Science, civilization and society

After three years again: the life of Mileva Maric

2011-01-24T13:59:00.007+10:30

More than three years ago a discussion erupted in my blog about the role of Albert Einstein’s first wife Mileva Maric in the development of Einstein's ideas about relativity. I don’t want to repeat the argument in detail here but refer you to my blog entries of 9 July 2007 in the blog archive.

The discussion left me dissatisfied at the time, but I had to wait for an opportunity to follow it up with some analysis of somewhat greater depth. This opportunity arose last year during a visit to Europe. So I wrote an essay about the issue. I did not want to enter the original controversy again (whether Maric was deprived of acknowledgment for her contribution to the core papers on relativity or not) but focus on the question whether Maric could have had a career in science and what stopped her from having one.

I submitted the essay to the journal “Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences” for review and possible publication. It was reviewed; the reviewers were not unsympathetic to the aims of the paper but recommended rejection, and so did the Associate Editor.

I think that the combined set of my paper, the two reviews, and the editor’s reasoning for its rejection can serve as useful information on the question of Milena Maric’s aborted career. So I make the set available here. I do this in the spirit of modern developments in scientific publishing: In oceanography, which is my field of speciality, submitted papers are now published on the web together with their reviews in a discussion section of a journal and move into the final peer-reviewed section if the reviewers recommend acceptance; if not, the original paper, the reviews and any related correspondence stay in the discussion section, where they remain accessible to all – see Ocean Science as an example.

It is not my intention to write a response to the reviewers’ comments here. Instead I want to make some general remarks. It is evident from the reviews that xxxx1, xxxx2 and xxxx3 (see my comment to this post) are three eminent science historians. Their suggestions for improvements to my essay can point the way along which to proceed. It is, however, not for me to follow the outlined path. After 45 years in oceanography I know how to set up an investigation into the dynamics of the ocean and bring it to successful conclusion, which usually culminates in a few paper in reputable journals. To follow through on the reviewers’ suggestions requires not the skills of an ocean scientist but the skills of a trained historian.

I consider myself fortunate to be part of a civilization that values the study of history. A civilized society needs historians who can spend months in the pursuit of sources that can shine light on the past. It is a sign of decay that great countries of the western civilization turn increasingly to plain monetary valuation of university departments and make student numbers and student evaluation the single most important measures for the worthiness of their teaching. Great civilizations need great humanity departments. The points raised by the reviewers are worth further study, but not from someone in a science department (that used to be called Earth Sciences, but not to frighten the students with the word Science it is now called School of the Environment). So I leave my investigation of the situation of disadvantaged women of the past where it is, hoping that it may be of use for true historians, and spend my retirement on changing the situation of disadvantaged women of today, working for the Support Association for the Women of Afghanistan, to which there is a link at the top right.

Just one small comment before I close: xxx1's distinction between mathematicians and physicists seems nitpicking to me. Anyone who reads my lecture notes to "Science, Civilization and Society" will realize that mathematics is the foundation of science. To me mathematicians are just as much scientists as chemists, physicists or biologists. Science has many faces, some more mathematical than others, but without mathematics there would not be any science.

Here are the links to the set (PDF files):

the essay: Mileva Maric: An Unfulfilled Career in Science
review 1 - deleted, see my comment to this entry
review 2 - deleted, see my comment to this entry
editorial report - deleted, see my comment to this entry

Vedanta and Modern Physics

2010-08-04T18:09:00.002+09:30

Two weeks ago I had an email conversation with Sharan Prakash, a high school student who is interested in Advaita Vedanta philosophy. Sharan points out that the book 'Vedanta and Modern Physics' by Dr. U. Chandrasekharyya (Lokashina Trust, Bangalore, 2006), which discusses the Vedanta philosophy of the Indian philosopher Adi Shankaracharya (born around 788), refers to the Nyaya-Vaisesika theories of atomic elements advanced by the Samkhya prakriti philosophies, in which a deeper reality is identified where mind and matter are not considered to be separate.

In contrast to dualistic religious views of the world, where matter is one domain and mind another, Advaita Vedanta philosophy by definition implies the continuity of mind and matter, i.e. a non-dualistic interpretation of reality.

Sharan says that according to Vedanta, the world in which separate atoms exist is part of the illusion of Maya, and that a deeper underlying reality exists behind this. In other words, Indian philosophers of the middle ages refer to atoms when they talk about the mind and not as the basic units of reality (which is reflected in the mind).

Not being a specialist in Indian philosophy I accept Sharan's comments as an invitation to deepen my discussion of Indian philosophy and science in lecture 14. I hope that someone more knowledgable than myself (and possibly more knowledgable than Sharan Prakash, who says that as a mere high school student, he may not be a valid authority) can add to this discussion.

The German chemical industry and the precautionary principle

2010-07-03T20:47:00.005+09:30

Bisphenol A is an organic compound with similarities to hormones. It is used in plastic containers, plastic baskets and other plastic goods as a softener, giving the products flexibility. Suspected to be harmful to humans for many years, it has come into the limelight since about 2008 when reports appeared in the press about possible harmful effects. A 2010 report from the United States Food and Drug Administration raised further concerns regarding exposure of fetuses, infants, and young children.

The German magazine Spiegel now reports that three weeks ago the president of Germany's Federal Environment Authority suggested that producers of plastic articles containing Biphenol A should begin to use alternative softeners as a precautionary measure. This further illustrates what I said in the postscriptum to my course: that society has to move from unlimited innovation to protection of the health of our planet. A suggestion from a government authority is of course only a small timid step in that direction, and because it does not have the power yet to enforce precautionary action it is met with blanket opposition from industry: The expert for product safety of Germany's Chemical Industry Federation says that "from the point of view of customer protection" there is no reason for a ban.

Real protection of the health of our planet and its inhabitants will only come when the onus of proof shifts from the government to industry and the role of science shifts from limitless innovation to verification that new products do not pose harm to users and environment.

Source: Der Spiegel nr. 24 of 14 June 2010 p. 16: "Gesundheitsrisiko Weichmacher?"

Hiroshima and the fall of Berlin - getting the timeline right

2010-03-09T12:21:00.005+10:30

In lecture 29 I said: "Hiroshima and Nagasaki had shown that the USA had the bomb. It soon became clear that before long they would also have long range missiles that could reach the Soviet Union without the need of bombers flying over it." The next two paragraphs then go into a discussion of the reasons why Stalin wanted the Red Army to enter Berlin before any other allied forces could reach the city.

Some have interpreted my text as saying that the motivation for Stalin's move towards Berlin was the release of the atomic bombs over Japan. As one reader wrote: "You say that 'Hiroshima etc had shown that the USA had the bomb'. Wasn't the Fall of Berlin in April–May 1945 and the bombing of Hiroshima in August of that year?"

This is of course correct: The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki occurred after the Red Army had reached Berlin and the war in Europe had ended. But the Soviet Union had been well aware of progress with the Mahattan project for quite some time and did not need the proof of actual bombs falling on cities. My text muddles the timeline and can be misleading.

Because my policy with the lecture notes is to leave them standing as they are and use this blog for updates I only added a link to this note in the original lecture 29.

The changing character of war

2010-03-05T21:38:00.003+10:30

In Lecture 29 I said that World War I was the last "classical" war, a war in which the casualties were found mainly amongst the soldiers. Beginning with World War II military conflicts produce more casualties among the civilian population than among the soldiers (a fact painstakingly avoided by the media, which report every death among the occupying forces in Afghanistan but rarely mention the much larger death toll among Afghan civilians).
A recent review of a study of returned servicemen after World War II illustrates the deveelopment with some interesting observations. When the soldiers returned home from the battlefields of World War I the civilian population acknowledged their suffering and greeted them with a sense of guilt: "While British state pensions and policies were ungenerous, civilian volunteers stepped into the breach, flocking to donate money and time to hospitals, rest homes, philantropies and cultural associations that sought to ease disabled veterans' isolation and pain."
In contrast, soldiers returning home after World War II were ignored, their stories of suffering paled in comparison with those of survivors in bombed-out cities. Instead of a hero's welcome, or at least understanding for trauma and depression, they found a lack of empathy and faced the disintegration of their private lives: "Divorces went up, from 4100 decrees absolute in England and Wales in 1935, to 15,600 in 1945, to 60,300 in 1947." Veterans from the Vietnam war did not fare better.

Reference: Susan Pedersen: Suitable Heroes. A review of Demobbed: Coming Home after the Second World War by Alan Allport. London Review of Books 32(4) 25 February 2010, pp. 11-12.

