My name is Rajendra Tayya and my home base is Preston, Lancashire, UK. Email: raj@rajendratayya.com.
The basic purpose for initiating my blog is to educate the general public with respect to the humanitarian issues that are prevailing in the world and to promote vigilance in our communities to combat these issues that are besetting us. Currently humanity on Earth is besieged by two fundamental problems, global terrorism and environmental crisis – both bidding that we review our very perception of life and the universe in a very critical perspective.
I would be reviewing these humanitarian issues in the physicist’s perspective (let me be clear at this point) and attempt to develop ethical interpretations of principles of science. It is vital to appreciate that physics is concerned with investigating the fundamental laws of nature and it equally contributes to philosophy as it does to engineering – in fact the original name for it is natural philosophy, as different from that of the cultural. The great mathematical physicist Albert Einstein said that, “science is refining everyday thinking”. And it is according to this intention I would be leading and developing the discussions and arguments in a reflective and critical way to mentally trigger you off in the right course thinking. Also, I will try to reproduce my narratives in an entertaining and colourful perspective, if I can, instead of being merely factual.
I am an amateur mathematician and physicist – well, I do have two years of BSc qualification in the two subjects (as well as privately researching) – as I could not complete my final year due to relapse of chronic ill-health. I was taken so seriously ill that for twenty years I could not literally hold a book in my hands and attempt to read – I found it overwhelmingly frustrating. My original intention was to do research in theoretical physics inspired by high-school days introduction to calculus and the theory of relativity. But unfortunately my ambition was doomed to be an utter failure. Nevertheless, over the course of years I have learned to develop various coping techniques and managed to regain my reading ability partially and arrive at a stage to start a blog of my own to communicate my views and thoughts about general matters in various perspectives.
Also, as this is an enterprise to educate the public, be well advised that intelligence in its original purpose is not merely for public display (good memory) but to solve problems (commonsense). I am mentioning this because some people, rather ignorantly distorting the idea of what we mean by “usefulness” and perverting the course of education in society. I should know this better as having been reared under the rat-race mentality of Indian educational system – this is a very serious matter for us to contemplate. Commonsense is simply the attitude to learn and achieve some form of movement.
Also, I consider that it is necessary to appreciate that, in the course of my discussions, raising humanitarian issues and explaining fundamental problems in science, the essential criterion to my thinking is that I am treating psychology as a fundamental natural science to equal status as physics, chemistry, and biology.