Philosophy Now Forum

chaz wyman wrote:Both the American and French revolutions are dead and therefore failures.
They both failed to establish democracy.

Revolutions have to continue to be successful. The American Revolution failed in 1787.
The French as soon as Napoleon seized the imperial crown from the hands of of the Pope to place it on his own head.

Just being ornery for the sake of being ornery.

spike wrote:

chaz wyman wrote:Both the American and French revolutions are dead and therefore failures.
They both failed to establish democracy.

Revolutions have to continue to be successful. The American Revolution failed in 1787.
The French as soon as Napoleon seized the imperial crown from the hands of of the Pope to place it on his own head.

Just being ornery for the sake of being ornery.

No - a revolution is a process. It is not a thing you do, then stop then declare it over.
The US people are less free than they were in 1750.

Chaz,

You are not worth discussing with. Bugger off.

spike wrote:Chaz,

Your not worth discussing with. Bugger off.

If you were no so ignorant of your own history you would know why i chose the date I did.

Now run along and look it up!

John:

This is an interesting link you sent: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/14/opini ... 37311.html. Thank you for it.

The article makes a good point about it not being inevitable that authoritarian regimes will in time collapse. The trajectory of human history, he argues, is also no guaranty that democracy will eventually evolve.

But the author didn't mention the inexorable human values of personal freedom and recognition as a possible mechanism that could cause authoritarian states to eventually collapsed. Neither did the author mention science as a factor that could determine their demise. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union manipulated science to support their ideologies. (The Bush administration interfered with science, also the science of economics, and look at the mess America is in today.) The authoritarian science they promoted should have been an indication to their eventual demise. Truthful science requires an open society, which those authoritarian regimes were unwilling to accept.

Science, which necessitates open research, is the only way in which a society can survive and continue, especially in the modern world. If a state is not truthful or liberal with its science it will inevitable collapse, as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union eventually did.

Because Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were so brutal with their science communities many of their best scientist left or were imprisoned, leaving them with a short fall in knowledge and research capabilities that could have made all the difference as to whether their regimes survived or not.

China has been quite open with its scientific research and developments. It knows that it has to be if it wants to participate in and profit from global trade. This openness on China's part is and indication that it is moving in the right direction of democratization. The Chinese people are also clamoring for more freedom and recognition from the state, and more participation in community affairs, further indication of a slow progress to democracy.

spike wrote:The present issue, 84, of PN is about philosophy and children. I can hear a child asking the question "Why does the corporation exist?", certainly a childish question.

A left-leaning teacher/philosopher, like most of the thinkers on this form, would probably answer that they exist for the reason of making money for their owners while gouging and taking advantage of the poor. But that would be an ignorant, ideological response from someone who might think they have a grasp on how the world works but doesn't.

One reason we have democracy in the Western world, and why it doesn't exist in the Middle East, is because of the corporation. Corporations are non-governmental organization that act as counterweights to governments. Even democratic governments can be dictatorial and intrusive on individual freedoms. Corporations have acted to counterbalance that power by giving people alternative ways to organize. Corporations have also contributed to the development of civil societies on which democracy depends on. Because the Arab/Islamic world has lacked such organization, the civil society that recognizes and protect individual freedoms, on which democracy is built, have not yet developed.

Without capitalism the world would not have corporations. Capitalism is responsible for these institutions that have been an important part in creating civil societies and the networks to counterbalance intrusive, dictatorial governments like we have seen in the Islamic world and under communism.

Those that would lead, see the status quo as normal human behavior and continually try and build a better mouse trap. The truth however is that humans are flawed. Only fools believe that we can have infinite wants on a finite sphere and unfortunately the animal has put it's long term survival on the back burner so it can feed it's desires of today. Capitalism is at the heart of this matter. Leave it to humans to lay blame on an inanimate object. It is in fact selfishness and not money that lies at the root. So let us all have it all so we can have no more, because surely that shall be the end result!

spike wrote:... Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union manipulated science to support their ideologies. (The Bush administration interfered with science, also the science of economics, and look at the mess America is in today.) The authoritarian science they promoted should have been an indication to their eventual demise. Truthful science requires an open society, which those authoritarian regimes were unwilling to accept. ...

Touch lost here as Nazi science and technology was far ahead of the rest, hence US and Russia rushed to capture the German scientists and their research after the war. They'd probably had nuclear weapons before the allies if we'd not managed to restrict their access to heavy water.

Arising:

Touch lost here as Nazi science and technology was far ahead of the rest, hence US and Russia rushed to capture the German scientists and their research after the war. They'd probably had nuclear weapons before the allies if we'd not managed to restrict their access to heavy water.

The Nazis were great in the science of weaponry, which was mostly a dead end street. But they certainly weren't in the science of life and sustainability, with their medical experiments and eugenics.

zorro wrote:Arising:

Touch lost here as Nazi science and technology was far ahead of the rest, hence US and Russia rushed to capture the German scientists and their research after the war. They'd probably had nuclear weapons before the allies if we'd not managed to restrict their access to heavy water.

