SynTalk

SynTalk thinks about the interrelationships between wholes and parts in natural and conceptual systems, and wonders whether the part is inferred from the whole. Does a part (somehow) imply or expect the whole? The concepts are derived off / from Abhinavagupta, Newton, Kepler, Boltzmann, Boyle, Saussure, Turing, Manfred Eigen, P. W. Anderson, Chomsky, & Morris Halle, among others. In interactions between words, fundamental particles, molecules, cells, & phonemes, why are most combinations void? How do a finite number of parts create a dizzying array of wholes, and links with concepts such as historical contingency, surplus, entropy, sequencing, emergentism, & auto-catalysis? Why are transitions in biological, physical, ecological, social, and linguistic systems so tentative and statistical? Has the physics of the material world achieved a special kind of climax in the biological unit of life, & how the cell is not simply a bagful of chemicals. How the cell is both a part and a whole, & the context of cell division. Which is the most fundamental living part? How entropy comes about ‘only’ in systems of ‘many’ interacting particles. At what point can we start defining concepts such as pressure, volume, & temperature? Why certain molecular complexes self-emerge into functioning self sustaining evolving systems? Why literature does not simply describe the world, and how the non-existent also often make sense? In our daily linguistic behaviour, do we (fundamentally) use phonemes or words or sentences? How a word is a meaningful sequence of phonemes, and the similarities with gene sequencing; the difference between: ‘John killed the tiger’, & ‘the tiger killed John’. The sound patterns of language, & how any sound cannot come after one sound. Can one syllable be a whole in itself (bijakshara)? How a large chunk of the genome performs mundane functions, & discrimination results only from a handful of genes. Are carbon atoms in graphite and diamond identical in every single way, or do the atoms become something different? The links between rabbit’s horn, bureaucracy, multiverses, Lego toys, universal physical constants, Mesopotamian civilization, zebra, sky flower, existence, and time. The implications of an animal (whole) repeatedly developing into an animal (whole). How non linearity (in both deterministic and stochastic systems) is crucial for any emergent phenomena. Is the long term future of existence non local (a la ‘the ant colony as an organism’) and (potentially) altruistic? The intriguing prospect of new emergence as a result of the unprecedented ongoing meta-interactions, where parts (human beings) increasingly understand the emergent design of the whole? The SynTalkrs are: Dr. Rajnish K. Mishra (linguistics, philosophy, JNU, Delhi), Prof. B.J. Rao (biology, TIFR, Mumbai), & Prof. Sitabhra Sinha (physics, IMSc, Chennai).

SynTalk thinks about health & healing, while constantly wondering whether health has a fixed meaning. Is health an anxiety? The concepts are derived off / from Hippocrates, Charaka, Patanjali, Voltaire, Nietzsche, Foucault, William Osler, BKS Iyengar, Dean Ornish, & Atul Gawande, among others. When & why did the health of the population become a concern for the state, and why was this a significant historical turn? How, when & why did health enter national budgets, and create an industrial force? What is the difference between healing (subjective?) and cure (objective?)? Is healing largely phenomenological, & subjectively realized? Is ‘cure sometimes, relief often, and comfort always’ a possible underlying ethical principle? How the ‘breath’ (prana), as the universal entity within us, unifies the body and the mind when both have a history (situated in time), and are ‘ours’? Is the body a river of energy, & is it possible to understand this energy more specifically & at the molecular level? Does the medical system address the ‘whole self’ and not just the body, & what is the journey from yama to samadhi? Does every part of our body have an expression? How can we make effective therapy safer? Is the doctor a facilitator for nature to cure the person, & is Placebo Effect the most significant healer? How then is the physician the king (& not the consumer), unlike in other transactions? The distinction between the legal & the ethical responsibilities of the doctor? Is it a part of the modern condition to be perennially anxious, & the scope is then extended to treat the ‘risk’? Are the alternatives such as ayurveda & yoga also being recycled under the framework of ‘healthism’? Is it important for the alternatives to have their own systemicity, and not be read solely in terms of the dominant system? Is the crisis of medicine external to a ‘good central core’? Why is cure more important than healing for the modern medical system, and is the underlying logic solely commercial? Is the iatrogenicity (in some ways) a part of the design of the healthcare system, and does this design have to change? Is internal intervention as (if not more) important than the external intervention? The links between witches, apothecaries, acupuncture, Nitric Oxide, endorphins, 21600 breaths, 2 pegs of whisky, statins, ether, and laughter. In the journey of healing, is comfort the starting point or the ending point? Does healthcare need to integrate the notion of ‘space’ into its metaphysic? Is health a personal challenge or (largely) a technical issue? Does the system currently have our complete faith, and does the equivalent of the ‘God is dead’ need to happen? Is it possible to be a non believer of the current dominant industrial medical system? The SynTalkrs are: Dr. R.D. Lele (nuclear medicine, Lilavati Hospital, Mumbai), Prof. Susie Tharu (cultural studies, philosophy, EFLU, Hyderabad), & Zubin Zarthoshtimanesh (yoga, Iyengar Yogabhyasa, Mumbai).

