In any academic area or professional field it is just as important to recognize the limits of knowledge and understanding as it is acquire new facts

In this world where science has revolutionized the way we live.Fields of academia are extremely diverse. Each field is advancing with continual research and innovation. As the frontiers of science are expanded by the humankind , it is indeed necessary to appreciate and recognize the limits of our understanding of any realm so that we stay on the path of progress in the field of discovery.

Let's assume that humankind momentarily believes that its understanding of science or any one realm of science is complete and fully understood. to see the consequences. We need not go far in history to find an example. In the field of astronomy, many astronomers believed a few centuries ago , that the sun revolves around the earth. This premise was backed by the vanguards , who at the helm , backed this idea so profoundly that they rejected any other school of thought which disagreed.Kepler was unfortunate to state the new laws of planetary motion. His views cost him his life. If only the astronomers listened to Kepler and debated with proof than scoff at his idea , the world would have realized the Kepler's laws of planetary motion much sooner.

A good reason for recognizing our limits of knowledge would be the necessity for innovators in any academic or professional field to think out of the box.They need to question the already laid out rules in the book.They need to understand the fundamentals in and out to succeed.In such an investigative process, it is a possibility that the existing premises are challenged and a drastic new approach is presented and proved. This fact is evident when Albert Einstein refused to accept the laws of Newtonian mechanics.He questioned its basis to develop the theory of relativity that does not obey the laws of motion postulated by Newton.

Yet another reason is that any scientific community needs competition. The diversity of thought and its application fosters competition that in its true spirit that tries to solve the same problem that boggles researchers in their respective realms. Competing thoughts help establish new theories and innovation is encouraged.Would it have been possible to see the internet revolution that has changed the way we live and communicate in the 21st century unless a set of university students at Berkley fundamentally wanted to alter the state of the computing world? They questioned the state where bulky mainframes ruled and brought the idea of distributed computing where computers cooperated to achieve a task. This idea required networking and it led to the birth of the Internet.

Summarily , for any scientific realm to remain vibrant, we need to recognize that there is more to be learnt and understood.The age old Tamil proverb outside NASA headquarters couldn't be more true and it is translated as:

" What is known to mankind is equivalent in size to a heap of sand, the unlearnt, unknown and unconquered is as big as the world."

Most people think that their deeply held values are the result of rational choice, but reason often has to do little with the way people form values

It is indeed difficult to ascertain if deeply held values of people are strongly grounded in reason.However , It will be helpful if we analyzed one of the deeply held values and and try to discover the rationale, if any.If we happen to find at least one deeply held value that is held by people in a society to be of sound reason, we can draw significant conclusions.

Let's start with one deeply held value that stems from religion.For thousands of years , the people of India who have been predominantly Hindus , have avoided the consumption of beef. It is a deeply held value and slaughtering the cow is a sacrilege in their religion.With the current exposure and globalization , it is often surmised that the "avoidance of beef" has no logic. It is even labeled as a superstition and a passe custom.This assertion is backed by the claim that the Hindu religion has no clear injunction and reason stated about the consumption of beef.But , let us look deeper.

Treating the avoidance of beef as a deeply held value, If one would look at the basis for such a value, at least one reason seems obvious. Hinduism being a pacifist religion discourages the consumption of meat.The cow as a part of the rural and urban household in ancient India supplied the home with milk and milk products. Its waste is used as fuel and manure and cow urine was used as a medicine today and patented for its medicinal properties wherein nursing mothers are provided a concoction of the same called "Panchkavya" even today. Slaughtering an animal that provides the household with so many benefits would have just seemed ungrateful, cruel and immoral. It is well known that many Englishmen in their pig-farm do not name the pigs and just number them.They are known to say naming them makes it hard when slaughtering them.Hindu household that often named the cow with names of Goddesses like "Lakshmi" ( the Goddesses of wealth and prosperity ) could have found it inconceivable to kill the animal.

This may not have been the only reason. Agrarian societies in ancient India might have noticed that amount of grain expended in rearing livestock as opposed to sustenance in vegetarian food is many a time greater. This is a very strong reason to opt for vegetarian food.It is wise to have the cow provide for the household than kill it and lose steady supply of milk.It is wise to use the bull in the field than kill it.It it were an older bull , that could not plough, it seemed again immoral to the peasant who saw the years the bull had toiled in his field.

