From SARS to Swine Flu: Who is Laughing All the Way to Their Banks?

The Epidemics Act is promulgated to fight swine flu situation in Maharashtra: news.

Even pigs should know how to respect the laws of the land...!

I WAS a dutiful parent, providing all the mandatory vaccinations to both my children as they were born: In the eighties when my children were born, these were primarily oral polio vaccines and the DPT injections against some scourges which used to take so many lives away and resulted in wastage of limbs.

Every parent I knew used to take all these precautions for the safety of their children, regardless of their background, their religion, etc. And the childbirth was mostly in hospitals and this helped the newborns to get the best possible medical attention and timely vaccinations which helped the eradication of these ailments.

But recent surveys seem to indicate that there is as resurgence of some of these ailments in some parts of Kerala, especially in Malabar. These reports were available for some time and it appears there is a regression in our vigilance against such childhood ailments which could cripple our kids for a life time. It is a dangerous tendency and needs to be curbed.

But why the slippage in our vigilance against such ailment? Some doctors say the media is primarily responsible as they highlight some stray incidents of extremely rare occurrence of side-effects of such vaccination, as a recent Malayala Manorama news report exemplified. They say these reports cause fear in the minds of people and cause them to keep away from vaccinations.

This diagnosis looks silly. As they say such side-effects take place extremely rarely and so reports of such side-effects also need to be extremely rare. And nobody in their right mind could claim that a rare report of a rare incident in one or two news media could have such a major impact on society.

Then what is the real problem?

To my mind, the problem is with our medical care system which has become completely commercialized and profit-oriented. They are looking for as money to make and even vaccinations have now become a good chance to mint money.

This had started in 80s itself when they started administering vaccinations for a large number of new ailments like Hepatitis B, for which I had to shell out a big amount of money. The vaccine was being promoted by a multinational pharmaceutical company and the pediatricians then recommended it strongly. Most parents accepted it, though the amount was often beyond their means. It is well known that a part of this money went directly to the doctors concerned.

Then a few years down the road, the vaccine became locally available and the prices came down drastically and now it seems there is no pressure on the parents to go for it. So what it means is that the medical profession was being a willing tool in the hands of the pharmaceutical industry and the losers were people who were forced to pay through their noses, but the ultimate result was the loss of trust between the medical professionals and their clients.

Of course there were other factors like religious fanatics, naturopaths and many others who kept up a campaign against vaccination for a variety of reasons. But I do feel that what proved to be the real tragedy was the loss of faith in the medical profession.

Now we see reports about a variety of epidemics from time to time from SARS to bird flu to swine flu, and naturally people are concerned. In Pune, where the first swine flu death took place the other day, it is more like panic.

But in spite of the seriousness of the situation, I do wonder whether some of these concerns are over-done, are we not being hoodwinked by a rapacious industry in cahoots with a profession which has lost its ethical moorings, looking for new ways to make a kill selling us cures for a flu which, as some reports say, is as harmful as a common cold in most cases?

My Dalit Servant and a Case of Thermodynamics

SOME TIME ago, Sajan, a friend, was busy setting up his biogas plant in his kitchen. I was one of those who keenly monitored the progress of the effort, and in fact I was disappointed when Bindu came up with a note of dissent, reporting that the plant simply did not give sufficient gas to do the cooking. That was bad. Hence Sajan started hunting around for kitchen waste to refuel his plant.

I was interested in the affair not (only) because all of us are very keen on what goes (wrong) in the other guy's kitchen (and possibly bedroom too.) I had a private motive because I was also having troubles in my kitchen. My problem, then, was a Parishad-type chulha which I had set up that simply did not work.

I talked to many people what was the problem with this chulha, which instead of pumping out smoke through the chimney, was spreading it inside the kitchen making the claim a 'smokeless chulha' somewhat of a misnomer. My wife kept grumbling, and I kept my mouth shut (I was the person who suggested we must have a chulha too!).

