The urban jungle that is Manhattan, with all its concrete skyscrapers, should be the very last place on earth where one might expect to see the start of a turning away from the Modern obsession with the artificial and the synthetic and a turn to the Postmodernity's renewed relationship with Nature.
But Manhattan is in fact the place where the wartime mass production of natural penicillin - with all that momentous decision's consequences for postmodernity - actually began .
Showing posts with label postmodernity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label postmodernity. Show all posts
Aug 25, 2014
Jul 12, 2014
Other than as victims, does a successful WWII book actually NEED women, blacks, Jews, the handicapped, the poor, gays, civilians ?
The Fox News-ization of WWII : history as re-written by talk radio ...
To answer my title's question : of course not.
The most prominent woman leader in WWII - almost the only one - was Eleanor Roosevelt - and her little bit of influence came mostly from her nation-wide newspaper column, not from being inside the corridors of actual decision making.
Ditto goes almost all of the small/weak/unfits/misfits I earlier mentioned.
Sure Jews and gays were plentiful in corridors of power in most Allied nations - but powerful acting as representatives of the Jews and of the gays --- no, no ,no , a thousand times not.
If you want to distort history, satisfy your aging male writer's ego and make lots and lots of money, you can happily focus on the WWII that was all about Modernity and the good old days when male middle class still dominated the lesser breeds and genders.
But 1945 did not just mark the Apogee of Modernity, Big Science and the hegemony of the big Western Powers - it also is taken - by general academic consensus - to be the year that marks the start of the Nadir of Modernity and the rise of our present Postmodern era.
Because, underneath the Boy's Own World of virtually all of today's most popular WWII books , there were an awfully lot of unfits taking FDR's Four Freedoms and the Allied Atlantic Charter very seriously indeed.
Which is to say, a lot more seriously than did the guys who originally wrote them ...
Penicillin-for-All : Postmodernity's "Manhattan Project"
We know far too well Modernity's "Manhattan Project" - Big Science's Atom Bomb - it sometimes seems that middle-aged male non-fiction writers write about nothing else than those heady - now long gone -days of Modernity and Male dominance.
(Yes it is almost always middle-aged men who write the books and articles about Manhattan's atomic bomb .
And perhaps it is also almost always middle-aged men who read them , despite the fact that ordinarily most readers are women of all ages.
This publishing fixation on the past glories of long gone Modernity may hurt publishing firms' bottom line but it is unlikely to change as long as most publishing bosses are also middle-aged males with a strong taste of nostalgia for when men like themselves ruled the roust unchallenged.)
Few middle-aged male writers , however , write about the simultaneous (in time and space) Post Modern Manhattan Project --- Penicillin-for-All.
P-F-A was an unexpected triumph -- because all-powerful wartime Big Government (and Big Pharma) definitely had other plans.
It was the unexpected triumph of a tiny band of unfits (with no government grants to aid them by the way) successfully defying both Allied and Axis eugenicism (and their own physical failings) to bring us Penicillin-for-All.
Call it a triumph of the unfit, weak, small - above all call it the triumph of DIY small science, since key to the unfits' success was their ability to create their own tiny life-saving penicillin factory , regardless of how Big Pharma and Big Government wanted to play out wartime penicillin.
So if WWII definitely began in 1939 at the height of the Era of Eugenic Modernity , equally it ended in 1945 at the beginnings of our present Era of Welcoming Diversity & Postmodernity and it is time male non-fiction writers accept this historical reality...
(Yes it is almost always middle-aged men who write the books and articles about Manhattan's atomic bomb .
And perhaps it is also almost always middle-aged men who read them , despite the fact that ordinarily most readers are women of all ages.
This publishing fixation on the past glories of long gone Modernity may hurt publishing firms' bottom line but it is unlikely to change as long as most publishing bosses are also middle-aged males with a strong taste of nostalgia for when men like themselves ruled the roust unchallenged.)
Few middle-aged male writers , however , write about the simultaneous (in time and space) Post Modern Manhattan Project --- Penicillin-for-All.
P-F-A was an unexpected triumph -- because all-powerful wartime Big Government (and Big Pharma) definitely had other plans.
It was the unexpected triumph of a tiny band of unfits (with no government grants to aid them by the way) successfully defying both Allied and Axis eugenicism (and their own physical failings) to bring us Penicillin-for-All.
Call it a triumph of the unfit, weak, small - above all call it the triumph of DIY small science, since key to the unfits' success was their ability to create their own tiny life-saving penicillin factory , regardless of how Big Pharma and Big Government wanted to play out wartime penicillin.
So if WWII definitely began in 1939 at the height of the Era of Eugenic Modernity , equally it ended in 1945 at the beginnings of our present Era of Welcoming Diversity & Postmodernity and it is time male non-fiction writers accept this historical reality...
Jul 1, 2014
Acting Up : sometimes you must , even if you can't
An provocative way to look at WWII is to say that its deep structure , beneath and beyond all its confusing surface variety of activities, could be boiled down to a Tyranny of the Fit against the Unfit.
'Fitness' was a coat of many colours : to the Russian Communists, coming from working class stock rendered you automatically much more fit than if your parents were upper middle class.
In the capitalist West, of course the reverse was true.
And to the stocky dark-skinned Japanese, the notions of physical fitness and of beauty as defined by their allies the tall, blond and blue eyed Aryan German Nazis did not match their own in almost any way.
But almost all of the science-minded in that era of scientism felt comfortable in casually using the terms fit and unfit to divide up a world of plenitude that they saw as needlessly and excessively cluttered and messy.
And to then to use the tools of plenticide to 'clean it up' so that only the fit remained in a orderly, clean, pure 100% productive world.
We don't feel the horror and disgust about variety and plenitude that as our grandparents of the era of streamlined modernity once did - far from it - in fact we now cherish which they so disdained.
But how and when did we start to move from their era to our era of post-modern questing after diversity ?
I say it all began when The Seven first "Acted Up" to protest what the Allied 'fit' had planned for some they defined as 'unfit' ....
'Fitness' was a coat of many colours : to the Russian Communists, coming from working class stock rendered you automatically much more fit than if your parents were upper middle class.
In the capitalist West, of course the reverse was true.
And to the stocky dark-skinned Japanese, the notions of physical fitness and of beauty as defined by their allies the tall, blond and blue eyed Aryan German Nazis did not match their own in almost any way.
But almost all of the science-minded in that era of scientism felt comfortable in casually using the terms fit and unfit to divide up a world of plenitude that they saw as needlessly and excessively cluttered and messy.
