It was the late Dr. Mahendra Lal Sircar who, by founding the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, made it possible for the scientific aspirations of my early years to continue burning brightly.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the importance of foundational support in pursuing scientific endeavors.
C. V. Raman credits Dr. Mahendra Lal Sircar for establishing the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, which provided a crucial platform for scientific exploration and knowledge in India. This emphasizes how vital institutions and mentorship are in fostering the aspirations and potential of future scientists.
In practice
In a speech at a science conference to inspire young researchers.
It seemed, indeed, that the study of light-scattering might carry one into the deepest problems of physics and chemistry, and it was this belief which led to the subject becoming the main theme of our activities at Calcutta from that time onwards.
We have, I think, developed an inferiority complex. I think what is needed in India today is the destruction of that defeatist spirit.
We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World.
The ultimate arbiter of truth is experiment, not the comfort one derives from one's a priori beliefs, nor the beauty or elegance one ascribes to one's theoretical models.
People think if you have deciphered the genome of humans that you can change everything. But you cannot change everything, because you do not know what the genes mean, and you have no methods for changing them, and you can't do experiments with humans like you can with animals.
Just by studying mathematics we can hope to make a guess at the kind of mathematics that will come into the physics of the future... If someone can hit on the right lines along which to make this development, it may lead to a future advance in which people will first discover the equations and then, after examining them, gradually learn how to apply them... My own belief is that this is a more likely line of progress than trying to guess at physical pictures.
We keep, in science, getting a more and more sophisticated view of our essential ignorance.
The search for knowledge is in our genes. It was put there by our distant ancestors who spread across the world, and it's never going to be quenched.
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