SynTalk thinks about dying & death from medical, ethical, existential, legal, & sociocultural perspectives, while constantly wondering how & why death is important. Is death ‘master-able’? The concepts are derived off / from Socrates, Glaucon, Epicurus, Jesus Christ, Hobbes, Stalin, Sydney Brenner, Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, Woody Allen, & Aruna Shanbaug, among others. How the hope for immortality is conceptually similar to the hope for justice? Can we avoid death before old age? How difficult is it to call someone dead, & is death an objective event? How life has changed from being ‘brutish, nasty and short’ a few centuries ago, & how the 20th century was in many ways the century of life. How is mortality different across age groups, and the role played by sanitation, vaccination, and oral rehydration over the years? Is death becoming more medicalized and protracted? Are more people now dying in hospitals? Why is it important to fight child mortality, and why is it likely that this global battle might be won or lost in the districts of India? Why the first month after birth is the most important to prevent avoidable death? Why the inevitability of death need (& should) not prevent appropriate public policy actions. How there is an opposition between life & death. What do we write on the death certificate, and why the cardio-respiratory arrest (for example) as a cause is not sufficient? How ‘extreme old age’ caused the death of Queen Mother? The difference and links between between physician assisted suicide, gradual withdrawal of care, (passive & active) euthanasia, medical care system, oral opiates, life support, & brain death. Why is the brain (stem) death becoming more popular, & possible links with organ transplant. Can there be a technology for death? How differently do people die? Can one prepare oneself to die (via philosophizing?)? What would leading oncologists do when they themselves face a terminal case of cancer? How suicide is the opposite of capital punishment. Do only human beings commit suicide; Why? Is death available to the ‘self’, in a moment when the self knows that it is no longer? How is the post-operative death different? Is the living cell programmed to die? Do we know what life is only through the occurrence of death, & is death a summation of life in some way? Is it important to not allow Market to take over death, just as it has taken over life? The importance of care for the dying? The role of the state in minimizing ‘bad luck’ deaths. How death is increasingly becoming banal and matter-of-fact, but is still (somehow) repressed culturally. Is it alright to have a cemetery in the middle of a university? How to die beautifully? The SynTalkrs are: Dr. Saitya Brata Das (philosophy, JNU, Delhi), Prof. Prabhat Jha (epidemiology, CGHR, St. Michael’s Hospital, Toronto), & Dr. Sanjay Nagral (surgery, Jaslok Hospital, Mumbai).

SynTalk thinks about the phenomenology of getting an idea, and wonders about the fine ‘thinness’ of an idea’s form. We discuss lively, apt, inapt, frustrated, injurious, abstract, failed, & wrong ideas, and understand how an idea can sometimes (but only rarely) run away with reality. The concepts are derived off / from Plato, Guru Nanak, Kabir, Leibniz, Hume, William Blake, Peirce, Dalton, Mendeleev, Allama Iqbal, Tartakower, & Kasparov, among others. Are ideas always driven by a sense of necessity, and how necessity fundamentally deals with form (& not content)? Is the world of the sensible (matter) and the sensitive (mind) different from the (autonomous) world of ideas? Is the material world a corruption, then, of the realm of ideas? In what sense is the idea of (say) justice or table-ness enworlded? The modes of recollection, doubt, introspection, induction, deduction, or abduction. Why a solution or an idea sometimes hits one as a bolt out of the blue? Are problems also ideas? Why an epiphany can (& should) never last long? Does every idea start with an anxiety, and what is the (creative &) schizophrenic journey into the field of uncertainty? What is the granularity at which the mind operates? How blunders and combinations are all waiting to happen. Are bad ideas as rare as good ideas? What is the margin of lost memories (between remembrance and forgetfulness)? The interpretive act of rendering a poetry using melody. Can we formalize introspective rationality? Chess chunks and how expert level games are driven by pattern & experience recognition? What is the darkness of the infinite like, where one may be without an idea? The links between rabab, homeless king, Dervish dance, smothered checkmate, stylization, alaap, dreams, indrajaal, & fMRI. How the greatest empowerment (in any field) via any idea is being or momentarily becoming as large as the universe. How the likely long term change in the global political order might change the idea of an idea into one more experiential and less propositional. Does idea need to be liberated from underneath language? Is it fair to anticipate that much of human affairs in the future is going to driven by the new form of the ‘point’? The SynTalkrs are: Dr. Madan Gopal Singh (sufi music, Delhi), Prof. Navjyoti Singh (philosophy, IIIT, Hyderabad), & Pravin Thipsay (chess, Mumbai).