Then our servant, a dalit lady who travels from a village to the city to work, said the problem was with the way it was designed: It did not have sufficient space for allowing the smoke to escape into the chimney pipe especially when we kept big pots above it. The problem, then was that of thermodynamics and I decided this was too much of a task for me. I left it at that accepting failure.

But the indifatigable lady was not like me. One day she showed me how to do it. Push it a bit lower and allow more space, and it worked beautifully. Now we cook in it quite often.

I wrote about it because this week I read Sunita Narain, in her Down to Earth column, write about a woman she met in Udaipur, Rajasthan, 25 years ago. She too had such an improved chulha which, however, did not work. What she did was to break it a bit and make it useful, or using our own improved terminlogy, re-engineering it.

I think these incidents are very important and they give us lessons about how to go about improving our people's lives. We need to listen to people who have grassroots level experience, or in other words our technocrats and knowledge-creators need to be a bit more down to earth. Otherwise their wonderful inventions would remain just that: inventions with no practical application.

(For those interested in the Sunita Narain column, see www.downtoearth.org.in)

Here We Go to the Moon...!

India's Chandrayaan-1 blasts off; ISRO says will land an Indian on the moon by 2015: news.

Surely we would have loved a vehicle that would launch us to the seat of power...!

Down Memory Lane:Dr A Achuthan on Early Days of Sastra Sahitya Parishad

YESTERDAY I had a meeting with Dr A Achuthan, an eminent conservationist, pioneer of the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad and a well known environmental activist.

He lives in Kozhikode, where much of his working life was spent, first as a teacher in the Regional Engineering College (now National Institute of Technology), and later as dean of students welfare at Calicut University. When he was dean of students welfare, I happened to be the chairman of the Calicut University Union for a term (1979-80) and so I had occasion to work with him closely those days running the affairs of the union. Even before that I knew him because both his children were with me in Malabar Christian College in late seventies when I served the college union in various capacities.

Yesterday, we were talking about the early history of the Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad and how it evolved into a major popular science movement in India and indeed in the third world, winning international awards in its over 40 years of history.

But in 1962 when it was launched in Kozhikode it was not a popular social movement. It was indeed a movement for the spread of science and science consciousness with books on popular science rendered in Malayalam, with classes for younger generation held in various colleges and schools and for the common people, and other activities which were mainly of an academic nature. He remembered people like P T Bhaskara Panikker, Prof V M N Namboodiripad, Dr K G Adiyodi, Prof M K Prasad, Prof I G Bhaskara Panikkar, Konniyur R Narendranath and others were pioneers in the movement, most of them teaching in colleges in Kozhikode and surrounding areas those days.

One of the major activities was translation of science books and publication of a science magazine, Sastragathi, first edited by P T Bhaskara Panikkar and later by Dr Achuthan. Those days they conducted ten thousand classes in various parts of the state on the topic Nature, Society and Science which addressed the issue of the relation between these forces through scientific and often Marxist point of view.

Dr Achuthan remembers there were contacts with the official CPM leadership even those days, and later this bond became quite strong. "I told EMS that we were doing a service to society which would eventually help the left and progressive forces and hence better leave us with the way we are," he said recalling his conversation with EMS on this aspect. EMS too agreed to this view, he said.

There were problems in the organization in those days too. For example, Dr K G Adiyodi, an eminent scientist, left the Parishad within two years of its formation and Dr Achuthan feels that he left because he thought his contributions were not given sufficient recognition in the organization. It was a feeling of hurt ego that forced him to leave, he said and recalled all his efforts to bring him back to Parishad when they worked together in Calicut University failed to bring any results.

Laughing Gas

The atom smasher, Large Hadron Collider, begins Big Bang experiment; doomsayers say apocalypse is near.

Are you sure we are safe, friend...?

Science, Metaphysics and the Concept of Martyrdom

Religion, Martyrdom and Evolution of Modern Society- part two

John Samuel: This is an interesting issue. Because the questions raised have philosophical (beginning with the question: What is "Self"?"), anthropological and historical significance.