The Nazis were great in the science of weaponry, which was mostly a dead end street. But they certainly weren't in the science of life and sustainability, with their medical experiments and eugenics.

Is that the best you have?

zorro wrote:"Nazis were um bad um mkay?"

zorro wrote:Arising:

Touch lost here as Nazi science and technology was far ahead of the rest, hence US and Russia rushed to capture the German scientists and their research after the war. They'd probably had nuclear weapons before the allies if we'd not managed to restrict their access to heavy water.

The Nazis were great in the science of weaponry, which was mostly a dead end street. But they certainly weren't in the science of life and sustainability, with their medical experiments and eugenics.

Is that the best you have?

zorro wrote:"Nazis were um bad um mkay?"

I am staggered how ill informed you are.
"Nazi science of weaponry was a dead end street." That is the most ridiculous thing I have heard in a long long while.
Maybe you have never heard of Ferdinand Porsche, Werner Von Braun, or Heinz Guderian?
The only thing that is dead-end around here is you brain cells.

One reason why Nazi Germany didn't get the atomic bomb is because of something weird. Jewish scientists were mostly behind the development of the atomic bomb. Hitler did not trust "Jewish Science". Thus he had the development of atomic weapons shut down, because of its Jewish origin.

This is the kind of pseudo science that defeated Germany.

zorro wrote:One reason why Nazi Germany didn't get the atomic bomb is because of something weird. Jewish scientists were mostly behind the development of the atomic bomb. Hitler did not trust "Jewish Science". Thus he had the development of atomic weapons shut down, because of its Jewish origin.

This is the kind of pseudo science that defeated Germany.

You are talking bollocks as per usual.
Where do you get this shit?

chaz wyman wrote:

zorro wrote:One reason why Nazi Germany didn't get the atomic bomb is because of something weird. Jewish scientists were mostly behind the development of the atomic bomb. Hitler did not trust "Jewish Science". Thus he had the development of atomic weapons shut down, because of its Jewish origin.

This is the kind of pseudo science that defeated Germany.

You are talking bollocks as per usual.
Where do you get this shit?

He's kind of right. The Nazis didn't trust Einstein's theories and did often denigrate them as being "Jewish science". At one point they sponsored a book called One Hundred German Authors Against Einstein. Einstein commented: "If I had been wrong, one would have been enough!".

I think zorro is wrong to suggest that Hitler shut down the development of atomic weapons because of his distrust of "Jewish science". Far from shutting that programme down, Germany had a small team throughout the war investigating the feasibility of atomic weapons, led by Heisenberg. It didn't get very far and some people have speculated that Heisenberg and others were deliberately dragging their feet on the project. There is no proof of this, so far as I know. However, what undoubtedly is the case is that many of the top physicists who could have aided the atomic weapons programme had fled as refugees before the war because they were Jewish. Therefore instead of helping Hitler's programme they were working on the Manhattan project instead. So to that degree zorro is right- Hitler's hatred of the Jews completely undermined his chances of developing an atom bomb.

RickLewis wrote:

chaz wyman wrote:

zorro wrote:One reason why Nazi Germany didn't get the atomic bomb is because of something weird. Jewish scientists were mostly behind the development of the atomic bomb. Hitler did not trust "Jewish Science". Thus he had the development of atomic weapons shut down, because of its Jewish origin.

This is the kind of pseudo science that defeated Germany.

You are talking bollocks as per usual.
Where do you get this shit?

He's kind of right. The Nazis didn't trust Einstein's theories and did often denigrate them as being "Jewish science". At one point they sponsored a book called One Hundred German Authors Against Einstein. Einstein commented: "If I had been wrong, one would have been enough!".

I think zorro is wrong to suggest that Hitler shut down the development of atomic weapons because of his distrust of "Jewish science". Far from shutting that programme down, Germany had a small team throughout the war investigating the feasibility of atomic weapons, led by Heisenberg. It didn't get very far and some people have speculated that Heisenberg and others were deliberately dragging their feet on the project. There is no proof of this, so far as I know. However, what undoubtedly is the case is that many of the top physicists who could have aided the atomic weapons programme had fled as refugees before the war because they were Jewish. Therefore instead of helping Hitler's programme they were working on the Manhattan project instead. So to that degree zorro is right- Hitler's hatred of the Jews completely undermined his chances of developing an atom bomb.

The point I was addressing (among zorro's numerous and amusing misconceptions) was that Hitler did not "shut down" anything of the sort. The heavy-water project in Norway can hardly be described as a "small team". And the efforts to stop it by the Allies speaks volumes about the danger of such a project.

zorro wrote:... But they certainly weren't in the science of life and sustainability, with their medical experiments and eugenics.

The latter are exactly concerned with the former. Or do you mean some kind of eco-humanist view about what science is or should be concerned with?