The Ideological Subversion of Biology(skepticalinquirer.org)
skepticalinquirer.org
The Ideological Subversion of Biology
https://skepticalinquirer.org/2023/06/the-ideological-subversion-of-biology/
2 comments
Marxists were upset about relativity and quantum mechanics:
"Soviet physicists were saved from a grand inquisition ironically thanks to the practical power mongering of Marxist dictator. [...] “Stalin chose the bomb over ideological purity.” Josef Stalin had ordered a core group of physicists to create atomic weapons for Soviet Union. These physicists insisted that inputs from the physicists accused of heresy to Marxism, was essential for the atomic bomb project. [...] Beria the killer hand of Stalin asked Kurchatov the physicist whether it was true that quantum mechanics and relativity theory were idealist, in the sense of antimaterialist.
Kurchatov replied that if relativity theory and quantum mechanics were rejected, the bomb would have to be rejected too. [...] three leading physicists -Kurchatov may have been among them- approached Beria in mid-March 1949 and asked him to call off the conference [organized by the party to ensure that physics followed the principles of dialectical materialism] on the grounds that it would harm Soviet physics and interfere with atomic project.
Beria replied to the physicists that he would not make a decision on this himself but would speak to Stalin. Stalin agreed to cancel the conference, saying of the physicists, “Leave them in peace. We can always shoot them later.”
https://swarajyamag.com/longform/marxist-encounters-with-sci...
People can find ways to be upset about anything:
"The privileging of solid over fluid mechanics, and indeed the inability of science to deal with turbulent flow at all, she attributes to the association of fluidity with femininity. Whereas men have sex organs that protrude and become rigid, women have openings that leak menstrual blood and vaginal fluids. Although men, too, flow on occasion — when semen is emitted, for example — this aspect of their sexuality is not emphasized. It is the rigidity of the male organ that counts, not its complicity in fluid flow. These idealizations are reinscribed in mathematics, which conceives of fluids as laminated planes and other modified solid forms. In the same way that women are erased within masculinist the- ories and language, existing only as not-men, so fluids have been erased from science, existing only as not-solids. From this perspective it is no wonder that science has not been able to arrive at a successful model for turbulence. The problem of turbulent flow cannot be solved because the conceptions of fluids (and of women) have been formulated so as necessarily to leave unarticulated remainders."
https://www.dogma.lu/txt/JB-Postmodernism.pdf
Oh my.
“To provide an example of the role that white empiricism plays in physics, I discuss the current debate in string theory about postempiricism, motivated in part by a question: why are string theorists calling for an end to empiricism rather than an end to racial hegemony? […] Given that Black women must, according to Einstein's principle of covariance, have an equal claim to objectivity regardless of their simultaneously experiencing intersecting axes of oppression, we can dispense with any suggestion that the low number of Black women in science indicates any lack of validity on their part as observers. […] In string theory, we find an example wherein extremely speculative ideas that require abandoning the empiricist core of the scientific method and which are endorsed by white scientists are taken more seriously than the idea that Black women are competent observers of their own experiences.“
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/704991
"Soviet physicists were saved from a grand inquisition ironically thanks to the practical power mongering of Marxist dictator. [...] “Stalin chose the bomb over ideological purity.” Josef Stalin had ordered a core group of physicists to create atomic weapons for Soviet Union. These physicists insisted that inputs from the physicists accused of heresy to Marxism, was essential for the atomic bomb project. [...] Beria the killer hand of Stalin asked Kurchatov the physicist whether it was true that quantum mechanics and relativity theory were idealist, in the sense of antimaterialist.
Kurchatov replied that if relativity theory and quantum mechanics were rejected, the bomb would have to be rejected too. [...] three leading physicists -Kurchatov may have been among them- approached Beria in mid-March 1949 and asked him to call off the conference [organized by the party to ensure that physics followed the principles of dialectical materialism] on the grounds that it would harm Soviet physics and interfere with atomic project.
Beria replied to the physicists that he would not make a decision on this himself but would speak to Stalin. Stalin agreed to cancel the conference, saying of the physicists, “Leave them in peace. We can always shoot them later.”
https://swarajyamag.com/longform/marxist-encounters-with-sci...
People can find ways to be upset about anything:
"The privileging of solid over fluid mechanics, and indeed the inability of science to deal with turbulent flow at all, she attributes to the association of fluidity with femininity. Whereas men have sex organs that protrude and become rigid, women have openings that leak menstrual blood and vaginal fluids. Although men, too, flow on occasion — when semen is emitted, for example — this aspect of their sexuality is not emphasized. It is the rigidity of the male organ that counts, not its complicity in fluid flow. These idealizations are reinscribed in mathematics, which conceives of fluids as laminated planes and other modified solid forms. In the same way that women are erased within masculinist the- ories and language, existing only as not-men, so fluids have been erased from science, existing only as not-solids. From this perspective it is no wonder that science has not been able to arrive at a successful model for turbulence. The problem of turbulent flow cannot be solved because the conceptions of fluids (and of women) have been formulated so as necessarily to leave unarticulated remainders."
https://www.dogma.lu/txt/JB-Postmodernism.pdf
Oh my.
“To provide an example of the role that white empiricism plays in physics, I discuss the current debate in string theory about postempiricism, motivated in part by a question: why are string theorists calling for an end to empiricism rather than an end to racial hegemony? […] Given that Black women must, according to Einstein's principle of covariance, have an equal claim to objectivity regardless of their simultaneously experiencing intersecting axes of oppression, we can dispense with any suggestion that the low number of Black women in science indicates any lack of validity on their part as observers. […] In string theory, we find an example wherein extremely speculative ideas that require abandoning the empiricist core of the scientific method and which are endorsed by white scientists are taken more seriously than the idea that Black women are competent observers of their own experiences.“
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/704991
I hear a lot about people talking about politics becoming ingrained in certain scientific fields, but it's hard for me to imagine this happening in certain fields. It is amusing to try to think how one might even begin to "ideologically subvert" a field like Condensed Matter Physics or Knot Theory.
Can you find anyone who would be upset about the Quantum Hall Effect or the Călugăreanu Theorem.