36 PVK Blog Post: PVK’s Humanities Course at IISER, Trivandrum. Module ‘Updating’. ‘Resources and Guide to Resources’.
Note: Some of the best teaching I did in my entire career spanning 47 years was done at IISER. I was allowed total freedom to design my course, choose my material and had a wonderful, wonderful set of students to share all of it with.
The only grating note was struck by Rajan, an ex-quant, and mathematician who was said to be world class but had zero understanding of the humanities and its role in an institute devoted to pure science. My course was appreciated by nearly all the students, who were among India’s best, by Robin Jefferey, who sat in on one of my lectures and innumerable students. I was given great feedback. But once Dr Jemmis, the director left IISER for his parent institute of IISC Bangalore and was replaced by some stooge a BJP MP from Nagercoil, one Pon Radhakrishnan had foisted on IISER, quality dropped. Not too much, because the faculty and students continued to be world class.
Dr Rajan, I suspect, was envious of the feedback I was getting and, as semesters went by, made it more and more difficult for me to teach there. First the duration of each lecture, an ideal 1 ½ hours for each lecture per week, was cut to 1 hour. Then, batch strength increased from 125 students per batch to about 250. Conducting exams for that many where I had to set question papers and value all the script, was too cumbersome.
Dr Rajan was off set by Divya, who headed the non-teaching academic staff. She was brilliant, diplomatic, always responsive, helpful in every way possible. I remember her with great fondness and respect. She had a beautiful voice, the kind that would have won huge fans on FM radio.
Anyway Rajan’s nastiness cooked my ISSER egg. Here is my course material for Spring 2016, nationalistically named ‘Vasanth 2016’.
IISER-TVM
Vasanth 2016
HUM 121: THEMES and TEXTS (2)
Resources and Guide to Resources
Theme 2: Updating
This guide should be gone through in conjunction with the two sets of texts used in class and mailed to all the students.
The idea that nature is a benign force and that, prior to the rise of “civilization” man lived in perfect harmony with nature is an almost universal idea. It was one of the key ideas of the Romantic movement in Europe. It animated the poems of Wordsworth and his fellow Romantics. It was central to the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), the French philosopher whose thoughts influenced Romanticism greatly. His ideas, still very influential in education and educational philosophy, can be understood if you read his novel Emile, or On Education (1762). Here is a short excerpt:
God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil. He forces one soil to yield the products of another, one tree to bear another’s fruit. He confuses and confounds time, place, and natural conditions. He mutilates his dog, his horse, and his slave. He destroys and defaces all things; he loves all that is deformed and monstrous; he will have nothing as nature made it, not even man himself, who must learn his paces like a saddle-horse, and be shaped to his master’s taste like the trees in his garden.
A brief look at his life and ideas can be had if you follow this link:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/rousseau/
If you are interested in Wordsworth’s attitude to nature please read his poems. ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey’ (1798), ‘Resolution and Independence’ (1802), ‘Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’ (1802-04), and ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud’ (1804) are recommended.
A look at this piece on the net might also help. It is titled ‘William Wordsworth as a Poet of Nature’. Follow this link:
The 20th century essayist Aldous Huxley has a contrary view about Wordsworth and his ideas about nature. He suggested that a trip to a tropical jungle would have disabused Wordsworth. Here nature is harsh and cruel. Check out his essay ‘Wordsworth in the Tropics’ at
Both attitudes persist in today’s world. Much of the environmental movement of the contemporary world is inspired by Romantic ideas about nature. Scepticism of these is also available. See, for instance, Archana Prasad’s Against Ecological Romanticism: Verrier Elwin and the Making of an Anti-Modern Tribal Identity (2011).
George Monbiot is a British journalist and activist. His ideas about the uncritical acceptance of Wordsworth’s ideas can be found in these essays:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/02/lake-district-wildlife-desert-blame-wordsworth
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/07/hide-evidence-storm-desmond-floods-paris-talks
Monbiot in pushing for sustainable farming practices. He endorses, for example, a farming project called ‘The Pontbern Project’. Find the details here:
http://www.coedcymru.org.uk/images/user/5472%20Pontbren%20CS%20v12.pdf
Monbiot belives that good science is what helps farmers make the right choices, not turning your back on science. He recommends “rewilding” or a reintroduction of native species so that land devastated by poor farming practices can become healthy and rich in bio-diversity. Good science and good farming practices go together, he avers.
His latest book is Feral: Searching for Enchantment on the Frontiers of Rewilding (2013).
The National Geographic essay on science-doubters by Joel Achenbach “Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science’ is available at this link:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/science-doubters/achenbach-text
Scepticism about science has always existed. Some people think that there is an increase in this attitude lately. A rapper recently suggested that there was proof that the earth was flat. See:
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jan/25/bob-rapper-flat-earth-twitter
Meanwhile good scientists continue their quest for knowledge and understanding. Think of the discovery of the proof for gravitational waves, predicted by Einstein a century ago. See:
There are many good books on science and the scientific attitude. Also on the history of science. Allow me to recommend three
Carl Sagan. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995)
Ben Goldacre. Bad Science (2009)
Rob Brotherton. Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories (2015)
In addition this course would like to recommend a brilliant history of science. It is this book:
David Wooton. The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution (2015)
You should all listen to Ben Goldacre’s TED talk titled ‘Battling Bad Science’. It is available at
http://www.ted.com/talks/ben_goldacre_battling_bad_science
The script can be found at
http://www.ted.com/talks/ben_goldacre_battling_bad_science/transcript?language=en
Please use these links and listen to and read Ben Goldacre simultaneously. I hope this excerpt, which captures the flavour of Goldacre’s thinking and prose nicely, will encourage you to visit the sites I have recommended.
“Because real science is all about critically appraising the evidence for somebody else’s position. That’s what happens in academic journals. That’s what happens at academic conferences. The Q&A session after a post-op presents data is often a blood bath. And nobody minds that. We actively welcome it. It’s like a consenting intellectual S&M activity. So what I’m going to show you is all of the main things, all of the main features of my discipline — evidence-based medicine. And I will talk you through all of these and demonstrate how they work, exclusively using examples of people getting stuff wrong.”
Each of the recommendations given above will help you improve your English. If they are read with attention and if accompanied by work on vocabulary, grammar and usage.
All the best. Don’t forget the motto of this course: ‘Read, Listen, Think, Write.’ Do not allow English to cripple you. Use it, instead, to open the doors to exciting intellectual realms. Empower yourself with English.
P. Vijaya Kumar
for IISER-TVM
Do mail me for clarifications. The address is profpvk@gmail.com
P. Vijaya Kumar / PVK
profpvk@gmail.com
Thank you. Nandri. Namaskaram.
PVK
12/June/2026.
PVK's Book mark 