The ugly truth of science

[Monte Davis]

Laing and the X-ray films: this is very thought-provoking. Along with the
Japanese Unit 731 experiments, it may be the clearest test case that has
come up in this entire swirl of discussion threads.

Is the evil of what was done to generate that "data" so radical that the
only moral course would have been to shred, burn, and extirpate the
resulting files, photos, films etc.? Or to put it another way, could it ever
be data without scare quotes? Or is it so tainted by its origin that simply
to see it is to be complicit -- and to learn from it or teach with it to be
even more complicit? Would it make any difference if the German films were
re-created as animations? If they were summarized as text and line drawings?


I don't have an answer. I certainly would have felt the shock Laing felt,
and might well have walked out with him and his friend. (Even in a context
of entertainment - heh - I have a very low tolerance for modern gore-horror,
and often change channels to get away even from a thriller's fight scene
that seems too long and loving.)

My feelings go with Laing from there to "terror of human beings, terror at
the films themselves, at the minds behind the making of them..."  But my
judgment begins to diverge in the next clause as he arrives at the
near-equation of "making" and "distribution." I also question his confident
(and typically Laingian) assumptions about 198  other students' thoughts and
feelings (or lack of same)... and his quick extension to science at large
and culture at large. By then I'm smelling wellintownian "little men" crap,
and he's lost me.

Most likely, wimpy wuss compromiser that I am,  I would have proposed to the
professor that the films be an optional viewing for those who chose to do
so, preceded and followed by discussion. And I might have suggested the
students think about substituting "science" for "history" in Eliot's
"Gerontion":

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now	
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors	
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now	
She gives when our attention is distracted	
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions	
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late	
What's not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon	
Into weak hands, what's thought can be dispensed with	
Till the refusal propagates a fear...

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Kai Frederik Lorentzen
Sent: Monday, June 17, 2013 6:13 AM
To: pynchon -l
Subject: Re: The ugly truth of science


In his autobiography ("Wisdom, Madness & Folly. The Making of a
Psychiatrist", pp. 69-70) Ronald D. Laing reports:

"As a teaching aid in our anatomy course, Hamilton had us shown films of
prolonged X-rays of the body, showing joint movements, and movements of the
digestive tracts, peristalsis, etc. They were unique. Hopefully they still
are. For exposure of the body to such prolonged X-rays produces massive
X-ray burns and tissue devastation, and an agonizing death unless the human
experimental animal is promptly put out of its misery. These were Nazi films
of experiments done to Jews, purloined by the British at the end of World
War II and now being used as teaching material.
It took a little while for what was going on to sink in. I saw one showing.
I walked out with a friend of mine, John Owens. The other 200 or so students
remained to sit and watch with apparent interest.
We were sickened and outraged. We went to Professor Hamilton and
expostulated with him. 'We are watching people burned to death! How can you
use this as teaching material?'
'Yes, I know. I agree with you. But it is unique teaching material. If we
don't use it now, their deaths will have been in vain.'
Most of the students agreed with him. There was no 'movement' to boycott or
ban these films. They were interesting. Just to indulge that interest (to
hell with the 'interest' of 'science') for one second, made me feel I had
caught the plague.
This incident intensified my terror of human beings, terror at the films
themselves, at the minds behind the making of them, at the minds behind the
bureaucratic and scientific efficiency that sustained with such blandness
and blindness towards evil the social machinery of their distribution as
well as their making.
How had we all become so docile? Why did we take so much for granted?
Why did most of us believe
what we were told by those we believed, and almost nothing else? HOW were we
such conditioned creatures?"

Laing's questions belong to the 'right questions' THEY do not want us to
ask, because if more people could care about these issues in their physical,
mental, social and - perhaps - metaphysical dimension, THEY indeed would
have to worry about the answers ...

KFL