Pynchon knows this, I say. Sorta always known.

[alice wellintown]

We agree to quite a bit, Monte. The points you've presented and the ones
I've presented are beaten paths. If you want original points go do some
research and stop wasting our time. This is the Pynchon List, not an ivory
tower.


On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 3:06 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:

> “..science becomes a useful political ideology for anyone who wishes to
> use it.”****
>
> ** **
>
> As does patriotism, as does religion, as does history, as does language
> itself: all have been (and still are) routinely caricatured, debased, and
> misrepresented in the service of ideological goals. Thank you for making my
> point. Did you have one of your own?****
>
> ** **
>
> BTW, the actual relevant science – human population genetics – didn’t even
> exist in H.S. Chamberlain’s heyday, and began undermining the premises of
> “racial science” almost as soon as it got going. Not that that embarrassed
> the racists, any more than actual nutritional science embarrasses the
> people hawking energy supplements, or the actual history of science
> embarrasses you.****
>
> ** **
>
> *From:* owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] *On
> Behalf Of *alice wellintown
> *Sent:* Sunday, June 02, 2013 2:09 PM
>
> *To:* pynchon -l
> *Subject:* Re: Pynchon knows this, I say. Sorta always known.****
>
> ** **
>
> *Medical Science Under Dictatorship*
>
> Leo Alexander, M.D. Boston****
>
>  ****
>
> http://www.restoringourheritage.com/articles/nej_medicaldictatorship.pdf**
> **
>
> ** **
>
> On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 2:03 PM, alice wellintown <
> alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:****
>
> Don't forget the Herero. The fact that Jews were hated before the Nazis,
> before Darwin, doesn't support your claim. The Nazis used Science, science
> was essential to the Nazi project, to the project to exterminate Jews and
> others. ****
>
>  ****
> \Nolan, Mary. "Science for Madmen," review of Racial Hygiene: Medicine
> Under the Nazis, by****
>
>  ****
>
> \Nolan, Mary. "Science for Madmen," review of Racial Hygiene: Medicine
> Under the Nazis, by
> Robert Proctor (Harvard University Press, 1988). New York Times Book
> Review, 21 August
> 1988, p. 7.\
>
> The place of science in Hitler's Germany has become something of a hot
> topic. Lifton's The Nazi
> Doctors examined the part played by some within the medical profession and
> his conclusion
> seems to have been that there were some 300 who went along with the Nazis.
> It is, on the other
> hand, the theme of this work that it was not just a few hundred toughs or
> thugs who happened
> also to be physicians who went along with the Nazis. Rather, the
> profession went along. It had
> biology as its justification.
>
> Nazi rule was acceptable to physicians because, in Germany in the early
> 1930s, there were too
> many physicians and the profession accepted the Nazis as a way of limiting
> competition within
> the profession. By accepting the Nazi view of Jews, the profession could
> eliminate a lot of that
> competition. Moreover, physicians' status in Germany was not very high in
> the Republic and it
> was hoped that the Nazis would provide a better social status to medical
> men. The Nazis had
> promised to help physicians if physicians would help them and it worked.
>
> "The Nazis, far from being irrational or anti-intellectual, drew on the
> ‘imagery, results and
> authority of science.' They used engineers and scientists to reshape
> technology and the factory,
> for example, and recruited economists and social scientists to draw
> blueprints for ‘the new order'
> in Eastern Europe. Most significantly, as Mr. Proctor convincingly shows,
> they employed racial
> science to define social problems and prescribe dramatic cures. Germany's
> ills were no longer
> attributed to economic crisis or political conflict... but to the
> handicapped and mentally ill,
> criminals, homosexuals and asocials, or inferior yet dangerous races. By
> medicalizing social
> problems, the Nazis gave them an unambiguous biological cause, eliminated
> the possibility of
> improvement by social or political means and justified a cure that
> stressed exclusion or
> elimination."
>
> Again, science becomes a useful political ideology for anyone who wishes
> to use it.
