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How good is an engineer or a medical professional without the power of rational thinking and scientific inquiry? How many of our elite engineering and medical schools have opened the minds of their students to this facet of life?

Recently, Mangalore-based rationalist Prof Narendra Nayak received an invitation from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur — one of the top-ranking IITs in the country — to deliver a talk on rationalism and scientific temper.

"The invitation is from a student initiative at IIT-Kanpur called NERD (Notes on Engineering Research and Development). NERD publishes articles and analysis and also runs a series of lectures on subjects related to everything except technology and engineering and I was delighted that there was a group that has the spirit of enquiry and they were serious about it," said Prof Nayak, before he left for Kanpur on Wednesday.

NERD group member Mohit Kumar Jolly, speaking from IIT-Kanpur, said: "Prof Nayak's lecture has been arranged under a series called SCoPE (Science Communication and Public Engagement), which is very popular. We had science journalists, environment scientists and experts from other fields delivering lectures."

"The objective of NERD is that students should not lose track of scientific temper amidst technology. In fact, scientific temper helps an engineer or an engineering student understand challenges. We have heard about Prof Nayak's reputation in rational thinking and scientific enquiry and we as techies could use knowledge about rationalism," he added.

Benefits of rationalism
But how will a tech student benefits from rationalism? "It is not that we will always aim at benefits; there are few things that will improve your approach to different problems in life, and the rationalist approach is one of them," Mohit said.

Prof Nayak is equipped with educational material that he has created over the years and the coursework has experiential inputs through experiments, demonstrations and teaching and learning processes.

Source: DNA India