CHAPTER THREE How Philosophers of Science Promoted Leftist Pseudoscience
Note:3@@@@@@@@@@DAL NEOPOSITIVISMO ROSSO
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It is well known that the majority clearly leaned to the left.
Note:IDEOLOGIA POLITICA DEI NEOPOSITIVISTI
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strongly interested in social and political progress.
Note:CARNAP PARLA X TITTI...TUTTI SOCIALISTI
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declaring oneself to be a socialist in the 1920s and 1930s
Note:TACITO SUPPORTO ALL URSS
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In 1933 he joined the American Communist Party and was appointed the chairman of its Agitprop Committee.
Note:ALBERT BLUMBERG...FONDATORE DEL CIRCOLO
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Blumberg insisted that bloodshed is inevitable
Note:LA POLITICA CHE AVEVA IN MENTE EMERSE NEL PROCESSO
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“Are you prepared to take a rifle and fight in the streets of Baltimore?”
Note:LA DOMANDA CHE B RIVOLGEVA AGLI AFFILIATI
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No Reactionaries, Please!
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briefly look at the journal Philosophy of Science,
Note:EXEMPLA
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“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
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left’s opponents.
Note:SENSO DEL TERMINE REAZIONARIO
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I was somewhat surprised to see your acknowledgement of [Friedrich] von Hayek.
Note:CARNAP A POPPER
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all leftists regard him as a reactionary
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right-of-center views in American politics.
Note:IL SENSO IN USA X MOLTI LEFTIES
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Republicans (i.e., the reactionaries)
Note:L OPINIONE DI GÕDEL
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this country [the United States] moves more and more in a reactionary direction”
Note:CARNAP A POPPER
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Lenin’s book Materialism and Empirio-Criticism,
Note:FONTE DEL SENSO PIÙ ORTODOSSO
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Frank mentions Lenin’s book and points to similarities between “diamat” (dialectical materialism) and logical positivism.
Note:IL LINK
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the two approaches share the struggle against metaphysics,
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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
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one of the two books reviewed was Friedrich Engels’s Dialectics of Nature, published nine years earlier
Note:PRIMO NUMERO
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reviewer called the book “an important contribution” and did not raise a single criticism,
Note:OSSEQUIO
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reviewer oddly distorted Einstein’s famously negative opinion about the value of Dialectics of Nature,
Note:TRUCCHETTI
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the content of the book “was of no special interest
Note:X EINSTEIN
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Engels’s work, being devoid of scientific merit, could be published merely out of biographical interest.
Note:UNICA CONCESSIONE
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contains a lot of dialectical mumbo-jumbo
Note:LIBRO PIENO DI SUPERCAZZOLE
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The Argument from Pravda
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were contributors at least permitted to be politically neutral? Malisoff argued against this kind of tolerance:
Note:BANDITA ANCHE LA NEUTRALITÀ POLITICA
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neutrality invariably turns out in practice to be a tolerance of the supremacy of evil
Note:L IDEA DI FONDO
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Turning science into a battleground between good and evil
Note:DOVE SI FINISCE
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history provides a striking example of an evidently pseudoscientific view being associated with “progressive” politics
Note:LYSENKO
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He couched pseudoscientific ideas about biology and agriculture in the language of the official dogma of dialectical materialism
Note:IL MISFATTO DEL NOSTRO
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scientists who opposed his views were arrested and shot.
Note:UNA VOLTA OTTENUTO L APPOGGIO DI PARTITO
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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
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“Bravo, comrade Lysenko, bravo!”
Note:STALIN LO LONDRA INTERRUPE COSÌ
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Lysenko’s reign in Soviet biology lasted until the fall of Khrushchev in 1964.
Note:LA FINE DEL SUO REGNO
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interesting to observe how Philosophy of Science reacted to this affair
Note:LA REAZIONE IN OCCIDENTE
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“you cannot believe all that you read in the newspapers”
Note:TROPPO PER ESSERE VERO...INFATTI NN LO SI CREDETTE VERO
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Somerville referred to an article from . . . Pravda!
Note:PER SCREDITARE LE CATTIVE NOTIZIE...
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Needless to say, the article claimed that scientists in the USSR were completely free
Note:DESCRIZIONI PARADISIACHE
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A vicious and intellectually dishonest work, made all the more unpalatable
Note:LA RIVISTA SU UN LIBRO DI DENUNCIA MOLTO ACCURATO
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The Silence of the Darwinists
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leading biologists such as J. B. S. Haldane and H. J. Muller.
Note:PRESENTI NEL COMITATO EDITORIALE
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Haldane had joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1942 and he publicly defended Lysenko
Note:AHI AHI AHI
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the prospects for genetical research are considerably better in the Soviet Union
Note:L OPINIONE DI H RIDOTTA AL MINIMO
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“in my opinion, Lysenko is a very fine biologist
Note:VIRGOLETTATO DI H
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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
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I do not want to become an agent of anti-Soviet propaganda.
Note:GIUSTIFICARE IL SILENZIO
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the noble cause of socialism was a good reason to postpone telling the uncomfortable truth
Note:LA SOLITA TIRITERA
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“Move on; nothing to see here.”
Note:IL MESSAGGIO DELLA RIVISTA
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the Philosophical Review
Note:QUI SI VA ANCORA PEGGIO...APERTURA AGLI STALINISTI
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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
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Philipp Frank,
Note:CHI AI SPINSE PIÙ IN LA NEL TEMPO...ANNI CINQUANTA
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no attempt was ever made to exert political influences on physical theories proper”
Note:PRIMA DI LENIN IN RUSSIA
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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
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“a rotten swamp”
Note:DEFINIZIONE DELA RELATIVITÁ IN URSS
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physical theories’ coming under political attack,
Note:IL METODO SOVISTICO
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Tinker, Tailor, Philosopher . . . Spy
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Malisoff was actually a KGB agent.
Note:A QUANTO PARE...VENONA DOCUMENTS
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a quite banal reason: money.
Note:NN SOLO IDEOLOGIA
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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
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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
