How a person’s politics can determine his or her positions on scientific theories.
This is my reply to a group of comments I discovered on the Online Philosophy Club’s Discussion Forums. In those comments, a DarwinX articulates views which many people held about Albert Einstein — and what was called “Jewish science” — in the 1920s and beyond. Indeed, as DarwinX will show, some people still hold these views today (see here).
DarwinX’s reasons for arguing that “Einstein was a fraud” are entirely to do with politics and the fact that Einstein was Jewish. That is, his criticisms aren’t in the least bit scientific. However, in order to advance political positions on scientific theories, certain seemingly scientific claims will often need to be advanced — even if in very crude forms. This is as true of certain people on the Left as it is true of certain people on the Right. However, in the case of DarwinX at least, it just happens to be someone on the (Far) Right who’s discussed in this respect.
Some people on both the Left (usually on the Far Left) and Right (usually on the Far Right) argue that this complete separation of science from politics is not only “naive” and “simplistic”: it’s also “dangerous”! I’m willing to accept that in certain respects, it may well be so. However, when people’s prime (or only) concern is politics and various social causes, then such people will hardly consider (even for a single second) a scientific theory without viewing it through their powerful and all-encompassing political prisms. And, I believe, that too is dangerous — as history has shown (e.g., from the Nazis in Germany to the Communists in the Soviet Union to what often still happens today).
In any case, the discussion below can be found here. My own comments can be seen under the name PAM (i.e., Paul Austin Murphy).
******************************
This was DarwinX’s first comment:
“The main reason Einstein was chosen to be the ambassador of physics is because he was Jewish and it would have be considered racist to criticize any of his theories. This is how the system uses political correctness to protect corrupt and deviate theories and ideas. Einstein completely obliterated the use of logic in science by introducing his his crazy ideas of relativity and curved space time which has destroyed logical science to this day.”
I don’t believe that today’s kind of political correctness existed when Albert Einstein first made his name as a great physicist in the early 1920s. However, it can of course be said that some kind of political correctness might have existed — even then.
[The video DarwinX links to mentions Antonio Gramsci, whose work didn’t become known outside Italy until the 1930s and it didn’t become widely influential until much later than that. As for the Frankfurt School, which is also mention: it’s main impact was felt post-1945. Einstein, on the other hand, first became a public figure in 1921 when he won the Nobel Prize.]
So this entirely depends on what the words “political correctness” mean.
Anyway, the idea that people — especially scientists — didn’t criticise Einstein’s theories because he was Jewish is incredible. Science simply doesn’t work like that on the whole — or even at all.
For example, what would have happened if another Jewish scientist produced theories which directly contradicted Einstein on relativity and “curved spacetime”? One can almost guarantee that this happened! (Jewish people are very good at criticising… Jewish people. Then again, non-Jewish people are good at criticising non-Jewish people too.) Would that have meant that, for reasons of “political correctness”, scientists would have had to accept both Einstein’s theories and their contradictions because both scientists were Jewish?
In addition, Einstein based a lot of his theories on previous scientific theories and mathematical work (which he freely admitted) which was created by mathematicians and scientists who weren’t Jewish. Does this mean that these non-Jewish bits of Einstein's work aren’t “corrupt” and the Jewish remainder is (to use your word) “corrupt”?
In any case, what’s intrinsically Jewish about relativity theory?
In 20th century philosophy, for example, Jewish philosophers — from Ludwig Wittgenstein to Thomas Nagel — have advanced theories which directly contradicted each other. Does that mean that both a Jewish theory and its direct contradiction are corrupt and therefore equally Jewish?
And I doubt there have been any scientists — except in someone’s imagination — who would have refrained from criticising Einstein’s theories simply because he was Jewish (especially in the 1920s and before). The stronger possibility is in the reverse direction: that Einstein’s theories would have been criticised simply because they were advanced by a Jewish person... Indeed Einstein’s theories were, in fact, criticised for precisely that reason by Adolf Hitler [see here], the National Socialists [see here] and others.
How can scientific theories be corrupt anyway? They can be false, misguided, not based on good theory or evidence, etc. — but corrupt?
If science isn’t a communal activity, then it’s not science at all. And, as a communal activity, science, on the whole, accepts relativity theory and the Einsteinian spacetime - if under suitable conditions. (This doesn’t mean that they will be accepted — as they are — for all time or that they won’t be adapted in some way.)
As for my own position, I simply don’t know enough about physics myself to offer anything new or original on relativity and Einsteinian spacetime. I certainly don’t know enough to criticise these theories. You would need to be a higher mathematician, an advanced physicist or a cosmologist to offer any justifiable criticisms of relativity theory and spacetime — never mind to offer theories which attempt to “refute” them outright.
DarwinX went on to say:
“Science is not a matter of opinion or consensus. There is only truth and reality. A consensus has nothing to do with truth or reality. Organizing science according to the dictates of consensus leads to corruption and bogus science.”
Saying that science is a communal activity isn’t the same thing as saying that scientific truths (or accurate theories about the world) are determined by the vote or by mindless agreement. The point about a scientific community is that it’s better to trust many workers in the field than to trust some individual scientist (or pseudo-scientist) who comes up with a theory he simply believes to be true.
Science is so complex and intricate that one person could rarely have the whole truth on a single theory or position. Even great and original scientists — such as Newton and, yes, Einstein — worked largely within scientific traditions and communities even if their new theories were indeed original and even revolutionary. (Therefore they weren’t immediately accepted by most scientists.) In any case, despite the originality of such scientists, that originality and accuracy still had to be accepted and agreed upon by the scientific community as a whole — and that happened.
So why should anyone accept the views of a lone scientist if he’s working in complete isolation and with no back up from anyone else other than those who already agree with him (perhaps for political reasons)? This is especially true if those people who agree with a lone “scientist” (on, say, the contradictions of relativity theory) aren’t themselves scientists. This simply leads to the question:
Why are people accepting the theories of these lone (or eccentric) scientists when they aren’t themselves scientists and when most other scientists reject their theories?
All I can say is that there are non-scientific (e.g., political) reasons — not reasons of what DarwinX calls “truth and reality” — which are motivating these agreements with these (as it were) alternative scientists or theories.
Then there was more from DarwinX:
“Don’t be intimidated by science theory. Real science is not difficult to understand. Bogus science tends to be over complicated and confusing, mainly because its main objective is to confuse and complicate simple matters.”
I’ve never heard that said before. Does this mean that science as it’s presented in popular-science books or science as it’s done by scientists themselves? There’s a massive difference between the two.
True; some popular-science writers do a marvellous job of clearly expressing scientific ideas. However, even they wouldn’t argue that “real science is not difficult to understand”. The basics aren’t difficult, sure; though that’s because all the mathematics, specialised technical theory and detail are simply missed out of (most) popular-science books. So popular science books are easy to understand. However, popular (or simplified) expositions of science aren’t themselves science. They are about science.
Everything said about science by DarwinX about Einstein is deeply imbued with his political and racial views on things. (Whether his general political positions are acceptable is irrelevant to that point.) His politics is in the driving seat and it’s completely determining his positions on science. Now that may not be a bad thing in itself. It depends on how much DarwinX really knows about science — not about the popular expositions of science by non-scientists and even sometimes by scientists. Again, his primary concern is politics and race; not science. His politics is being applied across the board so that he even sees politics in everything scientific — and, no doubt, in all things non-scientific too. This means that DarwinX is as ideologically and politically driven and fixated as the “politically correct” people he’s arguing against — perhaps more so.
No comments:
Post a Comment