Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Inside Eureka

Lots of stories, anecdotes and even ad campaigns have based themselves on the legendary bath tub story of Archimedes. Coming to think of it, Archimedes was so blessed. History must have seen so many researchers who spent their lives searching for one, just one moment of inspiration. So many would have died without achieving this moment of self-glorification and satisfaction. Really makes one wonder as to what could drive a person to such craziness of readying him/herself to spend a lifetime in search of something whose existence itself is uncertain.

Such, is the power, immense joy, and dizzying high the search of truth offers. Many mock at me at using the net-name "and yet it moves" for anything connecting me and the internet, be it my email ids, all my login names of online services, and why, even the url of this blog! Many have come up with quite a few alternative interpretations (and I must admit, many quite hilarious as well) for this name as well. But it is the tenacity of one Galileo Galilei to mumble these words about earth, despite being forced by a dogmatic church to accept an unscientific geocentric theory, which bowls me over. What could have driven a person to put his life at stake to press a point over one's belief in truth is something perhaps only a researcher could understand.

From the viewpoint of a person into computer science, the scene is no different. You start off with writing code for a purpose you know yourself is trivial or stupid or useless or a combination of the three, land up with troubles, try to debug the program for hours, lose sleep and hunger, and jump a few inches and let out a shriek enough to frighten all those around you when you realise that it's all working fine. Take a step back. What did you really achieve? Well, in most cases, almost nothing. Well, why are you ecstatic then? You don't know. As a matter of fact, very few in that state actually know. Reminds me of what one scientist (I forgot the name.. Oppenheimer or Bohr?) who was involved in developing the thermonuclear bomb had to say when someone asked him why he was doing this despite knowing the possible fallout of this project. He just had to say, "It's beautiful"! Is this stupidity? Idiocy? Craziness? Well, I guess we will never know the answer.

It is true that it is still only a miniscule section which gets drugged over the pursuit of truth. I guess nature wins hands down once again in its judgement of proportions. If it is dreadful to think of a world filled with drug addicts, we have a similar case in our hands here!

7 comments:

  1. Dear Andyetitmoves,

    I wish to say a few thingies:
    1. Its very obvious that u r vetti

    2. The absence of a creative spark plug in you makes you always harp abt andyet..., and yet I appreciate you for thinking up new places and ways to beat the same crap.

    3. Talking of hilarious interpretations, I'm sure none can match that of a certain Mr. Buyukokkten, :D

    4. If you succeed in finding Truth, don't forget to do 5 4 2 3 1 to him on my behalf.

    5. and it goes awn
    ....
    .....
    ...
    n. As you can clearly see, I am vettier than you :P

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  2. tsk tsk... didn't I say many would not appreciate what a researcher thinks about truth? :p

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  3. i can understand the tenacity and the ego of galileo... thanks!

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  4. beyond all that ppl would say, it is a nice post da.

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  5. how come I'm not on your "Friends" links? :-|

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  6. did you know its probably disputed whether he told it
    src : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_pur_si_muove!

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  7. Doesn't really matter.. It's the inspiration which counts :)

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