Science Authors

"Two things make the future real, the artist's imagination and the worker's hope. Fascism destroys both. Therefore the artist and the worker must unite to destroy Fascism. The Fascist artist is a traitor, the neutral is already dead. Art and anti-Fascism are synonymous."

"Oppenheimer is a medical doctor who has lived in Southeast Asia for decades. Like most of us, he is vaguely influenced by Marxism, e.g. where he dismisses religion as a means to “control other people's labour”, with explicit reference to Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. His book is based on solid scientific research (genetic, anthropological, linguistic and archaeological), and is in that respect very different from the numerous Atlantis books which draw on “revelations” and “channeling”... Stephen Oppenheimer makes a detailed and strong case for the importance of the culture of sunken Sundaland for the later cultures in the wide surroundings. India too must have benefited of certain achievements and human cargo imported from there."

"Another geneticist, S. Oppenheimer, offers independent confirmation (2003) that there was no Aryan entry, either male or female; he focuses on the M17, or so-called “Caucasoid” (=Aryan!), genetic marker: “South Asia is logically the ultimate origin of M17 and his ancestors; and sure enough we find highest rates and greatest diversity of the M17 line in Pakistan, India and eastern Iran, and low rates in the Caucasus. M17 is not only more diverse in South Asia than in Central Asia but diversity characterizes its presence in isolated tribal groups in the south, thus undermining any theory of M17 as a marker of a ‘male Aryan invasion’ of India” ."

"Oppenheimer, a leading advocate of this scenario, summarizes it in these words: “For me and for Toomas Kivisild, South Asia is logically the ultimate origin of M17 and his ancestors; and sure enough we find the highest rates and greatest diversity of the M17 line in Pakistan, India, and eastern Iran, and low rates in the Caucasus. M17 is not only more diverse in South Asia than in Central Asia, but diversity characterizes its presence in isolated tribal groups in the south, thus undermining any theory of M17 as a marker of a ‘male Aryan invasion’ of India. One average estimate for the origin of this line in India is as much as 51,000 years. All this suggests that M17 could have found his way initially from India or Pakistan, through Kashmir, then via Central Asia and Russia, before finally coming into Europe.”"

"We find the highest rates and greatest diversity of the M17 line in Pakistan, India, and eastern Iran, and low rates in the Caucasus. M17 is not only more diverse in South Asia than in Central Asia, but diversity characterizes its presence in isolated tribal groups in the South, thus undermining any theory of M17 as a marker of a “male Aryan invasion” of India. One average estimate for the origin of this line in India is as much as 51,000 years. All this suggests that M17 could have found his way initially from India or Pakistan, through Kashmir, then via Central Asia and Russia, before finally coming into Europe. (Oppenheimer, 2003: 152)"

"Yet the class structure which cripples Britain more than any other European state, is as nothing compared with the stratified hierarchies in Austronesian traditional societies from Madagascar through Bali to Samoa. (...) This consciousness of rank is thus clearly not something that was only picked up by Austronesian societies from later Indian influence.” (p.484)"

"Barley cultivation was developed in the Indus Valley."

"First, that the Europeans’ genetic homeland was originally in South Asia in the Pakistan/Gulf region over 50,000 years ago; and second, that the Europeans’ ancestors followed at least two widely separated routes to arrive, ultimately, in the same cold but rich garden. The earliest of these routes was the Fertile Crescent. The second early route from South Asia to Europe may have been up the Indus into Kashmir and on to Central Asia, where perhaps more than 40,000 years ago hunters first started bringing down game as large as mammoths."

"“We have found that the nature of material residues and the units of analysis in archaeology do not match or fit the phenomenon we wish to investigate, viz. Aryan migrations. The problem is exacerbated by the strong possibility that simultaneous with migrations out of Eurasia there were expansions out of established centres by metallurgists/prospectors. Last, when we investigate pastoral land use in the Eurasian steppe, we can make informed inferences about the nature of Aryan emigration thence, which is a kind of movement very unlikely to have had artefactual correlates.”"

"Ethics and honesty, [are] rare amongst scholars working on the Indian past."

"That this ‘social science approach’ can lead to disaster is suggested by a Ph. D thesis submitted by Shireen Ratnagar under Thapar. While examining the issue of Indus-Mesopotamia trade, this thesis reduced the Indus civilization to the position held by India in the British empire as a supplier of raw materials. Kumkum Roy was another of her Ph. D students and her book on the emergence of monarchy in Vedic India arranges certain portions of the Vedic texts in an arbitrary developmental order and postulates on that basis the ‘emergence’ of monarchy. Exercises of this kind may or may not be ‘social science’, but certainly this is not honest history."

"We know that the trigonometric sine is not mentioned by Greek mathematicians and astronomers, that it was used in India from the Gupta period onwards (third century).... The only conclusion possible is that the use of sines is an Indian development and not a Greek one. But Tannery, persuaded that the Indians could not have made any mathematical inventions, preferred to assume that the sine was a Greek idea not adopted by Hipparchus, who gave only a cable of chords. For Tannery, the fact that the Indians knew of sines was sufficient proof that they must have heard about them from the Greeks."