SynTalk thinks about different facets of music, including its ever changing relationship with ‘place’ and time. We explore how blocks of noise, sound, consonants, melody, & ‘intention’ come together to create music. How does music exploit the spatial dimension? How does the envelope of quality (timbre) emerge? The concepts are derived off / from Panini, Kant, Bakhtin, Chomsky, Kumar Gandharva, Bismillah Khan, Alladiya Khan, Aminuddin Dagar, & Ashok Ranade, among others. Are sounds (& music) merely vibrations? Are the underlying chronotopes of (say) Dhrupad, Khayal, or Thumri different in ‘a certain way’ (a la Epic and the Novel)? Do musical gharanas (styles) named after places have anything to do with them? Is it possible to tacitly learn music (including the ragas) from the environment? Does music have an internal grammar? How music is both instinctive and cultural. What is the role of imitation? Does music live in our experience, and what / where then is music for animals & plants? The varying priorities accorded to melody and lyrics in folk & classical music. Does folk music always have a performative function? Why are instruments closer to human voice (created by God himself(?)) considered superior (like sarangi over violin?)? Why instrumental music has rarely had a solo repertoire? Are we an instrument ourselves. Why (if at all) is art music special, & how is its aesthetic different from other genres? Why / how do different stringed instruments sound different? Is human voice also a medium (instrument)? The links between beating, mongoose, bowing, crows, plucking, peacocks, blowing, music, bird song, heavy metal, & Bhendi Bazaar. How / why is the place uprooted (say Sufi music from Tunisia) and brought to a performance space? Is music first for the musician? Is it possible to easily distinguish electronic sounds from the natural? Is there a certain quality (timbre) to EDM as well? The irony of tuning the tanpura electronically (shruti box). The SynTalkrs are: Prof. Milind Malshe (literature, aesthetics, IITB, Mumbai), Dr. Suvarnalata Rao (musicology, NCPA, Mumbai), & Dr. Subroto Mihir Roy (music (Dhrupad), Pune).

SynTalk thinks about the (sometimes?) subterranean world of things, and wonders how the world might look from the standpoint of the Thing. We also tentatively wonder if things indeed have a social life, and if the composite affair of thingness is highly linked to the notion of permanence. The concepts are derived off / from Akka Mahadevi, Rumi, Marx, Coomaraswamy, Heidegger, Adorno, Thomsen, Derrida, Jane Bennett, Maturana, Varela, Bruno Latour, & Bill Brown, among others. What (if any) is the difference between an object and a thing, and can one think of it using the framework of phase transition (& change of property)? Is materiality the primary level of reality? What is it like to be a thing from the past (when one looks at an archaeological artifact)? How a thing cannot avoid being involved in history, & there being a ‘historical ontology’ of things. Can we even posit ‘thinghood’ to something that existed before we existed? Does a water bottle have a meaning in itself? What does it mean to be a solid? Is the pyramid (today) an object or a thing? Is the distinction between a thing and ‘the elemental’ more interesting? Does the object always need a subject (with language & semantics)? Is the integrity or singularity of a thing always porous? Is it highly likely that the self organizing tendency of matter serves a social function? Does this provide a clue that things may in fact have a social life? How (& why) did inanimate (inorganic) matter create human beings, and whether we are likely to be recreated (sooner) by things left behind were we to go extinct? Does every thing get to be objectified? The links between rubber, ~23% beta bronze, atoms, CD ROMs, stainless steel, crystals, Challenger disaster, birds, robots, lotus leaves, & nano materials. ‘Why we should weld but the welding should not be seen’? In what sense is a poem a thing? ‘I died as a mineral and became a plant…’. The SynTalkrs are: Prof. Pushan Ayyub (material sciences, TIFR, Mumbai), Prof. Stathis Gourgouris (philosophy, literature, Columbia University, New York), & Prof. Sharada Srinivasan (archaeology, dance, NIAS, IISc, Bangalore).