> http://www.albany.edu/~scifraud/data/sci_fraud_1859.html****
>
>  ****
>
> ** **
>
> On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 1:19 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net>
> wrote:****
>
> “science has been and is… an  essential element in holocaust, in genocide…”
> ****
>
>  ****
>
> (1)    Please clarify for me the role of science in encouraging or
> enabling Turks to slaughter Armenians, Stalin to starve Ukrainians, Mao to
> starve Chinese, Pol Pot to massacre Cambodians, Hutu to hack Tutsi, Efrain
> Rios Montt’s troops to gun down Mayans, etc. Even w/r/t the Third Reich’s
> “scientific” racism, rumor has it that the pedigree of murderous European
> Jew- and Gypsy- and Slav-hatred predates Hitler, predates Chamberlain and
> Gobineau, and predates Darwin.   ****
>
>  ****
>
> “the Sciences are defining the fundamental ways in which we experience
> the world by defining the world as we experience it.”****
>
>  ****
>
> (2)    Please restate this in less tautological form.****
>
>  ****
>
> “Science can not abide… the man who makes a house of nature with an
> extension of his hand.”****
>
>  ****
>
> (3)  Please explain to the carpenter working next door as I type what, if
> anything, this means. The poor ignorant fellow shows remarkably little
> concern that the National Academy of Sciences, MIT, IBM, or the laws of
> thermodynamics are bending their chill, pitiless gaze upon him.   ****
>
>  ****
>
> That will do for now. If you can clear up at least some of the sheer
> incoherent nonsense you spout on this topic, we can proceed to what’s
> merely ignorant or mistaken.****
>
> *Perhaps we can proceFrom:* owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:
> owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] *On Behalf Of *alice wellintown
> *Sent:* Sunday, June 02, 2013 11:34 AM
> *To:* pynchon -l****
>
>
> *Subject:* Re: Pynchon knows this, I say. Sorta always known.****
>
>  ****
>
> Science and thus the scientist is essential, is indispensable to the
> villainous acts, the evil we have seen in the 20th and 21st century.  ****
>
> Of course there are connections. But when we define the connections,
> clearly, honestly, we see that science has been and is instrumental, has
> been an essential element, in holocaust, in genocide, in war, in evil.
> Science can't wash it hands of these crimes. While no one would attempt to
> defend generals, businessmen, politicians, scientists take exception, make
> excuses for the evil that science has been an integral part of, for the
> evil deeds of scientists. While it would anger nearly everyone in the USA,
> were they to learn that the government protected and defended, even
> supported, a Nazi politician or general or businessman, the Nazi Scientists
> are given special treatment. Von Braun is but one example. Why? Well,
> because the Sciences are defining the fundamental ways in which we
> experience the world by defining the world as we experience it. This is
> quite a powerful position to extend to any group in a society. As the
> saying goes, power corrupts. And, although science is quick to put on the
> cloak of theory, to shield itself from claims to absolutes, for they know
> that power and absolutes exposé them to claims of corruption, to claims
> that science is against life, to accusations of gnostic death dreams (the
> causal and causation is embodied in Blicero), it continues to divide nature
> from human endeavors and it refuses to accept the limits of its reach.
> Science smashes atoms and makes big data virtual tours of space for
> voyeurs, because it can not abide a mystery, magic, or the man who makes a
> house of nature with an extension of his hand. ****
>
>  ****
>
> Today, I worship the hammer. ****
>
>
> On Sunday, June 2, 2013, Monte Davis wrote:****
>
> "taking responsibility for both the good stuff and bad stuff you do" -- I'm
> down with that.
>
> It's what you mean from moment to moment by "you" that I can't get my head
> around. Sometimes the villainous agent or agency is science, sometimes it's
> technology (not the same, and much older than science), sometimes it's
> industrialization per se, sometimes it's industrial capitalism, sometimes
> it's the global scaling-up with population of our species' ecological
> footprint.
>
> Are there many connections -- both causal and corollary -- among all these?
