Principles of Science

Code: FC-0801-1 | Semester: Monsoon 2026

FC Section: First Year

Biology is often introduced as a tidy catalogue of organisms, organs, and processes—a view of life described from the outside in. This course argues that to truly understand biology, one must first understand its molecules, and that most biological phenomena emerge from the choreography of molecules colliding, binding, folding, and breaking apart. As the course unfolds, students will discover that nearly every major breakthrough and intervention in modern biology—diagnosing disease, designing vaccines, mapping cells, editing genomes—ultimately depends on our ability to read the language of molecules.

Along the way, students will also encounter the stories behind these discoveries. Much of what we now take as settled fact about the molecules of life was once little more than a bold hunch, a smudge on a glass slide that nobody believed, a line in a 1,600-year-old manuscript left unread for centuries, or a rejected grant proposal yellowing in a desk drawer. These are stories of people learning, molecule by molecule, to read life itself. The journey unfolds across three arcs — Seeing, Controlling, and Rewriting — tracing how humans first learned to make the invisible visible, then turned that vision into intervention, and is now beginning to rewrite life itself.

Code: FC-0801-2 | Semester: Monsoon 2026

FC Section: First Year

This foundation course will engage in discussions synthesizing three relevant dimensions of the Science-Visual art symbiosis, viz. a) how artistic endeavours for recording observations have enriched the scientific pursuit and shaped the epistemic landscape (for example, how artworks by anatomists, astronomers and naturalists enriched the contemporaneous understanding about the natural world), b) how artistic imaginations have contributed to scientific contemplations and vice versa (from Leonardo to Heath Robinson’s caricatures), c) how aesthetics, in terms of morphogenesis and organismal behaviour as well as cognitive inclinations to art, emerged in the course of evolution (the science of colour, mate selection in the animal world and the neuroscience of visual aesthetics in humans).

Code: FC-0801-3 | Semester: Monsoon 2026

FC Section: First Year

Is the universe simply obeying rules, or is it making them up as it goes along? All matter and radiation that we observe in the universe seems to obey certain fundamental physical laws. Nevertheless, on the surface of the Earth, the same matter has organised itself into complex structures and living things that enjoy the freedom of creating new kinds of structure and life. In fact, the living world is best described by new kinds of emergent principles that are quite different from fundamental physical laws.

How can one reconcile the creative abilities of the living world with physical laws that the matter it is made of obeys? This leads to one of the oldest questions human beings have ever asked: how did life originate? It is a mystery which lies at the intersection of physics, chemistry, biology, and the earth sciences.

The course is organised as a three-act intellectual journey, moving from the simplicity of physical laws, to the complexity of the living world, to the twilight zone in between where life originates.

Act I.  Laws, symmetry and hidden rules: The universe is full of regularities we call laws of nature. We open by asking what a law actually is, how we determine what qualifies as a law, and how scientists go about discovering these hidden patterns in the first place. We explore how simple, deterministic rules can give rise to structural order and symmetry, and how they can just as easily give rise to chaos and randomness.

Act II.  The wonder that is life: Nature is also an astonishing tapestry of diversity and complexity. Here, we shift our gaze to the biological world: how a tiny planet in a vast universe plays host to an incredible, sprawling variety of life. We explore the scale of this diversity, from the intricate machinery of a single cell to the entire biosphere. We examine how a different kind of principle — Darwinian evolution — acts as a unifying idea for making sense of this diversity.

Act III.  The transition – the origin of life: Somewhere between order and chaos, life finds room to exist. What mechanisms can steer inanimate matter to produce the organised complexity that is life? This is where the course turns to the origin of life problem and the question of whether we are alone in the universe.

Throughout this course, wherever possible, ideas will be taught through play and examples (games, hands-on demonstrations, and simulations) before moving to formal definitions.

Code: FC-0801-4 | Semester: Monsoon 2026

FC Section: First Year

This course concerns the nature of Time and the important role it plays in our lives. It introduces the concept of age and time in the context of Physics and Astronomy- how Time is measured, its connection with Space, and why it moves in one direction, as well as the way Time is perceived in biological systems. Through this course, we would be like to bring to the students our current understanding about the scale and age of the Universe, and how this knowledge has evolved; how biological systems, including the human body, maintain temporal patterns; the impact of climate change and ecological damage on biological time and the evolution of survival strategies that require the understanding of past, present and future.

The course will start with a general introduction and historical perspective to the concept of time in our day-to-day life and in physics and in biology. We shall discuss the history of measurement of time and the invention of clocks. Without involving much mathematics, the course will help students derive the relationship between the speed of light and time, the space-time continuum, the age of the universe, stars, Earth, etc. We would then follow the concept of time in biology in the context of birth-growth-ageing-death. Seasonal variations in morphological and life-history traits as measurements of time, mechanism of timekeeping – biological clocks, circadian rhythms. We will also discuss evolutionary time and the important concepts pertaining to our understanding of this, such as generation time of different living beings. The course ends with discussions on human cognition and the concept of time: conceptual understanding of past, present and future.

