The guilt of ideas by association
Over at The Renaissance Mathematicus, thonyc is asking some very pointed questions about science - but the questions are really relevant to everyone. First, how does a person's personal ethics affect their professional authority as seen by others? Second, if your work might build upon the work of someone of questionable ethics, do you eschew acknowledging their professional contributions (thereby causing your own work to suffer) or do you refer to their work as you would anyone else's (at risk of legitimizing their less wholesome aspects)? The case in point is a historian who is a leading expert on Galileo and also a Holocaust denier. I'll be following the conversation.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The wonderful thing about science is that it is a study of facts. Our own ethics can only interfere in how we get those facts, but once gotten, there shouldn't be any moral problems. For instance, we've learned a lot about the human body and medicine from the early vivisectionists but we wouldn't (or shouldn't) do that today. We can learn from the facts they extracted without actually committing the crime. Likewise Mengele was a Nazi monster, but some of his studies on twins are still used to today. We certainly wouldn't commit the same crimes he did, but we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath. Take the info but eschew the method!
ReplyDeleteInteresting point about science, but it appears that the person in question is a historian. At the risk of offending some, the individual is, at best, a master of a subjective art. What is noted and what is glossed over is an important part of the writing and analysis of history. The judgment of the historian is a central aspect of his/her work. Someone who would deny the Holocaust is probably overlooking other crimes against humanity.
ReplyDeleteEven the physical sciences are only part data and part interpretation. The list of references at the end of a technical paper are there partly for their data (which are objective) and partly for their conclusions (which are testable but unproven). What came to my mind when I read thonyc's post was the scientists who are real experts in their fields but develop crackpot theories outside them. Remember when Bill Joy wrote that article about "why the future doesn't need us"? And sometime I'll tell you why electrical engineers tend to believe in estraterrestrial life.
ReplyDeleteSo it always seems to boil down to how relevant the crackpot (or offensive) theory is to the work you'd like to refer to. In the Galileo/Holocaust case, on the surface the two seem to be utterly unrelated, but on the other hand the guy is a historian and the Holocaust is as much a historical matter as is Galileo. It seems, though, that much of his best work on Galileo was done when he was young, and the crazy only got to him as he aged.