And to then to use the tools of plenticide to 'clean it up' so that only the fit remained in a orderly, clean, pure 100% productive world.
We don't feel the horror and disgust about variety and plenitude that as our grandparents of the era of streamlined modernity once did - far from it - in fact we now cherish which they so disdained.
But how and when did we start to move from their era to our era of post-modern questing after diversity ?
I say it all began when The Seven first "Acted Up" to protest what the Allied 'fit' had planned for some they defined as 'unfit' ....
Sep 18, 2013
WWII: the battle for inclusive medicine over exclusive medicine
In 1940, Big Pharma only wants to sell its profitable-expensive (patented drugs) to those who could afford to pay for them directly : just as the AMA only wanted doctors to heal those who could afford to pay directly for its members profitably-expensive services.
Against this, some doctors like Henry Dawson believed that all life dined at a common table and that all life deserved a chance to live , all life deserved medical care, including penicillin.
He did not believe in dividing the world into "life worthy of wartime penicillin" and "life unworthy of wartime penicillin".
When the AMA and Big Pharma, working together at the OSRD and the NAS , thought and acted differently , he promoted among his fellow doctors the idea of hospital-made inclusive penicillin.
Inclusive Penicillin was that hospital made by individual doctors , without thought of patents or personal gain, to save the lives of all those regarded by the government's medical establishment as being "life unworthy of wartime penicillin".
The movement consisted of just Dawson's team at first, then people he directly convinced to follow his ideals.
It then spread all around the world as more and more doctors , encouraged by an awakened and angered laity, urged them on.
All the dramatic new stories, on young mothers and young children snatched from certain death at the last minute by minute amounts of penicillin flown around the world by seconded heavy bombers, seemed to have had an unexpected secondary affect.
Suddenly many of the modern era's population rediscovered feelings of compassion and empathy they thought they had successfully exorcised under the rationalism and utilitarianism
of modern culture.
Their hearts softened at the sight of all those saved babies, children of strangers, and they looked at all their neighbours and all strangers in a new, kindlier light .
An post-modern light ...
Against this, some doctors like Henry Dawson believed that all life dined at a common table and that all life deserved a chance to live , all life deserved medical care, including penicillin.
He did not believe in dividing the world into "life worthy of wartime penicillin" and "life unworthy of wartime penicillin".
When the AMA and Big Pharma, working together at the OSRD and the NAS , thought and acted differently , he promoted among his fellow doctors the idea of hospital-made inclusive penicillin.
Inclusive Penicillin was that hospital made by individual doctors , without thought of patents or personal gain, to save the lives of all those regarded by the government's medical establishment as being "life unworthy of wartime penicillin".
The movement consisted of just Dawson's team at first, then people he directly convinced to follow his ideals.
It then spread all around the world as more and more doctors , encouraged by an awakened and angered laity, urged them on.
All the dramatic new stories, on young mothers and young children snatched from certain death at the last minute by minute amounts of penicillin flown around the world by seconded heavy bombers, seemed to have had an unexpected secondary affect.
Suddenly many of the modern era's population rediscovered feelings of compassion and empathy they thought they had successfully exorcised under the rationalism and utilitarianism
of modern culture.
Their hearts softened at the sight of all those saved babies, children of strangers, and they looked at all their neighbours and all strangers in a new, kindlier light .
An post-modern light ...
Aug 27, 2013
The irony of 1945's twin triumphs ...
1945 was , on any account, an extraordinary year, not the least for its twin scientific triumphs.
At the time, it was almost universally held that the Man-made Bomb was the way of an atomic future so bright we'd have to wear shades .
By contrast, 1945's new Microbe-made medicine (natural penicillin) was viewed as but a temporary anomaly, a dusty throw back to the outdated caldron practises of medieval midwives.
But more than a half century later we are no longer so sure of all of this.
Atomic energy has not at all fulfilled its early promise.
Meanwhile, microbiology and biotechnology (descendants of 1945's natural-produced penicillin) have far outshot their 1945 rival, synthetic chemistry.
So today, with 20/20 hindsight, while 1945 can still feel like the apogee of the Modern age,it is also revealed as its very nadir.
Because 1945 is now seen as the birthday of our present post-Modern age.
In which case, Henry Dawson's twin follies of advocating on behalf of small individuals and on behalf of small microbes can be seen as promoting a distinguishing hallmark of postmodernity.
For few of us, under the age of eighty, devote much energy these days to replacing our current rainbow of many small cultures with a return to yesterday's dreary unitary monoculture of constipated WASP-dom.....
At the time, it was almost universally held that the Man-made Bomb was the way of an atomic future so bright we'd have to wear shades .
By contrast, 1945's new Microbe-made medicine (natural penicillin) was viewed as but a temporary anomaly, a dusty throw back to the outdated caldron practises of medieval midwives.
But more than a half century later we are no longer so sure of all of this.
Atomic energy has not at all fulfilled its early promise.
Meanwhile, microbiology and biotechnology (descendants of 1945's natural-produced penicillin) have far outshot their 1945 rival, synthetic chemistry.
So today, with 20/20 hindsight, while 1945 can still feel like the apogee of the Modern age,it is also revealed as its very nadir.
Because 1945 is now seen as the birthday of our present post-Modern age.
In which case, Henry Dawson's twin follies of advocating on behalf of small individuals and on behalf of small microbes can be seen as promoting a distinguishing hallmark of postmodernity.
For few of us, under the age of eighty, devote much energy these days to replacing our current rainbow of many small cultures with a return to yesterday's dreary unitary monoculture of constipated WASP-dom.....
Social Darwinism turns Peace into Undeclared War...
The attributes of the Age of the Big (Social Darwinism Mk I) makes the idea of contrasting it with the concept of the War of the Big (Social Darwinism Mk II) a moot point.
This is because the Social Darwin idea of reducing all Life to an unceasing, total, struggle for life or death means that only a formal declaration on paper could separate Darwinian War from Darwinian Peace.
It was always assumed , without much proof, that in this struggle the big would inevitably triumph over the small and then the ever bigger would do likewise over the merely 'big' .
By contrast ,Henry Dawson championed the small all his life - it must have come almost naturally to him, with his coming from a Canadian province that was increasingly viewed as too small to be relevant to Canadian values.
But he also noticed in his scientific investigations that while the big did thrive in stable circumstances, the small could still at least survive in hidden niches.
But in non-stable times, the big (over-extended) broke up, while the small (insured against normal hard times) took it all in stride.
Rather than modern science quickly dismissing Life's small as just part of evolution's dusty, distant beginnings, he felt they should give the small a second glance - and a second chance.
