CHAPTER THREE How Philosophers of Science Promoted Leftist Pseudoscience

CHAPTER THREE How Philosophers of Science Promoted Leftist Pseudoscience
Note:3@@@@@@@@@@DAL NEOPOSITIVISMO ROSSO

Yellow highlight | Page: 37

It is well known that the majority clearly leaned to the left.
Note:IDEOLOGIA POLITICA DEI NEOPOSITIVISTI

Yellow highlight | Page: 37

strongly interested in social and political progress.
Note:CARNAP PARLA X TITTI...TUTTI SOCIALISTI

Yellow highlight | Page: 37

declaring oneself to be a socialist in the 1920s and 1930s
Note:TACITO SUPPORTO ALL URSS

Yellow highlight | Page: 37

In 1933 he joined the American Communist Party and was appointed the chairman of its Agitprop Committee.
Note:ALBERT BLUMBERG...FONDATORE DEL CIRCOLO

Yellow highlight | Page: 38

Blumberg insisted that bloodshed is inevitable
Note:LA POLITICA CHE AVEVA IN MENTE EMERSE NEL PROCESSO

Yellow highlight | Page: 38

“Are you prepared to take a rifle and fight in the streets of Baltimore?”
Note:LA DOMANDA CHE B RIVOLGEVA AGLI AFFILIATI

Yellow highlight | Page: 38

No Reactionaries, Please!
Note:Tttttttttttttt

Yellow highlight | Page: 38

briefly look at the journal Philosophy of Science,
Note:EXEMPLA

Yellow highlight | Page: 38

“We have representatives of practically all the shades of opinion . . . radicals, progressives, a few tried veterans of established philosophic fashion, but no reactionaries” (Malisoff 1934, 3; emphasis added).
Note:EDITORIALE DEL DORETTORE

Yellow highlight | Page: 38

left’s opponents.
Note:SENSO DEL TERMINE REAZIONARIO

Yellow highlight | Page: 38

I was somewhat surprised to see your acknowledgement of [Friedrich] von Hayek.
Note:CARNAP A POPPER

Yellow highlight | Page: 39

all leftists regard him as a reactionary
Note:Cccccccccccc

Yellow highlight | Page: 39

right-of-center views in American politics.
Note:IL SENSO IN USA X MOLTI LEFTIES

Yellow highlight | Page: 39

Republicans (i.e., the reactionaries)
Note:L OPINIONE DI GÕDEL

Yellow highlight | Page: 39

this country [the United States] moves more and more in a reactionary direction”
Note:CARNAP A POPPER

Yellow highlight | Page: 39

Lenin’s book Materialism and Empirio-Criticism,
Note:FONTE DEL SENSO PIÙ ORTODOSSO

Yellow highlight | Page: 39

Frank mentions Lenin’s book and points to similarities between “diamat” (dialectical materialism) and logical positivism.
Note:IL LINK

Yellow highlight | Page: 40

the two approaches share the struggle against metaphysics,
Note:Ccccccccccc

Yellow highlight | Page: 40

Mach uses “a reactionary philosophical trick” or “verbal trickery”; is “an egregious sophist,” “a graduated lackey of fideism”;
Note:IL MACHISTA FRANK DIFENDE LENIN QUANDO LENIN ATTACCA MACH COSÌ

Yellow highlight | Page: 41

one of the two books reviewed was Friedrich Engels’s Dialectics of Nature, published nine years earlier
Note:PRIMO NUMERO

Yellow highlight | Page: 41

reviewer called the book “an important contribution” and did not raise a single criticism,
Note:OSSEQUIO

Yellow highlight | Page: 41

reviewer oddly distorted Einstein’s famously negative opinion about the value of Dialectics of Nature,
Note:TRUCCHETTI

Yellow highlight | Page: 42

the content of the book “was of no special interest
Note:X EINSTEIN

Yellow highlight | Page: 42

Engels’s work, being devoid of scientific merit, could be published merely out of biographical interest.
Note:UNICA CONCESSIONE

Yellow highlight | Page: 42

contains a lot of dialectical mumbo-jumbo
Note:LIBRO PIENO DI SUPERCAZZOLE

Yellow highlight | Page: 42

The Argument from Pravda
Note:Tttttttttttttttt

Yellow highlight | Page: 42

were contributors at least permitted to be politically neutral? Malisoff argued against this kind of tolerance:
Note:BANDITA ANCHE LA NEUTRALITÀ POLITICA

Yellow highlight | Page: 43

neutrality invariably turns out in practice to be a tolerance of the supremacy of evil
Note:L IDEA DI FONDO

Yellow highlight | Page: 43

Turning science into a battleground between good and evil
Note:DOVE SI FINISCE

Yellow highlight | Page: 43

history provides a striking example of an evidently pseudoscientific view being associated with “progressive” politics
Note:LYSENKO

