About 9 months ago, I was talking on phone to Indra's father at Calcutta about cabbages, queens and cauliflowers (http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2009/04/queen-and-cauliflower.html).
He suddenly told me: "You will be surprised to know that Indra left Sciences and is pursuing an Arts subject at MIT; but I won't tell you more about it...let Indra himself speak out".
I was dumbstruck. Indra's family is dedicated to Physics. His father was one of the brightest students of Physics from Presidency College in its Golden Era. His sister did her Ph D from a well-known US Univ in Physics.
And Indra himself said in so many words to me repeatedly that he was wedded to String Theory for Life (His or Strings', or whichever is earlier, as the Insurance Companies put it tactlessly).
And from Princeton and Berkeley (Some Great Shakes!)
And now THIS!!!
That Indra is as crazy as they come from Calcutta followed by IIT KGP, I had no doubt. Indeed it was a close thing between him and me. But as far as I knew (and I knew well enough) he showed no aptitude for any Arts except possibly the gentle art of demurring when cornered at Harry's during lab hours.
Music, Dance, Pottery, Painting?
A veritable Stockbroker turned Painter like Paul Gaugin, ditching his wedded Sthree and a Cherubic Son in the lurch one stormy midnight, rare in California?
Well, I was needlessly worried...he just jumped into Financial Economics.
But, as Feynman put it like: "Is it Art?"
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When we were in School at our seaside Village, every week we had an Arts Class and a Crafts Class as soon as we graduated to Class VIII.
We were allowed to buy our first Drawing Book, folding the other way, broadside-on, and having thick papers. And we were allowed to buy Tip-Top Pencils with a grade 2B (a dream come true!); earlier we could only buy 6H which lasted for years but made no visible impression on paper.
Only a couple of students could draw the parrot free-hand. The rest used Tracing Paper Technology (at IIT KGP they had a higher-tech called Topo, using glass sheets with a bulb underneath).
In Class X we were allowed crayons and pastels of various colors, but colors don't make a parrot out of an owl.
And finally in School Leaving Class XI we got water-colors; more water than color.
The only good thing about the Arts Class was that it was sex-indifferent...both boys and ladies had to draw the same squinting parrot.
Not so in the Crafts Class: Ladies had their embroidery kit. Boys were not allowed the option of change-over. They had a circular wooden frame into which another circular frame was inserted with the cloth screwed up in between. And just needle-work...any child can do it with eyes closed.
But we boys were given a roll of brown raw cotton of the crudest grade, seeds and all. And a hand-held device about 6 inches long with a hook at the top and a wheel at the bottom (moment of inertia). We had to insert the bolly thing of cotton into the hook's crooked eye, hold it with the left hand, spin the wheel with the right hand and pull...to convert cotton into yarn!
It was just impossible.
And we graduated to a genuine spinning mini-jenny and then a loom of sorts which we were not allowed to touch since they were expensive.
Fortunately we didn't have to pass in Arts & Crafts although we were subjected to an exam of sorts.
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As soon as we entered College, we had to choose between Arts & Sciences:
History, Economics, Politics, Logic (!), Civics etc were Arts.
Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Gelogy etc were Sciences.
Maths fell between two stools. I am now convinced it is neither Arts nor Sciences: it is Crafts (Witchcraft).
Law was in a different category of its own: there was a Law College from which the Union President was invariably elected; sometimes a lady too (they could ARGUE!).
About Physics I have no doubt: it is a science, trying hard to become an Exact Science and failing badly after Heisenberg entered the picture with his Uncertainty Principle (so far unbeaten).
As I said earlier String theory is a pole apart; Proof: Like Autocrat said famously: "Good Americans when they die go to Paris";.... "Good String Theorists when they graduate and squint after a post-doc or two go to Digital Finance".
I can't say decisively about Chemistry. It started well, trying to convert base metals into gold: Alchemy. That was definitely Voodoo, Sorcery and Witchcraft rolled into one with all their brews and incantations and weirdo dances.
But somehow after Mendeleev brought some order into it and invented his Periodic Table (Bless his Soul!), it became an Arts subject.
Don't grumble...it can never be a science as far as I know from my experience in the Chemistry Lab.
They said that the flame test decisively indicates the metal, depending on whether you get a blue, red, violet, green, or purple flame.
All of us always got a yellow flame indicating Sodium (from salty sea water in our seaside University).
They also said we can get the others from several exotic tests like: Silver Mirror Test, Brown Ring Test, Fruity Odor Test etc.
When I took my test tube triumphantly to our Demonstrator to show that I got a Banana-smelling Ester indicating perhaps Uranium maybe, he smelled it, scowled at me and sneered: "It is the Ethyl Alcohol you poured in, you fool!".
Kipp's apparatus was good-looking (what Hour-Glass Figures, God!) but the smell of Hydrogen Sulphide it emitted still wakes me up in my nightmares.
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Gauss was, it seems, scared to announce his discovery that there could be spaces in two-dimensions which are intrinsically curved.
And Gauss is fairly modern; not like Galileo or Joan of Arc.
Why? Why?? Why???
Because Maths was and is high-level Witchcraft.
QED
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