andie nachgeborenen > > ^^^^^ > CB: It sems possible that Heisenberg may have had > some rightwing political > conscoiusness, I believe.
Heisenberg was fairly right wing. In his autobiography he recalls serving in the militai that helped put down the Spartakus rebellion, and of course, though no Nazi, he later stayed in Nazi Germany at more or less nominally, depending on who you believe, headed up the Nazi atomic weapons project (which never went anywhere). All of this is totally irrelevant to the truth of H's contributions to quantum physics, notably the uncertainty principle, but not just that, his other work too. Right wingers can do great science -- von Neumann and Teller are others who come to mind. ^^^^^ CB: There's the physics and then there's the interpretation of the philosophical significance of the physics. Heisenberg could give a sort of push to the philosophical interpretation by the way he frames and describes the physics. There has been a big decades long debate about the interpretation of QM and its significance for philosphy. The issue is not can rightwingers do good science or can religious believers do good science, but was Heisenberg aware of the political signifance of materialist philosophy , the political significnnce of idealism vs materialism, and would he therefore try to encourage a rightwing or idealist or theist interpretation of his good physics work, taking advantage of his authority as discoverer of the scientific empirical fact to push for an idealist philosophical interpreation of that fact. We see the direct connection with theism in the recent popular movies that came out with Quantum Mechanics used as a basis for a New Age Religion of some sort. I posted on this to PEN-L when the movie featuring Quantum Mechanics as a rationale for the New Age Religion came out. ^^^^^ It is possible that he was > aware of the political > aspects of the struggle between materialism and > idealism. I don't think that would have interested H. Btw, Lenin's explanation of the rationale behind that struggle is uncharcteristically dumb -- he argues that "idealism" implies "fideism" (theism), which is right wing. ^^^^^^ CB: Actually, Lenin's explanation is very smart and a continuation of Engels brilliant discussion of the identity of religion/theism and idealism. In fact, since the whole discussion of idealism vs materialism which goes on here derives from Engels formulation , what is dumb is to not know the centrality of the identity of religion and idealism in Marxist discourse. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