SynTalk thinks about the tantalizing cocktail of poisons, toxins & venoms, and wonders if ‘what does not kill us makes us stronger’. We also constantly explore the striking similarity (in many ways) between medicine and poison (a la the vagueness of the word pharmakon). The concepts are derived off / from Sant Eknath, Parikshit, Derrida, & RG Macfarlane, among others. We peek into the world of snakes, scorpions, bacteria, rats, SNARE proteins, Botox, & bioterror. Why are there poisons in nature at all, and is there a link to the natural tendency towards ecological diversity? Is nothing poison in the world? How ‘the dose is the poison’. We (illustratively) explore the origins, structure, molecular & cellular actions, transmission, and dynamics of the Botulinum Neurotoxin (BoNT). How the Botulinum bacteria can survive for many months inside us (unlike any other bacteria). Do we have to have crime to have a stable society, and do poisonous plants & animals serve a parallel purpose in nature? How scorpion poison can be used to (potentially) treat Brugada Syndrome, and its links with cardiac sodium channel. How it is very difficult to use vaccines to permanently protect against venoms given the speed with which toxins act. We also borrow concepts such as padarth and dravya from vaiseshika philosophy to understand the (beautiful) metaphysical link of poison with the concept of ‘space’. How ‘substance’ is something that has different quality and action. Is venom a highly prestigious molecule for the snake itself for finding prey? How, then, do the non venomous snakes make a living? Why a child is (often) not afraid of a cobra? Is it possible to look at (molecular) structure and predict its (poisonous) action? Is it possible to identify the exact molecule (& not the cocktail) responsible for blocking the pre synaptic receptors? Is a more advanced society more vulnerable to poisons? What does poison look like? Should our nature ‘be’ to understand poisons? The SynTalkrs are: Dr. H.S. Bawaskar (medicine, Bawaskar Hospital & Research Centre, Mahad), & Prof. Bal Ram Singh (biophysical chemistry, indic studies, UMass, Dartmouth).

SynTalk thinks about the meanings, implications and the future of coexistence between & amongst the several biological species on earth. The interaction space between species is explored via known strategies such as symbiosis, predation, parasitism, antagonism, mutualism, commensalism, & competition, while constantly wondering if ‘nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of ‘selfishness’’. The concepts are derived off / from Sushruta, Charak, Hegel, Malthus, Darwin, Hamilton, Kropotkin, Gandhi, Dobzhansky, Hawking, & Dawkins, among others. Is there often selfishness in nature without the ‘self’. Why does the host change its genetic makeup to coexist with the parasite? Why do most species exist in communitarian groups? Why does a predator never run out of prey in nature (in stable equilibrium)? How it may be unavoidable to ‘tolerate the most intolerable’. How sickle cell anaemia developed as a response to malaria. What is the difference between the antibiotic and aseptic conditions, in the context of the coexistence of different species? The links between human beings, mosquitoes, Chernobyl disaster, raptor birds, Ayurveda, dinosaurs, consciousness, natural selection, Tom & Jerry, oranges, sibling rivalry, wolves, & tribes. How do dominant & exploitative social structures result from the ensemble of unevenly evolved groups (in terms of techno economic capacity). How autonomy of certain groups (the weakest doing menial jobs, say) that had their pristine existence can be annihilated, incorporated, subordinated, subjected, or even destroyed institutionally. How cooperation amongst the uneven develop? Does consciousness promote cooperation? Is culture (merely) a survival strategy? How (bacterial) mitochondria and chloroplasts (green alga) getting incorporated into eukaryotic cells was a significant evolutionary event. Are plants and animals also cruel? How Toxoplasma gondii insidiously finds its way back into the cat (the definitive host) from the rodents (the dead end). Can there be sacrifice in the Darwinian world? How culture is a complex mix up of both material & ideological practices. Can we truly understand the concept of queen bee (without the metonymy)? Is resource abundance always temporary in the biological world? Why kids don’t always agree with their mothers? Why does each orange segment often have one dominant seed? Does the critical self reflexive faculty of human beings make them fundamentally different? Is techno capitalism likely to be a key actor? Will human beings go out and colonize other celestial bodies, even as we coexist on Earth with other species? How human consciousness, survival instinct and (the bacterial) gut instinct could be the ultimate assets for the future? The SynTalkrs are: Prof. K.N. Ganeshaiah (agricultural sciences, writing, UAS, Bangalore), Prof. Rajan Gurukkal (history, social theory, IISc, Bangalore), & Prof. Swati Patankar (molecular microbiology, IITB, Mumbai).

