Posted on 10/30/2010 2:06:05 PM PDT by BruceDeitrickPrice
In mid-20th-century, the Communist Party wanted to believe that the environment could alter a species. The political payoff would be that Russia’s Communists could create a New Socialist Man in a generation or two. A scientist named Trofim Lysenko elaborated this theory in great detail; and Stalin pronounced it True. For several decades there were two kinds of genetics in the world, what the Communists believed and what the rest of the world practiced.
Stalin simply declared that 2 + 2 equals 5, as in the famous scene in Orwell’s “1984,” and all the people under his power enthusiastically accepted Lysenko’s teachings.
Wikipedia sums up the story this way: “Scientific dissent from Lysenko's theories of environmentally acquired inheritance was formally outlawed in 1948, and for the next several years opponents were purged from held positions, and many imprisoned....Today much of Lysenko's agricultural experimentation and research is largely viewed as fraudulent.”
At this point, you’re probably thinking, “That’s so stupid. Those Commies are such jerks, pretending they can just dictate what the truth is. Fortunately we never had anything like that in our country.”
Many in the West derive a smug feeling of superiority vis-à-vis the ursine Russians. There is just one little problem. Lysenko apparently operated a branch office over here. Did you never hear of Look-say? How about New Math?....
(Original has a good graphic. http://www.rightsidenews.com/2010103012009/life-and-science/health-and-education/the-lysenko-school-of-education.html )
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(Excerpt) Read more at rightsidenews.com ...
Global Warming?
This misses the larger historical point: Russia was an empire that international communism had targeted but the USA was, and IS the main goal. It was the rebellious state that was able to break away from that morass that was (is) Europe.
“And a dog will return to his vomit”
Actually, his theory was NOT disproven — they used bad science to try disprove it, cutting tails off mice, which had nothing to do with adaptive aquired characteristics.
Feinmann’s chapter in his book “You Must be Joking Mr. Feinmann” on his tenure as a member of the LAUSD textbook review board is funny, sad and illuminating. He found that one of the books submitted for review was missing from his package. When he inquired, he was told that it was not available, so the publisher sent a book with just the cover and blank pages, which the person charged with distributing the books to the committee did not bother to distribute.
Somewhat surprisingly, a majority of the members of the committee voted to approve of the book - based on the publishers description in a hand out! *None* of the other members were even aware of its ommission from the books that had been distributed! They had probably only looked at, at most, a quarter of the books they were supposed to be approving!
Feinmann is unsparing in criticism of high school and grade school textbooks, and absolutely scathing in his assessment of the “reviewers”, most of whom were professional “(mis)educators”
Agree. I almost put it in there. But decided to be modest. Linking Communists and Whole Word is a fairly big leap and I didn’t want to distract people.
I have a strong suspicion that the late great Richard Feynman would have been “skeptical” of anthropogenic global warming, to say the least.
I would never presume to speak for the Late Dr. Feinmann, but he more or less won his Nobel Prize by unravelling and refuting accepted wisdom. Personally, I think AGWT is poppycock. Poppycock, from the Dutch word for baby shit.
The Communists didn’t “believe” it- they decreed it. Communists and other leftists do not believe in las of nature. They believe reality is a mental construct and can be altered by changing men’s thinking and killing those who cannot think correctly.
Feynman was trained from childhood by his father to ask questions and seek true answers. He was never one to accept the kind of flawed reasoning and herd mentality exemplified by AGW. Most of the AGW gang are mediocre hacks, whereas Feynman was an individualistic genius.
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