Category Archives: Science / Philosophy

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR You are what you are isn’t as simple as it sounds. This is because who we are is based not just on our identities, but also our dreams, hopes, intelligence, memories, the world around us, and neurobiology. Neurobiology is the study of the nervous system and how the brain works, its anatomy, physiology, […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Aging is inevitable, albeit its cadence is not. As the American writer Betty Friedan rightly said, “Aging is not lost youth, but a new stage of opportunity and strength.” While we all know that our bodies age, the whole internal experience smacks of ambiguity, also mystery — although new research explains the aging […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR The idea of consciousness and its relationship between mind and brain have puzzled, bamboozled, and flummoxed philosophers and scientists alike since the dawn of civilisation. They still do — notwithstanding a host of new, breath-taking discoveries, that include peptides, our molecules of emotions. This isn’t all. Molecular biologists have discovered the fundamental building […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Science has, for long, used empirical data to estimate how close a theory is to the truth. But, not all theories, however, can be evaluated in that manner — for a plethora of reasons. In areas, such as string theory, cosmology, and evolutionary biology, for instance, arriving at how close a theory is […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR When Linus Pauling, the legendary chemist and two-time Nobel laureate, discovered that a specific heritable protein variation in a single component of haemoglobin protein complex resulted in sickle cell anaemia, it initiated a new era in biomedical sciences. Years later, the gene responsible for the haemoglobin variant was discovered — including an entire […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR All intelligence, it’s rightly said, leads to god. This is the ultimate truth — the sum of the parts and part of the whole. All things, big or small, also lead to god — because god is supreme intelligence. Where there is no god, there is no intelligence. Where there is, likewise, no […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Monsoons are not just rain and dance, or change of seasons. They are a time to seek one’s higher self, through moments of solitude. More so, when the pouring rain and dark, sombre clouds grant us a sense of seclusion, a welcome, ‘impromptu’ retreat at home — with a steaming cup of coffee. […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR There is a dazzling biology at work inside the brain, including its colossal appetite to storing information. Agreed that information technology has made ‘relative’ the need for long-term memory in the brain passé, but as new research augurs, this may call for the greater use of our working memory — not so much […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR There is a fascinating dictum that exemplifies an intriguing simile — that Westerners think with their left brain, the ‘seat’ of our conscious mind, while Easterners think with their right brain, the ‘hub’ of their unconscious mind. The ‘maxim’ is too composite, except for one’s own point of reference that separates and connects […]

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR All that is old need not be dated. Take for instance, our ecological heritage. It has been rightly proposed by scholars that countless enlightened ideas may be drawn from old precepts of previous civilizations, especially from ancient India. More than that, knowledge may also, in today’s context, be derived from the traditional individual […]