1. ‘Sacrifices' has got a whole range of historical, anthropological and theological interpretations. This must have begun as fertility practice- as human beings began to tame nature. Many such fertility rituals are also linked with menstrual cycle (symbolizing cycle of fertility and cleansing). When religions got institutionalized, such practices have acquired political dimensions (of knowledge, privileges, legitimacy, etc). In more evolved Vedic as well as Semitic religions one can see this.

2. In fact the very notion of Martyrdom is the art of constructing Myth. Though John the Baptist was beheaded, he was not a made so much of a myth. The death and crucifixion of Jesus was indeed made a myth through knowledge (the compilation and editing of the 66 books of Bible), theological interpretations and political process.

3. Every powerful intuition works partly on symbolism and myths. Actually the most popular perceptions of institutions are through signs and symbols (where knowledge and interpretative dynamics are in the background). So the Cross, Om the Crescent, sickle and hammer, etc, become the defining symbols. Apart from this each powerful institution also survive on myths. Such myths get expressed in the form of stories, martyrdom, sacrifices and icons. So Gandhi is more of a myth to the Indian establishment (the very identity of the "nations"- this also convey many things - particularly a whole idea about "tolerant and status-quoist" Hinduism.) Marx is indeed one of the biggest myths of the twentieth century. This art of making myth is a historical, political and institutional process. For example, EMS is now being made a myth. Che is probably one of the most celebrated myths. Martyrdom gives a chance to construct and maintain ‘local myths’. So even the Communist parties have got a hierarchy of martyrs, at global, national, state and local levels.
The Church too survived on sacraments, myths, and festivals- which have global and local dimensions. The entire circus of Sainthood is the most evident form of Institutionalized myth making in the Catholic Church. So Mother Teresa is a social-political construction, which serves the institutional purpose of the Church. She will be made a myth. In fact RSS too follows some of these things. Osama bin Laden has already become a myth.

N P Chekkutty: Now I think the only way we can rationally explain this phenomenon of martyrs and their hold on society is through economic motivation. What they serve is the self-interest of themselves (a wonderful after-life) or their own society (economic well-being, eradication of enemies through divine intervention, social peace, etc, etc, or whatever thing be that you make this sacrifice for.)

But the point is that this thing works only in a kind mythical atmosphere, as John pointed out. What proof do you have that the persons who take upon themselves the role of the sacrificial goat, did get the benefit in after-life or in the case of our own secular ‘sacrificers’, in social well being? We know many people went to gallows with the intention of bringing in a classless, exploitation-less society, but where are we now?

That takes us back to the fundamental question, why do we need to keep this elaborate hoax? Why can't we admit that there is no interest other than self-interest in society and all this talk about making sacrifices, taking the world into a wonderful new age, etc, are simply hogwash?

As a child, reading Dickens' Christmas Story, I was angry with Mr. Scrooge. But he said the truth. There can't be any free lunch and there can't be celebrations without the cost. And there can't be any sacrifices without some real hard, shrewd calculations about the benefits behind it.

Santhakumar: Agree that we must rethink the need for martyrdom in the current context. We do not see much dependence on this practice even among communists these days. But one group, which depends on this now, is the fundamentalists including Islamists. So whether martyrdom is good or not for some specific group (say, Islamists) is a different question. But for the society as a whole, such extreme sacrifices are not needed now. We can have other forms of communicating signals that we are not `free riders' (of the prisoner's dilemma kind).
But some sacrifice and signals of that kind may be necessary. For example, in international treaties, there are genuine arguments that some important players should signal that they are ready to take pro-active actions (including the bearing some others' cost) to motivate others. There are many situations when people do not take up the self-interest option even when they can, and are aware of it. This serves some important coordinating function. There is a substantial set of literature, including experiments, to show that normal people behave more nicely than the predictions of self-interest make out. (A famous experiment is the dividing the pie game - where two people are dividing say Rs.10 given to them by some external agency. If one is designated as the first mover, and only one division is allowed, FM can offer any amount to the other, since the other has no other option. But it is shown that if FM gives say only 50 paise, the second person do not take it, even though it is rational for him to accept it. Thus he is willing to sacrifice the 50 paise to signal something. In many such experiments, the equilibrium seems to be somewhere around 6:4, the first mover taking 6 and giving 4 to the other. This is strictly beyond the self-interest based predictions.