"We cannot forejudge what the future developments of the history of science will bring forth, but if India was probably less original than China in the engineering and physico-chemical sciences, Indian culture in all probability excelled in systematic thought about Nature (as for example in the Samkhya atomic theories of Kshana, bhutadi, paramanu, etc.), including also biological speculations .... When the balance comes to be made up, it will be found I believe, that Indian scientific history holds as many brilliant surprises as those which have emerged from the recent study of China -whether in mathematics, chemistry, or biology, and especially the theories which were framed about them."

"To seek the ultimate origin or predisposition of the Indian conviction in the profoundly Hindu world view of endless cyclical change, kalpa and mahakalpas succeeding one another in self-sufficient and unwearying round. For Hindus as well as Taoists, the universe itself was a perpetual motion machine."

"It is good to remember, therefore, that our own pious founders were not the only men, and that Christendom was not the only culture, to set on foot great and noble institutions of learning where successive generations of students assembled to get the benefits of education and research. When the men of Alexander the Great came to Taxila in India in the fourth century BC they found a university the like of which had not then been seen in Greece ... and was still existing when the Chinese pilgrim Fa-Hsien went there about AD 400."

"Indian culture in all probability excelled in systematic thought about Nature (as for example in the Sarokhya atomic theories of Kshana, bhutadim paramanu, etc.), including also biological speculations ... When the balance comes to be made up, it will be found I believe, that Indian scientific history holds as many brilliant surprises ..."

"For three thousand years a dialogue has been going on between the two ends of the Old World. Greatly have they influenced each other, and very different are the cultures they have produced. We have now good reason to think that the problems of the world will never be solved so long as they are considered only from a European point of view. It is necessary to see Europe from the outside, to see European history, and European failure no less than European achievement, through the eyes of that larger part of humanity, the peoples of Asia (and indeed also of Africa)."

"Joseph Needham, has stated, "Future research on the history of science and technology in Asia will in fact reveal that the achievements of these peoples contribute far more in all pre-Renaissance periods to the development of world science than has yet been realized.""

"However critical I gradually turned of most of Needham’s views, it was his work above all that convinced me of the indispensable aid cross-culturally comparative history of science..."

"J Needham's (1971) monumental work on Chinese nautics offers by far the most scholarly synthesis on the subjects of Chinese shipbuilding and navigation. His propensity to view the Chinese as the initiators of all things and his constant references to the superiority of Chinese over the rest of the world's techniques does at times detract from his argument.[28]"

"He had a tendency — not entirely justified in the light of more recent research — to think well of Taoism, because he saw it as playing a part that could not be found elsewhere in Chinese civilization. The mainstream school of thinking of the bureaucratic Chinese elite, or 'Confucianism' (another problematic term) in his vocabulary, seemed to him to be less interested in science and technology, and to have 'turned its face away from Nature.' Ironically, the dynasty that apparently turned away from printing from 706 till its demise in 907 was as Taoist as any in Chinese history, though perhaps its 'state Taoism' would have seemed a corrupt and inauthentic business to Needham.[31]"

"Cambridge scientist historian Joseph Needham’s loyalty was to Mao’s version of Stalinism as a system, but he got enamoured with China itself and wrote a very Sinocentric history of Science and Civilization in China, highlighting the unexpectedly large contribution which China has made to human progress."

"Alas, it was also originally Needham's Marxist and Weberian point of departure. As Needham found more and more evidence about science and technology in China, he struggled to liberate himself from his Eurocentric original sin, which he had inherited directly from Marx, as Cohen also observes. But Needham never quite succeeded, perhaps because his concentration on China prevented him from sufficiently revising his still ethnocentric view of Europe itself.[29]"

"European and America must stand ready not only to share with all Asians and Africans those treasures of understanding and use of Nature which modern science and technology brought forth, but also to learn from them many things concerning individual life and society which they are more than competent to teach. If this is not done, the achievements of Europe (and America) will in any case become the common property of mankind, but our civilization will go down in history as distorted and evil, unwilling to practice what it preached, and worthy of the condemnation of ten thousand generations."

"A lot has been written about how this pandemic is exacerbating social inequalities. But what if it’s because our societies are so unequal that this pandemic happened? There is a that, historically, have been more likely to occur at times of social inequality and discord. As the poor get poorer, the thinking goes, their baseline health suffers, making them more prone to infection. At the same time they are forced to move more, in search of work, and to gravitate to cities. The rich, meanwhile, have more to spend on luxuries, including products that hail from far-flung places. The world becomes more tightly connected through trade, and germs, people and luxury goods travel together along trade routes that connect cities. On paper, it looks like a perfect storm."

