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The purge of German science in 1933

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Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#161

Post by paganel »

reissbaker wrote: post #75
paganel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-semitism wasn't a major factor in European history until the (second-ish part) of the 19th century, for the simple reason that the European Jewish population wasn't that big of a presence for hundreds of years. Once the Enlightenment and French Revolution happened and once the Jewish population started to get some rights (which gets us into the 19th century) then things changed. Yes, I do know about the very unf…

Jews not "being a thing" in Europe from the 1200s until the 1800s is so preposterously wrong it's hard to know where to start. The Spanish expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, with the subsequent very famous Spanish Inquisition, might be a decent place to start reading. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Jews_from_Spain Spain is about as West as you can go and still be in Europe... And where do you think…

I didn't count the current territory of Spain up until the late 1400s as "proper" Western European, in fact most of the histories of Spain do not dwell on the history of Al-Andalus in the 14th century for too long, if at all.

> Spain is about as West as you can go and still be in Europe...

Geographically, of course, but in this type of historical discourse geography isn't the ultimate decider. Notice how Northern countries like Norway, Sweden and even Finland are considered as part of "Western Europe", even though there's only about a 3-hour drive between Sankt Petersburg and the Russian-Finnish border.

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#162

Post by inglor_cz »

kaashif wrote: post #116
inglor_cz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish could answer that. On one hand, the fact that a lot of smart people are trying to kill you is a great motivation for rapid technological advance and reduction of red tape. On the other hand, many of the young men in uniform who were torn apart by shells and mines could have been new Einsteins.

> many of the young men in uniform who were torn apart by shells and mines could have been new Einsteins. The problem of geniuses dead in wars pales in comparison to the number languishing in poverty or ignorance. These may number in the billions right now. How many potential Einsteins are miserably toiling away in dead end jobs? How many Ramanujans are eking out lives in villages in India? So on and so forth. And an…

Or how many really brilliant people spend their lives trying to push even more ads on the population at large, for good money and good living standard, but mostly harming humanity instead of helping it with their talent.

Waste of talent doesn't necessarily take the form of poverty and danger. We should be aware of the other part of the scissor, because it means that improving living standards aren't a panacea for this problem.

Hungary 100 years ago, a fairly backward and mostly agricultural country, somehow produced a long string of incredible geniuses that contemporary Dubai cannot.

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#163

Post by paganel »

seabass-labrax wrote: post #64
paganel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-semitism wasn't a major factor in European history until the (second-ish part) of the 19th century, for the simple reason that the European Jewish population wasn't that big of a presence for hundreds of years. Once the Enlightenment and French Revolution happened and once the Jewish population started to get some rights (which gets us into the 19th century) then things changed. Yes, I do know about the very unf…

I wouldn't agree with the assertion that it wasn't a major factor. The repeated violence against Jews and their expulsion from various areas is not a singular event, but forms a significant common thread across European history. It has happened so many times that the idea of persecuting Jews became a part of European culture , and thus gave the Nazis their inspiration for the Holocaust. The massacre at York in 1190 t…

I did include the caveat "starting with the 1200-1300s", and I did have the expulsion of the Jewish population from England in mind when writing that down.

After that I wouldn't say that there were"repeated" violences against Jews (when it comes to Western Europe) for the simple reason that there were almost no Jews around against whom to have that violence anymore. All that changed starting with the 19th century.

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#164

Post by Semaphor »

bergen wrote: post #122
cedilla wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Verbally smacked down? Yes. But it's absurd to even compare this to the purges in China, Germany and Russia, were people were literally killed to death. Also, while everyone has the right to argue anything, no one has the right to have the merits of their effort evaluated. When you go on and tell everyone here that ROT13 is as secure as RSA-2048, everyone will rightly laugh at you without considering your reasoning.

Not arguing with your point but “killed to death” sounds like an awesome metal band name

"Killed to Death" is an album by Murdered [0]

And there are 7 bands that had a song like that [1]

[0]: https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/Murdered/Killed_to_Dea...

[1]: https://www.metal-archives.com/search?searchString=Killed+to...

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#165

Post by silverquiet »

lynx23 wrote: post #160
silverquiet wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I never really got the appeal myself, but I'm told that people do in fact place great value on children which is why I'm so surprised at their willingness to destroy the planet.

"destroy the planet" is pretty much an exaggregation which demonstrates nicely that you seem to be alarmist. No point in having a discussion then.