The new chemistry and strange treatment of diseases

2009-12-06T23:33:00.002+10:30

Priestley's discovery of oxygen and Lavoisier's new description of the building blocks of nature had surprising consequences in the area of medicine. Thomas Beddoes (1760 - 1808), a philanthropic physician who cared much about the health of the poor and was an ardent admirer of the French Revolution during its first years, got carried away by the excitement of the new chemistry. He was convinced that illnesses such as "consumption" or "phthisis" (tuberculosis) and scurvy are the result of an imbalance of the elements in the inhaled air and promoted a new "pneumatic chemistry".

Scurvy (a disease produced by a lack of vitamin C) was in his view produced by a lack of oxygen in the air – evidenced by discoloration of the gums, heart and lungs – and could therefore be cured by letting the patient inhale air enriched with oxygen. The fact that seamen often succumbed to scurvy during long voyages across vast oceans could, in his view, be explained by oceanic air having a lower oxygen content. Beddoes was aware of the success of James Cook in beating scurvy through ample supply of acidic vegetables but argued that "this seems in great measure owing to his extreme care to keep his ships well aired."

The opposite, too much oxygen in the air, was in Beddoes' view the reason for tuberculosis (an infectious disease caused by bacteria now treated with antibiotica). He deduced this from the observation that occasionally pregnancy delays the progress of the disease and argued in 1793: "The foetus has its blood oxygenated by the blood of the mother through the placenta. During pregnancy there seems to be no provision for the reception of an unusual quantity of oxygene. On the contrary, in consequence of the impeded action of the diaphragm, less and less should be continually taken in by the lungs. If therefore a somewhat diminished proportion of oxygene be the effect of pregnancy, may not this be the way in which it arrests the progress of phthisis; and if so, is there not an excess of oxygene in the system of consumptive persons?"

Beddoes easily admitted that much of this was speculation. Nevertheless, driven by his urge to help humankind and improve the health of the poor, he promoted to keep patients afflicted with consumption in closed, badly ventilated rooms and established a Pneumatic Institute where patients were treated with air enriched with or depleted of various gases.

Naturally the Pneumatic Institute was not a success. For the patients, who were mostly close to their death already, the wrong therapy probably did not change much. But the Pneumatic Chemistry and its Institute were a sad waste of the extraordinary talents of a man who all his life wanted to better the fate of the ordinary people.

References:

Beddoes, Thomas (1793) Observations on the Nature and Cure of Calculus, Sea Scurvy, Consumption, Catarrh, and Fever: together with Conjectures upon several other Subjects of Physiology and Pathology. London: J. Murrey.

Jay, Mike (2009) The Atmosphere of Heaven: the Unnatural Experiments of Dr Beddoes and his Sons of Genius. New Haven CT: Yale University Press.

Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize

2009-10-12T21:21:00.010+10:30

I do not usually comment on current political events in these pages, but last week I received an email invitation to congratulate Barack Obama on his Nobel Peace Prize. As I have commented on an earlier Nobel Peace Prize (see my entry of 14 October 2007 "Should the IPCC receive the Nobel Peace Prize?") I feel justified to react publicly to this insult to my intelligence. I do that by comparing the timelines of the Vietnam War (a war that also sparked a Nobel Peace Prize) and of the war in Afghanistan. What is a Nobel Peace Prize worth if the wars intensify? Evidently the prize has lost all credibility and value (except its monetary value, of course).

The emphasis on Australia is for some local friends. How long should Australia wait before it withdraws its troops this time?

1961		John F. Kennedy becomes president, 2,000 US troops in Vietnam	2001		George W. Bush becomes president, special forces are sent into Afghanistan after arial bombing campaign
1963	First coordinated protests in London and Australia	Lyndon B. Johnson becomes president, says that "the purpose in Vietnam is to prevent the success of aggression."	2003		5,500 foreign troops in Afghanistan
1964	Student marches in US cities	16,500 US troops in Vietnam
1965	First large anti-war marches in the US, first sabotaging of military aircraft in Canada	The war is extended into Cambodia and Laos 200,000 US troops in Vietnam	2005		George W. Bush is re-elected president, declares that "the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq will be remembered as great turning points in the story of freedom."
1966	Public opinion moves from support to rejection of the war
			2008	Public opinion in Europe and Australia moves from support to rejection of the war, first large anti-war demonstrations in Europe
1969	Millions take a day off in the US to demonstrate against the war	Richard Nixon becomes president, promises "peace with honour" and an end to the war	2009	First news reports of protest demonstrations in Australia	Barack Obama becomes president, says that the previous administration "has overextended our military", sends an additional 15,000 troops, authorizes the bombing of targets in Pakistan, receives the Nobel Prize 100,500 foreign troops in Afghanistan (66,000 US, 34,500 NATO)
1970	First and only nationwide student strike in the US closes universities in protest against the war	US troops start incursions into Cambodia Kissinger pushes for intense bombing of Cambodia	2010	???	US may start incursions into Pakistan (?) US may raise foreign troop level to over 120,000 (?)
1971	More than 12,000 demonstrators arrested in Washington	Australia and New Zealand withdraw their troops	2011	???	???
1973		Kissinger receives the Nobel Prize US troops withdraw from Vietnam, the USA increase military aid	2013	???	??? becomes president, promises to ???
1974		Gerald Ford becomes president, is forced to phase out aid by 1976	2014	???	???
1975		The fall of Saigon ends the war	2015	???	???
Final cost: 3 - 4 million Vietnamese and 1.5 - 2 million Laotians and Cambodians killed, 58,159 US soldiers dead			Cost to date (October 2009): over 12,000 civilians killed (about 40% by anti-goverment forces, 60% by foreign troops), 1,435 foreign soldiers dead

Calendar wisdom: who can add to it?

2009-06-14T13:34:00.007+09:30

During the last few months I have been working with the publisher Weldon Owen on the Pacific Ocean section of their planned Atlas of the Sea, to be published in their family reference series in November. These books are of high quality, large format and colourful, full of information and at the same time suitable for the coffee table, see their website.

Now I am working with Weldon Owen on a volume Science and Society. It will be based on my lecture course but obviously have a very different presentation format - many photos and illustrations but only the most essential text.

One element of the book will be quotations from scientists and others relevant to each section of the book. I am searching for quotations from old texts related to the calendar problem. Here is what I have found so far:

The Atharva Veda says:
To the seasons we speak, to the lords of the seasons, and to the sections of the year; to the half-years, years and months: they shall deliver us from calamity! ... The five divine regions, the twelve divine seasons, the teeth of the year, they shall ever be propitious, to us! (Hymn XI, 6)
Thy summer, O earth, thy rainy season, thy autumn, winter, early spring, and spring; thy decreed yearly seasons, thy days and nights shall yield us milk. (Hymn XII, 36)

The Bible says:
And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and year." (Genesis 1:14)

The Qu'ran says: He it is Who made the sun a shining brightness and the moon a light, and ordained for it mansions that you might know the computation of years and the reckoning. (10:5)

Does anyone have other ancient quotations related to the calendar problem, from ancient China, Japan, South East Asia, Egypt, Greece, anywhere? If you do, please send a comment to this entry.

Neo-fascism, the Soviet Union, Islam and all that

2009-05-17T11:11:00.010+09:30

Today I received an email from a John Weeks in Texas:

"Sir: Thank you for your lecture series/book. It is the most humorous garbage I have read in many years. Monty Python could not have done better! I didn't know it was possible for someone to twist history so much to make their neo-fascist beliefs seem logical. The material on the Soviet Union and Islam are priceless. What a hoot!
Thank you, John Weeks, Texas, USA"

I emailed back and asked his permission to post his email on my blog, and he replied:

"Sir: You may post this on your blog under one condition: you must refer to me as one of those ignorant Americans who have caused all the world's problems.
Take care, John Weeks"

So let us note that I dutifully made the required reference but that it was John Weeks who said it and not me.

The email raises a few interesting questions. It is not often that I am called a neo-fascist. The usual understanding of neo-fascism is that it is a political movement and associated ideology that developed after the end of World War II, revives significant elements of fascism and expresses admiration for fascist governments of the past. I don't think that I have to go into great detail to make the case that nowhere in my material do I express admiration for Hitler, Mussolini or any other fascist leader. So the epithet neo-fascist cannot be applied to me.

It appears that John Weeks was careless in his use of words. Maybe he meant to use fascist and give it a bit more emphasis? After all, the word fascist is used and misused in many different contexts – there are ecofascists, vegefascists, fashion fascists, animal rights fascists and many more. Used in that way the word becomes utterly meaningless, as George Orwell already observed in 1944:

"It would seem that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox hunting, bullfighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else." (George Orwell: What is Fascism? Tribune, 1944.)

It would seem that people who use the word fascist without much thought use it as a derogatory term and nothing else. This has become more and more fashionable lately, a trend that I find disturbing. As a German with a good education I am aware of the history of my country of birth and citizenship, and it always stings me when someone uses a word associated with the greatest atrocity of world history for such trivia as fashion.

