, like my school principal Dr. Jagdish Surlakar, who had a doctorate in History, and yet chose to teach high school students in Goa, are embodiments of one of highest ideals of humankind. There is no higher calling, no greater legacy, than educating and inspiring young minds, irrespective of their age and social status, and irrespective of the titles and degrees of their teachers. Nothing in life is more rewarding than witnessing the face of a little boy or girl light up with a flash of genuine insight because of what you said. But it is important to do much more than just regurgitate factual knowledge, as is evident from the abysmal ignorance about biology, evolution and science in general, displayed by many contributors to Goanet. Indeed, Vivek Monteiro is not merely imparting knowledge about scientific facts. He appears to be teaching kids how to think using the scientific method, to generate testable explanations without invoking superstition and the supernatural, and to evaluate evidence in support and against those explanations in an unbiased manner. Please read about all the activities of the amazing organization that he has established recently at the following link: http://www.navnirmiti.org/ Unfortunately, he is not accepting any foreign donations as a matter of policy. Please also note that his name is nowhere to be found on the website. What you are seeing is the selfless pursuit and dispersal of knowledge for its own sake - the high ideal that our school principal aspired for. Cheers, Santosh