"Pandemics don’t always trigger , but they can do, by throwing into relief the very inequalities that caused them. That’s because they hit the poor hardest – those in low-paid or unstable employment, who live in crowded accommodation, have underlying health issues, and for whom healthcare is less affordable or less accessible. This was true in the past and remains so today. During the the death rate was three times higher in the poorest fifth of England’s population than in the richest. Covid-19 is showing no signs of departing from the pattern, which, because of the way the socioeconomic dice fall, also has a racial dimension. But there is something brand new about this pandemic, which has never been seen before in the history of humanity – and that is our unprecedented global experiment in . These lockdown measures are designed to slow the spread of the disease, relieve the burden on s and ultimately save lives – and it looks as if they may be doing that. But they may also be exacerbating social inequalities themselves."

"In India there have been reports of deaths among unemployed returning home in search of food; many countries, including the US, have seen workers taking industrial action, and anger has been expressed in rural communities over wealthy city-dwellers retreating to their second homes for the duration. Governments should keep an eye on these developments, in weighing up when and how to lift the lockdown, because even if it’s difficult to argue today that the cure is worse than the disease, the cure might provoke an entirely different malaise – and history teaches us that no society is immune to that. That’s the . In the long term, of course, they – and we – should address the dreadful inequality in our societies, which this pandemic is picking apart with a lethal scalpel."

"I say "possibly" (for the COVID-19 to more dangerous to humans than the other coronaviruses) because so far, not only do we not know how dangerous it is, we can't know. Outbreaks of new viral diseases are like the steel balls in a pinball machine: You can slap your flippers at them, rock the machine on its legs and bonk the balls to the jittery rings, but where they end up dropping depends on 11 levels of chance as well as on anything you do. This is true with coronaviruses in particular: They mutate often while they replicate, and can evolve as quickly as a nightmare ghoul."

"Viruses in bats may have mixed and matched genes to create the virus that gave rise to the deadly SARS outbreak in 2003, a new study suggests. And it could happen again. All of the ingredients needed to create a new SARS virus are found among viruses currently infecting horseshoe bats."

"The 2019 novel coronavirus is a punishment by nature to humans' unsanitary lifestyle. I promise with my life that the virus has nothing to do with the (Wuhan Institute of Virology) lab."

"We have to overthrow the idea that it's a diversion from "real" work when scientists conduct high-quality research in the open. Publicly funded science should be open science."

"I hope the terrestrial snails, secreted away in their burrows by day across the earth's vast landscapes, will continue their mysterious lives, gliding slowly and gracefully through the night, millions of years into the future."

"As the mathematician Clifford Taubes noted, “Physics is the study of the world, while mathematics is the study of all possible worlds.” Thus, mathematics unveils the infinite possibilities; physics pinpoints the few that structure our universe and our existence."

"Tversky was fond of describing his work as “debugging human intuition.”...Tversky could establish again and again the existence of mismatches between intuition and probability—between cognitive illusion and reality."

"Indeed, mathematics is full of conjectures—questions waiting for answers—with no assurance that the answers even exist."

"The aim of science is to reduce the scope of chance."

"Most coincidences are simply chance events that turn out to be far more probable than many people imagine."

"The theory of probability combines commonsense reasoning with calculation. It domesticates luck, making it subservient to reason."

"Ramsey theory implies that complete disorder is impossible. Somehow, no matter how complicated, chaotic, or random something appears, deep within that morass lurks a smaller entity that has a definite structure. Striking regularities are bound to arise even in a universe that has no rules."

"Randomness, chaos, uncertainty, and chance are all a part of our lives. They reside at the ill-defined boundaries between what we know, what we can know, and what is beyond our knowing. They make life interesting."

"In mathematics, in science, and in life, we constantly face the delicate, tricky task of separating design from happenstance."

"Intriguingly, the mathematics of randomness, chaos, and order also furnishes what may be a vital escape from absolute certainty—an opportunity to exercise free will in a deterministic universe. Indeed, in the interplay of order and disorder that makes life interesting, we appear perpetually poised in a state of enticingly precarious perplexity. The universe is neither so crazy that we can’t understand it at all nor so predictable that there’s nothing left for us to discover."

"More often than not, a piece of mathematics worked out years before—and believed to be totally without practical value—finds a role in the “real” world."

"To an increasing number of practitioners, computer simulations rooted in mathematics represent a third way of doing science, alongside theory and experiment."

"It’s the global food system that’s broken, not just the practices of any one country. A global problem requires a united global effort, and China could easily take the lead."

"Let’s keep in mind not just those beings who won the metaphysical lottery by being born as Homo sapiens, but also those who lie furthest outside our moral circle. They need us the most."

"I walked into a village with a reporter. We heard loud wailing coming from one of the homes. When we arrived at the house, I saw a child clutching at the mother's leg. The mother had hung herself because she had AIDS and couldn't treat herself."

"The future of the animal rights movement is bright, but it needs PETA to move on from their gimmicks and harmful publicity stunts. If PETA fails to evolve, other advocates need to push ahead, distancing themselves from its gimmicks and forging a new perception of animal rights as an urgent and serious social issue."

"We don’t make a distinction between factory slavery and humane slavery or cruel genocide and painless genocide. We, rightly so, condemn the entire institution."

"Human exploitation of animals is horrific and needs to be stamped out, but we should consider taking action against another considerable source of pain and suffering for wild animals — nature itself."