So, John Weeks, call me an ignoramus, an ideologue, a witless moron, or whatever takes your fancy, but don't call me a fascist or neo-fascist.

John Weeks clearly does not like what I say about science and society in the Soviet Union and under Islam. It is difficult to say much about this without knowing what he finds objectionable. He may find it interesting to learn that some of the staunchest pillars of capitalism are turning towards Islamic practice. As Jeremy Harding reports in the London Review of Books, financial institutions based on the tenets of Islam have been barely affected by the debt crisis that triggered the Great Financial Crisis. Such esteemed institutions of capitalism as London's Lloyds TSB and HSBC and the German Deutsche Bank are now offering Sharia-compliant banking products to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. (Jeremy Harding: The money that prays. London Review of Books vol. 31 no. 8, pp. 6-10.) Maybe Islam is not such a hoot after all.

Greek religion and science

2009-05-11T15:34:00.001+09:30

In Lecture 8 I expressed my doubts that the Greek religion played a major role in the development of early Greek science. A few months ago I bought an English translation of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey at a library clean-out sale and had an opportunity to read it during long hours in planes and airports on my way to Iran and back.

I received my high school education in a German Gymnasium, a place of study in the humanist classical tradition. Latin and ancient Greek were part of the fare, but we never made it to the study of Homer. So this was my first time to meet the famous poet - alas, not in his mother tongue.

I have never been fluent in ancient Greek. My doubt about its value for life had already surfaced during high school and had gelled a few years later when I had to register for conscription. The clerk had already taken down my personal details and proceeded with the form: "What languages do you speak?" "English, Latin and Greek." The clerk: "English and Greek", muttering the words as he wrote them. I protested: "English, Latin and Greek." The clerk, his eyes still on the form: "We record only living languages." I did not know any living Greek at the time. I have met some now, and some are my friends, but when they speak in their mother tongue I don't understand a word.

But an English translation of Homer is quite adequate when it comes to understanding the character of ancient Greek religion. All of us (or most of us) know that the ancient Greek had many gods and goddesses of different rang and purpose. What I had not appreciated before I read Homer is the strong animistic component of Greek religion. Every river, every mountain, every forest had its god or nymph, and unusual events of the natural world were invariably the result of decisions made by immortal beings. Take this scene from the Iliad:

Driven by a rage over the death of his closest friend, the hero Achilles wrecks havoc among the Trojan forces, who flee in panic. Many end up in a river, where Achilles continues to slaughter them, "and he would have slain yet others, had not the river in anger taken human form, and spoken to him from out the deep waters saying: 'Achilles, if you excel all in strength, so do you also in wickedness, for the gods are ever with you to protect you: if, then, the son of Saturn has vouchsafed it to you to destroy all the Trojans, at any rate drive them out of my stream, and do your grim work on land.'"

Achilles takes no note of the river god's request. What follows is a masterful description of a flash flood: "Meanwhile Achilles sprang from the bank into mid-stream, whereon the river raised a high wave and attacked him. He swelled his stream into a torrent, and swept away the many dead whom Achilles had slain and left within his waters. These he cast out on the land, bellowing like a bull the while, but the living he saved alive, hiding them in his mighty eddies. The great and terrible wave gathered around Achilles, falling upon him and beating on his shield, so that he could not keep his feet; he caught hold of a great elm-tree, but it came up by the roots, and tore away the bank, damming the stream with its thick branches and bridging it all across; whereby Achilles struggled out of the stream, and fled full speed over the plain, for he was afraid."

To this point the text could be read as a description of a natural event and the words "the river raised a high wave" taken as a poetic turn of phrase. But the next sentence leaves no doubt about who is acting here: "But the mighty god ceased not in his pursuit, and sprang upon him with a dark-crested wave." And a few sentences further on: "Even so did the river keep catching up with Achilles albeit he was a fleet runner, for the gods are stronger than men." (The Iliad, book XXI) This animistic view of nature is at par with the spirit world of Japan, for example. It cannot explain why the separation of science from religion occurred in Greece and not in far east Asia for that matter.

There are, of course, those who scoff at animism and oracles. In the Odyssey the estate of Odysseus is in danger of being ruined by a bunch of lazy layabouts who during his absence feast every day at his expense, killing the estate's oxen, goats and sheep. When they are confronted with a prophesy that the flight of two eagles is an indication of Odysseus' imminent return and unforgiving revenge, one of them says: "Go home, old man, and prophesy to your own children, or it may be worse for them. I can read these omens myself much better than you can; birds are always flying about in the sunshine one way or other, but they seldom mean anything." (The Odyssey, Book II) But in Homer's poem unbelievers are not men of stature but representatives of the bad party. What would be a statement of rational thinking when spoken by Hippocrates is in Homer's context only proof of wickedness.

It is difficult to see how such an attitude to nature could be fruitful for the development of scientific thought. The reasons for the separation of science from religion have to be found elsewhere. They have to be related to developments in society that widened the horizon of people and allowed a new view of the world to gain ground against the ingrained animism of Greek religion.

Text update complete

2009-04-30T08:12:00.003+09:30

The minor update of the lecture text, announced on 10 October 2008, is now complete. (It was actually completed in February, but I forgot to mention this here.) To avoid major departures of the lecture text from the book edition any further amendments will not affect the lecture text itself but will take the form of blog entries.

Science in the Persian empires

2009-04-29T12:33:00.003+09:30

Why do the Persian empires rate so little mention in my history of Science and Civilization? This question had been in my mind for a long time. I had promised myself to clarify the issue but never got around to it.

Earlier this year I spent six weeks teaching oceanography in Iran and had the opportunity to visit several of its historic sites: Susa and Dur-Untash (Choghazanbil) of Elamite times and Cyrus' grave in Pasargadae and Persepolis of Achaemenian times.

The Elamite empire (c. 3000 – 559 BC) spanned the period before the onset of new science in Greece. Its achievements were comparable to those of its Mesopotamian neighbours. As pointed out in Lecture 2, Elam and Sumer both invented a script at about the same time. (Elam eventually abandoned its invention and took to the Sumerian writing.)

This was well understood; I had no problem with Elam. My feeling of uneasiness related to the Achaemenid empire (559 – 330 BC), which rose at the time when science made great progress in Greece. The Persian empire was not only one of the largest empires of ancient times, reaching as it did from Lybia in the west to Indian in the east, it was also governed by enlightened rulers. Its ceremonial capital Persepolis could match the best buildings of all other civilizations. Numerous documents from the construction period testify that Darius the Great (549 – 486 BC), the third of the Achaemenian kings, achieved this without the use of slave labour: All labourers were paid for their work; women often received higher wages than men and were entitled to paid maternity leave.

Why, then, does the Achaemenid empire not rate a more prominent mention in the history of science? The answer came to me when I studied its history, looking at the ruins of Persepolis. Cyrus the Great (died 530 BC) came from a nomadic tribe of goat and sheep herders. When he founded his empire he had no connection to scientific achievements. The situation can be compared with the beginning of the Islamic empires, which needed some 150 years to absorb the science of Greece and India before they could add to the science of others.

The Achaemenid empire did not have the time to reach that stage. It lasted only 230 years. In 330 BC Alexander the Great arrived with his army, looted its treasury and burned Persepolis to the ground.

From the cultural point of view, that a 26 year old orders the destruction of an awe-inspiring complex of magnificent buildings is hard to swallow. My Iranian colleague's response was: " But that is what they did in those days." He is of course right. But the issue may deserve a separate blog entry some day.

From the point of view of science history the result of Alexander's action was that the Achaemenid empire did not get its chance to contribute to the development of science. Persia had to wait another 500 years before the Sassanid empire (226 – 651) established the Academy of Gondeshapur and turned its hospital into a model for the world.

This is Persepolis today.

An artist's impression of the Hundred Column Hall.

Images from the documentary "Persepolis recreated", producers Farzin Rezaeian and Hossein Hazrati, director Farzin Rezaeian, Sunrise Visual Innovations Canada 2004.