> Yes.  Are they one and the same Big Bad Thing? No. I'm well aware that I'm
> doing that analytical/dissective approach you reject... but if yours is as
> coherent as holism gets, I think I'll pass.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org<owner-pynchon-l at waste.org>]
> On Behalf
> Of Joseph Tracy
> Sent: Saturday, June 01, 2013 2:20 PM
> To: P-list List
> Subject: Re: Pynchon knows this, I say. Sorta always known.
>
> Bullshit. I don't support, believe in or advocate Luddism though I don't
> particularly despise those with  true and sincere distrust of technology or
> tribal peoples who don't want to adopt the technologies and science of the
> modern world. I do advocate taking responsibility for both the good stuff
> and bad stuff you do.  I advocate technologies  and science that don't
> require theft and destruction. I advocate methods that are bio-spherically
> respectful and sustainable.
> On Jun 1, 2013, at 12:16 AM, David Morris wrote:
>
> > You essentially advocate Luddism.  I think Tea Party, stupid party,
> fearful and reactionary.  I really hope TRP isn't that dumb.
> >
> > Dr. Mengele looks a lot like TRP:
> > http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele
> >
> > Maybe he feels the Dr's guilt.
> >
> > David Morris
> >
> > On Friday, May 31, 2013, Joseph Tracy wrote:
> >  But scientists and technologists are not merely adjuncts to bad
> political
> pressures, they sometimes lead the way into ethically abusive terrain, atom
> & then hydrogen bombs, nuclear power plants sited on unstable terrain(
> Fukushima) with approval of scientists, medical scientists came up with the
> things like the Tuskeegee syphilis experiments, US military experiments
> exposing people to radioactive materials, MK Ultra's experiments using
> drugs, sensory deprivation and torture on unwitting Canadians. The Nazi
> "medical" experiments were often as "scientific" as current experiments on
> rats.  The  pragmatic, for some more than others, philosophy  of
> "Scientific
> advancement " demands that materials be mined and provided cheaply no
> matter
> the human and eco costs. Science and the products generated by science
> demand access to the materials and cannot ask for a free pass.
> >
> > Sometimes scientists provide the disease and then the cure as in DDT,
> > HFCs ,phthalates, and Thalidimide. With global warming there may be no
> > cure
> >
> >  You want to say these things are entirely political, but politicians do
> not make dioxins or PCBs, do not figure out how to mine with mercury, are
> not the inventors of fossil fuel technologies or new plastics and other
> products  and techniques that poison the waters and soils.. The presumption
> that all the questions and difficulties we face are neatly divisible in
> such
> a way as to absolve  scientists and the  scientific method is not an idea
> to
> which I will be genuflecting.  The science we inherit  has relied heavily
> on
> analysis through dissection, dissolution, explosion and the reduction of
> all
> things to the observable component parts. This has been a mindset with some
> very dark consequences because life, and the only reality humans can
> actually experience is interactive, conscious, interdependent and more than
> the sum of parts or rules. There is no rule by which things desire to live,
> and no methodology of science has ever produced a living reproductive
> organism. Once again as in the original article there is a large gap
> between
> what  science claims  to know and what can be demonstrated by experiment.
> Scientific practice is not  able to be isolated as some pure and benign
> pursuit. It has been heavily fueled throughout history by war and greed and
> has itself fueled war, injustice and avarice.  Some of this comes out with
> heart-rending intensity in Mason and Dixon, Gravity's Rainbow, and Against
> the Day.. Equally so in The Metaphysical Club, Frankenstein, A Brave New
> World.
> >
> >
> > On May 30, 2013, at 10:44 PM, David Morris wrote:
> >
> > > Good point.
> > > But your beef is entirely political.  It has nothing to do with science
> or philosophy, except beyond their application in politics.
> > > In the US 3rd parties are almost lays losers.  You seem to be
> advocating
> a allegiance of scientist as a political voice.  And Amen!
> > > But that goal isn't about science or philosophy.  It's about
> pragmatics.
> > >
> > > David Morris
> > >
> > > On Thursday, May 30, 2013, Joseph Tracy wrote:
> > > No.  I****
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
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