From: Peshewegunzh <beaver.cs.washington.edu!gnosys!mthvax.cs.miami.edu!mamia!peshe>
Subject: Re: German Physics
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 21:55:34 GMT

Original-Sender: Peshewegunzh <mthvax.cs.miami.edu!mamia!peshe>

Alan McGowen <hpindbu.cup.hp.com!alanm> and I shall evidently never make
peace:

> > Sadly, the Sierra Club for this area issued a news release
> > just before the hurricane struck, which was exultant that a
> > hurricane was hitting this area, so that nature would correct (destroy) what
> > man had destroyed (built).
>
> By any chance, were
> hints of electoral politics involved? Any related mention of "environmental
> extremists" and certain senators from Tennessee?

People were readying to flee for their lives. There were no editorial
comments, no politics involved. Simply another view of what to most
seemed an impending disaster.

> In my part of the world, the major threat is earthquakes, and it is not
> considered uncommpassionate to advocate building codes which increase
> protection against them.

The views stated were not in concern to building codes, but that it was
considered (and I agree to some extent) that man should not have built
anything in the area, not because of hurricane potential, but because
of diminishment of the Everglades park system. Nevertheless, under no
circumstances would I relish the destruction and suffering even if
it results in restoring the park system to its non-human inhabited and
ecologically more sustainable state.

All structures in the area are built according to a strict hurricane
resistant building code. However, there is not much that can survive
a category 5 storm completely undamaged. But this was not the question.
I think some of the thoughtlessness of the release might be attributed to
not being fully aware of the real aftermath of such an event, and perhaps
due to the panic situation prevailing beforehand statements may not have
been vetted properly. I do believe it is indicative of the state of mind
of *some* environmentalists, however, though obviously not all.

> Sympathy for wildlife which dies in storms is also a little misplaced,
> since it is a recurrent natural phenomenon to which ecosystems have been
> long adapted. The tragedy here is that many species have had their ranges
> so reduced by the expansion of the human population and the pressures
> which attend it that such natural impacts, which in past could have been
> more readily recouped, can now constitute as significant additional impetus
> towards extinction. For this reason, human intervention may be required
> to compensate for the damage wrought by storms in reserve areas, but properly
> seen what we are compensating for is our own encraochment, and not the
> storm's.

I hope that this does not mean that compassion even for human victims is
misplaced; from earlier posts regarding the equivalency of all life forms,
including humans, it would seem that we might be tempted to feel nothing
since that is obviously a recurring natural phenomenon, too. I think that
such a response involves, paradoxically, a loss of the sense of
responsibility we have for other people and the creation, and certainly
the prime motivation for such behavior, compassion.

> Again the author again confuses social Darwinism and other political movements
> with Darwin's explanation of evolution as a product of natural selection.
> Perhaps he is unaware that under Stalin, Darwin's theory was held to
> be "bourgoise error" in the Soviet Union, and the official doctrine which
> biologists were required to believe was the Larmarkian theory as championed
> by Lysenko.

Actually Lysenko developed a theory of genetics which implied that human
nature could be molded, and acquired charateristics could be inherited. Stalin
saw in Lysenko's theories justification for some of the extreme means used
to create a new "Soviet Man." Darwinian-inspired views of the cruelty of
a competitive nature creating stronger and ever more progressive lifeforms
made Lysenko's theories morally acceptable, especially in light of another
Russian scientist's work which seemed applicable, that of Ivan Pavlov. Of
course, there I would submit that even Pavlov's theories run aground because
we are not his dog, but behaviorists with their penchant to create new types
of human beings do not yet seem to have learned this, despite Lysenko's
rather Gogolian fate.

Of course, Stalin was trained in a seminary so I am sure you are not surprised
by *his* logical failure, Alan! |-) ...

The real problem was (and is) that a educational and governmental bureaucratic
tyranny propagated by those who claim an infallible mantle by virtue of
calling themselves scientists - Trofim Lysenko had all the appropriate
degrees - becomes intolerant of other views, to the point of
suppressing them. This is wrong, since it has been shown over and over in
science that often a scientific heresy in one generation becomes the
orthodoxy of the next.

> "Nazi paganism", by the way, has also been blamed for the rise of quantum
> mechanics, so what not ecology as well? :-) It makes at least as much sense
> as the Nazi's own idea that Einstein's theories were "Jewish Physics" and that
> they were dense with equations in order to confuse German Youth, who had much
> better think about politics than nature.

I think it would be naive to too quickly dismiss Nazism as the rather comic
farce that American propaganda has preserved for us in films and elsewhere.
Scientists who were not intellectually or philosophically opposed to Nazism
created powerful technologies. Nazis were very close to making their own
A-bomb, with raw materials obtained with difficulty from occupied territory.
Einstein's own motivation for urging Roosevelt to a Manhattan Project were
because of his knowledge of progress on that front in Germany. Einstein would
have remained a German if it were not for the scapegoating of the Jews by
Nazism as genetically inferior, which choice was made for reasons of hatred
for their monotheistic religion which the Nazis postulated had created the
cancerous mutation of Christianity. This choice was justified, as many
policies are, by invoking the shibboleth of science and applying it to
evolutionary theories, when what is really sought are political expediencies.
The Nazi ideology fervently held to dreamed of an idealistic return to the
old pagan naturistic religion practiced before Christianity mestastasized in
Europe.

European exploration of space and the race for the moon was largely fueled
in Russia and America by a competition between each side's captured Nazi
scientists, and has now largely faded with the deaths of those like V2 rocket
bomb pioneer Werner Von Braun. Thus, we must be faced with the reality that
Western science stands on the shoulders of the Nazi scientists, too, and
we should be aware of the philosophical baggage carried along. Certainly
science has been idolized so greatly that the moral failure of these men
who were war criminals was completely overlooked in favor of what power
they could bring to other victorious European governments.

I have answered the above statements rather extensively and fairly
completely, because I detected a kind of intellectual superiority
about the last response which is uncalled for. I think that this should
put to an end any comments about the likelihood or not of any
particular Indian being unaware of historical or philosophical
developments. I think we should realize that we speak as equals. The
reason is, of course, that while Europeans have difficulty speaking
for Indians, Indians have been forced to acclimatize to European
modes, and can thus speak validly there, too.



--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Peshewegunzh

peshe%mamia.UUCP@mthvax.cs.miami.edu
mthvax.cs.miami.edu!mamia.UUCP!peshe
peshe@mamia.UUCP
mthvax!mamia!peshe

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Both Alan and Peshe seem to have clearly stated their ideas, further
discussion should expand on them, and not merely restate them.  In
particular, while Peshe's views on the value of Western science seem to
make use of guilt by association with the Nazis; I would prefer that
those views not become the center of a NatChat flamewar.  If such
discussion is inevitable, please take it to email.--jay]

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