Of Science and Religion…..

Science and religion have been, for a long time, the two pillars of mankind. There is always a struggle between the two with each trying to show its superiority over the other.

I think the difference between science and religion is that religion tries to justify each miracle (constructive or destructive) by god/devil. Science on the other hand tries to give reason to these miracles and reconstruct/ avoid the same.

In earlier days, everything that we now take for granted was a miracle. The blowing of strong winds, hurricanes, rain, rising and setting of the sun were all given a reason through religion. This was why I think old religions had gods for everything. Sun god, wind god, rain god, ocean god, thunder god etc… Eclipses, earthquakes and such were considered works of the devil.

It is interesting to note that even in very old times, people thought about how the universe was formed, how life started, how it is controlled. Not finding a good solution, they attributed it to the creator, the controller etc, who obviously became gods. As science grew, we came to know the real reasons for some of these things, but the religious figures remained. It might so happen that in a few centuries, religion might become obsolete and totally vanish.

But it is not always possible to pinpoint the reason for every occurrence through the rules of science. Science is sometimes left dazzled by miracles. One can Google and find some of these. Though science may be able to answer some of them, not all can be answered, at least with our current knowledge. Does this mean that there indeed is a god who keeps making up miracles so we do not start to discard him totally? Does he give us reasons for the things that occur so we can form a balance between science and religion?

The fight for supremacy between science and religion will always be on. But I think that we need both of them together for a healthy and happy society.

Of Robots

I have this question for long in my mind. When will we be able to make robots as complex and as complete as human beings? I am not saying that Humans are the benchmark to make robots. Humans have only limited capabilities. For example in sensing, we hear only a limited range of sounds, we see only a limited range of electromagnetic waves (which we conveniently call the “Visible Range”).

Still, we do have an excellent machinery inside, which apart from being robust is also efficient. Look at the heart for example. It is so small (total volume 280 ml) yet pumps blood to the whole body, pumping 7200 liters of blood in a day consuming what one would consider very low energy.

But the point to ponder is that humans have come to these levels of sophistication after millions of years of evolution. So, given that robots have been around not more than a couple of hundred years, would it be too much to ask…..??

Mathematics

Now they say great ideas pop up in heads in the bathroom. This I believe is true. So this is what happened there in my head this morning. Not a great idea but just the kind of stuff I like debating about.

Is mathematics a science by itself, or is it a tool which has been developed by engineers to be used with their work. And secondly It is a language that has been developed purely based on our convenience. I would only give 2 examples here to show what I mean.

To show an example of the second point first. Why does our counting system (the decimal system) have 10 digits. What I mean is it could have had 4 and the counting could have gone 1 2 3 10 11 12 13 20 21 22 23 30 ......... Why not? But I think 10 was chosen because we have 10 fingers (which were used for counting) in our hands. So isn't it just convenience. Now why was binary developed. To be used with computers. Why binary? Because computers architecture is based on flip-flops which basically have 2 modes. If we had three way flip-flops, we would have used 'trinary' instead. Now this also serves as an example of mathematics developed by engineers to suit their purpose.

These are just simple examples, I am sure people can give much stronger examples for and against my point. But this is what I think!!

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