Elam

2008-12-02T09:57:00.006+10:30

The civilization of Elam goes back to at least 3000 BC but lasted several millennia. During my recent trip to Iran I came across the site of an Elamite fortress in central Khuzestan called Cool Farah. From what I understood the guide explained that it had withstood an attack by the Persian king Ashurbanipal, so it existed during the so-called Neo-Elamite II period (c. 770 – 646 BC), although its initial construction could be much older. Here are a few photos of the site as it is today:

Indian and "Arabic" numbers

2008-11-15T21:48:00.002+10:30

I just returned from a trip to Iran and Afghanistan, where the people read and write Persian. (In Iran it is called Farsi, the Afghans call it Dari. The two relate to each other like Australian English and US-American English; they are both Persian but have their own characteristics.)
Persian uses the same numerals as Arabic:
However, I discovered that the way numbers are written in Persian and Arabic gives a strong clue to their origin: While Persian, like Arabic, is written from right to left, numbers are written from left to right, even if they occur in a line of text. In other words, they break the flow of reading: The reader arrives at the number from the right, then has to take the number in against the flow of the text, and then revert to right-to-left reading.
It seems clear to me that the reason for this rather strange convention has to be seen in the Indian origin of the Arabian numbers. The Brahmi script, the first script used for Sanskrit, was written from left to right. The Indian number system was first developed in the Brahmi script. When the Muslim scientists learned about the Indian position value number system they introduced it into Arabic in exactly the form as they had found it: They used the Indian numerals and the Indian notation.
While the Persian script remained a mystery for me during the two weeks of my travels, I became quite adept at reading and "translating" Dari numbers, because they follow our way of writing, and in a decimal position value number system you only have to remember ten numerals.

The value of democracy

2008-10-16T14:32:00.004+10:30

My discussion of the reasons for the demise of the Soviet Union in lecture 35 may be seen by some as an endorsement of the system of parliamentary democracy. Maybe it is important to emphasize that the principle of democracy, i.e. the exercising of power through the people, can take many forms but that the system of "parliamentary democracy" is not one of them.

Parliamentary democracy is the form of government during the period of fully developed capitalism. It serves the purpose to make the people think that they can exercise power and to hide the fact that the power is and remains in the hands of the ruling class and its agents in parliament. (This does not mean that every parliamentarian works for the benefit of the ruling class, but the system always makes sure that the majority does.) As capitalism matures the political parties become more and more interchangeable, and it becomes more and more difficult to influence future development of society through parliamentary elections.

Experience shows that in a capitalist society real progress does not come from parliaments. Real power by the people is usually exercised though actions outside parliament such as strikes, demonstrations and other forms of direct action. If you need proof look at my other blog, The Woolloomooloo murals.

Minor updates to the text of the lectures

2008-10-10T22:32:00.003+10:30

Those who have seen the book version of the web site know that the book follows the text of the lectures. Nevertheless, some minor improvements in the presentation were made during the preparation of the book chapters. As a consequence the book presents some material in a clearer way, and some passages are easier to read in the book than on the web.

In the coming weeks I intend to remedy this and go through the text of the web lectures and associated material to bring them into alignment with the book version. Any changes will be very minor and not change the essence of the text. Amended lectures will be annotated with the date of the last update from now on.

Industrialization in the Soviet Union

2008-10-10T22:19:00.005+10:30

In lecture 35 I said: "Supporters of capitalism point towards the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 as proof that there is no alternative to capitalism. They ignore that socialism turned the Soviet Union from a backward feudal state into a superpower in a time span of less than 40 years." For today's generation it is indeed difficult to grasp the enormous achievement that the industrialization of the Soviet Union represents. Some figures can provide some background:

In 1923, when the internal enemies of the October Revolution had finally been defeated, "the national income was only one-third of its level in 1913. Industry produced less than one-fifth of the goods, the coal mines yielded only one-tenth, and iron foundries only one-fortieth of their normal output." Many city people were forced to live in the country just to feed themselves: "Russia's cities and towns ... had become so depopulated that in 1921 Moscow had only one half and Petrograd only one third of its former inhabitants." (quotations from David Horowitz: Imperialism and Revolution. London: Allen Lane the Penguin Press, 1969.)

US president Kennedy described the situation in 1963 with these words: "No nation in the historic battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union in the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and families were burned or sacked. A third of the nation's territory, including two-thirds of its industrial base, were turned into a wasteland - a loss equivalent to the destruction of this country east of Chicago." (quoted in Horowitz, loc. cit.)

The bombing of Hiroshima

2008-10-10T21:29:00.005+10:30

In lecture 29 I said about the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima: "Whether it was instrumental in bringing Japan to surrender is questionable. The Japanese forces were already exhausted, and surrender could not have been delayed much longer. There can, however, be no doubt that the second atomic bomb, dropped on Nagasaki 3 days later, can only be classified as a war crime."

It appears that I was giving the US military the benefit of the doubt, and this quite unjustifiably. Others have been much more damning in their assessment. The nuclear physicist Patrick M. S. Blackett, who in 1947 received the Nobel price in physics for his work on atomic and cosmic-ray physics, "was the first to point out that the Atomic Bombs dropped on Japan fulfilled diplomatic objectives vis-à-vis the U.S.S.R. rather than military objectives which could not be accomplished by other means." (P.M.S. Blackett: Military and Political Consequences of Atomic Energy. London: Turnstile Press, 1948; quoted in David Horowitz: Imperialism and Revolution. London: Allen Lane the Penguin Press, 1969.)

In other words, the sole purpose of the Japanese deaths in Hiroshima and in Nagasaki was to frighten Stalin and establish a position of strength for the Cold War. This would place not just the Nagasaki bomb but both bombs into the category of war crime.

Sonification of tides

2008-09-30T14:30:00.004+09:30

To say that this post is relevant to the content of Science, civilization and society is stretching credibility, but it has some entertainment value and is related in some way to the discussion of tides in my blog "The tide predicter of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey" of 25 May. In that post I referred to a web page with an animation of Kelvin's Tide Predicter. The same page has a link to "Tidesounds", where tidal constituents are used to produce "musical scores." You can listen to some examples here: Miami harbour entrance, Daytona Beach, Florida, Cordova, Alaska.

The Tide Predicter page says that "the musical patterns were generated by Stephanie Mason at the University of Minnesota Geometry Center, who wrote C-code to generate predicted tides for these ports, and programmed a NeXT-MIDI interface to generate the corresponding soundtracks." You have to admit that the resulting sounds are more of educational/scientific than musical interest. I asked my son Sebastian, who studies music technology at the University of Adelaide, to produce a bit of sonification of some observational data from one of my field studies. He used data from an oceanographic data buoy that recorded (among other things) wind speed and direction, ocean current and temperature and conductivity at various depths in Thorny Passage near Port Lincoln, South Australia. Here is the result: Southern Ocean sounds.

Seb used the observed wind direction to set the rhythm and the battery voltage to control the loudness; he converted the conductivity at 2.5 m depth into marimba, the temperature at 2.5 m depth into soft organ and the salinity at 2.5 m depth (calculated from temperature and conductivity) into drums. As the water moves in and out through the Passage with the tide its salinity and temperature change slightly, so the up and down of the melody mirrors the tide. The variable speed of the rhythm is produced by the passage of atmospheric fronts that cause sudden changes in wind direction. It does make for more interesting music than just tidal heights from a tide table, don't you think?

You can find Seb's own blog here.

The beginning of marine science

2008-09-19T15:37:00.005+09:30

In Lecture 26 I said that "the first of the great deep-sea expeditions was undertaken by the British naval vessel Challenger in 1873 - 1876. This was the beginning of the race for the last territories still available for colonization." This correct but somewhat general statement does not explain why research voyages to other continents had to start with the exploration of the greatest ocean depths. The 20-year birthday volume of Oceanography, the official journal of the international Oceanography Society, has just come out and supplies the answer:
The introduction to the "Summary Report on the Scientific Results of the Voyage of the H.M.S. Challenger" of 1895 says: "The desire to establish telegraphic communication between Europe and America gave the first direct impulse towards systematic exploration of the deep sea." (Briscoe, 2008) It appears that again science - in this instance deep sea science - develops only where there is a need for it.
The same Oceanography volume contains an article that documents in detail how after World War II physical oceanography was driven by the needs of imperialist navies to develop underwater warfare. (Munk and Day, 2008)

References:

Briscoe, M. (2008) Celebrating 20 years of The Oceanography Society. Oceanography 21(3), 12-13.
Munk, W. and D. Day (2008) Glimpses of oceanography in the postwar period. Oceanography 21(3), 14-21.

Science, Civilization and Society: the book is out

2008-09-08T12:16:00.004+09:30

As announced earlier, the book version of "Science, Civilization and Society" is now available. It can be ordered by referencing the international book numbers

ISBN-10: 363906593X
ISBN-13: 9783639065930

It can also be ordered online from various sellers. Some are listed at the web site "World Civilizations"; just click on the title of this post. It may be worth comparing prices at other sellers - the steep price was set by the publisher, not by me. As of today the lowest price is only available in Europe, unfortunately.

