A tiny question.
Gillies, Lindsay
Lindsay.Gillies at FMR.Com
Tue Jan 2 16:14:53 CST 1996
thus HAG:
)vBraun is using the authority of science in order to
)propagate some non-scientific opinion. You may think this not serious,
)or merely poetic license, but it is more than that
indeed...one might characterize most of National Socialist scientific life
this way. "Making metaphors" and analogical "thinking" marks the work of
all the great NS "brains"---even Speer found true power finally in an area
where he was an amateur. Werner felt ok about science carried out over the
dead bodies of Dora camp slaves---perhaps because NS "science" had already
shown them to be untermenschen. This is certainly more than poetic license.
Naturally not all analogical thinking is murderous or racist...but Werner
as quoted by TRP cannot be taken too far from his actual historical context,
provided in prototypical form via the Herero story. If ever the "authority
of science" was used "in order to propagate some non-scientific opinion"...
________________________
From: Hartwin Alfred Gebhardt
John Burgess writes:
> I think HAG is taking a rather harsh line here... von Braun is not saying
> that "science prove" a spiritual existence... he's saying that his
> knowledge of science (which I think fairly considerable) reinforces his
> _belief_ in continued spiritual existence. He is willing to take a
> scientific law and apply it to a field for which is was not created,
> i.e., to make a metaphore. One may not care for his poetry, but that's
> what it is. If the "truthfulness" of it doesn't strike a particular
> reader, then the poetic connection didn't work.
>
> I don't see a "misapplication" of science in the quote.
I have to disagree. He is clearly attempting to connect the first law
of thermodynamics with "our" continued spiritual existence. He is
thus implying something like 'energy = soul', and is therefore quite
explicitly misusing the clearly defined concept of energy - if you
take the scientific definition away from E, you take the meaning away.
Furthermore, vBraun is using the authority of science in order to
propagate some non-scientific opinion. You may think this not serious,
or merely poetic license, but it is more than that. There are many ways
to use science in order to create interesting and _successful_ metaphors
without making nonsense of the science in the process - this is not one
of them.
hg
hag at iafrica.com
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