Battleground - Extempore Competiton in Oneiros '17

On the 7^th of October, Sophia – the philosophy club of Manipal University Jaipur organized an extempore competition in collaboration with Oneiros ’17 – the annual cultural fest of the university where the speakers were judged both on their knowledge of philosophy and the ability to express their thoughts. 

The extempore was a little different than the conventional kind as a team of speakers had to take a topic from the topic bowl and the team had to speak on the negative and positive aspects of the same.

The topic bowls had a number of topics like women of today, social media in a democracy, Indian education system and many more which were worked upon with meticulous effort by the speakers. 

The winners

The event was judged by Dr. Anthony sir and Dr. Naresh Dutt Mathur sir who had a tough time judging as all the speakers spoke very well. The winner was Sarthak Sarbahi and Arnav Kaushal. The first runner up were Mahima and Akansha. At the end Prof. Dr. Mridul Shrivastava, Dean – Faculty of Arts & Law was presented with a token of honour by Prof. Dr. Anthony S. Raj for her contribution in the field of teaching and research.

Felicitation of Dr. Mridul Shrivastava

Report on lecture on “How to Write a Research Paper?”

- Aujas Sohal

Sophia Club, the philosophy club of Manipal University Jaipur had organized a lecture to enlighten the students in campus on “How to Write a Research Paper”. The lecture was presented by Prof. Dr. Anthony S. Raj sir and Dr. Pradeep Chahar sir. Dr. Anthony sir, Professor of Philosophy and HOD of Dept. of Arts, welcomed our lecturer Dr. Pradeep sir.

 

As the lecture began, it was focused more on how to conduct the research. The research material should be systematic, replicable and logical. The main part of research is its hypothesis, which works as a guide and a result which the researcher aims towards. It is suggested that you always keep a hypothesis so you don’t divert from the aim of the research. Another important factor is the administrative feasibility, whether you have enough money to afford all the equipment and data required. Once your cost factor is in check, next are your sources from where you organize your samples. Different kinds of scientific methods exist for this purpose. These samples that are collected, are accepted to be same for the entire group, this is called generalization. Since there are too many variables that cannot be controlled by the researcher, he or she aims to use the sample collected from a smaller group and accepts it as the same for the entire group. The lecturer then gave us the example, ‘Impact of stress on sexes’, stated two kinds of hypothesis, a non-directional hypothesis, which doesn’t bring much clarity to the topic and a directional hypothesis, which brings clarity and acts as the aim of the research. The major characteristic of a hypothesis is that it should be testable or else the entire research may become pointless.

The lecturer then continued forward with the quote, “Writing a research report carefully and accurately is an art.” The next major part of research is assessment and measurement. In situations where you do not mathematically use any definition or formula, the conclusion you make is called an assessment. Whereas, the conclusion calculated accurately by a mathematical formula and definition is called measurement. Each time you write a research paper choosing the topics is also a very important issue, as the topic and sub topics should be made so that the paper follows a continuous flow and is easy to follow. Making objective decisions is a critical point in research, as the researcher has to make unbiased decisions and there should never be any scientific dishonesty of ethics. Falsification of data is a very common example of scientific dishonesty, plagiarism being on the rise, each research report on similar topics is bound to have some lines in common, and hence the scientific community has set a level of acceptance of similar material. Other such breach of ethics includes falsification of data, faulty data gathering process. Justification and validity of data is another concern, a researcher should be able to justify why he has chosen the topics, the samples and the formulae. Errors in research are bound to happen, no matter how careful the researcher is, there are two types of errors, type 1 and type 2. Type 1, rejecting the null hypothesis, when it is true and type 2, rejecting the null hypothesis when it is false. Null hypothesis indicates similarity in the group. The more dangerous error of the two varies from situation to situation. The lecturer concluded his topic with a quote, “Research is to see that everyone sees, but to think what no one has thought.”

After the topic was concluded, Dr. Anthony sir offered us some insight on how to actually write down the research on paper. Remembering every quote we come by, so that when we use it ourselves, we never forget to give due credit.

Sophia Club member Hrishabh offered the vote of thanks and brought the event to a close. Pen and paper in each hand, every student looked forward to writing a research paper themselves one day.   
(Photographs by Abhishek Sharma) 

Lecture on "Introduction to Philosophy & Metaphysics" By Dr. Pradeep Kumar Sinha

- Aujas Sohal

 Sophia, the philosophy club of Manipal University Jaipur had organized the first lecture of the academic year 2017-18 on the topic “Introduction to Philosophy and Metaphysics”, attended by the members who were curious as to what philosophy was actually about. The speaker for the lecture was Dr. P.K. Sinha, Professor of Philosophy, who had come for this guest lecture from Ranchi.

Dr. Anthony sir, Professor of Philosophy and HOD of Dept. of Arts, welcomed our guest lecturer and presented him a bouquet & gift. He then welcomed everyone with his motto, ‘The shortest distance between two hearts passes through the stars’ making us all feel comfortable.