Lomborg's new discoveries: Old wine in new bottles

2008-08-09T14:18:00.006+09:30

In Lecture 35 I discussed Bjørn Lomborg as a practician of partisan science, of willfully deformed science designed to counter criticism of the activities of big business and its government associates. In his book The Sceptical Environmentalist" Lomborg tried (in the words of the advertising text on the book's website at Cambridge University Press) to "challenge widely held beliefs that the environmental situation is getting worse and worse". As "a former member of Greenpeace" he argued that the dangers of global climate change are exaggerated and that "there are more reasons for optimism than pessimism." Cambridge University Press even claims that his book "offers readers a non-partisan stocktaking exercise."

This was in 2001, when Lomborg was on his way to become director of Denmark's national Environmental Assessment Institute, a position he held until 2004. Now the world has moved on, and it has become impossible to close one's eyes before the evidence that global climate change induced by human activity will produce disastrous developments if we do not take correcting action very soon. Lomborg, now Adjunct Professor at Copenhagen Business School, found a new platform in the Copenhagen Consensus Centre. Last year he published Cool It - The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, according to his personal website "a groundbreaking book that transforms the debate about global warming by offering a fresh perspective based on human needs as well as environmental concerns."

He continues, talking about himself in third person: "Rather than starting with the most radical procedures, Lomborg argues that we should first focus our resources on more immediate concerns, such as fighting malaria and HIV/AIDS and assuring and maintaining a safe fresh water supply - which can be addressed at a fraction of the cost and save millions of lives within our lifetime."

It is of course befitting for a Professor of Business to see the world exclusively through cost/benefit analysis. It is also not surprising that if you rank today's problems in order of their cost/benefit ratio, supplementing the diet of children in developing countries with vitamin A comes out on top, since some $20 - $30 are returned for every dollar spent, while the return on a dollar spent on greenhouse mitigation could be as low as 90 cents. But what can we conclude from such an exercise? That we should not spend our money on greenhouse mitigation but on vitamin supplements instead?

Lomborg should know - and being a trained academic presumably does know - that cost/benefit analysis does not help us much in the face of crisis if it is not combined with risk analysis. It is also not possible to analyze global problems such as vitamin deficiency in the Third World in isolation. If we ignore greenhouse warming today the children of developing countries will still be worse off in twenty years' time than today, because the entire ecosystem on which their food supply depends will have deteriorated dramatically. But Lomberg's book is not about scientific analysis, it is about selling old wine in new bottles.

The Weekend Australian of 2-3 August quotes Nick Rowley, former climate change adviser to the UK government, as saying that Lomberg is making a fundamental error of logic. "The level of risk we confront is a greater level of risk than virtually any other area. He views these as if they are mutually exclusive; they're not. They're intertwined and you can't see a scenario where under even two degrees of warming the most vulnerable people in the world are not going to be a lot more vulnerable. There are a lot of moral and ethical considerations that need to influence that process as well. It's not just a technical exercise."

As I said in Lecture 35: "It is not the observational evidence that makes Lomborg a partisan scientist, it is the ethical dimension of his science."

Science, Civilizations and Society: the book

2008-07-29T20:41:00.002+09:30

This entry supersedes the entry of last August (2007) that anounced the availability of Science, Civilization and Society in book form for pdf download. The pdf version has been withdrawn. It will be replaced by the printed version, to be published before September by VDM Verlag Dr. Müller. More details will be posted as they become available.

Alexander von Humboldt

2008-06-19T17:31:00.001+09:30

That Alexander von Humboldt, one of the greatest naturalist and scientific explorers of European history, did not get a mention in my lectures has been on my mind for quite some time. I rationalized this omission by telling myself that a course on the relationship between science and society cannot cover the biographies of all who came to fame during the age of discovery: My table “Major Expeditions 1700 – 1850” in Lecture 25 mentions twenty people (von Humboldt being one of them), but only five of them feature in the index, and short biographies are provided for only four of those.

I have now studied von Humboldt’s biography and have to admit that his low treatment in the context of science and society is not justified. This is not the place to summarize his life, but a few comments on his position in the development of science during the early 19th century are in order.

Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 1769 - 6 May 1859) was born and died in Berlin, the capital of Prussia. After an unremarkable education he became intensely interested in botany, became knowledgeable in mineralogy and meteorology and developed a hunger for exploration. But in the late 18th century exploration went hand in hand with imperial expansion. Prussia was a political power of third rank, and while the Prussian king wanted to boost his Academy of Sciences he did have neither the means nor the inclination to develop a world empire.

Von Humboldt’s career as a scientist vividly demonstrates how scientific progress is shaped by the political constellation of the time. Unable to join an exploration party in his home country, von Humboldt tried to join French exploration efforts. He was invited to join Nicolas Baudin, but political upheaval caused the postponement of Baudin’s voyage. An attempt to go to Egypt with Napoleon Bonaparte also came to nothing. Eventually Spain’s prime minister Mariano de Urquijo supported an application to the Spanish king for a royal permit to visit the Spanish possessions in the Americas.

During the five years 1799 - 1804 von Humboldt and his companion Aimé Bonpland travelled some 9,650 kilometres through South and Central America, walking the ancient Inca roads, canoeing on its rivers and riding across its mountains. Spain’s colonies were in those days only accessible to government officials and Roman Catholic missionaries, and von Humboldt’s and Bonpland’s discoveries in an otherwise closed continent turned into invaluable contributions to the growing knowledge base of botany, geography and earth sciences generally.

On his return from America in 1804 von Humboldt lived in Paris, the centre of science, until in 1827 his financial means were exhausted and he had to return to Berlin, where he received a royal stipend as the tutor of the Crown Prince. He used the last three decades of his life to write Kosmos, a description of the structure of the universe as then known that within a few years was translated into nearly all European languages.

The tide predicter of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey

2008-05-25T10:44:00.009+09:30

Robert Merkin of Northampton, Massachusetts, USA, recently sent me a photo of the tide predictor that was in use at the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey from 1912 to 1965. It was built by Rollin A. Harris and E. G. Fisher, who modeled it on Lord Kelvin's Tide Predicter, and can handle 37 tidal constituents. It is also known as "Old Brass Brains". Here is Bob Merkin's photo.

Bob also pointed me to a site that offers an animation of Kelvin's Tide Predicter. It shows the workings of the Predicter much clearer than my own description and offers a choice of seven port locations to try it out. Unfortunately it comes under the heading "Fourier Analysis of Ocean Tides".

Fourier Analysis uses multiples of a base period; but the tidal constituents are not multiples of a base period, they are set by the movement of the earth and the moon. Tides are therefore predicted by adding the effect of the various tidal constituents with their known periods. This method is called Harmonic Analysis in oceanography.

In mathematics the term Harmonic Analysis describes an extension of classical Fourier Analysis. When the term Harmonic Analysis is used in the context of tide prediction it does not carry that meaning; it refers to a method that is based on the known periods of the tidal constituents. This has lead to confusion on occasions. Kelvin's Tide Predicter is a very helpful tool to clarify the situation.

Science and the aristocracy

2008-05-11T12:13:00.002+09:30

In a study of the history of science it is important to realize that progress in science is not determined by the genius of a few individuals but by the conditions of society. In the age of feudalism only a wealthy aristocrat could afford to pursue scientific interests and go down in history as genius. Ordinary people had little chance to show their potential.

In a footnote to lecture 8 I used the example of Tycho Brahe, the Danish aristocrat turned astronomer. A study of the history of astronomy described his birth in 1546 as "fortunate" for the development of science. I queried that and said: "What honours him and secures his place in the history of science is not his fortunate birth but his decision to turn his back on the idle life of the ordinary nobleman and apply his gifted mind to science." Brahe did not care much about the aristocracy; he married a peasant's daughter and embarked on a career as imperial mathematician and astronomer.

It is instructive to compare Brahe's attitude to science with that of the English nobleman Joseph Banks, the resident naturalist during James Cook's fist expedition into the South Pacific. Banks brought along a second naturalist, a secretary, two artists and four servants, all paid for from his own wealth.

The large amount of work done by Banks and his party in the field of botany and taxonomy was an immense contribution to science. But Banks clearly did not see science as an important part of his life; he saw it more as what Galiliei called the "regal sport" of the ruling class. This became obvious when Cook invited Banks to join his second voyage into the South Pacific on the Resolution. Banks agreed, on the condition that he could increase his party to fifteen, including two musicians to while away the time. He even managed to talk the Navy into adding an extra deck to the ship to accommodate his party.

When the time came to sail the Resolution out of the shipyard one of Cook's lieutenants called her "by far the most unsafe ship I ever saw or heard of." The pilot declared her top-heavy and prone to capsize and refused to even move her off the dock. The ship was restored to her original state and Banks, swearing and sulking, withdrew from the expedition.

The story demonstrates that when it comes to evaluating the role of individuals to science, looking at their contribution to science alone does not produce a balanced assessment. Banks clearly had the capacity and gift to play a much larger role in the history of botany, but he chose the idle life of the aristocracy.

