Explore new frontiers of knowledge: Prof. Nageshwar

Prof K. Nageshwar, Former MLC and Professor, Department of Journalism, exhorted the university and college teachers to explore new frontiers of knowledge and new schools of thought by crisscrossing disciplines.

Addressing the 85th Orientation Course at UGC-HRDC, Osmania University, Prof. Nageshwar emphasized the need for promoting inter-disciplinary teaching particularly in higher education in India. It is the responsibility of teachers to react, reflect, and communicate to the society, he added. Stating that it is always amusing to crisscross between various subjects, he said that when different branches of knowledge interact and interface, exciting insights emerge.

Prof Nageshwar explained that William Shakespeare’s plays had a formative influence on the development of Marxism and psycho-analysis. Marx used lines from ‘The Merchant of Venice’ and ‘Timon of Athens’ to develop his economic theory and his theory of consciousness. Sigmund Freud used his reading of ‘Hamlet’ to develop the acclaimed theory of Oedipus complex.

In the ‘Republic’, Plato argued that the study of arithmetic has a positive effect on individuals, compelling them to reason about abstract numbers. Reasoning out numbers has an application in everyone’s life and profession, he further elaborated.

John Forbes Nash Jr. an American mathematician developed fundamental contributions to game theory, differential geometry, and the study of partial differential equations. These concepts have provided an insight into the factors that govern chance and decision making inside complex systems found in daily life. His theories are used in economics, computing, evolutionary biology, artificial intelligence, accounting, computer science, games of skill, politics and military theory. This shows how an ever lively mind can be a source of fertile ideas that have a multitude of uses, Prof K. Nageshwar added.

New frontiers of knowledge are emerging with synergy and symbiosis between different subjects.  Biology interacts with information technology to create Bio-informatics, which is an inter-disciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data. Bio-informatics helps in understanding the genetic basis of diseases, Prof. Nageshwar explained.