Pakistanis Do Not Need To Study Relativity

Roger Penrose the English Scientist had once visited Pakistan to give some lectures on new developments in relativity. On his return to the West, Ray Sachs another well-known Physicist remarked, "why do you want those poor people to do useless things?" S. Chandrasekhar, the Indian-born astrophysicist, recounting this incident in his biography, remarked that he was so infuriated that he rudely said to Sachs "Do you mean, relativity is good for us, you and me, but the Pakistanis are not good enough for it?" Chandrasekhar, of course, was proud of the fact that he had a Nigerian student who returned to his country to teach relativity.
This is the curse laid upon us by the prosperous and egalitarian West. That it is more important for the starving poor in forgotten countries to fill their wretched stomachs and eke out a miserable living, so that one day, if at all, they may be lifted out of poverty and only then be initiated into a life of the mind. This disdain for the possibilities latent in humans anywhere, be they African or European or Asian, marks the close-mindedness of the many Western scientists I work with on a daily basis here in America. It is a sad statement to be made about people who have so much access to information about their own past, that they forget their own humble beginnings. Steeped in the poverty and wretchedness of the dark ages and the Renaissance, some of the giants of science aspired to a life of the mind, at the expense of their stomachs, and reached astonishing heights of creativity. This fact, they forget so easily. What would the world be today if Kepler and Abel and so many others had lived their lives ploughing fields, shoveling manure, and serving the Lords of the Manor? Very few of them were high born and most lived under conditions worse than those that existed in India or Pakistan.
I have long puzzled over this attitude, and was rudely reminded of it yesterday when I happened to read about the Simputer. This is a small hand-held computer designed by a group of young people in Bangalore, India. Unlike other hand held devices, this one includes some novel features such as voice translation into Indian languages. The success of this device is a moot point, but it underscores something important: it was a product of the mind, devised by young people who live a life of the mind. They may not have access to skiing slopes and bungee-jumping or other instant thrills of the rich West, but in the universe of the mind and ideas, they are no worse or better than their intellectual counterparts here. To enquire into the utility of such activity is to miss this important point. Rather it is important to recognize that even the very wretched and poor have ideas, although rarely the means to pursue them. It would also be superficial to ask what more could be achieved if they had the means? I say only, that the mind exists, that creativity exists, that there is a burning desire to engage in intellectual activity in this supposedly wretched part of the world.
A popular website named slashdot.com engaged in banal and superficial debate on the value of such activity. Most made the same argument as Ray Sachs, but some took great delight in rubbing in the fact that the wealth of the West gives them the right to indulge in such activity, but that it is obscene and inappropriate for an Indian living in India to do so. Once again they forget that they inherited wealth by chance, and they could easily have been born on the wrong side of the poverty line or the color line.
However, and more importantly, there is a false dichotomy here that is often missed. Reduced to simple terms the argument seems to be: Either you are rich and can indulge in a life of the mind, or you are poor and must focus on lifting yourself out of poverty. Lifting yourself out of poverty means various things, such as devising simple farm equipment to help the peasant, stop reproducing in such large numbers, provide vaccines for cholera and typhoid, etc. It does not include intellectual activity. That this is a false dichotomy is proved by the history of the West. They would not be what they are today, if they applied the same argument to their own past. It is well known that the wealth of the world from the beginning of the Christian era till about 1750 belonged to the East, with India and China alone accounting for more than half of it. How dare Newton think? How dare he indulge in the wasteful luxury of intellectual activity when Europe was being swept by the plague, and people had no decent sewage system and were dying by the millions for want of proper hygiene and health care? The absurdity of this argument is manifest. Rather, we marvel and are in awe of Newton for his courage, persistence, and achievements, and are richer for it today.