6 degrees Celsius will basically render the Earth inhospitable for human occupation, but perhaps with some remnants remaining near the poles. Some of the latest work from James Hansen (whose previous work has been quite prescient) is suggesting that 10 degrees is likely. I apologize for my hyperbole.

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#166

Post by cseleborg »

foobarian wrote: post #9
perihelions wrote: post #8

One aspect of this that fascinated me is Nazi Germany's "physics denialism" (?) — the reactionary response to the modern physics revolutions of the early 20th century. (I.e. the twin revolutions of quantum physics and of relativity). It was a much weirder response than simply an attack on physicists who happened to be Jewish humans. Fields of physics were conspiratorially labelled as having a "Jewish" character, and…

The depictions of "wrong physics" in the 3 Body Problem show kinda remind me of that. Any kind of thinking that had even a whiff of going against the party line would cause problems for the author. What a weird time. I wonder if it's similar to how we look down on e.g. string theory, except I don't know if that's an apples to apples comparison given that we haven't seen any string theory apples yet :-)

String theory has, however, been successfully applied to oranges. Here in Germany, these are now routinely sold in nets, made of some sort of string. QED

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#167

Post by perihelions »

Tainnor wrote: post #121
perihelions wrote: post #8

One aspect of this that fascinated me is Nazi Germany's "physics denialism" (?) — the reactionary response to the modern physics revolutions of the early 20th century. (I.e. the twin revolutions of quantum physics and of relativity). It was a much weirder response than simply an attack on physicists who happened to be Jewish humans. Fields of physics were conspiratorially labelled as having a "Jewish" character, and…

It was the same thing in mathematics. For example, when Edmund Landau defined pi as "twice the value of the unique zero of cos in the interval [0, 2]" (a very common definition) instead of geometrically, this was attacked as being "un-German" (even though you can obviously go from the geometric to the analytic definition and vice versa). https://institucional.us.es/blogimus/en/2017/03/pi-and-the-n...

Here's a remarkable quote: "The Cauchy-Goursat theorem arouses intolerable displeasure in us Germans".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Bieberbach

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/hit... ("How German Mathematicians Dealt With the Rise of Nazism" (1967 / 2016))

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#168

Post by archagon »

wolverine876 wrote: post #146
perihelions wrote: post #8

One aspect of this that fascinated me is Nazi Germany's "physics denialism" (?) — the reactionary response to the modern physics revolutions of the early 20th century. (I.e. the twin revolutions of quantum physics and of relativity). It was a much weirder response than simply an attack on physicists who happened to be Jewish humans. Fields of physics were conspiratorially labelled as having a "Jewish" character, and…

> There was a fanaticism that's hard to grapple with philosophically, a thing that's far outside rationality, a magical thinking. How much more "magical" can you get than disregarding natural physical laws, and substituting your own? That's the definition of magic. People now deny climate change, often because it's 'liberal' - think of the incredible consequences of climate change, far greater than the disregarded ph…

Or “woke.”

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#169

Post by csomar »

wongarsu wrote: post #23
atleastoptimal wrote: post #4

I wonder just how advanced Germany would be nowadays without the World Wars.

The lingua franca in many sciences might still be German instead of English. But for the most part the technology level of Germany is coupled to that of the rest of the world. It's hard to tell how that would have evolved. Maybe keeping the existing research clusters in Western Europe intact would have lead to faster advances in chemistry and particle physics. On the other hand we probably wouldn't have a space stati…

You are assuming that without wars, all these achievements wouldn't have happened. Sure, that's one possibility. The other possibility is that people do them regardless. We have the iPhone today. A quite advanced device. We didn't need a war for that; but only the people willingness to connect with other people. In fact, most things we have from war are meaningless for everyday life.

Man to the space has a certain grandeur to it but it didn't fill soviet shelves with food.

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#170

Post by lynx23 »

silverquiet wrote: post #165
lynx23 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"destroy the planet" is pretty much an exaggregation which demonstrates nicely that you seem to be alarmist. No point in having a discussion then.

6 degrees Celsius will basically render the Earth inhospitable for human occupation, but perhaps with some remnants remaining near the poles. Some of the latest work from James Hansen (whose previous work has been quite prescient) is suggesting that 10 degrees is likely. I apologize for my hyperbole.

6 deg of what? fahrenheit, celsiius? And what, increase or decrease? Inaccurate alarmists are even wrose. Please dont even reply, I couldnt care less about your opinions.
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