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The purge of German science in 1933

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Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#211

Post by HelloNurse »

kromem wrote: post #45
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…

You mean things like thinking that the vaccine harms of something nearly the entire world has received which was being said would kill people in two years time is more dangerous than the thing that actually killed millions of people during the last few years? It would be pretty weird if there were major political parties denying the science like that, or even picking who they would vote for as a leader based on the p…

"Major political parties" know that votes from idiots are as valuable as votes from people they are unable to fool: no-vax conspiracy theorists are one of many despicable constituencies that they want to be nice to, at the cost of alienating a smaller number of better people.

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#212

Post by HelloNurse »

dudefeliciano wrote: post #192
reissbaker wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're trying to draw a hard line distinction where only a blurry evolution exists. While antisemitism in the 19th and 20th centuries had some unique characteristics that co-evolved with other forms of racism, antisemitism existed before the 19th century and there are clear evolutionary roots e.g. "Jewish badges" [1] that date back to the 1100s, which the famous "Jude" badge from the Nazi era was a continuati…

i think the main difference is that in the middle ages conversion to Christianity was a way to avoid persecution, while this was not an option under nazi Germany.

Racial excuses replaced religious excuses.

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#213

Post by 48864w6ui »

nforgerit wrote: post #184
KingOfCoders wrote: post #175

And 1945. Double whammy. Germany never made a comeback. The anti-science culture revolution of the 1970s cemented this. It's cool to be bad in science in schools since then, every celebrity boasts about how bad they were in mathematics etc.

German here. It's actually true that you see a lot of "public intellectuals" that publicly tell how bad they were at math. I only realized that when Merkel as chancellor back in Covid times, after numerous meetings with other politicians and non-scientists, found herself explaining exponential growth on a press conference with her fingers. Not sure about the 1970s hypothesis, though.

Despite that Germany did manage to elect a p-chemist as BK.

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#214

Post by wolverine876 »

archagon wrote: post #168
wolverine876 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.”

What in a 'woke' ideology has denied basic, consequential science?

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#215

Post by leephillips »

The discussion of Weyl is incoherent: according to the author he was both forced out and decided to leave. The reality is that he decided to leave Germany out of fear for his family, after delaying an alarming interval of time.

One of the very first people to be removed from a faculty position by the Nazis in the purge of Jews is also one of the most important mathematicians and scientists of the 20th century, but goes unmentioned by this author. I discuss her removal and its aftermath, and the phenomenon of her invisibility to both amateur and professional historians, in my forthcoming book: https://lee-phillips.org/noether/

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#216

Post by pasabagi »

tdba wrote: post #210
pasabagi wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general the thing people find obnoxious about this kind of argument is that both 'race' and 'IQ' have their origin in eugenics, but are meaningless in genetics. The genetic variation across one race (say black) is much greater than the variation between races. There are no well-established genetic predictors of IQ. So, even if you do find evidence that there is a statistical correlation between these two unscienti…

> There are no well-established genetic predictors of IQ Common misconception, sadly untrue. There are known genetic predictors of intelligence, they're just not simple genes that the layman can wrap his head around. https://www.nature.com/articles/nrg.2017.104

I think you'd have to be a bit of an expert to understand these results, just because of words like 'intelligence', that could mean anything, really, and I think accounting for 20% of the 50% heritability of intelligence is not exactly blowing the question out of the water.

All the same, I guess I am out of date (in 2017, they were getting 1% - perhaps in 2030, they will be up to 50%? Or back down to 2%?)

In general, I don't think there's any problem with saying some traits we call intelligence are heritable and that has a genetic component. I'm less sympathetic to the idea that intelligence is a simple scalar (the Q in IQ) or a quantity that should be used to prejudge candidates for given technical or social tasks. I mean, if somebody is good, does it matter that they are dumb as hell? I certainly would rather a talented dumbass than a useless genius as a coworker.

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#218

Post by Isamu »

leephillips wrote: post #215

The discussion of Weyl is incoherent: according to the author he was both forced out and decided to leave. The reality is that he decided to leave Germany out of fear for his family, after delaying an alarming interval of time. One of the very first people to be removed from a faculty position by the Nazis in the purge of Jews is also one of the most important mathematicians and scientists of the 20th century, but go…

Thanks! Looking forward to this!

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#219

Post by brcmthrowaway »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #175

And 1945. Double whammy. Germany never made a comeback. The anti-science culture revolution of the 1970s cemented this. It's cool to be bad in science in schools since then, every celebrity boasts about how bad they were in mathematics etc.

Interesting idea.. but ABleton comes out of germany!

Re: The purge of German science in 1933

#220

Post by archagon »

wolverine876 wrote: post #214
archagon wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or “woke.”

What in a 'woke' ideology has denied basic, consequential science?

What I mean is that I regularly see science being denied on the right because it’s labeled “woke.” Mostly social science at the moment, but I see the term attached to medical science as well, vis a vis the pandemic for example. It’s utterly nonsensical, but the point is to imbue the subject with negative feelings by association.

So, yeah, history repeats itself yet again.

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