Another reason could have been the Indian climate.The fat content in beef is highly unsuitable for digestion and weather of the subcontinent makes it a poor choice of diet.As for the taste buds, India has a cuisine with spices that is known to make food as tasty with or without meat.When so many reasons pile up against the case of beef , It is not surprising why the people of India chose not to consume beef.

When we started with the deeply held value, It might have seemed to exist without a reason.It might have made many of us scoff at such at such a value.However, as we can see with the reasons presented, it is definitely not deprived of logic.We also realize that we cannot generalize and write off all deeply held values as "irrational".It is indeed appropriate to treat each deeply held value at its own merit and try to analyse its reasons before arriving at a hasty conclusion.

Summarily , all societies from civilizations have value systems that stem from religion.It is necessary to for the present generation to be curious to understand the root if the values and try to ascertain its rationality.

Outliers | The Story of Success | Malcom Gladwell's book review

Many a time we regard our erstwhile classmate in twelfth grade who got into IIT as "gifted" or a "genius".Our parents heard from teachers who called this classmate( I am sure he was not a dear friend) a "child prodigy".It was not unusual for the "prodigy" to get into India's top engineering schools.We subliminally began to believe in ourself as a "mediocre".Our parents played an important role in the formation of this opinion.They compared our performance with the genius in the class one test after another.Naturally, we were slowly pushed into the bracket of averageness. For many of us this has been the situation hitherto. Perhaps it is time after many years to ask some questions. Can a student avoid this vicious cycle of stereotypes ? Should we fall prey to the victimhood ? Is this all about our innate ability ? Should any student be written off as a failure ?

As a high school student we brought the story that our capacity was circumscribed by our "IQ".We thought all great people in the world had substantially higher IQ's to steer them towards success of which we only dreamed.Are we really destined to be the part of the proletarian lot to work in a mundane profession of drudgery without scaling the heights of science or arts or any other realm ? What differentiates an "Outlier" from the pack? To use the word "pack" may seem a terrible expression , but the "pack" is the pack due to a reason and an Outlier is an Outlier for many a reason.

Malcom Gladwell's 'Outliers' is the book that brilliantly argues the case of Outliers and explores the niche of an Outlier that made him excel beyond the ordinary.It looks at the opportunity that was available to the Outlier and discerns that the success of an Outlier is grounded in very favorable circumstances that enabled the person to seize the moment and rise to the occasion.

As an example, Bill Gates got a chance to work on Mainframes which was pretty expensive in his days and out of reach for a normal teenager. This happened just because his school had connections that helped him get "Mainframe time" and later Gates could make a deal with a firm ( that happened to be near his house) to get "desk time" on the Mainframe in exchange for being a "tester".Yes, even Bill Joy had favorable circumstances as he got more time in his college's mainframe computer by discovering a bug in the billing time that allowed him to use the system long enough to master programming without being drained in pocket , a chance inconceivable at the time. Bill Joy seized the opportunity and wrote the newer version of the UNIX operating system still in use today.He also rewrote Java!!.

The pertinence of effort in extraordinary achievement is underscored by perseverance of the Outlier.Gladwell debunks the idea of very high IQ solely playing a role in this phenomenon and explains that a "threshold" of IQ might be necessary to win a nobel prize but once a peron's IQ is above the threshold, it does not matter how high the IQ is, but how far the person's persistence is and how much a better his circumstances are.

The book explores the inextricable link of our culture and its legacy that shapes our personality and our habits for the world .The book presents the example of a family of peasants in China who work round the clock for a better harvest and this quality of hardwork is passed on to the children who invariably grow up to be successful lawyers or bankers when they come to the United States by outperforming their american counterparts in Math.The Chinese nomenclature of numbering also chips in to give its children an added advantage.

Summarily, the book is an engaging read that makes us slowly realize that an Outlier is in fact not an Outlier at all. It prepares us for this conclusion all along the chapters making its case stronger by every page.By the end of the book , a reader would probably be emancipated form the belief he would have held tenaciously on "geniuses" since tenth or twelfth grade. The reader would not be overboard to hope and believe that he too can be the Outlier, provided he looked for the right turns and worked hard as ever to win.