But in our writings, we argue for designing institutions based on the assumption of self-interest. This is for another reason. An institution designed with self-interest assumption works well, in most cases, even if some are not self-interested. However, an institution designed with the assumption that people are altruistic collapses, even if one behaves in a self-interested manner. Thus assumption of self-interest is very much useful in designing institutions, even though many people behave in a not so strictly self-interested manner on many occasions.

Satchidanandan: How much distance from Martyrdom to Suicide? What is the relationship between Chance and Martyrdom? What if someone becomes a martyr without even wanting to be one? What if martyrdom is thrust upon someone?

Some years back, while trying to understand the famous Kayyur revolt and the martyrdom of those young rebels that glorified it, a group of people engaged in writing the script for a John Abraham film on Kayyur, collecting all possible data and information from the survivors and books, confronted these questions; it was a blind alley; it choked them; they could not move forward without solving these existential questions. It was not only a financial crisis that stopped the film, but also this philosophical crisis that caught those unfortunate people- now let me say 'us'- between laughter and tears.

M P Chandrasekharan: Chekkutty's point that there is nothing other than self interest comes very close to the truth. Self interest begins from the person, extends to the spouse, children, parents, and the circle widens including friends, neighbours, community, caste, religion, nation, etc. There is a continuum of self interest around every one of us, with decreasing intensity as the point moves away from the person. When many individuals are put together, these self interests of different intensities work 'for or against' one another and create a ‘field’ similar to the electromagnetic field. It should be interesting to develop a field theory and a mathematical model.

I don't think martyrs come up on their own. The society around them works them to a frenzy until they are ready to annihilate themselves. Potti Sriramulu who died in his hunger strike to get statehood for Andhra Pradesh asked for food at the end which his followers promptly refused. Nehru conceded, Andhra became a State and Sriramulu a statue in the town centre.

N P Chekkutty: Here is a very interesting quote about martyrs, which we can extend to the suicide bombers too:

Tertullian boasted to one Roman magistrate in North Africa that killing Christians only increases fervor while inspiring more people to join them: "The more you mow us down, the more we multiply; the blood of the martyrs is seed" for the church. When certain Christians questioned the value of martyrdom, Irenaeus denounced them as "heretics," while Tertullian mocked them as cowards...

Hope you will remember these gentlemen: They were the two important bishops of the Church in the second century who pushed ahead with martyrdom and violence of a self-inflicted kind, on which they built up the Church. In the process, they brushed aside and even decimated those who asked questions, those Doubting Thomases who wanted an alternative path, a path that could lead to a more humane church. In fact reading about these suppressed texts, like the Nag Hammadi texts that include the Gospel of Judas, one comes across a very lively intellectual debate within the Church in those early days immediately after the crucifixion of Christ.

But it took the Church about 1500 years for coming to grips with the problem, through the process of Reformation and a fierce soul-searching that was violent and painful often. But that helped the Church to face up to its past and made it a more modern and open institution which has, more or less, exorcised its own ghosts.

But what about the other practitioners of this martyrdom business? In the case of Islam, I feel it would take a very serious inner battle within the community to grapple with this question. It is fact the community, more or less, is on the brink of such a process and that could take many forms but the ultimate result would be a parting of ways between those who believe in violence and those who trust in peace.

