Subhash Kak

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Subhash Kak (born March 26, 1947, Srinagar, Kashmir) is Delaune Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Professor in the Asian Studies and Cognitive Science Programs at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. He is best known for his contributions to history and philosophy of science and also for his Indian studies.

Contents 1 Professional career 2 Books 2.1 Non-fiction 2.2 Poetry 3 See also 4 External links 4.1 Essays 4.2 Interviews 4.3 General

Professional career

Subhash Kak completed his Ph.D. at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi in 1970. He taught there and also at Imperial College, London, Bell Laboratories, and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR). He joined the LSU faculty in 1979.

His main contributions have been in cryptography, random sequences, artificial intelligence, and quantum information processing. He is the originator of instantaneously trained neural networks (INNs) (also called Kak neural networks), and he was amongst the first to apply information metrics to quantum systems.

His claims concerning the astronomy of the Vedic period in his book The Astronomical Code of the Rgveda (1994) challenged academic views related to the Aryan invasion theory and the nature of early Indian science. The co-authored In Search of the Cradle of Civilization (1995) led to an intensification of the polemics on the origins of Indian culture.

Kak is a founder of a biannual conference on science and consciousness that has been held in North Carolina beginning in the 1990s. Kak maintains that a fundamental subject-object dichotomy makes it possible for science only to deal with objects and not with the perceiving subject and, therefore, it is impossible to create a formal science of consciousness. Since the mind can make models of the outer reality, which, at its deepest level, is quantum mechanical, he argues that the mind must have a quantum mechanical basis. But his view of how the brain works is different from other quantum approaches to it. He sees the brain as a machine that reduces the infinite possibilities of a quantum-like universal consciousness, which is a consequence of the recursive nature of reality. The mind can only operate sequentially while reality is simultaneous across countless dimensions, suggesting that such a reduction from a universal consciousness may explain the amazing feats of savants and creative people.

His ideas on mind and consciousness are scattered in a variety of writings. The most accessible sources for his philosophy of recursionism are his books The Gods Within, The Architecture of Knowledge, the cryptic The Prajna Sutra, and his numerous journal and encyclopedia articles.

Books

Non-fiction

• Patanjali and Cognitive Science (1987)
• India at Century's End, South Asia Books, (1994) ISBN 818599014X
• Georg Feuerstein, Subhash Kak, David Frawley, In Search of the Cradle of Civilization, Ill: Quest Books, (1995, 2001) ISBN 0835607410.
• The Astronomical Code of the Rgveda, Aditya Prakashan, (1994 ), ISBN 8185689989 ; Munshiram Manoharlal (2000), ISBN 81-215-0986-6
• Computing Science in Ancient India (2001)
• The Wishing Tree: The Presence and Promise of India, Munshirm Manoharlal, (2001), ISBN 8121510325
• Gods Within: Mind, Consciousness and the Vedic Tradition, Munshirm Manoharlal, (2002) ISBN 8121510635
• The Asvamedha: The Rite and Its Logic, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, (2002) ISBN 8120818776
• The Nature of Physical Reality, Peter Lang Pub Inc, 1986, ISBN 0820403105
• "The Prajna Sutra: Aphorisms of Intuition", 2003.
• The Architecture of Knowledge: Quantam Mechanics, Neuroscience, Computers and Consciousness, Manohar Pubns, 2004, ISBN 8187586125
• "Recursionism and Reality: Representing and Understanding the World", 2005.
• Advances in Communications and Signal Processing, Springer-Verlag, 1989. (with W.A. Porter).
• Advances in Computing and Control, Springer-Verlag, 1989. (with W.A. Porter and J.L. Aravena).

Poetry

• The Conductor of the Dead (1974)
• The London Bridge (1977)
• The Secrets of Ishbar (1996)
• Ek Taal, Ek Darpan (1999)
• The secrets of Ishbar: Poems on Kashmir and other landscapes, Vitasta (1996) ISBN 8186588027

See also

• Kak neural network
• Decimal sequences for cryptography

External links

Essays

• Essays on Sulekha
• Columns on Rediff

Interviews

• Interview by VGR on History
• Interview by PBS on Soul of India
• Beliefnet Interview
• Indereunion Interview

General

• Another LSU homepage
• This one has the Vedic topics.
• Publications on Physics and Computer Science in the ArXiv.org e-print archive
• Lifeboat Foundation Bio
• New Poemsca:Subhash Kak

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