HDYK Episode 6: We've Got History- With Sarah Qidwai Artwork

How do you know?

It’s ironic that in an era of big data, truth sometimes seems more elusive than ever. To make better choices about how to manage our lives, our work, and our environment, we need to use the best possible information to guide us. But even with great data, humans don’t always make great choices- we misinterpret, we oversimplify, we fail to see fallacies in logic or flaws in the data itself- and even our most rational examinations of the numbers are fundamentally human, shaped by culture, prior experience, and our internal biases.In this podcast, we explore the process of how data becomes information, information becomes knowledge and knowledge becomes belief- and how, in turn, belief shapes the way we take and interpret data. From young learners to practicing scientists, the ways we incorporate information into our worldview is affected by our experiences. We combine social and data science perspectives with the study of how humans learn, in order to examine not just what we know, but how we know it.

All Episodes

How do you know?

HDYK Episode 6: We've Got History- With Sarah Qidwai

November 15, 2021 • Christie Bahlai

And now, as Monty Python would say, for something completely different. Or is it? Is it data, is it science? The humanities produce knowledge. Yet, they’re not generally considered part of STEMM. So, what about humanities research on STEMM? What does this look like? Where does it fit in?

As we continue to explore the human side of science, in this episode we consider the history of science, and also what it is like to be an early career researcher now navigating the Academy and transitioning from PhD to postdoc.

Sarah Qidwai recently completed her University of Toronto’s Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. Her research interests include the history of science and religion, science and colonialism, and South Asian studies.

Her doctoral dissertation situates Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-1898) as a key figure in the history of science in colonial India. Sarah has investigated the development and implementation of Sayyid Ahmad’s scientific thought (including human evolution and the motion of the earth) and how he dealt with science’s role in its historical context.

She’s published the book chapter “Darwin or Design: Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s Views on Human Evolution" in The Cambridge Companion to Sayyid Ahmad Khan. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), and “Re-Examining Complexity: Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s Interpretation of ‘Science” in Islam”, which was published in Rethinking History, Science, and Religion: An Exploration of Conflict and the Complexity Principle, published by University of Pittsburg Press in 2019.

A complete transcript of this interview is available here.

This podcast is produced with the generous support of the Mozilla Foundation and the National Science Foundation, and with input from community members from Mozilla, the Environmental Data Science Inclusion Network, and our colleagues and students at Kent State University. A special shout out to Kristen Dowling and Emily Loccisano for managing our digital presence and branding and to Jen Zink for audio production. Music featured in this episode is Honeyknocker Meadows, by Origami Repetika, and obtained from freemusicarchive.org under a CC-BY licence. This podcast and its accompanying materials licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license- please share, like and use our stuff!