Reference:

Allen, O. E. (1980): The Seafarers, the Pacific Navigators. Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, 176 pp.

The Catholic Church and the destruction of America's civilizations

2008-05-11T12:08:00.001+09:30

Wherever the Spanish conquerors went they were accompanied by friars, whose role was to bring Christianity to the heathens. The Dominican order made missionary activity during the conquest one of its primary undertakings.

There is no doubt that some Dominican friars tried to soften the treatment of the indigenous people by the conquerors and prevented the worst excesses. But there is also no denying that even such intellectual interest as the study of indigenous languages (mainly to enable the Christian gospel to be preached in the local vernacular) was aimed at the final destruction of a "pagan" civilization. Any historical assessment of the role of Christianity has to admit that the muskets and guns of the conquistadors were not the only instruments that brought great civilizations to an end but also the book burnings and destruction of places of worship by the representatives of the Church.

The Convent of San Esteban in Salamanca, Spain, was and remains the centre of the Dominican mission. It features a display of the Dominican role in the conquest of South America. There are exhibits of souvenirs brought back by Dominican missionaries, but one searches in vain for any indication of regret for what happened under their spiritual supervision. Instead, vague and obfuscating texts attempt to conceal their contribution to the destruction of great civilizations.

A book exhibit "San Esteban, Search and Encounter; America, the universalist Dominican vocation" declares: "The world expanded itself, and it became necessary to invent new norms. What was known and understood was no longer sufficient. The search for the truth extended itself to the other side of the ocean." The main inscription on the wall of the Convent is more direct; it concedes that it was not the world that drove the action by expanding itself, admits that actions involved people, and identifies the actors: "The thoughts and the action of the Dominicans of San Esteban in America demonstrate that the battle for the freedom and the dignity of all people is the way to the TRUTH – And the only medium: the WORD." The South American Indians should be thankful for the freedom and dignity they received!

The role of profit in scientific exploration during the "Age of Discovery"

2008-05-11T12:06:00.001+09:30

The early European ocean voyages of the Age of Discovery did not always lead to the discovery of unknown lands. Their main objective was to obtain as much profit as could be made. Exploration of new coasts, with the associated benefits for science, was a secondary consideration, performed only to the degree necessary to bring success to the economic purpose of the voyage.

The early Portuguese and Spanish sea captains were true explorers, in the sense that their contract with the crown (four fifth of the profit to the explorer, one fifth to the crown) was based on voyages to unknown destinations and therefore carried great risk. The British crown found it more profitable to raid the Spanish outposts in regions already discovered. It financed Francis Drake, Thomas Cavendish and other "privateers" to sack Spanish settlements and capture Spain's ships.

The profitability of marauding voyages was beyond doubt. When Drake captured a Spanish galleon in 1579 he obtained 13 chests of silver coin, 26 tons of silver bullion, 80 pounds of gold, and uncounted jewellery. Cavendish sacked Puna Island off Peru, slaughtering its Indian inhabitants, in 1587; he returned from his two year marauding voyage with a booty worth 125,000 pounds, nearly half of the Crown's annual revenue. Such adventurism did not contribute much to science.

Carbon targets to manage climate change

2008-03-11T06:23:00.004+10:30

This is a follow-up to an earlier posting (see "Prevention of climate change without binding targets?" posted on 12 December 2007) where I said that the only way forward is a strategy based on uniform carbon emission allowances per person. In some countries the principle is making its way into government policy. Here are two figures from the Interim Report to the Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments of Australia (the first draft of the so-called Garnaut Climate Change Review).

The first figure shows the total CO₂ emissions, including those from land-use, for 2004; units are gigatons, the scale is on the left. Squares show per capita emissions, in tons on the right-hand scale. I added the yellow line to the figure; it shows the acceptable per capita emission if we assume that the world has to return to the total emissions it produced in 1990.

The second figure is a sketch (the Garnaut report calls it "a stylised, illustrative scenario") of what has to happen if we want to stabilize the climate. The y-axis gives per capita emissions, the x-axis time, both without units. The figure demonstrates the huge change in lifestyle the USA and Australia have to undergo if they are to reach their per capita targets. The European Union and Japan are under far less pressure but have to reduce their per capital consumption, too. With the numbers adopted by the Garnaut report China has not quite reached the maximum acceptable per capita consumption (which means that my yellow line in the first figure was drawn somewhat too far down on the scale) but will reach it soon, while India is not in such a tight situation.

The Garnaut report was commissioned to form the basis for Australia's climate change policy. Hopefully the Australian government will adopt it in full. Any delay in adoption of the percapita emission principle will cause more damage to the environment.

DDT and "scientific fraud"

2008-01-16T21:42:00.001+10:30

In 2004 an article by J. G. Edwards entitled DDT: A Case Study in Scientific Fraud", published shortly after his death, reviewed the history of the ban on DDT by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the USA. Edwards shows convincingly that most if not all arguments brought forward in support of the ban – negative effects on human health, on birds, on egg shells and others – were not supported by science. He credits Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring as the trigger for the eventual ban on DDT in 1972 and calls the procedures that led to the ban "scientific fraud".

It is certainly correct that many of Carson's claims about the environmental effects of DDT cannot be substantiated. Carson, who had trained as a biologist but made a career as a nature journalist, was interested in raising public awareness of the deterioration of the environment through industrial products, at a time when such ideas were novel and went against the general belief in scientific progress at all cost. She was successful to such a degree that her book is now widely considered to mark the beginning of the environmental movement. That she argued her case with wild exaggerations and several wrong claims may be understandable for someone who can see the future of a world with an unrestrained chemical industry but is met with hostility wherever she goes, but that does not exonerate her from having employed dishonest means.

Edwards' claim of scientific fraud is another matter. As Edwards reports himself, the DDT hearing of the EPA, which lasted seven months, came to the conclusion that DDT does not pose a threat to human or animal health and recommended to allow its use as a pesticide; but the recommendation was overruled by the EPA Administrator, who had links with an environmental group. There was thus no scientific fraud: Science came to the correct conclusion. The fault lay with the administration, i.e. in the political domain.

Edwards' paper is not completely free from misleading claims. It focuses on DDT use for mosquito control in malaria eradication, describes the early successes with DDT spraying between 1945 and 1960 and says: "After the U.S. ban on DDT, there is a global malaria burden of 300 to 500 million cases and 1 to 2.5 million deaths annually, mostly among young children. Malaria kills an African child every 30 seconds." As Edwards describes it, the ban on DDT can only be seen as a crime against humanity.

This picture is far from the truth for several reasons:

The use of DDT for malaria control represented a very small proportion of general DDT use of the 1950s and 1960s. Widespread use of DDT in agriculture, while possibly of no harm to humans, can only increase resistance to it and is therefore only a temporary gain, while the quantity of DDT in the environment accumulates. DDT is very persistent in the environment, and the low doses recommended by the EPA science assessment may eventually be exceeded by large amounts.

The ban on DDT refers only to agricultural use; its use in malaria control has always been permitted. The World Health Organization recommends DDT for indoor spraying, a use that was formally included in the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants in May 2004, 6 months before Edwards' paper was published. (Indoor spraying – the coverage of walls and ceilings with a thin DDT layer - prevents mosquitoes entering buildings but does not kill them; it acts as a barrier between mosquitoes and humans.)

The claim that continued use of DDT would have saved millions of lives cannot be verified. Many mosquito populations have developed resistance to DDT (in Sri Lanka, India and many other countries as early as 10 years before DDT was banned). Effective malaria control now requires the use of alternatives such as pyrethroids (synthetic chemical compounds that emulate the natural chemical pyrethrins produced by certain Chrysanthemum flowers and are used in many insect repellents). Ironically, the rapid loss of effectiveness in the 1960s was mainly the result of agricultural DDT spraying, which used much larger quantities than malaria control. This suggests that DDT effectiveness for malaria control could have been maintained much longer if agricultural use of DDT would have been banned 20 years earlier.

References:http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Carson R. (1962): Silent Spring. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, Mass.

Edwards, J. G. (2004): DDT: a case study in scientific fraud. Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons 9 (3), 83-88; available as PDF file.

World Health Organization (2004): WHO position on DDT use in disease vector control under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. WHO/HTM/RBM/2004.53 rev.1, available as PDF file

More information and debate at http://timlambert.org/category/science/ddt

Prevention of climate change without binding targets?

2007-12-12T22:31:00.001+10:30

The United Nations Conference on Climate Change is underway; Australia signed the Kyoto Protocol at last but refuses to accept binding carbon dioxide (CO₂) reduction targets unless China and other developing countries accept them, too. Can such a stand be justified, and on what grounds? Let us look at some basic premises and evaluate the consequences.