He extended this in the 1930s to those judged chronically ill and second rate and then, in the war years , to those American young people with SBE who were judged to be 'life unworthy of expensive medical care during a military crisis' .
Modern science had no time for his theory - his championing of the small was viewed as a damning folly from a medical scientist with an otherwise worthy medical career.
But post modernity science is largely shaped around the concept of reality's inherent complexity and diversity : admitting that reality will always consist of the mixing together of large and small phenomena and large and small beings.
In this long view, Dawson's folly begins to look quite prescient ...
This is because the Social Darwin idea of reducing all Life to an unceasing, total, struggle for life or death means that only a formal declaration on paper could separate Darwinian War from Darwinian Peace.
It was always assumed , without much proof, that in this struggle the big would inevitably triumph over the small and then the ever bigger would do likewise over the merely 'big' .
By contrast ,Henry Dawson championed the small all his life - it must have come almost naturally to him, with his coming from a Canadian province that was increasingly viewed as too small to be relevant to Canadian values.
But he also noticed in his scientific investigations that while the big did thrive in stable circumstances, the small could still at least survive in hidden niches.
But in non-stable times, the big (over-extended) broke up, while the small (insured against normal hard times) took it all in stride.
Rather than modern science quickly dismissing Life's small as just part of evolution's dusty, distant beginnings, he felt they should give the small a second glance - and a second chance.
He extended this in the 1930s to those judged chronically ill and second rate and then, in the war years , to those American young people with SBE who were judged to be 'life unworthy of expensive medical care during a military crisis' .
Modern science had no time for his theory - his championing of the small was viewed as a damning folly from a medical scientist with an otherwise worthy medical career.
But post modernity science is largely shaped around the concept of reality's inherent complexity and diversity : admitting that reality will always consist of the mixing together of large and small phenomena and large and small beings.
In this long view, Dawson's folly begins to look quite prescient ...
Aug 25, 2013
Are the small just a tiny part of the Modern past or a vital part of the Postmodern future ?
Two hundred years from the event, historians will be telling classrooms that when it comes to exam time, they should remember that WWII boiled down to just one issue.
One - scientific - issue.
Were the small to be considered just a tiny part of Modernity's dusty past or were they to be a vital part of the (postmodern/multi-coloured) future ?
In early 1939 , on one side was virtually all of the world's educated.
On the other, was Henry Dawson : and that was his folly.
By late 1945 , Henry Dawson was dead and gone and so his current opinion was irrelevant.
But many of the world's younger educated had moved - under the course of many events - one begun by Henry himself - to doubt their parents' and grantparents' position on the matter.
For if the smartest pundits of the war's end were sure that 1945 represented the apogee of modern bigness , by about 1978 leading commentators are just as sure it actually represented Modernity's nadir and the birth of our present day Postmodernity.
But Dawson's all-out efforts to defend the small under the assault of WWII values caused his premature death, so he wasn't around in his mid-eighties to enjoy his vindication.
That to was his folly ; or his eternal glory ...
One - scientific - issue.
Were the small to be considered just a tiny part of Modernity's dusty past or were they to be a vital part of the (postmodern/multi-coloured) future ?
In early 1939 , on one side was virtually all of the world's educated.
On the other, was Henry Dawson : and that was his folly.
By late 1945 , Henry Dawson was dead and gone and so his current opinion was irrelevant.
But many of the world's younger educated had moved - under the course of many events - one begun by Henry himself - to doubt their parents' and grantparents' position on the matter.
For if the smartest pundits of the war's end were sure that 1945 represented the apogee of modern bigness , by about 1978 leading commentators are just as sure it actually represented Modernity's nadir and the birth of our present day Postmodernity.
But Dawson's all-out efforts to defend the small under the assault of WWII values caused his premature death, so he wasn't around in his mid-eighties to enjoy his vindication.
That to was his folly ; or his eternal glory ...
May 6, 2013
Modern "Bigger is Better" vs Post-modern "Small is Beautiful"
Kiddies, don't agonize about the complex differences between modernity and postmodernity when your prof poses the question at your next final exam ( trust me on this one - they will).
Just remind yourself that great-grandpa back in the 1930s was as unlikely to say "small is beautiful" as today's intellectuals on public broadcasting would ever proclaim "bigger is better" ....
Just remind yourself that great-grandpa back in the 1930s was as unlikely to say "small is beautiful" as today's intellectuals on public broadcasting would ever proclaim "bigger is better" ....
Apr 7, 2013
1945 : Triumph of the Weak ; Mite is Right
If the triumph of post-1945 postmodernity over pre-1945 modernity means anything , it means the unexpected triumph of the mite-y over the mighty and the triumph of the weak over the wise.
And yes, the survival of the fittest (to a particular place and point in time) over those all-weather, all-terrain, all-the-time "fit" so beloved by modernists.
Ain't life grand ? And ironic ...
And yes, the survival of the fittest (to a particular place and point in time) over those all-weather, all-terrain, all-the-time "fit" so beloved by modernists.
Ain't life grand ? And ironic ...
Jan 21, 2013
Dawson's DIY penicillin a postmodernist "shot across the bow" of Modernist Big Pharma
Two hundred years from now, only the first of the Dawson team's many articles on wartime penicillin will still be cited and still considered seminal.
This, despite the fact that Nova Scotia-born Henry Dawson's last penicillin article told a surprised world that invariable fatal subacute bacterial endocarditis (the much dreaded SBE) had finally been cured - by his penicillin method that he had pioneered 5 years earlier.
But instead it is Dawson's first penicillin first article, the "impure but non toxic" article of May 5th 1941, that had (and continues to have) ramifications beyond any one disease, ramifications indeed beyond even medicine and science itself.
In that article, delivered before a large group of international medical researchers in Atlantic City and widely reported by the popular and scientific media from The New York Times to the South Africa Medical Journal, Dawson deliberately paired and then contrasted two oxymoronic phrases.
But first, recall that Dawson chose to appear in front of all his peers to praise his new drug to the heavens AND announce that it had no therapeutic effect on a series of four SBE cases in a row.
Trust me on this one : normally scientists do not rush to the biggest conference in town to proudly announce repeated failure.
But it wasn't the lack of therapeutic success from his impure natural penicillin that Dawson was really so eager to announce.
Rather it was the lack of toxic effects from his crude homemade mixture of natural penicillin and its natural impurities that he was so proud (and perhaps amazed) to announce.
(In a sort of 'reverse Ivory Soap', his starting penicillin brew was far less than 99 and 44 100th percent impure : pure penicillin made up only one part per million of his mixture !)
It could have had - perhaps even should have had - a highly deadly mycotoxin poison buried somewhere in that fungus mix, but God took pity on Humanity and it did not.
We do not have a complete version of Dawson's report and ad lib comments , only various precis. But assembled together, I believe we can garner Dawson's actual words and phrases used to prescribe his main intent behind this article.
He described how his tiny team made their hospital-grown crude (impure) and natural penicillin, calling it both more potent and much less toxic than the factory-made chemically pure synthetic sulfa drugs, less potent and more toxic, made by Big Pharma .
His takeaway line, as the CBC's Don Connolly likes to say, is that "despite being impure, homemade natural penicillin was actually less toxic and much more potent than factory-made pure synthetic sulfa drugs."
Today, in this postmodern age, this statement might hardly seem controversial ; but in 1940, at the apogee of Modernity, to diss the Du Pont slogan of "living better chemically" was to indulge in sheer heresy.
At the same university as Dawson (Columbia) and at the exact same time, famed German-scholars-in-exile Adorno and Horkheimer were busy dismantling 500 years of Modernity, brick by brick, and patiently reassembling them as Postmodernity.
Perhaps posthumously, their fellow university colleague Henry Dawson can lay claim to being among Postmodernity's first scientific converts.....
This, despite the fact that Nova Scotia-born Henry Dawson's last penicillin article told a surprised world that invariable fatal subacute bacterial endocarditis (the much dreaded SBE) had finally been cured - by his penicillin method that he had pioneered 5 years earlier.
But instead it is Dawson's first penicillin first article, the "impure but non toxic" article of May 5th 1941, that had (and continues to have) ramifications beyond any one disease, ramifications indeed beyond even medicine and science itself.
In that article, delivered before a large group of international medical researchers in Atlantic City and widely reported by the popular and scientific media from The New York Times to the South Africa Medical Journal, Dawson deliberately paired and then contrasted two oxymoronic phrases.
But first, recall that Dawson chose to appear in front of all his peers to praise his new drug to the heavens AND announce that it had no therapeutic effect on a series of four SBE cases in a row.
Trust me on this one : normally scientists do not rush to the biggest conference in town to proudly announce repeated failure.
But it wasn't the lack of therapeutic success from his impure natural penicillin that Dawson was really so eager to announce.
Rather it was the lack of toxic effects from his crude homemade mixture of natural penicillin and its natural impurities that he was so proud (and perhaps amazed) to announce.
(In a sort of 'reverse Ivory Soap', his starting penicillin brew was far less than 99 and 44 100th percent impure : pure penicillin made up only one part per million of his mixture !)
It could have had - perhaps even should have had - a highly deadly mycotoxin poison buried somewhere in that fungus mix, but God took pity on Humanity and it did not.
We do not have a complete version of Dawson's report and ad lib comments , only various precis. But assembled together, I believe we can garner Dawson's actual words and phrases used to prescribe his main intent behind this article.
He described how his tiny team made their hospital-grown crude (impure) and natural penicillin, calling it both more potent and much less toxic than the factory-made chemically pure synthetic sulfa drugs, less potent and more toxic, made by Big Pharma .
His takeaway line, as the CBC's Don Connolly likes to say, is that "despite being impure, homemade natural penicillin was actually less toxic and much more potent than factory-made pure synthetic sulfa drugs."
"Living better chemically ?"
Today, in this postmodern age, this statement might hardly seem controversial ; but in 1940, at the apogee of Modernity, to diss the Du Pont slogan of "living better chemically" was to indulge in sheer heresy.
At the same university as Dawson (Columbia) and at the exact same time, famed German-scholars-in-exile Adorno and Horkheimer were busy dismantling 500 years of Modernity, brick by brick, and patiently reassembling them as Postmodernity.
Perhaps posthumously, their fellow university colleague Henry Dawson can lay claim to being among Postmodernity's first scientific converts.....
May 6, 2012
Big but Simple, Small but Complex, the paradoxes of PO-MO Science refutes central tenet of MODERNITY
Modernity was birthed in the late 19th century ,when Darwinian Biology saw a definite, if meandering, directionality to progress, leading through random activity into self organization - onward to ever bigger and hence ever more "complex" beings .
This metaphor was extended to all things : Big Government, Big Corporations, Big Unions ,Big Bridges, Big Dams, Big Battleships , ever onwards.
Bigger was Better,Law of the Jungle, Might Makes Right: Darwin our God was definitely on the side of the Biggest Battalions.
But quantum physics and molecular biology in the 1930s put a question mark on these certitudes.
Or should have - if Science works like it claims it does.
For example, the alchemists' claim of transmutation of atoms turned out to be possible after all - the hundred plus elements were not just a given at the birth of the Universe.
So some physicists in the 1930s were speculating that in the seconds after the Big Bang, its immense heat and pressure fused subatomic particles into ever bigger subatomic particles and ultimately produced the lightest element hydrogen and a few of its lightest cousins.
What what could have given the truly tremendous energy and pressure needed, by quantum theory, to fuse the heaviest elements into being ?
A mystery.
But with the 1930s discovery of Super Novas, we now had a source for the immense energy needed.
It came from explosions of the biggest discrete objects in the Universe .
But there was a real paradox here : there is nothing bigger or more energetic than a Super Nova exploding, but all it could produce for all its labour was the tiny - and relatively simple - atom.
Yes, the simple atom : For by the 1930s, the new sciences of Polymer Chemistry and Bio Chemistry were coming to the conclusion that true complexity lay in the giant biological-created molecules.
These were a mixture of thousands of different atoms, but arranged in such complex three dimensional shapes that each enzyme or protein molecule to be an incredibly tiny but precise factory or robot.
Ironically, some claimed that it was Life's smallest beings, the microbes, who designed and used these giant molecules the best.
Martin Henry Dawson called this bacterial transmutation of biological molecules (like DNA) via HGT (horizontal gene transfers) "Transformation", but many others simply called it biological transmutation a la the alchemists and the elements .
So now ,big Super Novas produced small and simple atoms , while tiny microbes produced big and complex molecules.
But in fact, these discoveries made by Quantum Physics and Molecular Biology between 1890s to the 1930s seemed to hold
little 'real world' relevance to politicians and businessmen, until WWII (Modernity's War) exposed Modernity' weaknesses.
Martin Henry Dawson's friends, Floyd Odlum and Jackie Cochrane, were in turn close friends with the most influential advocate of air power in WWII : General Hap Arnold, US Army Air Force.
Arnold felt that Carl Norden had the war-winner in his bombsight, so deadly accurate there would be no need to use old-fashioned infantrymen like Dawson.
However, Newtonian Physics/ Norden Physics totally failed to get its promised bombs into the proverbial pickle barrel from 15,000 feet up.
The military were forced to go back to the ancient method used by the armies of tens of thousands of years earlier : firing up of entire cities.
(That and calling in those low tech/old fashioned infantrymen to once again close the deal.)
The fire came from the atomic bomb with such force that aiming accurately was rendered irrelevant -- even a miss still wiped out the entire city.
Suddenly, after August 1945, that long-haired Quantum-whatever physics stuff that had produced the a-bomb seemed to be something politicians, generals and newspaper editors would have to take seriously. Newton - and Norden - would have to go to the museum.
The revelation of Auschwitz's medical experiments in November 1945 had already made everyone question just what evil alley Galtonian Biology was leading humanity up.
Dr Joseph Mengele's 'research' (via photographs and measures of people's external bodies) leading to crude carving and sewing up of people to make the perfect race suddenly seemed irredeemably old-fashioned.
The future of genetics seemed to lie instead in tiny objects inside those bodies - lie inside the molecules of life.
Dawson's former colleagues at the Rockefeller Institute might just hold the new key to biology - via a sudden interest in researching Dawson's old DNA stuff.
Not that any politician or businessmen actually said that - not for 50 more years.
But the ambitious young at the leading edge of science sure did --- they moved into molecular biology from all branches of science after 1945, from physics and chemistry and geology as well from zoology and botany.
Daltonian Chemistry was in no better shape - its traditional method of choice - huge factory vats to heat up and heat down, under tremendous pressure, to create a few simple chemicals - also seemed suddenly irremediably old fashioned by 1945.
A tiny - invisible - fungus factory, as advocated by Martin Henry Dawson, could gracefully produce the Life-saving penicillin at normal temperature and pressures while the huge chemical plants just spun their wheels, failing to produce any synthetic penicillin.
The weak, as it turned out, might inherit the universe after all, just as the Bible claimed many eons ago....
This metaphor was extended to all things : Big Government, Big Corporations, Big Unions ,Big Bridges, Big Dams, Big Battleships , ever onwards.
Bigger was Better,Law of the Jungle, Might Makes Right: Darwin our God was definitely on the side of the Biggest Battalions.
But quantum physics and molecular biology in the 1930s put a question mark on these certitudes.
Or should have - if Science works like it claims it does.
For example, the alchemists' claim of transmutation of atoms turned out to be possible after all - the hundred plus elements were not just a given at the birth of the Universe.
So some physicists in the 1930s were speculating that in the seconds after the Big Bang, its immense heat and pressure fused subatomic particles into ever bigger subatomic particles and ultimately produced the lightest element hydrogen and a few of its lightest cousins.
What what could have given the truly tremendous energy and pressure needed, by quantum theory, to fuse the heaviest elements into being ?
A mystery.
But with the 1930s discovery of Super Novas, we now had a source for the immense energy needed.
It came from explosions of the biggest discrete objects in the Universe .
But there was a real paradox here : there is nothing bigger or more energetic than a Super Nova exploding, but all it could produce for all its labour was the tiny - and relatively simple - atom.
Yes, the simple atom : For by the 1930s, the new sciences of Polymer Chemistry and Bio Chemistry were coming to the conclusion that true complexity lay in the giant biological-created molecules.
These were a mixture of thousands of different atoms, but arranged in such complex three dimensional shapes that each enzyme or protein molecule to be an incredibly tiny but precise factory or robot.
Ironically, some claimed that it was Life's smallest beings, the microbes, who designed and used these giant molecules the best.
Martin Henry Dawson called this bacterial transmutation of biological molecules (like DNA) via HGT (horizontal gene transfers) "Transformation", but many others simply called it biological transmutation a la the alchemists and the elements .
So now ,big Super Novas produced small and simple atoms , while tiny microbes produced big and complex molecules.
But in fact, these discoveries made by Quantum Physics and Molecular Biology between 1890s to the 1930s seemed to hold
little 'real world' relevance to politicians and businessmen, until WWII (Modernity's War) exposed Modernity' weaknesses.
Martin Henry Dawson's friends, Floyd Odlum and Jackie Cochrane, were in turn close friends with the most influential advocate of air power in WWII : General Hap Arnold, US Army Air Force.
Arnold felt that Carl Norden had the war-winner in his bombsight, so deadly accurate there would be no need to use old-fashioned infantrymen like Dawson.
However, Newtonian Physics/ Norden Physics totally failed to get its promised bombs into the proverbial pickle barrel from 15,000 feet up.
The military were forced to go back to the ancient method used by the armies of tens of thousands of years earlier : firing up of entire cities.
(That and calling in those low tech/old fashioned infantrymen to once again close the deal.)
The fire came from the atomic bomb with such force that aiming accurately was rendered irrelevant -- even a miss still wiped out the entire city.
Suddenly, after August 1945, that long-haired Quantum-whatever physics stuff that had produced the a-bomb seemed to be something politicians, generals and newspaper editors would have to take seriously. Newton - and Norden - would have to go to the museum.
The revelation of Auschwitz's medical experiments in November 1945 had already made everyone question just what evil alley Galtonian Biology was leading humanity up.
Dr Joseph Mengele's 'research' (via photographs and measures of people's external bodies) leading to crude carving and sewing up of people to make the perfect race suddenly seemed irredeemably old-fashioned.
The future of genetics seemed to lie instead in tiny objects inside those bodies - lie inside the molecules of life.
Dawson's former colleagues at the Rockefeller Institute might just hold the new key to biology - via a sudden interest in researching Dawson's old DNA stuff.
Not that any politician or businessmen actually said that - not for 50 more years.
But the ambitious young at the leading edge of science sure did --- they moved into molecular biology from all branches of science after 1945, from physics and chemistry and geology as well from zoology and botany.
Daltonian Chemistry was in no better shape - its traditional method of choice - huge factory vats to heat up and heat down, under tremendous pressure, to create a few simple chemicals - also seemed suddenly irremediably old fashioned by 1945.
A tiny - invisible - fungus factory, as advocated by Martin Henry Dawson, could gracefully produce the Life-saving penicillin at normal temperature and pressures while the huge chemical plants just spun their wheels, failing to produce any synthetic penicillin.
The weak, as it turned out, might inherit the universe after all, just as the Bible claimed many eons ago....
Mar 15, 2012
All of us, ALL OF US, have spent the majority of our lives in "The Age of Commensality"
BLOG MISSION STATEMENT :We must all learn to live together with and in Nature: all diners at her common table (commensal) or we must all learn to die together, frying in the upcoming global climate meltdown."
The Age of Commensality has a distinctly abrupt beginning as Eras go : bang ! -1945 - you're on !
That was the year of the Nuremberg Trial revelations about Auschwitz and Nazi Death Doctors, the year of Dresden and Hiroshima.
Bang ! indeed.
This means that unless you are 135 years old (and you're not) , the majority of your life has been spent not living in The Age of Modernity.
So what Age, then, have you been living in all these years ?
There is a wide (academic) consensus about the post-1945 changes in the way most of us humans perceive Reality and think about Reality.
But there is no consensus on whether they hang together in a consistent way and if so, exactly what then to call them.
The current placeholder name Postmodernity won't do and everyone knows it.
What will we then call the next Age after this and the one after that : Post-Post-Modernity and Post-Post-Post-Post-Modernity ?
Why bother with calling the 19th Century 'The Age of Romanticism' - why not simply call it The Age Of Post-Classicalism ?
My sense is that the Modern Age clearly thought and acted as if humans, in some essential sense, dined above and beyond Nature.
However, our own Age sees more and more clearly that we are bound into Nature, ie we're inside Nature and densely interconnected with all of it, like it or not.
I don't mean milk and honey/ lamb down with lions /turn the other cheek /interconnectedness --- I mean we're stuck into it.
If we are survive, we must see that our fellow life forms are also given their fair chance to survive as well, even if that means we must restrain our own appetites today so we can have a little something tomorrow.
We now intuitively realize that we all dine at one great common table.
Whenever things start to go wrong with the water,carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and you-name-it cycles, it hits everyone from bacteria to babies.
Commensality (as this word is used by students of religion and anthropology/sociology, not in the distinctly odd way biologists use it ) seems to me to be the term that best describes the basket of ideas that makes up Postmodernity.
I hope to hear of other rival terms that claim to better describe the post-modern condition.
Fair enough - bring 'em on cable boys and girls !
Anything is better than lamely continuing to use the term postmodernity.
Soon this 67 year old Old Age Pensioner will be older than the Age it has replaced - but 67 years on, it doesn't deserve to still be an orphan without a name ....
All of us, ALL OF US, have spent the majority of our lives in "The Age of Commensality"
 |
| Michael Marshall |
That was the year of the Nuremberg Trial revelations about Auschwitz and Nazi Death Doctors, the year of Dresden and Hiroshima.
Bang ! indeed.
This means that unless you are 135 years old (and you're not) , the majority of your life has been spent not living in The Age of Modernity.
So what Age, then, have you been living in all these years ?
There is a wide (academic) consensus about the post-1945 changes in the way most of us humans perceive Reality and think about Reality.
But there is no consensus on whether they hang together in a consistent way and if so, exactly what then to call them.
The current placeholder name Postmodernity won't do and everyone knows it.
What will we then call the next Age after this and the one after that : Post-Post-Modernity and Post-Post-Post-Post-Modernity ?
Why bother with calling the 19th Century 'The Age of Romanticism' - why not simply call it The Age Of Post-Classicalism ?
My sense is that the Modern Age clearly thought and acted as if humans, in some essential sense, dined above and beyond Nature.
However, our own Age sees more and more clearly that we are bound into Nature, ie we're inside Nature and densely interconnected with all of it, like it or not.
I don't mean milk and honey/ lamb down with lions /turn the other cheek /interconnectedness --- I mean we're stuck into it.
If we are survive, we must see that our fellow life forms are also given their fair chance to survive as well, even if that means we must restrain our own appetites today so we can have a little something tomorrow.
We now intuitively realize that we all dine at one great common table.
Whenever things start to go wrong with the water,carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and you-name-it cycles, it hits everyone from bacteria to babies.
Commensality (as this word is used by students of religion and anthropology/sociology, not in the distinctly odd way biologists use it ) seems to me to be the term that best describes the basket of ideas that makes up Postmodernity.
I hope to hear of other rival terms that claim to better describe the post-modern condition.
Fair enough - bring 'em on cable boys and girls !
Anything is better than lamely continuing to use the term postmodernity.
Soon this 67 year old Old Age Pensioner will be older than the Age it has replaced - but 67 years on, it doesn't deserve to still be an orphan without a name ....
Mar 12, 2012
Yes , WWII was a HIGH TECH triumph - it was just LOW TECH that it couldn't handle...
The HIGH TECH successes of WWII ?
Where do we begin?
The A-Bomb of course, along with the B-29 intercontinental heavy bomber and the Norden Bombsight. The V-2 sub-orbital ballistic missile, against which there was ( and is) no defense, suitable to be upgraded with the newer, smaller, atomic bombs for added horror.
That American inter-war wonder of the modern age, the prison gas chamber, adapted to large scale use at Auschwitz , where when combined together with the best practices in computerized database tracking, worked to ensure that mass murders were no longer undocumented, undisciplined, melees.
The Hunger Plan - the plan to double the agriculture output of a million square kilometres of Eastern Europe and Russia.
This to be achieved by killing the existing 50 million residents and their useless mouths (and hands and brains).
They would be replaced by a hundred thousand big tractors powered by petroleum from the Caucasus and controlled by skilled Aryan operators.
Scientific, Mechanical, Agriculture, done right.
LOW TECH failures - well yes, a few, but hardly worth mentioning in the standard triumphant accounts of the war.
For example, the Americans could put a Bomb on Hiroshima (and ultimately a Man on the Moon), but couldn't seem to put a waterproof boot on its lowly MOS 745s (infantry rifleman) in wet, cold, Italy in the late summer of 1943.
Trenchfoot has low tech solutions but Scientific America couldn't find them - or more likely, deemed them too boringly low tech to assign its best talents toward.
LOW TECH failure #1, #2, #3,#4 ad infinitum ?
The failure of human society to at the very least feed everybody a basic diet.
Now don't start by blaming Mother Nature for WWII's famine deaths.
Compared to say 1936 or 1946, the war years were ones without dramatic floods or droughts --- we should have expected surpluses not mass famine.
Let me repeat -- more people died of hunger and hunger diseases as a result of WWII, than died in combat or by execution by gas or gun.
Nature , in those war years, stood ready to yield up her bounty to not just feed the world but make it fat.
Modernity failed to cultivate that potential bounty and then further failed to equitably distribute what food it did produce.
Even Modernity can feed enough of the world , to stave off mass famine, in peacetime.
But in wartime, when it was given its head to do much better, it instead SNAFU-ed up big time.
Postmodernity was birthed in the mass famine of 1945-1946.
A philosophy that couldn't even handle the most basic, most essential task that Humanity requires - Food - is not worthy of our respect or our loyalty.
When the global environmental meltdown goes Postal, do you really want Modernity's zealots to be put back in the driver's seat?
Wasn't one WWII, two WWIIs too many ???????
Where do we begin?
The A-Bomb of course, along with the B-29 intercontinental heavy bomber and the Norden Bombsight. The V-2 sub-orbital ballistic missile, against which there was ( and is) no defense, suitable to be upgraded with the newer, smaller, atomic bombs for added horror.
That American inter-war wonder of the modern age, the prison gas chamber, adapted to large scale use at Auschwitz , where when combined together with the best practices in computerized database tracking, worked to ensure that mass murders were no longer undocumented, undisciplined, melees.
The Hunger Plan - the plan to double the agriculture output of a million square kilometres of Eastern Europe and Russia.
This to be achieved by killing the existing 50 million residents and their useless mouths (and hands and brains).
They would be replaced by a hundred thousand big tractors powered by petroleum from the Caucasus and controlled by skilled Aryan operators.
Scientific, Mechanical, Agriculture, done right.
LOW TECH failures - well yes, a few, but hardly worth mentioning in the standard triumphant accounts of the war.
For example, the Americans could put a Bomb on Hiroshima (and ultimately a Man on the Moon), but couldn't seem to put a waterproof boot on its lowly MOS 745s (infantry rifleman) in wet, cold, Italy in the late summer of 1943.
Trenchfoot has low tech solutions but Scientific America couldn't find them - or more likely, deemed them too boringly low tech to assign its best talents toward.
LOW TECH failure #1, #2, #3,#4 ad infinitum ?
The failure of human society to at the very least feed everybody a basic diet.
Now don't start by blaming Mother Nature for WWII's famine deaths.
Compared to say 1936 or 1946, the war years were ones without dramatic floods or droughts --- we should have expected surpluses not mass famine.
Let me repeat -- more people died of hunger and hunger diseases as a result of WWII, than died in combat or by execution by gas or gun.
Nature , in those war years, stood ready to yield up her bounty to not just feed the world but make it fat.
Modernity failed to cultivate that potential bounty and then further failed to equitably distribute what food it did produce.
Even Modernity can feed enough of the world , to stave off mass famine, in peacetime.
But in wartime, when it was given its head to do much better, it instead SNAFU-ed up big time.
Postmodernity was birthed in the mass famine of 1945-1946.
A philosophy that couldn't even handle the most basic, most essential task that Humanity requires - Food - is not worthy of our respect or our loyalty.
When the global environmental meltdown goes Postal, do you really want Modernity's zealots to be put back in the driver's seat?
Wasn't one WWII, two WWIIs too many ???????
Mar 11, 2012
WWII : 20th Century Dress Rehearsal for a 21st Century Global Meltdown....
On all sides, WWII (Modernity's War) was exalted to be the planned Triumph of Man's Will over the Ways of Nature.
But it hardly turned out that way did it?
There is little consensus on what exactly PostModernism is or is not , but all observers agree that VJ Day 1945 marked the beginnings of PostModernity ---- and the death throes of unreconstructed Modernity.
Actually I should say that is the academic understanding of 1945's consequences (few would disagree that Modernity finds little traction on your average university campus these days !)
But things are quite different down here at Ground Zero : there is little evidence that the Chambers of Commerce and the conservative Political Parties have ever heard about PostModernity's triumph among the thinking class.
For here at Ground Zero, practice is dominated by those who do (and deny) , not by those who think.
Man's Will is still expected to overcome, in the best 1930s style, any limits Nature may impose on Life.
Its not that Republicans and corporate CEOs totally deny there are any problems with our relations with Nature - far from it.
It is just that they steadfastly deny these problems - and others - can not be solved in time by Man's mental ingenuity, a little hard work and some cash.
World War Two should remind us that while Republicans,Soviets, Nazis and CEOs can govern more or less successfully in peacetime, war has a way of revealing the flaws in Modernity's Platonic certitudes....
But it hardly turned out that way did it?
There is little consensus on what exactly PostModernism is or is not , but all observers agree that VJ Day 1945 marked the beginnings of PostModernity ---- and the death throes of unreconstructed Modernity.
Actually I should say that is the academic understanding of 1945's consequences (few would disagree that Modernity finds little traction on your average university campus these days !)
But things are quite different down here at Ground Zero : there is little evidence that the Chambers of Commerce and the conservative Political Parties have ever heard about PostModernity's triumph among the thinking class.
For here at Ground Zero, practice is dominated by those who do (and deny) , not by those who think.
Man's Will is still expected to overcome, in the best 1930s style, any limits Nature may impose on Life.
Its not that Republicans and corporate CEOs totally deny there are any problems with our relations with Nature - far from it.
It is just that they steadfastly deny these problems - and others - can not be solved in time by Man's mental ingenuity, a little hard work and some cash.
World War Two should remind us that while Republicans,Soviets, Nazis and CEOs can govern more or less successfully in peacetime, war has a way of revealing the flaws in Modernity's Platonic certitudes....
Oct 30, 2010
1945: how the Official Histories of wartime MODERNITY fabricated victory from the wreckage of defeat
ABSTRACT: When WWII Modernity's PLAN A failed in 1944, a totally different (and postmodernist) PLAN B stepped in at the last minute to save the day.
After the war, (modernist) Official Histories from organizations like the OSRD recast the methods and motivations of PLAN B organizers to make them appear to have been part of PLAN A all along.
Meanwhile, the original PLAN A ( and PLAN B for that matter ) were relegated to mere footnotes.
It is time overdue for a more accurate retelling, keeping PLAN A and PLAN B to their original separate (but parallel) paths.
*************************
If I had to paraphrase all the Official Histories of World War Two Big Science organizations to a terse Hollywoodian 'High Concept Moment', it would sound like this:
After the war, (modernist) Official Histories from organizations like the OSRD recast the methods and motivations of PLAN B organizers to make them appear to have been part of PLAN A all along.
Meanwhile, the original PLAN A ( and PLAN B for that matter ) were relegated to mere footnotes.
It is time overdue for a more accurate retelling, keeping PLAN A and PLAN B to their original separate (but parallel) paths.
*************************
If I had to paraphrase all the Official Histories of World War Two Big Science organizations to a terse Hollywoodian 'High Concept Moment', it would sound like this:
"Thanks to Allied Big Science (cue 'Hands Across the Water'), a Norden bombsight could flawlessly drop an A-Bomb into the centre of a deep barrel of fermenting - but very pure - penicillin from 15,000 feet ."
Oct 29, 2010
AGAPE penicillin: Nature Won; Modernity Zero
Sixty five years later is Einstein's famous formula still the one that best describes 1945 ?
ie E=MC2
Or was the most lasting impact of 1939-1945's MODERN-WORLD war the fact that yesterday's Big MO (Modernity) lost.
And that Nature won.
And that in 1945, out of the resulting wreckage crawled PostModernity, aka us PO folk (the baby boom generation and our children and children's children ) ?
(Sadly resigned godparents: Adorno and Horkheimer.)
IE, is "WWII=MOgoesPO" today's best short, short,
short but correct formulaic answer to the exam request to sum up mankind's biggest, bloodiest war ever ?
ie E=MC2
Or was the most lasting impact of 1939-1945's MODERN-WORLD war the fact that yesterday's Big MO (Modernity) lost.
And that Nature won.
And that in 1945, out of the resulting wreckage crawled PostModernity, aka us PO folk (the baby boom generation and our children and children's children ) ?
(Sadly resigned godparents: Adorno and Horkheimer.)
IE, is "WWII=MOgoesPO" today's best short, short,
short but correct formulaic answer to the exam request to sum up mankind's biggest, bloodiest war ever ?
who lost the last MODERN--WORLD war, 1939-1945 ?
You mean the one where Modernity (Big MO) warred with the World?
Big MO lost and lost badly.
'Nature Bats Last' (and Nature bats long and deep) .
And in 1945, out of the resulting wreckage crawled PostModernity, aka POMO or simply PO.
All of us alive today - all of us - have spent the majority of our lives as 'PO folks' in the 65 years since 1945.
Our godparents ?
Some folks called Adorno and Horkheimer.
Forget the claim that modernist claim that 1945 means E=MC2.
Time has revealed that 1945's actual formula to be this:
WWII=MOgoesPO
Big MO lost and lost badly.
'Nature Bats Last' (and Nature bats long and deep) .
And in 1945, out of the resulting wreckage crawled PostModernity, aka POMO or simply PO.
All of us alive today - all of us - have spent the majority of our lives as 'PO folks' in the 65 years since 1945.
Our godparents ?
Some folks called Adorno and Horkheimer.
Forget the claim that modernist claim that 1945 means E=MC2.
Time has revealed that 1945's actual formula to be this:
WWII=MOgoesPO
Jul 14, 2010
Healing the Heartless
Seventy Five Million people - at least - had their lives greatly shortened by the events of World War Two.
Died. Dead. If not during the war itself, then not long after.
Set against that toll (the worst ever disaster in human history) the act of extending, for a few years, the lives of about 25 civilians with a physical heart disease may not stack up for much.
Connecting the two - vast military forces raging overseas with a small quiet medical affair that could have just as easily happened in peacetime - may seem impossible.
But I think there is a strong connector and it is that the curing those physical heart cases was dependent on first healing some Home Front civilians of a metaphorical heart disease far more deadly than Endocarditis : Scientific Heartlessness/ Scientific SansCoeur.
Calling upon Science and Nature to justify a lack of compassion for those not among your own kind was Modernity's abiding moral failing.
It was displayed not just during modern warfare or in everything that Hitler ever did - it was habitual, in varying degrees, among most all of us back then.
Only Time will tell us what abiding moral failings of this postmodernist/quantum/commensal age will engender - I am sure that Heartlessness will be chief among them.
But hopefully we will no longer boast about our heartlessness as being based on the best scientific discoveries from Nature.
The decline of Modernity came not from any external assaults, rather it rotted from within, from among its strongest supporters, the Scientist.
This happened when a few, then some, and finally many, saw that Nature did not favour heartlessness at all but rather the opposite, and translated that new knowledge into concrete human behavior : they changed their day-to-day ethics accordingly.
It wasn't a rapid or smooth process nor has it ended yet but it had to start somewhere and Dawson's story is as close to the beginnings as I have been able to find AND it had consequences that we have all felt personally - so it it is an excellent place to start recalling when Mo went Po, if only because the first person cured of the metaphorical heart disease was Dr Dawson himself.
Not that he was heartless by any means anytime in his life, but he was a proud member of a relatively new profession, that of the Clinical Investigator, which had the potential for exposing all the ambiguities of Modernity's reforming spirit.
Only when Dawson started questioning the disinterested objectivity he always had upheld so strongly, was he himself on the road away from Mo and heading for Po.....
Died. Dead. If not during the war itself, then not long after.
Set against that toll (the worst ever disaster in human history) the act of extending, for a few years, the lives of about 25 civilians with a physical heart disease may not stack up for much.
Connecting the two - vast military forces raging overseas with a small quiet medical affair that could have just as easily happened in peacetime - may seem impossible.
But I think there is a strong connector and it is that the curing those physical heart cases was dependent on first healing some Home Front civilians of a metaphorical heart disease far more deadly than Endocarditis : Scientific Heartlessness/ Scientific SansCoeur.
Calling upon Science and Nature to justify a lack of compassion for those not among your own kind was Modernity's abiding moral failing.
It was displayed not just during modern warfare or in everything that Hitler ever did - it was habitual, in varying degrees, among most all of us back then.
Only Time will tell us what abiding moral failings of this postmodernist/quantum/commensal age will engender - I am sure that Heartlessness will be chief among them.
But hopefully we will no longer boast about our heartlessness as being based on the best scientific discoveries from Nature.
The decline of Modernity came not from any external assaults, rather it rotted from within, from among its strongest supporters, the Scientist.
This happened when a few, then some, and finally many, saw that Nature did not favour heartlessness at all but rather the opposite, and translated that new knowledge into concrete human behavior : they changed their day-to-day ethics accordingly.
It wasn't a rapid or smooth process nor has it ended yet but it had to start somewhere and Dawson's story is as close to the beginnings as I have been able to find AND it had consequences that we have all felt personally - so it it is an excellent place to start recalling when Mo went Po, if only because the first person cured of the metaphorical heart disease was Dr Dawson himself.
Not that he was heartless by any means anytime in his life, but he was a proud member of a relatively new profession, that of the Clinical Investigator, which had the potential for exposing all the ambiguities of Modernity's reforming spirit.
Only when Dawson started questioning the disinterested objectivity he always had upheld so strongly, was he himself on the road away from Mo and heading for Po.....
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