The Documentary Debate

So here's another debate story. This one is between me and my friend Vatsal; we'll call him Vats for brevity's sake.

Vats is a good mathematician and physicist. However, he belongs to the group which I call as the "derivationalists", which means to say that Vats does not find any fun in science that is explained without the rigor of mathematical derivations and deep physical laws. In short, Vats is quite against popular science.

I have had this debate with Debanjan (Deb) earlier too. Deb is also a "derivationalist" and completely against pop-sci. He feels that it is a complete waste to time to read about an overview of something from a magazine or Wikipedia without starting from the basic principles of physics (we are talking about physics here), reading tens of publications and deriving everything in that field out by yourself.

As a result of these views, we often have clashes on our view of scientific documentaries that are presented in educational media like Discovery or NatGeo. We are specifically talking about documentaries in pure science rather than engineering ("Megastructures" and "Extreme Engineering") because we do agree that the presenting of enigineering design on-screen, be it a Porsche car or the Tokyo Int airport, does hold some merit, because these constructions are "nice to see", and there is really no big point in telling people how an IC engine works or how the strength of materials is calculated to bolster the beams and columns.

Vats (and I believe Deb too) has a strict no-no on pure science documentaries. Being "derivationalist", he raises objections on the way the content is organized. It is obscured in several perspectives. Supposing the documentary starts from the basic principles, then it is difficult to cover the latest philosophies in the course of a single hour. If they intend to touch the latter, they begin half-way, and the uninitiated viewer has no clue about what hit him, and he goes for the schoolboy's approach of "accepting what is on the board to be god-gifted truth". Well, it is true that certain in-depth documentaries have attempted to span the entire horizon of historical development of the subject matter - like the set of 6 documentaries on Astrophysics and Stephen Hawking's theory, which started from the days of Tycho Brahe and ended with Black Hole radiation. But in going into such a vast coverage, one risks the fundamental point of "jumping the steps", as it were.

In such documentaries it is not unusual to come across Einstein's General Theory of relativity explaining gravitation as a "cloth fabric on which the heavenly bodies are located". If you have watched these, you would know that the narrator proceeds to say that the "weight" of the Sun depresses the "fabric" - creating a funnel-like curvature, into which the planet gets pulled in, and the revolution of that planet may be shown to counter the gravitational attraction of the Sun. You might have seen a construct like this at science fairs or exhibitions too, although I doubt whether they did mention Einstein.

At any rate, this interpretation may be looked upon as a culmination of Vats' dissatisfaction with documentaries. And its not without reason. About 90% of the viewers who have been wowed at such a lucid explanation of such deep principles have not considered the most obvious flaw in this argument. The reason we think that a sphere placed on a stretched extent of cloth would depress it is becuase we are used to thinking the sphere having some "weight" which is nothing but a manifestation of the Earth's gravitational force on the sphere. So essentially you are using gravity to explain gravity.

Even if we did accept it as a "visualization aid", the curvature that mass essentially produces is a curvature in space-time, and nothing in this analogy can bring that factor in (unless you carefully describe a light synchronized clocking mechanism in each intersection point of the grid). Furthermore, and Vats tells me this for at this point it really gets beyond my knowledge, there are fundamental roadblocks to one's thought processes if one starts with the belief that gravitation is like the depressing of a fabric. He tells me there is some matrix, when when diagonalized and blah blah gives some parameters. From these parameters emerge the gravitational constant and other factors, which tell you the effect of a mass on space-time. Vats being a derivationalist, this over-simplified approach disturbs him a lot, as it misses out on key concepts and insights into the true origins and ramifications of the theory. The viewer feels that he has "got the thing" when he is as far away from it as he always was, if not more.

Vats' points are logical and true. I do not challenge his points, for being trained in science (though not to his level of detail in these matters), I can see how the links are missing in such documentaries. But my basic argument is not about the excellence of the content, but about the people who watch these documentaries.