But you see, what Tertullion said is eerily reminiscent of what our secular people say here. Every day we listen to slogans like "Martyrs are not dead, they will continue to live through us" from such secular platforms. I am worried about them because I do not see any possibility of a Reformation-like process within this secular myth-making apparatus.

RVG Menon: In the Gita, Krishna presents all kinds of arguments before Arjuna, to convince him why he should pursue his Dharma.

One very interesting line of argument is this:
"Hatho vaa prapsyasi swargam
Jithvaa vaa bhokshyasae maheem"
If you are killed (in battle) you shall attain the heaven,
and if you win, you shall enjoy this earth(ly benefits).
I think that all the martyrs are fed on this kind of indoctrination, even today.
But in reality, the martyrs are the victims rather than the victors.

As General Patton said:
"No SOB ever won a battle by dying for his country.
Battles are won by letting the other SOBs die for their country!"

As MPC has put it, the potential martyrs are driven into a frenzy by the society, who needs martyrs, at various times. War is the biggest example of mass martyrdom.
Religion, politics, family, caste, gothra, individual honour all call for martyrdom, in various subtle ways.
They are like the gladiators, the chaevakars.
The society wants them, but is also suspicious of them, and hence, is afraid of them.
Because they are different. They are destined for the ultimate sacrifice.
The society is not sure what price they might ask, for this sacrifice!

N P Chekkutty: John says:This art of making "Myth" is a historical, political and institutional process...

Agreed. But what purpose does it serve in the world today, when we have means of communication, means of overcoming them? Don't you think that in this brave new world, there is a real possibility for the rise of a more rational, more intelligent, more level headed behaviour on the part of human beings? Do we need the new myths, do we have to live by such myth-making even today? And is it not proving to be very very harmful? Do we have to be captive of our own illusions, myths and ghosts as in the past when there were some legitimate reasons for it but what prevents the new world of global instant communication from being a more informed society?

John Samuel: I think myths do serve a purpose- in terms of building collective memories, collective identity and collective narratives. In one ways myths are one of the key markers of identity. Though modes of communications and technology changed, basic human instincts and the dynamics of power, society and political process do have some recurring themes.
Even now many of the Institutions invest a lots on brand-building-- using methods of advertising, communications, etc. For instance, the King of Thailand is a perfect example of constructing a myth making using of the most modern forms of communications, technology and media.

Satchidanandan: In T S Eliot's play, Murder in the Cathedral, the Archbishop of Canterbury refuses to yield to all temptations, but the temptation of martyrdom and the immortality it brings was too much even for him to resist. Even in courting martyrdom--if it is willfully courted and not an accident as it happened at Kayyur (the attack on the policeman was just by chance and impulse of the crowd in the procession) there is a self-interest, but I would call it the noblest of self-interests, the same that Christ must have had while being on the cross to save humanity. It also depends on two other things: the response of the contemporaries to the cause and the consequence as felt by the posterity. This applies to the crusaders and suicide bombers as much as to the communist revolutionaries.

N P Chekkutty: Yesterday I read a very interesting article in the science and technology section of the Economist (March 22,2008) which explains the effort being made by a few scientists the phenomenon of religion.(The Science of Religion: Where angels no longer fear to tread.)

It was very interesting because it touches upon most of the issues that we were discussing here. In fact, as part of the Explaining Religion project, they did undertake a number of statistical experiments like the dictator game, something quite similar to the one Santhakumar explained here.

One highlight of the study seems to be that like language, religion too has a biological, quite Darwinian, basis. It would even explain the phenomenon of suicide-bombers if you look at it from point of view of the concept of group selection, which seems to have been abandoned by Darwinians themselves earlier.

Dr David Sloan Wilson of Bringhamton University, New York, says that evolution of human morality could be explained in the context of inter tribal warfare. Such warfare can be so murderous that groups whose members fail to collaborate in an individually self sacrificial way may be wiped out entirely. So in order to protect the group, you get into suicide pacts. So survival of the fittest takes some new form, through a group identity.