The lecture started with a simple question, ‘What is philosophy?’ love for wisdom, theory of knowledge and gaining absolute knowledge. He then explained us the concept of knowledge as a whole and the true meaning of absolute knowledge, which we could only come to understand by realization and developing our faith. He then introduced us to the concepts of Indian philosophy, which could further be divided into two parts Astik (Belief in Vedas) and Nastik (Non – Belief in Vedas). The three schools of Indian philosophy, Charvak, Buddhist and Jain were Nastiks and the rest 6 (Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, Mimamsa and Vedanta) were Astiks. There are various ways to gain wisdom; through perception, words, inference and many more. All the schools of Indian philosophy are said to follow various kinds, only Charvak School of philosophy is said to believe that the only valid source of knowledge is perception. Quoting the honored lecturer himself, “Wisdom is absolute. Trying to understand the smallest things will ultimately help us in understanding the bigger things in life.”

 

Dr. P.K. Sinha then introduced to us the three branches of philosophy: Epistemology (The theory of knowledge), Metaphysics (The study of elements) and Ethics (How to live in the human society). He then explained to us that all three parts of philosophy correlated to one another, giving us the example that metaphysics of various schools was based upon the knowledge gained from epistemology of the same school. He then elaborated on the topic Metaphysics. Element is the smallest part from which everything else is created. Indian Philosophy believes in 5 elements, Sky, Fire, Water, Earth and Air. Every school of Indian philosophy believes in all 5 elements, except Charvak, as they only believe in gaining knowledge through perception because sky cannot be perceived. He further continued with the relation between the five elements, their five qualities and our five sense organs. Then the questions that rose were, ‘What is the nature of elements?’ and ‘How many number of elements there actually are?’ He answered the questions in order by introducing the notion that we consider elements to be conscious, non – conscious, both or neither. That gives rise to different theories such as Theory of Materialism, Theory of Monolism, Theory of Duality and Theory of Pluralism.The elements are believed to be different in number, as each person has their own concept, some say that there exists only one element, others say that it is 2 as a single element cannot make up everything and some say infinite just as the number of things in the universe. He concluded this topic with the line that, ‘Without metaphysics, philosophy as a whole becomes boneless and does not possess any structure’

Wisdom is non material, and is a truth which does not change unlike knowledge which changes with every new discovery that is made. True wisdom can be only be gained through self realization; using the right faith, right knowledge and right determination.

After the lecture was concluded, many curious students led the interactive Q&A session. After which members of the Sophia Club gave a vote of thanks for his time and the knowledge he imparted to us.

All the new comers were now intrigued as they started to understand the concept of philosophy and their minds more curious as to what lay ahead.

FIRST GENERAL BODY MEETING of Session 2017-18

An open general body meeting was conducted by Sophia Club on 2nd September, 2017. The meeting was addressed by the vice president, Sadvansha Munshi, who welcomed the affirmed professor, and Sophia Club's faculty coordinator, Dr. Anthony S. Raj sir and all the new comers. She started with a small introduction that philosophy is an attempt to understand life better through our walks of life. She also explained the importance of philosophy and how it is a very influential subject. Philosophy has contributions in many subjects, such as Science, Maths, Literature, Sociology, and many more.

Apart from that, all the office bearers were formally introduced to the members.

Later, the President of the club, Aparna Singh, stood proud and gave a small presentation about the activities which were held throughout the year. She also cleared the doubts and queries of the members.

Afterwards, Dr. Anthony sir gave a small introductory lecture on Techno-culture. He explained the affects of technology and screen-culture on our thought processes. His speech of full of hard hitting reality and realizations.

The end of the first General Body Meeting of the year 2017 was announced by the president while she thanked all the OCs and the CCs for their hard work and inputs in making the meeting a success.

Admissions Open for BA(Hons) Philosophy at Manipal University Jaipur for Academic Year 2017-18

It is a joy to welcome all aspirants who want to take admission in BA(Hons) Philosophy at our University. The eligibility criteria, admission link and procedure can be found in the University web-site i.e. www.jaipur.manipal.edu in the admission section by selecting UG admission  further in the Arts Department section. The course fee and other information are also available. For any other query you can mail to DrAnthony (HoD, Arts) at ansraj65@gmail.com.

Presenting before you the office of Sophia Club for the session 2017-18

"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader." - John Quincy Adams

We are delighted to present before you the office bearers of Sophia Club for the session 2017-18.

President : Aparna Singh, B.Tech ECE (Upcoming V sem)
Vice-President : Sadvansha Munshi, B.A. (Hons) Psychology (Upcoming III sem)
General Secretary : Subhoshree Mitra, B.Tech IT (Upcoming V sem)
Joint Secretary : Kshitij Raj, B.Tech CCE (Upcoming V sem)
Treasurer : Devansh Agarwal, B.A. (Hons) Economics (Upcoming III sem)