SynTalk thinks about collective sentiments and its antipode, Reason, and constantly wonders if this historically naturalised dichotomy is perhaps at the root of the phenomenon of ‘hurt sentiments’. We simultaneously wonder if the realm of sentiments and affect have somehow been pathologised. The concepts are derived off / from Abhinavagupta, Plato, Descartes, Hume, Dayanand Saraswati, Marx, Gandhi, Ambedkar, Samuel Huntington, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, & Woody Allen (off Emily Dickinson), among others. Is it possible to create spaces for dialogue and ‘ruthless criticism of everything existing’? Is sentiment ever hurt spontaneously, or is it always constructed, and how do sentiments get their collective force? Where do sentiments and cultural common sense begin to develop, and what are the linkages with childhood, neighborhood, family, religion, media, vigilantism, capitalism, & the State. Which is a better path: tolerance, or dialogical curiosity? Why is reason never hurt? How there are many ways of describing everything. The special status of religious sentiments, given the claim of sanctity from a transcendental source (beyond rationality & argumentation), and their ability to articulate aggressive sentiments. Is every religion also a social and political power structure? Why (paradoxically) the UK Government could not prosecute Salman Rushdie (for Satanic Verses) for blasphemy. How the sanctity of the human life is above any hurt sentiment. Is offence for offence fine, and is offence a part of the right of expression? Is the realm of creative expression characteristically different? How the pogroms, riots, & ‘women being pulled by their hair out of a pub’ become mediatized events, & the sometimes-cynical-sometimes-critical-sometimes-partial role played by the media. Can / should the State act as a buffer zone between opposing sentiments? The need to listen fearlessly. Should diversity be seen as a universal human value? Is there a need for renegotiated and renewed sense of universal human values. The need for laws which can be critiqued and rejected or accepted in the public sphere. Is the future bleak for the spirit of negation and questioning? Is a different future dependent on a different political order? What is the future of nationalistic sentiments. The need for “Hope” (the thing with feathers), which needs no reason. The SynTalkrs are: Prof. Purushottam Agrawal (cultural history, literature, ex-JNU, Delhi), Prof. Anjali Monteiro (media studies, documentary film making, TISS, Mumbai), & Geeta Seshu (journalism, The Hoot, Mumbai).

SynTalk thinks about the disenchantment of the world, & wonders if it is possible for there to be multiple metaphysics for the connection between human beings and nature. Is there always something in excess of what we know & experience? We discuss disenchantment and re-enchantment via contexts of boredom, capitalism, death, art, lullabies, adivasis, rag-picking, '​tuning of a tanpura​'​, pilgrimages, sparrows, ‘a tree growing’​, & more​. The concepts are derived off / from Kant, Marx, Weber, Adorno, Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Dagar Brothers, & Bhimsen Joshi, among others. Is disenchantment necessarily morally pessimistic? ​How has the desire to create one's own reality and the 'cult of certainty' impacted the possibility of multiple realities & (sometimes) ‘non-epistemic’ routes? Is the disenchanted route almost always a ‘personal’ choice or is it an unequal battle? Is boredom a result of thinking about life in ‘just’ one way? Is one man’s enchantment another man’s bicycle? How disenchantment is an outcome (potentially) of the ascendancy of theory over observation? Is the process of re-enchantment also often compatible with the logic of capitalism, and how it is possible to live a partly liminal life? Can art still say something that truly surprises us? Is it even possible to interrogate the dominant logic of describing the world? Can an enchanted world be substituted, bought, or bracketed by something else? Is the digital world a source of enchantment? Why are we afraid of getting bored? How a ‘2-person system’ is the basic instrument for re-enchantment. Is it possible to imagine a world where every logic is not subservient to the logic of the economy? Is it possible to think of a life which is neither controlled by the State nor entirely vanquished by death? Do we have to take our death less seriously? The SynTalkrs are: Prof. Bishnu Mohapatra (social theory, poetry, Azim Premji University, Bangalore), & Prof. Milind Sohoni (computer science, technology & development, IITB, Mumbai).