There are so many such interesting insights in this article. Hope some biologists here would explain the full impact on social and religious life.

M P Chandrasekharan: In the case of Jesus Christ the crucifixion was not with his co-operation and connivance. It was Jonathan Annas's (the High priest of Judaism) collusion with the Romans that really resulted in the murder (martyrdom). The sacrifice element was introduced later (by St. Paul and others) in order to make the Christian ideology as close as possible to the Judaic religion practiced those days. St Paul pictured Christ's crucifixion as a sacrifice at the behest of Jehova in lieu of goats and cattle sacrificed thitherto, thus making further sacrifices unnecessary in the Christian religion. It was this sacrifice element that brought practitioners of Judaism in their millions to Christianity after the fall of Roman Empire, rather than the teachings of Jesus.

K P Aravindan: Yes, there is a lot of biological literature on the subject starting
with Kropotkin's 1902 book, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. A
recent example is Marc Heuser (Moral Minds: How Nature Designed a
Universal Sense of Right and Wrong, 2006.)
Martyrdom is the most extreme form of altruism which means the
behavior by an individual that increases the fitness of other
individuals while decreasing the fitness of the actor. Such tendency
for altruism may be good for survival of the group, though not
necessarily to the individual concerned.
The problem and controversy among biologists is regarding the degree
to which human altruism is genetically determined. The stream called
Sociobiology tends to give narrow genetic explanations for all such
behavioral traits in human societies. I would tend to disagree with
this. For one, Darwinian evolution works at the level of individuals
rather than groups. Furthermore, Homo Sapiens is a very young species,
less than 200000 years old. There would not have been enough time for
the multiple genes required for such complex behaviors like altruism
to have been selected.
Another simple explanation would be cultural selection. Cultures that
celebrate altruistic acts for example through their grandmother's
tales and epics and ballads would have a selective advantage against
a warring tribe that does not have such traditions. Such cultural
characteristics and (moral(?) traits) thus tend to be preserved in
human societies.

What use is this all in modern societies? Very difficult to tell.
Maybe it would have more value in Socialist societies (survival of the
nicest) than in capitalist societies (survival of the fittest).
Martyrdom maybe passe once we erect other moral edifices (equality,
love, nonviolence etc.) which makes it redundant.

(To be continued. Courtesy: Fourthestatecritique.googlegroups.com)

V S Ramachandran, Picasso and the Cosmic Dance of Shiva

VILAYANUR S. Ramachandran is a well-known scientist described as one of the hundred great people to watch in the 21st century science. He explores the human mind and hence fellow scientist Richard Dawkins calls him the Marco Polo of the neuroscience, venturing into hitherto unexplored areas of the vast ocean called human mind.

The grandson of famous freedom fighter Alladi Krishna Swamy Iyer, VSR speaks Tamil and has strong cultural and personal relations with Kerala. It is likely this 57-year-old alumni of a Chennai college, would be the next person to bring a Nobel plaque to south India, after Sir C V Raman.

He was in Thiruvananthapuram the other day, delivering a lecture at the AKG Center Hall, to a packed audience. He spoke about human mind in its creative splendor and this is how one among the audience described his speech: “It was interesting to hear his argument that artists, poets, novelists and other creative people are inheritors of a brain `dysfunction', due to which adequate deactivation of links between different parts of brain does not happen and hence they see many links between seemingly unrelated aspects.”

Ramachandran in his books, Emerging Mind, A Brief History of Human Consciousness and famous the BBC 2003 Reith lectures have made some interesting forays into areas of art, literature and aesthetics. His is a new way of looking at the world of art and literature, a path charted out by the possibilities opened up by modern science and technology. Naturally, it has its admirers and critics too.

Ramachandran in his BBC lecture makes his position clear:

"Now let me add a note of caution before I begin. When I speak of
artistic universals I am not denying the enormous role played by
culture. Obviously culture plays a tremendous role, otherwise you
wouldn't have different artistic styles - but it doesn't follow that
art is completely idiosyncratic and arbitrary either or that there are
no universal laws.

