In my youth there was
an orgone fad. Quite a few persons with whom i was acquainted
had or built orgone boxes. None was a scientist
and there has never been any proof that there is such a thing as
orgone. Ouija boards were also the fad. Today the majority in the
US believe in Astrology. I have not seen any investigation of
popular attitudes towards science and scientists, but it appears
that we are not trusted or believed as perhaps we once were. Were i
not a scientist i might also have a cynical attitude towards them,
since the majority are contributors to the military, big pharma, or
big agra, or others of that ilk.
I didn't contribute to the discussion Mitchel's post provoked
because after reading Petros' and Joel's remarks i realized that
anything i might say would be dismissive. I anticipated that they
would then simply dismiss me as another brainwashed scientist.
Now it seems necessary to speak to the underlying problem. It is
not that there are funky ideas around. It is not that there are
imaginative alternatives to currently accepted concepts. These are
good. In some other society they would provoke experiments by
qualified scientists that would produce results that would be
believed by the non-scientist majority. But in this society
Capitalism is hegemonic It owns us. It owns the scientists and
their science. We are tainted. We are not to be believed by a
cynical public. Unfortunately our practice is sufficiently arcane
that the popular masses cannot easily grasp exactly what we do.
They have to trust us; but they don't. The only cure for this
problem is Science for the People--that scientists, like firemen and
nurses, demonstrate by their acts that their first concern and
obligation is to help people, to rescue them from an unjust social
order. We are tainted.
herb
On 7/23/2012 2:39 PM, Mitchel Cohen
wrote:
Hi,
The researchers I was talking about new nothing about Reich.
Orgone energ was something that Joel Carlinksy added on his
own, but I was specifically asking about Tesla, etc. which
may or may not overlap with Reich's constructs.
The fact that Reich was imprisoned for his research and
that the US government burned his books in the 1950s doesn't
prove anything one way or the other about the validity of
his work, but it does make one curious, no?
Mitchel
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael H Goldhaber
Sent: Jul 23, 2012 11:29 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Discussion about Energy
Nearly 40 years ago, Carolyn Iltis, a
historian of science, was in Berkeley SftP. She was
interested in topics such as witchcraft, but also played
around with Wilhelm Reich's concepts, and had an orgone
box. Reich was of course the follower of Freud who first
tired to combine his work with marxism and was interested
in various bodily energies. He got in trouble with the US
government and was eventually declared insane because he
believed in little green men or something like that. The
orgone box was a box that was supposed to trap and reflect
bodily produced orgone, which was somehow related to
orgasm. I suspect Wikipedia must have an article on it.
On Jul 23, 2012, at 8:16 AM, Romsted, Laurence
wrote:
Mitchel:
Two more things.
Without searching through past emails, I want
to stipulate that I misrepresented you
intentions. I did not scan them before I wrote
the email below either. I went on my memory.
My mistake.
However, you could have at any time responded
to my question to you, Joel and Petros. You
have not. Please do. If you need the question
restated, I will locate it in my old emails.
Larry
Mitchel:
Please. I felt I should tell
this list why the potential
discussion disappeared.
From my perspective (obviously):
You started the discussion by
circulating Joel email without
explanation. I was struck by a
passage that made no sense to me
concerning energy and chemistry. I
offered to discuss it on the SftP
list. Joel did not want to. You
lost interest. Petros was willing
to discuss stuff with me off list.
We are sort of doing that now.
I take very seriously the idea
that the fundamental ideas of
science that have developed over the
past several centuries do not
include important energy concepts.
I do not know of any. So I asked.
You have not responded either.
If your going to circulate
statements and idea that are
contrary to established scientific
ideas (that is OK), explain why you
are circulate them, what they are
about, and what the published and
reviewed evidence is for them with
references. It took me several
email exchanges before I learned
that Orgone was the missing energy.
I do not know what Orgone is.
Larry
Larry,
this is untrue, at least as
far as I am concerned (and I
believe it holds for Petros
as well). How you come to
this, I don't know, as I
wrote the exact opposite --
that I did not want to
discuss this privately but
wanted to do so on the list.
Joel Carlinsky declined,
not me.
M.
-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Romsted
Sent: Jul 22, 2012 10:48 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Discussion about
Energy
All:
Remember those few
emails about energy that
sort of started after
Mitchel sent an email
from a guy name Joel and
I volunteered to
discussion the ideas?
Joel, Mitchel and
Petros, also involved a
bit, decided that they
did not want to discuss
them in a discussion
list.
The end,
Larry