Yellow highlight | Page: 43

He couched pseudoscientific ideas about biology and agriculture in the language of the official dogma of dialectical materialism
Note:IL MISFATTO DEL NOSTRO

Yellow highlight | Page: 43

scientists who opposed his views were arrested and shot.
Note:UNA VOLTA OTTENUTO L APPOGGIO DI PARTITO

Yellow highlight | Page: 43

wreckers and kulaks are located not only in your collective farms. . . . They are just as dangerous, just as resolute in science.
Note:KULAKI IN LABORATORIO

Yellow highlight | Page: 44

“Bravo, comrade Lysenko, bravo!”
Note:STALIN LO LONDRA INTERRUPE COSÌ

Yellow highlight | Page: 44

Lysenko’s reign in Soviet biology lasted until the fall of Khrushchev in 1964.
Note:LA FINE DEL SUO REGNO

Yellow highlight | Page: 44

interesting to observe how Philosophy of Science reacted to this affair
Note:LA REAZIONE IN OCCIDENTE

Yellow highlight | Page: 45

“you cannot believe all that you read in the newspapers”
Note:TROPPO PER ESSERE VERO...INFATTI NN LO SI CREDETTE VERO

Yellow highlight | Page: 45

Somerville referred to an article from . . . Pravda!
Note:PER SCREDITARE LE CATTIVE NOTIZIE...

Yellow highlight | Page: 45

Needless to say, the article claimed that scientists in the USSR were completely free
Note:DESCRIZIONI PARADISIACHE

Yellow highlight | Page: 46

A vicious and intellectually dishonest work, made all the more unpalatable
Note:LA RIVISTA SU UN LIBRO DI DENUNCIA MOLTO ACCURATO

Yellow highlight | Page: 47

The Silence of the Darwinists
Note:Tttttttttttttttttt

Yellow highlight | Page: 47

leading biologists such as J. B. S. Haldane and H. J. Muller.
Note:PRESENTI NEL COMITATO EDITORIALE

Yellow highlight | Page: 47

Haldane had joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1942 and he publicly defended Lysenko
Note:AHI AHI AHI

Yellow highlight | Page: 47

the prospects for genetical research are considerably better in the Soviet Union
Note:L OPINIONE DI H RIDOTTA AL MINIMO

Yellow highlight | Page: 47

“in my opinion, Lysenko is a very fine biologist
Note:VIRGOLETTATO DI H

Yellow highlight | Page: 47

Muller knew very well how dire the situation of Soviet scientists was but he refused to talk about these matters in public.
Note:UN ALTRO NOBEL...RETICENTE

Yellow highlight | Page: 48

I do not want to become an agent of anti-Soviet propaganda.
Note:GIUSTIFICARE IL SILENZIO

Yellow highlight | Page: 48

the noble cause of socialism was a good reason to postpone telling the uncomfortable truth
Note:LA SOLITA TIRITERA

Yellow highlight | Page: 48

“Move on; nothing to see here.”
Note:IL MESSAGGIO DELLA RIVISTA

Yellow highlight | Page: 49

the Philosophical Review
Note:QUI SI VA ANCORA PEGGIO...APERTURA AGLI STALINISTI

Yellow highlight | Page: 49

a paper by John Somerville in which he praised Stalin’s “famous speech” that “played such a large role in the philosophical discussion.”
Note:PEANA

Yellow highlight | Page: 49

Philipp Frank,
Note:CHI AI SPINSE PIÙ IN LA NEL TEMPO...ANNI CINQUANTA

Yellow highlight | Page: 49

no attempt was ever made to exert political influences on physical theories proper”
Note:PRIMA DI LENIN IN RUSSIA

Yellow highlight | Page: 50

deism was logically inherent in the concept of a four-dimensional space-time continuum
Note:TIPICA CRITICA SOVIETICA A EINSTEIN....IDEOLOGIA X PRIMA...RELATIVITÀ RIGETTATA

Yellow highlight | Page: 50

“a rotten swamp”
Note:DEFINIZIONE DELA RELATIVITÁ IN URSS

Yellow highlight | Page: 50

physical theories’ coming under political attack,
Note:IL METODO SOVISTICO

Yellow highlight | Page: 51

Tinker, Tailor, Philosopher . . . Spy
Note:Ttttttttttt

Yellow highlight | Page: 51

Malisoff was actually a KGB agent.
Note:A QUANTO PARE...VENONA DOCUMENTS

Yellow highlight | Page: 51

a quite banal reason: money.
Note:NN SOLO IDEOLOGIA

Yellow highlight | Page: 51

materials he had provided to the KGB yielded the Soviet Union millions of dollars while the amount he requested (but did not get) was “trifling.”
Note:LA LAMENTELA ALL ATTO DEL PAGAMENTO

Yellow highlight | Page: 52

some of the money he received from the KGB may have been channeled into paying the costs of running the journal.
IL LATO IRONOCO DELLA FACCENDA