So who watches documentaries? Students for one, both from high school and universities. With university students, the trend lies more in watching documentaries from a different area of human knowledge rather than their own. And, mostly, common people who have an interest in science. Imagine this. You were once greatly interested in physics and math. You were an ardent student of these in school. You moved on study engineering, and then in due course of fortune you ended up working to develop algorithms to calculate risk in stock market trading (think GS or MS). Now you have neither the time nor the level of training to indulge yourself in all those topics in physics that they never taught in school. From your perspective, what would such a documentary bring? A refreshing way to fulfill all those dreams, in my opinion. Sure, you cant go teach relativity in the next college lecture. Neither can you sit and derive all those wonderful laws and principles. But if nothing else, you could manage to hear and know a little about those things which you would have otherwise forsaken for good. You did not become an expert, but you had the fun of reliving your physics days, and gain a little more perspective in the process, for all of it is not hogwash.

From the point of view of students, we have to be a more careful. And this is where a good documentary stands out from the rest. For students, documentaries do serve as some of our first insights into the subject matter in many cases, and the concepts and ideas gained thereof stick with us like childhood memories. So some day if we end up actually studying those topics in detail, we would not want our mental roadblocks to get in the way - like the sphere on the cloth conundrum. Neither would we like to talk about half-learned ideas before an educated audience, if the occasion so arises.

In this way, a good documentary is like a good teacher. It sets inquisitiveness aflame. It does not claim that what it is saying is the sacrosanct facsimile of the philosophies of the topic. It tells you, "Well, this thing is actually complicated, but just for starters, you might want to imagine it like this..." It always tells you what is the flaw in its simplified view of looking at it, and warns you against taking it too literally. In doing so, one must be very ingenious and crafty in thinking of the most apt analogies, so that they capture as much of the complexity of the real scenario as possible. Where such analogies are impossible  - like the "spin" of an electron - they should be avoided for good. At the same time, a good documentary does not go into unnecessary piles of math to try and be precise. That is not the intent of the show, and in more ways than one, a documentary with truck-loads of data and number-crunching turns out to be boring, non-intuitive and scares people's interest out of the topic by telling them "This is just not your cup of tea".

As a citation, I'll point to the BBC4 documentary called "The Music of the Primes" - a show on the search of pattern in prime-numbers. This documentary caught my eye in terms of content and organization. It started from the fundamentals, introducing why prime numbers are important, why there are an infinite number of them, etc. Then they spoke of how Gauss went about trying to find a rhythm in the probability of a prime number showing up in logarithmic progression of numbers, and how it did not turn out to be perfect. Then they spoke of the Riemann zeta function, and most tactfully avoided saying anything about plotting functions on Argand planes and all, yet they said that the "valleys" (zeros) of the "contours" of this function in "that other world" (complex domain) held the key to correcting Gauss's step-approximation to precision. They spoke of the conjecture of alignment of zeros, and the difficulty people have faced in trying to prove it. Yet they did not let the show reach a dead end, and spoke about the immense importance of primes in code breaking (Alan Turing), nuclear energy levels and online commerce (encryption). The other show - on the final proof of Fermat's last theorem - did have a definite ending, but was not that well organized and had too many logical "jumps" to make me feel comfortable.

For that matter, books have suffered from the same flaws. Nobody told us that Gauss' Law was more fundamental that Coulomb's Law (some state boards left it out for good). Nobody said that the "g" is actually the gravitational field of the planet. Some even said that an electron "spins about its axis", and went on to equate the atomic structure to the solar system (its like believing Santa Claus actually spends out of his pockets to give children gifts). Just like we have to be wise in our choice of books to learn the correct and the best, so is it when it comes to documentaries. And the joy of a well-set documentary is a lifelong interest in a subject matter that may have just completely eluded us in this lifetime.

Let's Talk About Science

I have a friend, who, although quite close to me, differs significantly from my view of science. His name is Debanjan; I'll call him Deb here to save myself the trouble of having to type out the full name every time I make a reference to him. Deb is a brilliant student, and I believe he has quite a future ahead of him in physics. He is an ardent student of quantum physics. But that is beyond the point here. Deb has very strong opinions, and he holds to them and defends them to great depths with much logic. This I find particularly delectable, because when I enter into a technical argument with most people they back down before my own expressiveness. As a result, time and again we have very interesting conversations.

