From: andrew@rentec.com (Andrew Mullhaupt)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: Heidegger, Hitler, Racism and logic.
Date: 25 Aug 92 16:02:03 GMT
Organization: Renaissance Technologies Corp., Setauket, NY.

In article <BtHq6n.C2L@unx.sas.com> sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill) writes:
>
>In article <1193@kepler1.rentec.com>, andrew@rentec.com (Andrew Mullhaupt) writes:
>Perhaps so.  But the point was not that *some* experiments were dead ends,
>but that *some* valuable knowledge was gained.  (Please do *not* suppose that
>my corollary to this is "And it was worth it.")  In making a moral condemnation
>of the Nazis it is neither necessary nor relevant to deal with how good or
>bad their scientific methodology was, nor whether they achieved results that
>might in some way be valuable.

It's better science if it doesn't come at too high a price. For example - if
you could arrive at a way of determining the results of the SSC experiments
by building a machine which cost 1% of $ 8.3 B then it's better, right? So
when we evaluate the quality of practical science we need to examine the
actual cost - and in fact the _opportunity cost_ (would these resources be
better spent in other things?).

Ideological constraints on research impose opportunity cost, sometimes for
better (i.e. Nazi experiments are immoral) or for worse (i.e. Nazi genetics
is a dead end).

>|> ... I
>|> am not surprised to find that this seems to be the way it went in the life
>|> sciences, especially since the Nazis promoted a false foundation there, too.
>|> (Cf. Lysenkoism/Stalinism).
>
>You seem to want to claim that no one could be a good scientist and a good
>Nazi (good Nazi?  Now there's an interesting use of 'good'.)

No, I do not want to claim this. But I would object to idea that good Nazi
has to be taken in only one way. I have much I could say about the many
meanings the word 'good' can have when in close contact with the idea of
Nazism, but I'll let others have that field. George Steiner's _Language and
Silence_ is without question a good place to start on the trail of what
happens to language and meaning in the proximity of such _unutterable_
calamities.

>  If such a view
>makes you feel better, okay with me.  The analogy to Lysenkoism is weak.  For
>one thing, Lysenko's conformance to Marxist/Leninist/Stalinist ideology
>*limited* the research programs.  The Nazis did not appear to limit themselves
>in similar ways.  I'll grant that research programs in both societies were
>warped by the underlying ideology.  I suppose, however, that one could regard
>the Lysenko era as a rather long-term experiment demonstrating the inviability
>of certain views of evolution.  Indeed, it frequently is used as an example
>of just this.  Knowledge is gained through negative results.

Actually, the analogy to Lysenkoism is quite interesting. The Soviet bomb
effort was hamstrung by an anti-semitic bias against relativity. I believe
it is through Sakharov that we know that during this time, the Soviets had
a system of coded relativity theory which the party censors couldn't figure
out as a restatement of Einstein. Both systems imposed large limitations on
what could be done in research, and to negative effect. For example, the
Gottingen number theorist Landau was unexpectedly prevented from lecturing on
number theory after the local SS (which included a lot of math grad students)
decideed that number theory was "semitic". His classes were picketed by the SS
and he decided not to cross the line. Now Landau was neither Jewish, nor as
far as I can tell associated with anything anti-Nazi. Neither was number
theory of the time particularly populated by Jewish scholars more than any
other field. So we have to assume that the Nazi ideology was as much co-opted
by mathematicians with political axes to grind as much as Lysenkoism was in
the Soviet Academies. To the extent that any political ideology serves to
provide leverage for lesser men to displace the more productive, there is
an undoubted negative effect. The flight of Germany's intellectual capital
from the Nazi ideology is not negligible by any stretch of the imagination.

You are more likely to find work actively suppressed in the Soviet version
because the intellectuals had limited mobility. But this is not a different
cost - just a different way of counting it.

This is not a new story, and it has many anecdotes - from the nameless one
who could not ignore irrational numbers gone overboard, to the murder of
Hypatia in Alexandria, to the suppression of the annoying Galileo, to the
execution of Lavoisier, and the self-destruction of the pseudo-rebel Galois.

Strong political ideology has a manifold interaction with science, since 
scientists live in society. When it comes to evaluating this interaction
as positive or negative, it is very complex unless you concentrate on the
cases where the ideology involves itself _directly_ and _extensively_ in
the day-to-day process of scientists. And in these cases the more vehement
the ideology, the more you're picking out where science struggles rather
than where it flowers. 

Now you claim that there is a value for negative results. True, but the
experiments you choose to spend your resources on should be selected for
prospects of success. Nature will ensure a sufficient amount of failure.

Later,
Andrew Mullhaupt
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta