This essay takes a historical view on “citizen science” by exploring its socialist version via the case of a Soviet amateur seismologist Vladimir Mannar. In the wake of the 1948 Ashgabat earthquake, which coincided with Lysenko’s victory in his campaign against genetics, Mannar launched an aborted campaign for a participatory “socialist seismology.” Mannar co-opted Lysenkoist language of science for the people and gained professional status within professional seismology but was shut out by the experts capitalizing on a “big science” imperative (...) of cold war. Mannar’s personal experiences of navigating competing pulls of cold war seismology and his vision of “people’s seismology,” marginalized within increasingly technical and instrumental cold war science, shed light on oxymoronic nature of citizen science, and the clash between participatory vision of science and an increasing reliance on high-level technical expertise. This case provides a vantage point from which to examine the dual nature of citizen science with its dual loyalties, ambiguities, and the constantly renegotiated status of data—the raison d’être and the most tangible outcome of the initiatives unfolded on the outer fringes of academic science. (shrink)

In September 1950, the Genetics Society of America (GSA) dedicated its annual meeting to a "Golden Jubilee of Genetics" that celebrated the 50th anniversary of the rediscovery of Mendel's work. This program, originally intended as a small ceremony attached to the coattails of the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) meeting, turned into a publicity juggernaut that generated coverage on Mendel and the accomplishments of Western genetics in countless newspapers and radio broadcasts. The Golden Jubilee merits historical attention as both (...) an intriguing instance of scientific commemoration and as an early example of Cold War political theatre. Instead of condemning either Lysenko or Soviet genetics, the Golden Jubilee would celebrate Mendel – and, not coincidentally, the practical achievements in plant and animal breeding his work had made possible. The American geneticists' focus on the achievements of Western genetics as both practical and theoretical, international, and, above all, non-ideological and non-controversial, was fully intended to demonstrate the success of the Western model of science to both the American public and scientists abroad at a key transition point in the Cold War. An implicit part of this article's argument, therefore, is the pervasive impact of the Cold War in unanticipated corners of postwar scientific culture. (shrink)

Controversies, i.e., multiple theory confrontations, may have a strong impact on the development of science. By an analysis of the so-called resonance controversy in chemistry the view that controversies and their resolution differ considerably from the process of theory succession is defended. It is argued that controversies are symptomatic of foundational problems, produce theory-scattering or domain-splitting, and induce ontological shifts. An explication is given of the role of existence claims and the applicability of Ockham's Razor in the resolution of controversies. (...) The requirement of a realistic interpretation of theories at all times, as defended by some philosophers, is criticised. (shrink)

In this article, the author examines an exemplary part of the Soviet media discussion following the Chernobyl disaster. She traces transformations in this discourse affecting the concepts of risk and uncertainty and indicates their relevance for the reconfiguration of the relationships between the state, scientific experts, and the public. Chernobyl occurred during a period of unprecedented potential for change: in the wake of Gorbachev’s perestroika, newly emerging environmental groups gradually managed to gain access to a previously closed forum, the national (...) print media. During the ensuing public debates between environmentalists and energy officials, nuclear risks or uncertainties were used as powerful, yet flexible, rhetorical tools for articulating political positions, for assigning or denying authority and legitimacy, and for reconceptualizing “the public.” The shorthand “Chernobyl” came to be deployed strategically to solicit change, to challenge old practices, and to legitimize the continuation and extension of these practices. (shrink)

Present science policy discourse is focused on a broad concept of “techno-science” and emphasizes practical economic goals and gains. At the same time scientists are worried about the freedom of research and the autonomy of science. Half a century ago the difference between basic and applied science was widely taken for granted and autonomy was a value in high esteem. Most recent accounts of the history of science policy start abruptly from World War II, emphasize the Cold War context, and (...) neglect the pioneering role of the Soviet Union in forming todays “big science.” This paper claims that a closer look into the intellectual heritage from the early twentieth century will be helpful in navigating present issues of science policy. The “Lysenko affair” was a paradigmatic case in forming Cold War views on science and politics. (shrink)

In the 1950s, embryology in socialist China underwent a series of changes that adjusted the disciplinary apparatus to suit socialism and the national goal of self-reliance. As the Communist state called on scientists to learn from the Soviets, embryologists’ comprehensive view on heredity, which did not contradict Trofim Lysenko ’s doctrines, provided a space for them to advance their discipline. Leading scientists, often trained abroad in the tradition of experimental embryology, rode on the tides of Maoist ideology and repositioned their (...) research. Some of their creative realignment of previous research questions, materials, and traditions to Marxist philosophy and agricultural objectives generated productive programs. In particular, Tong Dizhou translated Engels’s dialectics of nature into a research question about cytoplasmic inheritance. His continuing investigation on it led to the first goldfish “clone” through a nuclear transplantation experiment; Zhu Xi and his associates transferred a goldfish model in embryology into studies on improving carp aquaculture, leading to a rare success in the Great Leap Forward of 1958. These directions for embryology continued well into the 1960s. At a time when global embryology was diversifying and began to be molecularized, eventually forming “developmental biology,” socialist embryology took shape in China with a different set of epistemic and practical commitments. The history of its development challenges and enriches our understanding of the concrete process of change in one discipline under Mao, showing ways in which scientists creatively adapted state-sanctioned ideologies and visions to do productive work outside the framework of molecular biology during the Cold War. (shrink)

In the search for elementary particles, such principles are used as Gell?mann's that ?anything which is possible is compulsory?. This is an example of a teleological principle according to which the scientist tries to realize in science the kind of world that he desires on prior emotional grounds. Mendeleev's classical discovery of the Periodic Law and Table of Elements was thus guided by his mystical values. A mechanistic anti?teleologist such as Jacques Loeb was indeed a crypto?teleologist who wished science to (...) fulfil his radical, socialistic aims. Hoyle's ?perfect cosmological principle? projected conservative values, while such conceptions as Oppenheimer's ?catastrophic collapse?, and Mach's Principle likewise had their teleological bases. Anti?mystical and individualistic values inspired Bridgman's operationism. A ?perfect operational principle? would stipulate that every imaginable state of affairs would be operationally differentiable from others. Teleological principles are essential to the functioning of sciences; in the Theory of Theories, the principle of plenitude may hold: that for every mode of theory, there is some segment of reality for which it provides the best explanation. Naturalistic accounts of basic teleological principles seem inadequate. (shrink)

The intellectual movement to interpret fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism as “political religions” has generated lively debates and an intensive publication program for over a decade. The scholarly trend has been closely associated with a revival of the concept of totalitarianism, reconfigured to account for the popular appeal and violent fervor of twentieth-century mass movements of the extreme right and left. As theoreticians of political religion have been preoccupied with arguments about the definition of religion and the problems of comparison, two (...) stumbling blocks have become increasingly apparent. First, historians of Soviet communism, who since the early 1990s have empirically and conceptually transformed the study of Stalinism and Soviet history, have either exhibited “utter neglect” of the political-religion concept or have shunned it due to the scientism and official atheism of the regime. As a result, comparisons in the political-religion mode have generally been carried out by scholars not expert in Soviet history. Second, and closely related to this, even sympathetic critics have found secular religion too blunt a tool and too generic a concept to probe the “novel, supranational, but historically specific... sense of mission” produced by radical interwar regimes. Soviet communism as a project, more than fascism, was deeply invested in viewing its own ideology as genuinely scientific. (shrink)

The paper questions an official narrative of Soviet Marxism that had been formulated both by the Bolshevik leaders and the Western European Marxists. It proposes to shift the discussion from a historically constituted understanding of Soviet Marxism as a partisanship of theory to the epistemic conditions of Marxism after the October Revolution. The paper argues that a post-revolutionary Soviet logic assumes that theory should start where Marx ended and that it should act in a Marxist fashion across all conceptual and (...) practical realms. Instead of asking ‘how’, the Soviet thought returns to the old pre-critical question of ‘what is’, and reformulates this ‘what is’ in the Marxist post-critical terms. Constructing a new critical concept of Soviet Marxism, the paper proceeds with the analysis of the post-critical status of knowledge after the revolution and recovers forgotten and repressed epistemological alternatives to orthodox Bolshevism. (shrink)