One particular topic about which we differ greatly is the aim of science. I hold a belief that science is meant for the benefit of the common people and to improve the life and living of the masses. Deb on the other hand believes that science is a natural outflow of the joy of discovery, "the pleasure of finding things out", quoting Feynman. As a result of this, we come to rather contradictory conclusions and tiffs regarding the nature of modern research. For one, I acknowledge that for an innovator, the kick of finding things out is like a drug. It gives you an addictive pleasure from which it is indeed very difficult to draw yourself out. Due to this, researchers go deeper and deeper into more and more esoteric topics, to hunt out the intimate details of the truth behind things.

The negative of what I find in this is that researchers, especially modern researchers, overlook the fact that they have some, even if very little, responsibility to the society from which they come and to which they belong. By saying this, I mean that modern research goes so deep into so difficult things, that what they do seldom benefit the common man at all. Much of the research that goes on today, if you see reports in good technical journals, will have a title that in unnerving enough. As soon as you read the title you know that you are as far away from it as one could possibly be. Worse still, I have discovered topics which are somewhat related to my own field of interest, and yet it has gone to such a depth of specialization that indeed I can understand very little about it. I am not against such research, mind you. I appreciate the intelligence and knowledge it requires, and respect the fact that the people involved in it get some great enjoyment in doing it.

The problem I placed before Deb in our debate was thus: imagine such a man, maybe yourself, who knows "very much about very little" and is doing great things in that. Now suppose a simple man, who works 10-to-5 and goes to the market everyday morning, meets you on the street one fine morning and asks you what you are doing. You explain to him, as best as you can (there is a difference in opinion between us here too, but lets leave that aside for the time being), that you are trying to figure out the probabilistic path taken by the electron cloud  between two contacts in a quantum transistor, and how the same maybe modified by the use of magnetic fields (actually it is perhaps far more complicated, but lets suppose we bring it down to this). Mr. Simple Guy frowns his brow, tried hard to understand, breaks into a sweat, gives up and finally asks, "I am sure it is very great, but how is it going to help me, or those like me?" What answer do you give?

Deb is of the opinion that the pursuit of knowledge in science in a natural process. If scientists had to worry day in and day out about fulfilling the expectation of the farmer, the laborer and the quintessential family-man right here right now, life would become very difficult for them. They would be forced to think about things and find solutions to problems that really do not interest them, and would perhaps make a mess out of it because they did not put their hearts to it well enough. Deb believes that researches are best left to themselves, doing whatever they please and however they please, without worrying about the fact that whether they are benefiting people or not in the present scenario.

But what about the people, I ask him. What about the thousands of people who live around you. We studied in a college whose fees were greatly subsidized, and if I am not wrong, the subsidy came from the taxes paid by those people about whom you are not willing to spare a thought. Is that morally correct, and do they not have a right to ask you to what effect they invested their money in educating you? Was it not in the hope that you, being brighter and smarter, would show them a new, perhaps better way of living? How can you so casually evade your responsibility to the people behind your success and move on to "whatever you please"?

Deb feels that it is out of context to ask for benefits right now. He believes that what science achieves today benefits people in very tangible ways a few generations down the line. For example, when John Bardeen and Walter Brattain worked hard to develop the first semiconductor transistor, I am sure nobody felt how useful this could be (perhaps not even they themselves). But look now - the transistor, a few generations down the line and with more innovations, has made possible today the computer and the mobile phone and a host of other things that every other person is using. The esoteric has become the pedestrian, and people are reaping the benefits of what once might have been considered to be pursued in "pure academic interest". It may be humorous at this point to note that when the first telephone was invented, the then-president of the USA said "Its a wonderful gadget, but who would want to use it anyway?" Funny as it may sound, it is the root of this argument - what seems to be mere fanciful inventing today may turn out to be instrumental in a mass technical revolution just a few years later.

True. But I have more to say. What about astrophysicists? Prof Hawking for example? What he has done is marvelous, and has richened our understanding of the universe in ways that cannot be explained in the mere words of a fool like me. But how many generations and how many more innovators down the line will it ever become useful to common people? Besides, how many researchers can boast of having done seminal work which has brought in a revolution a few generations down the line? What about the loads of rubbish people produce every year (which perhaps includes many of the undergraduate dissertations we scripted ourselves - God knows whether anybody even reads them) and pass of their entire lives in the name of "futuristic research? Or the people who work on number theory? As of now, I know no application of the practical world where that field has ever proven to be useful.

