About …

I am a science educationist in Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India. I did M.Sc. in Biology and M.A. in Philosophy from Delhi University, and Ph.D. in Philosophy of Science from IIT Kanpur. I am currently carrying out research and development in the area of structure and dynamics of knowledge, an inter-disciplinary domain covering the issues in cognitive science, epistemology, and computer science. Some of my areas of interest are semantic web, knowledge organization, AI, philosophy of science, biological roots of knowledge and modeling complex systems with specific interest in cognitive development. I am the author of a specification and implementation of a distributed knowledge base called GNOWSYS (http://www.gnu.org/software/gnowsys/), and an architect of gnowledge.org, a community portal, which is launched on 2nd February 2007. I spend my spare time promoting free knowledge and free software and serve as the chairperson of Free Software Foundation of India. I am currently guiding two research scholars in the area of biology education at HBCSE, TIFR. I teach graduate courses there in the area of History and Philosophy of Science, and Cognitive Development. I spent two years in the development of SELF Platform.  Current engagements: gnowsys, gnowsys-mode, gnome-gn0wser, building the surface map of knowledge, writing neighbourhood theory of meaning.

And last but not the least I am a practicing gnowgi, and my struggle is to explore ways of bridging the gap between understanding and belief.  In other words, I am exploring ways to answer the question:  why even after developing a clear understanding several scholars do not develop ontological commitment.

You can read my views on issues from the main page of this site, and some of my publications from here.

To know why I coined this term ‘gnowgi’ and use it for this space, an introduction to few other such terms that I coined or use already coined terms will help.

gnowledge: (as defined by me, but this terms was used by others as well.)

gnowledge is that part of knowledge which an agent has no restriction to encode, decode, re-encode, re-decode, re-produce, and inherit.

gnoware:

gnoware is technology or software that an agent has no restriction to repair, encode or fabricate, decode or deconstruct, re-encode or re-fabricate, re-decode, re-produce, and inherit.

gnow:

when used as a verb, to gnow is to create a gnowable resource, to share knowledge.

gnower:

an agent who participates in the act of gnowing.

gnowser:

pronounced in rhyme with ‘browser’, is a tool to browse, and manage gnowledge base. This is also the name of the Semantic Desktop based on GNOWSYS.

gnowcabulary:

is gnowledge jargon.

and

gnowgi:

pronounced in rhyme with yogi, is a person who not only does gnowing, but also preaches gnowing, uses exclusively gnoware and produces gnowledge.

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