Premise 1: Every human being, whether in a developed or a developing country, has the same right to a decent standard of living.

Premise 2: To stabilize the climate the world has to return to a sustainable level of CO₂ output. I don't know what this level is - I assume Bali will be able to tell us that – but for the sake of the argument let us assume that the CO₂ output of 1990 is sustainable. (The actual year does not matter to the argument, as we shall see.)

According to United Nations statistics, the global CO₂ output of 1990 amounted to 21,563 million tons. The current world population is something like 6,602 million people. If we accept premise 1 we have to accept that every person is entitled to emit the same amount of CO₂ into the atmosphere. To maintain the output of 6,602 million people at the level of 1990 means that every person should not exceed an annual output of 3.25 tons of CO₂.

What does that mean for different countries? Again according to United Nations statistics, in 2004 India's per capita CO₂ output was 1.2 tons; China's output was 3.8 tons, Australia's output was 16.3 and the output of the USA 20.4 tons.

It is obvious that the developed world will have to change very, very dramatically. It is also obvious that nothing but sheer selfishness can support the argument that the developing countries should reduce their CO₂ output. On moral grounds we have to say that it would be nice and very generous of India if it tries to minimize its increase in CO₂ output; but even if it doubled its output it would still not have reached its allowable limit. China has obviously reached its allowable limit and should not increase its output further.

This is not the first time this simple calculation has been done. The German chancellor Angela Merkel mentioned the same idea once and was promptly declared off the planet. Nevertheless, Germany's electricity rates are the highest in Europe, and the country is moving ahead with the development of carbon-neutral technologies at a surprising pace, while Australia increases its coal export to secure its standard of living and the USA use its military force to secure the world's oil fields for its exclusive use.

I am sure that the actual numbers differ somewhat from my example – the world population has grown since 2004, and 1990 is probably not a good basis for sustainability. But the principle remains the same: The developed world has no moral or other right whatsoever to insist on CO₂ output cuts from the developing world.

The idea of buying carbon credits from poor countries to allow oneself the continuation of one's reckless lifestyle is a fallacy. Besides being on very shaky moral ground it will not work, because the money paid to the poor countries will inevitably lead to rapid increases in their CO₂ output as people use it to improve their living standard.

The only way forward for developed countries is to accept very high binding reduction targets and to begin with a profound restructuring of their lifestyles.

Reference: United Nations Statisitcs can be found at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/databases.htm.

The statistics on per capita CO₂ output are at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/cdb/cdb_topic_xrxx.asp?topic_code=32

Saint Augustine and Evolution

2007-12-10T15:55:00.001+10:30

In Lecture 25 (Evolution, the answer to the biological explosion) I already mentioned Augustine of Hippo as a man of the Church who did not see a contradiction between the Biblical account of the origin of the world and scientific insight.

I now came across a quote from his work The Literal Interpretation of Genesis that should give the defenders of creationism something to think about: One of the most venerated "Fathers of the Church" defends science against blind interpretation of the Bible. Here is what Saint Augustine had to say in 408 AD:

"It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation."

(The Literal Interpretation of Genesis 1:19–20, Chapt. 19 [AD 408]; found in the Wikipedia entry for Augustine.)

The discovery of Caral and the Supe civilization

2007-11-24T18:32:00.001+10:30

When I said in Lecture 2 that Caral was only discovered "in the last decade of the last century" (i.e. after 1990) I fell victim to a phenomenon described by Katherine Reece in the book Archaeological Fantasies: How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public as "mass media reports of shocking new, history-altering discoveries." Broadcasters like the British Broadcasting Service should certainly be commended for their many outstanding productions on history and archeology; but the style of these television series, which always present some interesting archaeological work as groundbreaking and counter to all previous knowledge, is not only sensationalizing but can also be quite misleading - it certainly was in my case.

Caral, a city of the Norte Chico or Supe civilization, came into the limelight through a television program (I cannot remember whether from the BBC or not) in the late 1990s. This was followed by papers in Science in 2001 and Nature in 2005. These reports overshadowed the fact that the ruins of Caral had been known since at least 1945, and that ruins of several other settlements of the Supe civilization (Aspero, Huaca Prieta, Kotosh and others) had been studied before, some as early as 1905. I only became aware of this when I researched early American civilizations for my "Civilizations of the World" Time Atlas project.

Still, it is no exaggeration to say that America's place in the history of early civilizations has only been recognized about 100 years ago. It is also true that much still remains to be learned about civilizations in the tropical parts of South America.

References:

Katherine Reece: Memoirs of a true believer. In Garrett F. Fagan (editor): Archaeological Fantasies: How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public pp. 96 – 106. RoutledgeFalmer (2006)

Wikipedia: Caral. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caral)

Should the IPCC receive the Nobel Peace Prize?

2007-10-14T08:58:00.001+09:30

Two days ago the Nobel Peace Prize Committee allocated the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 in equal parts to Al Gore and to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change".

Al Gore has spent a considerable part of his life to make people aware of the consequences of our use of fossil fuels. He did this at a time when general opinion was still against him and he had to suffer taunts and recrimination from many sides. His conviction, courage and determination make him a most suitable candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, which after all should honour those who are prepared to go beyond the normal call of duty in the quest for peace.

But why the IPCC, a scientific panel organized to garner the knowledge of the global scientific community about climate change? International science has many panels and working groups on various unresolved questions of science; the IPCC is just one of them, although admittedly probably the largest. Scientists who work in them or with them are doing their job just as many others. They contribute their knowledge without expecting personal return, but they do that as part of their everyday work. Honouring them with the Nobel Peace Prize should be an acknowledgment of service beyond normal duties, as it undoubtedly is in the case of Al Gore but not in the case of the scientists who contribute to the work of the IPCC. Allocating part of the Nobel Peace Prize to the IPCC cannot be justified through its work; it is a political decision designed to highlight the urgency of tackling global warming.

That global warming has to be tackled urgently is beyond doubt. The Nobel Peace Prize Committee has to be applauded for its decision to bring the issue to everyone's attention again. It could have achieved that by giving the entire prize to Al Gore.

The somewhat skewed decision is not necessarily out of step with the history of the Nobel Peace Prize. Unlike the Nobel Prizes for Physics, Chemistry and Medicine, which are given to indisputably outstanding achievements in science, and the Nobel Prize for Literature, which does contain a subjective element of literary taste but always honours outstanding writers, the Nobel Peace Prize has made some serious mistakes. The allocation of the prize in 1994 to Yasser Arafat, who used violent means to defend the rights of the Palestinian people, and Yitzhak Rabin, a member of the Zionist terrorist organization Haganah that in the 1920s and 1930s assisted the British to suppress Arab uprisings against the occupying forces, could be justified by arguing that the two nominees had repented. But the reason for the allocation of the prize was the signing of the Oslo Accords. These accords led to a Palestinian "Authority" that has become an assistance force for the Jewish occupation and has lost all credibility with the Palestinian population; it can even be argued that the Oslo Accord laid the grounds for the rising importance of the religious-based Hamas. It is questionable whether the Oslo Accord was an instrument of peace or just another step in a continuing violent conflict. Francis Sejersted, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, foreshadowed this in his presentation speech of 1994 already when he noted: "It has been said that the Nobel Committee ought to have waited." It should have done so, indeed.

A real travesty of the idea of a peace prize was its allocation to Henry Kissinger (shared with Le Duc Tho) in 1973 for "arranging the ceasefire" [of the Vietnam conflict] "after negotiating for nearly four years." Kissinger was not only responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths during the bombing campaign that began in 1969 but torpedoed attempts of South and North Vietnam at a peace treaty after the ceasefire was signed and prolonged the war by two years for the sole purpose of strengthening his and Nixon's position in internal American politics. He has been labeled a war criminal in many publications including two books; the fact that he does not dare to take libel action against them proves the accuracy of the accusations. Understandably Le Duc Tho avoided to be on the podium with Kissinger; he refused to accept the prize.

Compared with such aberrations the allocation of the prize to the IPCC is a minor matter. But I still think that it is not the role of a peace prize to honour scientists for work done in the normal course of their duties.

Sources:

The Nobel Prize decision
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/index.html

On Henry Kissinger
http://musictravel.free.fr/political/political3.htm
http://www.versobooks.com/books/ghij/h-titles/hitchens_kissinger.shtml

On the role of the Palestinian "Authority"
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n15/mend01_.html

More information:
Wikipedia entries on Kissinger, the Paris Peace Accords, Yitzhak Rabin, Haganah and others

The International System of Units

2007-09-12T21:33:00.000+09:30

Today the European Union announced that it gave Britons permission to keep their imperial units in parallel to the metric system forever. This reminded me of a statement in my lecture 21: "Since 1975, when Britain, Canada and Australia finally converted to SI units, the USA remain the only scientifically and economically important country that does not use SI units." I noticed that I was giving the British government more credit than it deserves.