Deb tries his defense here too. He counters by saying that in that respect many of the greatest discoveries should be called useless. The Special Theory of Relativity, for example. Probability and combinatorics. Even quantum mechanics!

No its not true, I argue. Special theory of relativity is useful, although we may not be aware of it. This theory tells us how to harness nuclear energy, and bad as that may sound, it may well be our prime source of alternative energy a few hundred years down the line, considering the rate at which fossil fuels are getting depleted. Special theory of relativity has its uses in modern aeronautics and allows pilots to drive people home safely, talking of more immediate impacts. Probability and combinatorics are almost the backbone of the world of finance and speculation, the basis on which billions of dollars of forex trading take place and people make or break their fortunes in stock exchanges. Quantum mechanics has allowed us many things, not the least of which is to understand solid state physics well, abstract it to a simpler lever and happily teach it away to undergraduates in the name of electronics! Even molecular reactions owe their full understanding to quantum mechanics, and although many genetics engineers may not be aware of it, the discovery of the structure and thereafter artificial production of life-savers like insulin are, in the history of development of science, an offshoot of quantum mechanics in the name of crystallographic studies (remember Bragg's law, anyone?)

Deb takes these points in his favor and strongly sticks to the fact that such esoteric practices must go on, because that is the way progress has been ushered in in the past and perhaps will continue to be in the future. But who are the recipients of these benefits? The elite? The people who are directly or indirectly funding your research? USA and Europe, to be more in-the-face? What happened to poor India? What about the people here, who will come back for them and benefit them, even if it is 7 generations away in the future?

Deb says science and scientists serve mankind as a whole, and are not limited by political boundaries. Nobel as it might sound, it is fallacious, because if you disregard the political boundaries then you become only more strongly answerable to every common man in the world. The poor farmer who rides on his wooden plough trying to bring his unruly oxen under the harness beneath the burning sun to till his field perhaps gets only more right to question the outcome of your research and its impact, if that be the way. I am yet to receive a satisfactory response to this question.

It is difficult to come to a conclusion on something like this, but what I feel about the topic is this: it is undeniable that research cannot be put under the yoke of day-to-day concerns, and the creativity of innovators must be allowed to run free if discoveries like the recent artificial development of genetic material to bring to "life" an otherwise inactive cytoplasm are to become reality. Needless to say, this research, no matter how esoteric it may seem to the plain eye, has immense significance which I, being a gob-smacked idiot in the world of biology, can also appreciate. But perhaps it would be good if all these great minds sat up straight and decided, that out of 12 months of the year, I shall put 10 months in what I want to do, and think for 2 months about what the people, my people, mankind at large, need, right NOW. And I shall use my mental faculties to find some practicable and useful solution for them, to make the world a better place.

And above all, no great mind should ever become blind to the impact of his discovery on the practical world, in the name of "the pleasure of finding things out". Feynman himself said that when he started working on the Manhattan project, his chief concern was that if Nazi Germany beat them to the race of successfully making the bomb, then the losses to human life would be incalculable. Thus it was a necessary evil to put their minds to work for the bomb. But when Germany was defeated, he regrets that not once did it strike him as to what point was there in continuing the work he had been doing, so lost he and the team was in the kick of discovery. He admits it was perhaps the greatest mistake a scientist could ever make, to allow his brain to be used by the "worldly wise" for unscrupulous purposes while allowing himself to be fooled under the "pleasure of finding things out" syndrome. People around us are too smart, unlike what we "educated" ones think, and they can manipulate us in ways we cannot imagine. In view of mankind, then, let us indulge in the joy of discovery, but not become blind to what it may mean to, and how it may affect, our people, and lets spare a little time thinking for them too.

PS: I am not sure if my readers will find this interesting. If you do, let me know, there are several other equally, if not more, interesting debates, that we had, which I shall be glad to share with you.