Science has demonstrated that the universe creates itself through its own history. This history is the result of a probabilistic process, not a deterministic execution of a plan. Science has also documented that human beings are a result of this universal, probabilistic process of general evolution. At first sight, these results seem to contradict Christian teaching. According to the Bible, history is essentially the history of salvation. Human beings therefore are not an “accident of nature” but special creations to be (...) saved. With deeper theological probing, it becomes clearer, however, that creation must create itself. The Christian God is the loving God who enters into a loving relationship with human beings if they desire to reciprocate. If creation could not create itself, human beings could not be free. Without freedom to ignore or reject God's love, the central act of the Christian God, the drama of salvation, would become a parody played by marionettes in the hands of a supernatural manipulator. Christians should welcome the fundamental insight brought forth by science that the universe, including human beings, created itself through its own history. This article will try to show that this scientific insistence is required and confirmed by the intrinsic character of the orthodox, Judeo‐Christian concept of God. That nature has to create itself, including human beings, secures human freedom and with it, the responsibility for human actions. From this perspective one might better understand the Bible in the light of God's revelation through the book of nature. (shrink)

Study of Lenin and Vygotsky's theoretical explorations of social and individual development reveals Vygotsky's conception of conscious awareness and scientific concepts as directly correlated with Lenin's conception of consciousness. Following from this core idea, similarities are demonstrated between Lenin's conception of the role of political leadership in the development of working-class consciousness and the role of Vygotsky's teacher or "more capable peer" in the development of "conscious awareness." Finally, Vygotsky's methodological leap in his conception of individual development is best understood (...) when situated within Lenin's concept of social development. Vygotsky is thus re-established as operating within the Marxist-Leninist political and philosophical tradition. (shrink)

Through the analysis of the interpretations of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity, the paper aims to demonstrate the following thesis: the Duhem-Quine thesis on empirical underdetermination can be extended to the claim that not only the empirical data, but also the empirical data together with the mathematical formalism of a physical theory do not suffice to determine completely our theories of physical reality. As a consequence, beyond observational data and mathematical physics, cultural and social factors as well as (...) the value-preferences of physicists also play role as constitutive elements of physical theories. For example, the indeterminist interpretations of quantum mechanics are not neutral but value-laden, and deterministic interpretations, which insist on classical determinism as a value, are also possible. On the other hand, the thesis of the underdetermination of physical reality by mathematical physics confirms neither radical relativism, nor extreme versions of sociology of science. On the contrary, the mathematical formalism to be interpreted is autonomous – and in this sense “objective” – to a great extent with respect to cultural, social and other non-scientific factors and, therefore, there is a firm consensus regarding it in science. (shrink)

The late Hungarian physicist Lajos Jánossy is respected in international physics first of all for his results achieved in the field of cosmic radiations, but his work in the alternative, Lorentzian tradition of relativity theory is also of historical importance. As an adopted son of the Hungarian Marxist philosopher, Georg Lukács, he was socialised in a left-wing spirit. He formulated a philosophical criticism of Einstein’s theory in terms of dialectical materialism in the 1950s and 1960s. In contrast to the new (...) Soviet thesis valid in Soviet ideology from 1955, he insisted that the positivist, Machian epistemological foundation determinatively influenced the physical level of Einstein’s relativity theory and distorted its real physical meaning. He also rejected the anti-commonsense character of Einstein’s new concepts of space and time and argued for the necessity of a commonsense-conform physics. However, in contrast to the Soviet critics of relativity theory of the Stalinist period, Jánossy never used ideology to destroy the scientific authenticity of Einstein’s theory, but, accepting the Einsteinian-Lorentzian mathematics as one of the great achievements of the history of physics, he announced and successfully implemented a positive program of a commonsense-conform, non-positivist, Lorentz-based reformulation of the theory. The socialcultural background of Jánossy’s reformulation of relativity theory is characterised by the strain of two contradictory elements: on the one hand, his left wing, Marxist commitment,on the other, his socialization in Western, “bourgeois” science and culture. Through a Marxist, “dialectical materialist” criticism of the positivist, Machian aspects of Einstein’s theory as well as through his work for a commonsense–conform physics, Jánossy defended not only Marxism but also the classical tradition of scientific rationalism as an essential element of European culture. (shrink)