The course is taught through lectures, discussions, flip-the-classroom mode (students making presentations on various related topics), reading books/watching movies and writing assignments.

Code: FC-0801-5 | Semester: Monsoon 2026

FC Section: First Year

A formidable combination of astronomical and geological conditions has made it possible for the Earth to harbour life on it. But there are many catastrophic events in the space that may destroy life, even the planet which in the vast cosmic arena appears as a mote of dust suspended in a beam of sunlight and floating in the vast emptiness of space.  Search for extra-terrestrial life has taught us an important lesson that our world, mother Earth is an extremely rare place in our galaxy and possibly the only planet that has the required astrophysical and geological conditions for harbouring life. Even if there are other planets similar to the Earth wherein life may exist, the number of such planets in the vast galaxy is extremely small, and so we are alone at least within a radius of a few hundreds of light years. 

This course will unfold the fact that our home, the planet Earth, is so special yet so vulnerable, so crowded yet so lonely, so common yet so unique, so insignificant yet so great! 

The following topics will be covered in the whole course: 

(i)   Our address in the Universe, the boundary of the solar system, the solar neighbourhood and the hierarchy in the structure of the visible Universe. A brief history of the solar planets.  

(ii)   Birth of the Sun and its planets including the Earth. We are made of star dust – the origin of heavy elements including carbon- the building block of organic molecules. 

(iii)   The Solar family – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Pluto and the other dwarf planets. Moons of the solar planets. 

(iv)   Planet Earth – its evolving geology and the atmosphere. The Oceans- where has so much water come from? The ecological system.   

(v)   Life is a puzzle: Definition of life- its main functions: metabolism, replication and evolution by natural selection. Origin of life on the Earth. The Extremophiles  

(vi) The potential threats to the Earth – Astronomical, Geological and Man-made threats. Extinction of life in the past.

 (vii)  The natural protection for life – The extremely rare combination of astronomical and geological coincidences that has enabled life on the Earth to survive and evolve.  

(viii)   Are we alone? Search for extra-terrestrial bio-signature and techno-signature. 

(ix)  The evolution of the Sun – from a faint young star to a red giant and a changing environment of the Earth – from a habitable to an uninhabitable planet. 

(x)  The death of the Sun and the fate of its planets.

Code: FC-0801-6 | Semester: Monsoon 2026

FC Section: Senior Year

Deconstructing Discoveries

Almost all high school graduates have studied science. However, the science they encounter is typically presented as a body of established knowledge—the products of science—rather than the processes through which discoveries and inventions are made. As a result, students often learn scientific facts in isolation, with little appreciation of the scientists behind the discoveries, the processes that led to them, or the important roles played by society, funding agencies, and research institutions in shaping the course of scientific inquiry.

The aim of this course is to introduce students to how science is actually done. It will examine how scientific discoveries and inventions are made; how society—including governments and the media—responds to them; how scientific recognition and prizes are awarded (or sometimes not awarded); and how the practice of science has evolved from the work of isolated individuals to Big Science, in which large international teams collaborate to address complex problems. Drawing on examples from biology, chemistry, astronomy, and physics, the course will demonstrate how observations, experiments, and discoveries have advanced our understanding of nature while illustrating the scientific method in practice. It will also foster an appreciation of scientific temper and examine the scientific basis of some of the major global challenges facing humanity today, including epidemics, climate change, and environmental pollution.

The course will be conducted through a combination of lectures, readings, discussions, and student seminars on topics assigned by the instructors. Students will also interview practicing scientists after reading selected papers from the primary scientific literature, participate in hands-on activities (such as constructing a double-helical DNA model and performing experiments with a simple pendulum), and stage scenes from the play Oxygen by Carl Djerassi and Roald Hoffmann to explore the human, historical, and social dimensions of scientific discovery.

Code: FC-0801-7 | Semester: Monsoon 2026

FC Section: Senior Year

This is a foundational course on the principles of science, dealing with the methods of study of science, ethical aspects and how science impacts society at different levels. The course will specifically deal with a very topical subject of sustainable science, focusing on nature-society interactions, UN Sustainable Development Goals, and real-world solutions in industry, government, and NGOs.  Key aspects include science at different length scales, combining data-driven and physical sciences, and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) playing a crucial role in sustainability.  Specific topics include “Sustainable Chemistry,” integrating with other sciences to deliver solutions to address environmental challenges. Chemical and allied sciences play a crucial role in this direction, and the course will bring out the importance of chemical science in achieving sustainability. The importance of chemistry in renewable energy and pharma will also be highlighted.