The Calcutta Chromosome - Science Fiction and Technology
This novel was written by a social anthropologist, Amitav Ghosh, who is also a skilled literary craftsman when it comes to the precision and clarity of his narrative style. So, knowing his anthropological background and expertise, a reader goes into a book with a little different sense of anticipation; science will surely be a prominent part of the book's theme. And also, I am enjoying reading the novel and observing the two types of cultures - Western and Eastern cultures - and how each of those cultures views and responds to technology and science.The plot is made very interesting in a diverse way, because there are characters whose cultural backgrounds are very different from the places and cultures that they are living in; for example, far from his real cultural place of residence is Antar, an Egyptian (Eastern culture), who resides in Manhattan (western culture). His job is to research artifacts (from many cultures) through the medium of cyberspace, which is a kind of other-worldly technology culture that allows individuals of all cultures to interact digitally, but never to actually speak verbally to one another, see one another, or pass judgment other than through the written word. Meanwhile, keeping to a diversity of
Also, Ross was obviously approaching science from a different perspective than was his assistant, Mangala, his Indian laboratory technologist. " And right there is a passage that explains the eastern attitude towards science at that time; since conventional, traditional western science haven't solved the problem, why not use magic, or witchcraft, or other seemingly pagan approaches?. "Ross won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the role of the anopheles mosquito in the transmission of malaria. These spacey-seeming people embracing very different cultural mores, Murugan's theory continues, apparently used Ross's research to pursue some kind of fountain of youth, using the mosquito to allow the soul to jump into the body of a different person. "A month's worth of rice for one prick and one small blood sample? This is another bold contrast between how the west approaches not just science, but work and life; give someone money, quick, and run to get your name in the paper or otherwise grab some glory and credit for something perhaps you really didn't do all by yourself. Murugan, according to a review in the Christian Science Monitor (Rosenberg, 1998), was "an engaging character - an obsessive verging on madness, but also a raconteur with a delicious instinct for life's absurdities in general and colonial hypocrisy in particular. Science to Murugan was linked to his tendency to be suspicious and entertain dark hypotheses; and the novel becomes something of a scientific investigation itself, as readers are thrown into a conspiracy story that is harder to figure out than a Rubik's Cube sometimes. tell him that what he sees is the creature's member entering the body of its mate, doing what men and women must do. He offers money for blood that has malaria samples in it: ".
Common topics in this essay:
Doc Manson's,
Elijah Farley,
Rubik's Cube,
Egyptian Eastern,
Indian Murugan,
Mangala Indian,
Medical Association,
Amitav Ghosh,
Western Eastern,
Nobel Prize,
approach science,
science technology,
cultural differences,
approaching science,
mangala weird,
eastern culture,
ronald ross,
guinea pig,
ross's research,
nobel prize,
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Acceptance Essays