Britain changed from the Pound/Shilling/Pence currency system to the decimal Pound/Pence system in 1971, but that was about it. Distances are still in miles, volumes in pints and gallons (though different from US pints and gallons), weights are in ounces and pounds, and the list goes on ...

I changed the text in lecture 21 to: "Since 1975, when Canada and Australia converted to SI units, Britain and the USA remain the only scientifically and economically important countries that do not use SI units."

In Britain, labelling and measuring in metric has been compulsory since 2000, but not in the USA. The reason for this difference is very simple: 88% of Britain's trade is with metric countries, and Britain's industry would experience a great disadvantage if it continued to offer goods based on imperial measurements. In contrast, the economy of the USA is based on a very large domestic market, while the export of goods made in the USA represents only a minor component. The US-American manufacturing industry considers the continued use of imperial measures a shield against imports from metric countries.

While I was going through the lecture I noticed the sentence: " There had to be an end to inches, Zoll, furlongs, yards and whatever other units of length were in use across Europe." Inches, furlongs and yards are British measures, Zoll is German. The German measures disappeared from use when Napoleon occupied the country and reorganized its administration, but inches, furlongs and yards are still alive. To move my sentence closer to reality I replaced the British measures by the French length measurements league and pouce and threw in the German Elle for good measure: " There had to be an end to league, Zoll, pouce, Elle and whatever other units of length were in use across Europe."

Science, Civilization and Society now in book form

2007-08-30T12:05:00.001+09:30

The material for the lecture course Science, Civilization and Society is now available in book form. It can be downloaded from the website in PDF format.

The book is a condensed version of the lecture notes found on the website. As a book it cannot include the animations that are used on the website to explain physical principles. It also arranges the material in a somewhat different order. But it offers a good way to study the history of science and civilization and the interaction between them away from the computer.

NOTE: See the update of 29 July 2008.

The 3rd Earl of Shaftsbury

2007-08-23T11:47:00.000+09:30

Lecture 22 associated the ethical principle "Help those in distress, if you sympathize with their sufferings!" with a person named as Shaftsbury. This was rather vage information. I changed it to Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671 - 1713), the English moral philosopher who expressed that principle in his works.

The Jantar Mantar at Delhi

2007-08-23T11:40:00.000+09:30

My original information about the Jantar Mantar at Delhi said that it was "built under the reign of the Mughal ruler Muhammad Shah, who reigned from 1791 to 1841." That seems to be incorrect. I think that the observatory in Delhi was also built on the orders of Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II, ruler of the state of Jaipur in Rajasthan from 1699 to 1743. I changed the text accordingly. If anyone has a reference to verify this I would appreciate a response to this comment.

Reformatio Sigismundi

2007-08-17T18:07:00.001+09:30

There was an error in the original text of lecture 19, which said: "The reformatio sigismundi, a pamphlet produced in 1439 on one of Gutenberg's new printing presses ..." Gutenberg's invention was not complete until 1455. I corrected the text to "The reformatio sigismundi, a pamphlet produced in 1439, printed in 1476 on one of Gutenberg's new printing presses, reprinted seven times and distributed throughout Germany ..."

Did China survey the world in 1421?

2007-08-17T15:10:00.000+09:30

When I prepared the core question of lecture 17 (Why did China not colonize the world during the 15th century?) four years ago, Menzies' book "1421, the Year China Discovered America" had just hit the market. It provided some clues that could help to resolve the contradiction between China's technological capabilities and its abstention from colonial conquest.

Over the last few weeks I had another look at Menzies' claims and what others say about them and am no longer so convinced about his book. It contains many dubious statements and relies on evidence provided by people with dubious records; as a result, Menzies has lost much of his credibility. I changed the text of the lecture accordingly and shall install the changed version later today. While I still think that Menzies raises interesting and important questions my lecture notes no longer refer to his theory as a serious contribution to scientific debate. I now leave it to the readers to follow up the question of China's role in 15th century exploration themselves if they want to.

The one thing that has not changed in this discussion is the superiority of Chinese technology over European technology during the 15th century.

Mileva Einstein-Maric (again)

2007-07-25T11:46:00.001+09:30

I now found the time to read the four pages of comments I received a year ago in relation to my text on Mileva Einstein-Maric. I made some minor amendments to the text and changed one word in lecture 28 but could not find much argument why my profile of Mileva Einstein-Maric is unacceptable. I'll upload the changes tomorrow when I get to my office at the university.

The Ptolemaic system

2007-07-23T18:41:00.000+09:30

Jon Anderson from Western Michigan University pointed out in an email already five months ago that I had an error in the discussion of epicycles in lecture 8. I wrongly attributed the idea of epicycles to Eudoxus of Cnidus, while it is due to Apollonius of Perga.

Now that my last and final paper in oceanography has been accepted and is with the printer I can finally spend more time again on Science, Civilization and Society. I fixed the error and added a brief personal page for Apollonius. I'll upload the new pages next Thursday (26/7) when I get to the office again. (The university firewall does not allow me to upload pages from home.)

The precautionary principle

2007-07-09T21:25:00.000+09:30

My support for the precautionary principle received a rather caustic email response from the CEO of the Institute for Trade, Standards and Sustainable Development (ITSSD), a " US-based nonprofit and nonpartisan legal research and advocacy organization". To my surprise it claimed that I compare "economic/democratic capitalism" with my "preferred French paternalistic socialist model of governance". This was the first time anyone told me that France is a socialist country.

The email can hardly be described as a contribution to scientific debate. It was the type of opinion piece that now tends to replace hard factual information in the newspapers: I was accused to promote "partisan science ideology of socialistic paternalism and utopianism, which is symptomatic of the religious faith-based orthodoxy of precautionary principle advocates".

How can one react to such stuff? I tried to explain that "I teach my students to base every judgement on facts. In my lecture notes I try to show the development of science, civilization and society based on facts of history. I may not have achieved that in every aspect, but I hope that people at least see that I tried." But that did not satisfy the ITSSD, who declared that I do not understand "the legal and economic dimensions surrounding these issues".

I think the real value of the emails from the ITSSD is the demonstration of the hardline ideological character of those who oppose the European initiative to give the precautionary principle more prominence in the administration of industrial products such as new chemicals. I am sure that the "nonpartisan" ITSSD does not speak for the scientists of the USA, but it surely reflects government attitude. If you want to see this kind of ideology in action, see my "Postscriptum" at the end of lecture 35.

Matthias Tomczak

Albert Einstein and Mileva Einstein-Maric

2007-07-09T20:56:00.000+09:30

As promised in my welcome note I post a summary of some email correspondence I received before I set up this blog.

One correspondence concerned the description of Mileva Einstein-Maric's role in the development of Einstein's ideas about relativity. The correspondent said that I gave Mileva Einstein-Maric too much credit and painted her academic achievements in a glowing light.

I only became aware of the issue of Mileva Einstein-Maric's assumed contributions to Albert Einstein's work through articles in New Scientist and a television program. When I followed the stories up it became soon clear that the issue has a strong polarizing effect and that some people think that she is a forgotten genius, while others insist that this is all rumour and has no base in fact.

I am not in a position to follow this up with research of my own. I intend to go through my text again during the next few weeks and check my statements carefully. But I can says this: In the context of Science, Civilization and Society it is of no consequence whether Mileva had comparable or even better marks than Albert at university or whether her marks were rather average. The important point of her life is that she was a woman who was denied her chance to an academic career, which she could have had, had she been born a man. Her life is thus an illuminating example for the situation of women in science at the beginning of the 20th century.

How much Einstein himself contributed to the suppression of Mileva Maric's career I am in no position to judge, and I do not want to dwell on that aspect very long. His donation of his Nobel prize money to his divorced wife could have been motivated by a bad conscience, it could also have been motivated by generosity. What makes one uneasy about young Einstein's attitude to other people's work is the total lack of references in his seminal paper, which was after all not created out of thin air but was the culmination of developments to which a few others had made major contributions - maybe Milena Maric was one of them, maybe not.

Matthias Tomczak

Welcome!

2007-07-08T22:59:00.000+09:30

After two years of teaching "Science, Civilization and Society" at Flinders University in South Australia and three years of web presence of the accompanying lecture notes it is time to give students and other users the opportunity to interact with me and others. So I open this blog for comments and discussion.

I have received the occasional comment and criticism via email in the past. I cannot publish the original emails here, because they were not sent to me with the understanding that they would become public. But I intend to summarize their essence and my responses tomorrow. Until then: Welcome, and let us start a constructive dialogue.

Matthias Tomczak
School of Chemistry, Physics and Earth Sciences
Flinders University of South Australia.