Let me put it somewhat differently. Let's assume that 90% of the
variance you see in art is driven by cultural diversity or - more
cynically - by just the auctioneer's hammer, and only 10% by universal
laws that are common to all brains. The culturally driven 90% is what
most people already study - it's called art history. As a scientist
what I am interested in is the 10% that is universal - not in the
endless variations imposed by cultures. The advantage that I and other
scientists have today is that unlike we can now test our conjectures
by directly studying the brain empirically. There's even a new name
for this discipline. My colleague Semir Zeki calls it Neuro-aesthetics
- just to annoy the philosophers."

Ramachandran in his Thiruvananthapuram lecture took examples from the western and Indian art history, including the famous statue of Nataraja, Shiva in one of his myriad forms, in cosmic dance from the great Chola tradition to the cubist and expressionist works of Picasso. His lecture gave rise to a fierce online debate, on how far science and technology can help us understand, and appreciate, art and literature.

I made the following points in a debate:

First, VSR is a pioneering scientist in an area which traverses the universes of science and arts, two distinct forms of creative energy in action that are products of human brain. Second, while philosophers and literary theorists did bring up such debates on these realms, what makes Ramachandran unique is the knowledge and methodology of scientific enquiry that he brings into this area. Third, it is a matter of fact that ancient Indian thinkers had achieved a high level of prominence and progress in many areas of 'pure thought' and scientific inquiry. But the West took it far ahead with their empirical methodology that we woefully lacked and that has put us far behind. Four, that should help us place scholars and thinkers like our own M N Vijayan who made inquires into human mind in their literary studies making use of Freud, as an original thinker, but what makes him different from Ramachandran is that though they may speak about the same phenomena, one follows the path of pure thinking or metaphysical speculation, while the other has science and technology behind him and that gives him vast strength and credibility.

Many scholars and academics put in their views on these points. Let me quote a few (with due acknowledgements to all of them):

Dr P K Pokker, who teaches philosophy at Calicut University, said: My argument is that he (VSR) did not confer any new information or knowledge in the realm of aesthetics. He might be a good neurologist. But in the case of aesthetics he simply presented a kind of "manichithrathazhu" model argument. His criticism of western theoreticians was baseless. Besides Rasa and Dhvani cannot explain the origin and development of aesthetic production. He either ignores or forgets about the social means of production and enjoyment. Above all he wanted to simply idealize the so-called Indian feudal art. His theory of distortion in art is not at all new. Let me ask whether he has contributed anything new to understand the origin, development and even decay of art and literature.

My response:
Dr. Pokker has brought up a serious point, with which I generally find myself in agreement. I read Dr Ramachandran's speech in The Hindu and it seems it has two parts in it. First, a scientific explanation on the new areas of neurology, undoubtedly important as areas of scientific inquiry. It explores the human mind in new ways making use of the technological advancement of our age. In this context, I remember what Dr. Craig Vintner said the other day about his genome project, that most of the work was done by advanced computers...

Then comes the other part, which is more disputable. It is about a theory of aesthetics as he tries to explain the human mind in its creative activity taking examples from Chola art to modern masters including Picasso. He seems to suggest that these art-forms are the creations of a special kind of brain activity.

Here the problem is that science may not be able to explain human mind in its creative mood, outside its social milieu. Because we see the Nataraja in cosmic dance in a particular phase in our history, in a particular part of our country; we see the cave paintings in Ellora and Ajantha in a particular place and time; and we see the rise of novel as a particular form of fictional expression in a particular phase in the capitalist development...

That means art and aesthetics need other forms of thought to explain itself deeply and more accurately. A neural science expert may shed some light on some aspects but it would e too ambitious to attempt any comprehensive aesthetic theory purely on the basis of science and technology. That is why I tend to listen to M N Vijayan more seriously when he speaks about poetry and turn to VSR when he speaks about fantasies and itching limbs which are not there.

