Somewhat NP Argentinians bound for Germany

[Dave Monroe]

... well, I'm under the impression that perhaps Pynchon had a problem with it, and
I'm not so sure that we shouldn't, either.  Those Nazi scientists were good at an
awful lot of (awful) things, and, to the credit of yr standard medical
practitioners, at least, "we" have refrained from using the very many ineteresting
things no doubt Nazi researchers learned about, say, the human body (not to mention
the human subject) when subjected to, say, extremes of temperature, not to mention
of pain, of suffering (see, for example, Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors, and
George J. Annas and Michael A. Grodin, eds., The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremburg
Code: Human Rights in Human Experimentation).  You do not find it disturbing that
the man previously responsible for lobbing explosives on, notably, Antwerp and
London, in a program much dependent on concentration camp slave labor, along with
his colleagues and/or cronies, were whisked of to aid and abet not only our space
program (the friendlier face of the technological Cold War), but our nuclear weapons
program as well (that not-so-friendly face ...)?  That Aristotelian line on
technology here, our tools neutral, neither inherently good, nor inherently bad
(interestingly, it's Heidegger who comes to mind as a sharp contrast, though ...)?
"Facts" "neutral," even?  Well, I do tend rather to believe in a material world, of
which we, bodily and cognitively are no doubt a part, which, in its sheer
materiality, is indifferent to us, our ideas, opinions, judgments, but ... but
"facts" are distinctions we draw upon that world, which are produced by us, with
rather less indifference, with rather less neutrality.  And, I'd agree, some are
"better," given certain considerations, than others,  but ... but that is not to say
either of our positions necessarily reflect that of the author, text at hand,
perhaps the time has come for a consideration of technology, science and the ethics
thereof in Gravity's Rainbow, and I'd even admit that essay on Luddism as evidence,
if you'd like (or not).  The moral of whose story, is my question ...

... Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr ... well, I'm asuming you've read, perhaps even seen
performed, Michael Frayn's excellent play, Copenhagen.  I would note, however, that
quantum physics, relativity, experimental science, even, were considered "Jewish,"
and therefore, unacceptible, sciece, under the Third Reich.  Until the idea of the
atomic bomb came along, but even then ....  Other titles for your consideration, if
you haven't already considered, or even read, them:

--Jeremy Bernstein and David Cassidy, Hitler's Uranium Club
--David Cassidy, Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Hesienberg
--Samuel Goudsmit, Alsos
--Sir Frank Hall, Operation Epsilon: The Farm Hall Transcripts
--Klaus Hentschel, The Einstein Tower
--Roert Jungk, Brighter than a Thousand Suns
--Kristie Macrackis, Surviving the Swastika: Scientific Research in Nazi Germany
--Thomas Powers, Heisenberg's War: The Secret History of the German Bomb
--Paul Lawrence Rose, Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project
--Fritz Richard Stern, Einstein's German World
--Mark Walker, German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power, 1939-49
--Mark Walker, Nazi Science: Myth, Truth and the German Atomic Bomb
--Mark Walker and Monika Rennenberg, eds., Science, Technology and National
Socialism

On the Heisenberg question (in short, willing Nazi collaborator or no?), well,
Powers is of course the most forgiving, Rose perhaps the most antagonsitic, but I
think Walker makes a pretty well-researched, well-reasoned, and, ultimately,
convincing case against him, without necessarily throwing out the brilliance with
the bathwater.  Walker's Nazi Science is an esp. comprehensive overview of, well,
nazi science, esp. physics.  I'd list David Irving's The German Atomic Bomb (a.k.a.
The Virus House), but, for better or worse, I haven't read it, saving me the dilemma
of having to endorse him in any way, shape or form.  My understanding, though, is
that it's rather less inflammatory than his subsequent work, and not all too badly
researched.  But it would have been conspicuous by its absence, so ...

jporter wrote:

> > From: Dave Monroe <monroe at mpm.edu>
>
> > think it undeniable that Pynchon had atken no small notice of the traces of
> > the
> > Reich in our own rocketry, weapons programs, starting (but by no means limited
> > to) the 'intellectual reparations" the Allies claimed in Operation Paperclip
> > .... where are those Nazis?  Well, they start of in WWII there, and end up at
> > NASA, apparently ...
>
> I have no problem with ex-Nazi scientists within our own rocketry/weapons
> program. Neither, apparently, did those people who sat on the tip of those
> huge, muscular and powerful Saturn rockets that lifted them- against all the
> earth's best efforts- to the moon. They wanted the rockets to work, after
> all.
>
> The nazi scientists were good at that.
>
> The moral of the story is that there is no moral. Facts are neutral. Any
> judgement of good or evil is, by definition, relative, because it is
> necessarily based on incomplete knowledge. This seems inhuman, or
> anti-human. It would be nice- comforting- to have an absolute, an edge, a
> boundary, a base, a foundation from which a complete moral understanding of
> our dilemma, and guide for our future actions could be dependably
> constructed. But such is the stuff of wistful pipe dreams- of those earnest
> fellows with "the future in their bones," as much as, by the Luddites, as
> much as by Pointsman.
>
> It is an extension of the paradox of causality and randomness. Prior
> conditions can never be completely specified. Shit happens, ja? and no one
> can say exactly why, how or when. This was discovered on the smallest scale
> by another nazi scientist and championed by his jewish mentor, much to the
> bedevilment of Einstein.
>
> The truth is there is no truth, but some lies are better than others.
>
> jody