Let me not labour on the wondrous things that are possible in the East, but let me instead take their arguments home, and show what they really mean. Even in the prosperous West today, there are entire groups of people, who cannot aspire to the achievements of a Penrose or Sachs or Chandrasekhar. Forget the colored minorities living in inner cities. Even within affluent middle-class families women are discouraged from becoming scientists and mathematicians, because it is not the role women are supposed to play. What difference then, between a Pakistani woman whose stomach must be filled, and a Western woman spending her life barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen? The latter is infinitely worse because she is put down by society although it has the means, while at least the former is forced by circumstances because she has no opportunities. I do not want to carry this argument further, because it is simplistic and rather dangerous. In all fairness, the lot of women in South Asia is much worse than that of their counterparts in the West. But the point I am making is that, those who are rich have little right to prescribe what the rest of us must aspire to. Certainly, they may mock us for wanting to build a theme park, but to mock us for aspiring to a life of the mind? Do you not see the condescension and racism in this argument?
False dichotomies by definition exclude the middle. Even in the most desperate of conditions, humans by virtue of their individuality, reach astonishing heights of creativity. In a sense, society is an advancing army progressing to improve our condition, but it does so in an idiosyncratic fashion. Progress is achieved because individuals by the thousands perform creative acts in diverse fields such as science, the humanities, and the arts. This is an army that sweeps forward on all fronts, and thus, society progresses on all fronts. No activity, that of the peasant or the intellectual, is any more or less important than that of the other. They are all necessary and they are sufficient. The common thread among intellectuals is that they live a life of the mind, irrespective of the nature of their profession, and irrespective of their condition. Perhaps the most compelling example of an individual who craved a life of the mind was Ramanujan, the mathematician. Born in poverty in Southern India, he overcame enormous obstacles, with the help of the English mathematician G. H. Hardy (a champion of the underdog), to blaze a trail in mathematics. His struggles and his passion for mathematics are still a source of inspiration to many in India and elsewhere. This is the most important legacy of people like Ramanujan. Irrespective of our condition, we can still hope and strive, even if our chosen field produces no visible benefit to our society. Ramanujan cared not one whit about applying his work to alleviating poverty. All he wanted was “leisure to pursue mathematics”. This single-minded pursuit of our calling, our response to our inner voice without reference to our physical condition, is what ennobles human activity. This is what makes progress possible. To exclude intellectual activity from the lives of the poor, or to denigrate it, is to focus on their bodies and put their brains in a jar.
I am a practising neurophysiologist. The work I do is completely useless in terms of applicability. No Indian is going to live a longer life because of my work. There are no drugs or prosthetic devices that will emerge from my work, or prevent mental illness. I study information processing in the brain. It is a completely useless and wholly intellectual activity. I pursue it because the challenge of understanding the brain is exciting and makes me so restless, that sometimes I cannot sleep because my mind is filled with questions and ideas. The anxiety is great, and often I do not eat enough, have wrecked my marriage, and take no exercise at all. Probably I will die young because I smoke too much, work and think all the time, and sleep very little. But by golly! I am having a whale of a time, and I defy anyone to tell me that I come from a poor country and should be helping my starving fellow citizens. I do not care if my work is remembered or forgotten. All I care for is that, in this tiny space and time given to me, I have lived a life of the mind, and have influenced a few to do the same. And bugger all who tell me otherwise.
Here are some useless topics that I suggest the readers pursue. They require nothing but intellect, and will be of no practical use whatsoever to society. Pakistanis and Indians alike, and indeed poor people anywhere, should study them and come up with useless conclusions: Model theory, String theory, evolution, the neural basis of sensory processing, animal behavior, computational complexity, analytic number theory, theory of black holes and relativity, gravitational waves, cosmology and the origin of the universe, the structure and dynamics of galaxies and other large astrophysical bodies, theory of games applied to animal communication, linguistic theory particularly the theoretical aspects such as syntax, morphology and phonology, the origin of life, parthenogenesis, weakly electric fish, how bats use sonar, how moths counter bat sonar, mimicry and deception in the insect world, and the ultimately useless question: what is consciousness.
I sincerely hope that Pakistan or India or some tribe in New Guinea or Rwanda produces several researchers in all these fields (many of them women), and teaches everyone a thing or two.