So let us just accept that there is something beyond mere science and technology and that everything can't be explained through its certainties.

John Samuel wrote:
Chekkutty says: "That means art and aesthetics need other forms of thought to explain itself deeply and more accurately."
What is thought? "Other forms" of thought too may be able to be explained by science. Why not? After all "thought" too is an outcome or a process that emanate through the functioning of brain. There has been number of efforts to understand the working of brain through using linguistics, or visual mapping etc. By the way, I do no think that VSR has been trying to develop or even propose any theory aesthetics. He is a scientist who is in to the business of explaining the neurological aspects of brain. He draws from art, visual mapping etc to explain or suggest and at times speculate different aspects of the functioning of brain.
While he has tried to venture into Philosophy of Mind, he is primarily a scientist who uses imaginative and insightful ways, including from art, to understand, explain and suggest multiple aspects of the working of brain. So it will be misleading to consider VSR as a philosopher or art critic.

Prof. K Satchidanandan wrote:
I would not go to VSR with the expectations I have of an art critic: then I would read Arnold Hauser or Herbert Read or Ernst Fischer or John Berger or Partho Mitter or Geeta Kapoor... I do not think the knowledge about art comes from a single source, it cuts across disciplines and even if we add up all of them, something will remain-- I do not in the least deny the irrational or irreducible in art, its mystery; I cannot as I have known it in my blood and bones; but that does not permit me to deny the possibility of explorations from different angles and disciplines.
Pokker is perfectly right in what he says about the social in art. All reductive and simplifying approaches have their inadequacies. (Even sociological reductions).

Sanil V, who teaches at the Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT, Delhi, wrote:
VSR’s research is at once an invitation and a provocation to serious philosophical thought. He helps us to challenge the we-have-always – already-known-it-all attitude of some philosophers. It is the task of philosophy to recognize and respond to novelties in science, politics and art by proposing new concepts to them.

VSR tells us about the plasticity of brain. The idea of a compact and continuous substance is not suitable for understanding the materiality of brain. Brain is full of holes, dysfunctions and blind spots. Thought occurs in those holes. Brain is always a bit beyond itself and a bit less than itself! It is no longer that self identical, central, hyperactive agency which is in control of body and mind. This is an exciting result for any philosopher who learns from the materialist tradition of Spinoza, Marx and Deleuze. VSR’s views demand a serious rethinking on the relationship between perception, beliefs and action.

Philosophy should respond to specific research in sciences and not get trapped in popularizing pseudo-religious ideas like “scientific method” and “progress”. Not all scientists are positivists. But all popular scientists are!!

What is VSR’s contribution to aesthetics? Yes, much of what he says about art is pretty naïve – just as what Dawkins says about religion. However, Art is not VSR’s route to aesthetics. Aesthetics has two meanings. Aesthetics is a theory of art. It is also a logic of sensation. There isn’t much to learn from VSR on the former – in a direct manner. But VSR has exciting things to say about the latter. In my opinion, a materialist aesthetics of art must seriously worry about the nature of brain and sensations. Inputs from a non-reductionist and post-(naïve) empiricist neuroscience is necessary to disabuse the excessively culturalist and symbolist theories of art. Some of VSR’s experimental results (filling-in and assigning at the blind spots) have been enormously helpful in my own research on the ontology of the cinematic image.

Some critics might say that VSR only dramatizes the results of patient and piecemeal research conducted by many unknown scientists. Here, he may be compared to Stephen Hawking. This could be true. Fortunately none of us are in the Nobel award committee, and hence, need not bother about who –did –it- first issues. For me, the name VSR simply refers to a contemporary enthusiasm which has spread across neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, art, etc. Sorry for those who miss it!

Now, a final note on my part: This is an exciting debate and surely it will continue in the years to come, especially when VSR will bring home the much coveted Nobel for his great work in the frontier areas of scientific research.