I appreciate this linked article not so much for its actual content, but
for the multilogue that it might initiate

While at one level this article seems like a dose of "good sense," it
seems simultaneously superficial and naive relative to the social
sciences.  The social sciences have been impeded mostly by the reflexive,
political, and deliberately semi-conscious nature of its field of
phenomena, which includes physical scientists.  Atoms don't talk back or
determine research priorities or pick one type of tissue over another
based upon persuasive animation, except as their research and applications
are limited and cultivated by funding priorities and career building.
Atoms, in their human form, do develop nuclear weapons such as "depleted"
(more accurately "deadly" and eco-cidal) uranium weapons and then
methodically act to obscure, deny, and justify the full effects and harm
caused by their use. Psychosis is the term used to describe the obessive
attempt to force the compliance of a particular world view upon the
actual, sometimes benign and sometimes malign, world of life and community.

Perhaps it would be well to expand the apparent definition of "Science for
the People" to include the conception and application of the social
sciences including the social side of psychology.

The actual history of the development of nuclear weapons includes both
extreme hubris and sadism, as well as unlimited budgets leading to fame,
fortune, and infamy. That the physical scientists presume to be aloof from
social and political implications is certainly a deficit of the world view
of physical scientists, but given that governments, particularly those
with an over funded military budget and a predilection toward corporatism,
almost every type of science can be used for destructive purposes.  I
remember that during the trial of the Chicago Seven a biology researcher
gave witness to his research on the tracking abilities of a frog's eye
being used toward the development of ballistic guidance systems. The net
point being that the locus of the problem is not the science but the
scientists and their corporatist employers.

That scientists as a social group can as individuals partition their
research, which on one side create major toxic chemicals in the employ of
corporations seeking narrowly defined profits and externalizing the
damages and adverse health effects, while simultaneously espousing so
called "creation science" is another example of convenience, and social
psychosis. The net motivation seems to be to let themselves off relative
to the moral responsibility for their scientific mono-mania and supports
their denial of the actual social and ecological nature of our reality.

Given that the military psyops and corporate PR/marketing concerns have
developed one portion of the "social sciences" to a high degree of
success, while the development of these same social sciences have been
impeded at every turn to serve the interests of the public and public
commons, what is going on is something more than relatively undeveloped
social sciences.  More accurately it is the under-developed sense of and
involvement in the social side of the sciences by the physical scientists,
as well as the general diversion and perversion of the social sciences by
corporations and their governments. Flattery and personal status, if not
outright wealth, has contributed to the physcial scientists being led
astray as well.

One interpretation of military psyops would be world-view warfare. Imagine
if there was an equivalent and counter mode as world view peace-fare.
Lest I forget, the insertion of hierarchic, higher knowledge institutions
of religion have contributed greatly to this partitioning. Examples
include the limitation of surgery and the  understanding of physiology
because it was not GOD'S WILL to intervene in who dies and who doesn't,
with the caveat of applications for the wealthy and priesthood, or the
elite interpretations of quietism and grace.

toward advancing this discusssion,      Tadit



On Tue, 5 Oct 2004 20:26:21 +1200, Robt Mann <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> http://nobelprize.org/peace/articles/rotblat/index.html
>