Is There Some Bizarre Link Between Top Physicists and Progressive Values?
Mega
The passing of Stephen Hawking reminds me of a question I’ve asked myself many times: Why is it that brilliant physicists happen to be progressives?
As discussed here: Hawking supported a boycott of Israel by academia, citing the nation’s treatment of Palestinians, and was a vehement critic of capitalism’s excesses, warning that economic inequality would skyrocket as more jobs become automated and wealth continues to be transferred to the already-wealthy.
The physicist condemned the so-called “debate” over climate crisis and was sharply critical of President Donald Trump’s decision in 2017 to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris accord on climate change. “We are close to the tipping point where global warming becomes irreversible,” he said last summer. “Trump’s action could push the Earth over the brink, to become like Venus, with a temperature of two hundred and fifty degrees, and raining sulphuric acid.”
Hawking is hardly alone.
Einstein
In terms of quotable figures in world history with progressive values, it’s hard to imagine they’ll ever be anyone like Albert Einstein:
• Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
• I am by heritage a Jew, by citizenship a Swiss, and by makeup a human being, and only a human being, without any special attachment to any state or national entity whatsoever.
• Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
• It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
Bertrand Russell
• It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
• Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid … Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
deGrasse Tyson
On the living side of the ledger, we have Neil deGrasse Tyson:
• The good thing about Science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.
• Once you understand that humans are warming the planet, you can then have a political conversation about that … Every minute one is in denial, you are delaying the political solution that should have been established years ago.
• When you have people who don’t know much about science standing in denial of it and rising to power, that is a recipe for the complete dismantling of our informed democracy.
Do you want your kid’s broken arm set by a brilliant orthopedic surgeon or your neighborhood plumber? Would you like your criminal case handled by an astute defense attorney, or an ambulance chaser who flunked the bar four times? Do you take golf lessons from a pro or a hacker?
Maybe it’s time we started to pay attention to our civilization’s brightest and most qualified people.
Craig,
Well done ! What an eloquent argument for a society ruled by an “intellectual elite”. Why should all those “deplorables” be allowed to vote ? They should realize their inferiority and acquiesce to the central committee of the elite and enlightened. I’m sure Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, would all agree !
Oh dear, why is it when you carefully test a ‘Progressive’ a repressive totalitarian appears ?
Your choice of Bertrand Russell is curious. Anywhere other than the English speaking world, he would have been executed for sedition. He actively encouraged the US not to send troops to WW1 but urged British troops to mutiny !
In 1937 he raged against the “criminal sociopath ” Churchill, urging :
“If the Nazi’s succeed in sending an invading army to England we should do best to treat them as visitors, give them quarters and invite the commander and chief to dine with the King, collaboration is better than conflict”.
During the Cuban missile crises he telegraphed President Kennedy:
YOUR ACTION DESPERATE. THREAT TO HUMAN SURVIVAL. NO CONCEIVABLE JUSTIFICATION. CIVILIZED MAN CONDEMNS IT. WE WILL NOT HAVE MASS MURDER. ULTIMATUM MEANS WAR… END THIS MADNESS.
But I wasn’t aware Bertrand Russell possessed any qualifications as a Physicist ?
Physicists eh ? Hmmm,… okay, how about Nobel Prize for Physics winner Professor and Deutsche Physik SS Oberliechter Philipp Eduard Anton von Lenard, the leading Nazi physicist or physics Nobel laureate Johannes Stark who joined Herman Goring’s special unit for Aryan Physics, or Dr Werner Heisenberg the principal scientist in the Nazi German nuclear weapons project and Heinrich Himmler’s old school chum. Heisenberg won the Physics Nobel Prize for the creation of quantum mechanics in 1932, he joined the NSDAP in 1927.
How about physicist traitors like Alan Nun, Theodore Hall and Klaus Fuchs who aided that wonderful human benefactor, Joseph Stalin acquire nuclear weapons ?
Of course you omit Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, OM, FRS[2] (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a New Zealand-born British physicist who came to be known as the father of nuclear physics. Rutherford was politically conservative and a great admirer of fellow conservative thinkers Edmund Burke, Wolfgang von Goethe and Ludwig von Mises.
Although not known for his work in physics, the great conservative economist Milton Friedman did study the subject.
Oh well, it’s feeding time, so I guess I’ll just knuckle back to my fellow ‘deplorables’ 🙂
Craig,
Found time to check Bertrand Russell’s accomplishments a physicist, which as I suspected are non-existent.
He did however, co-author ‘Principia Mathematica’ a three volume work attempting to describe a set of axioms and inference rules in symbolic logic from which all mathematical truths could in principle be proven. He also published the ‘Principles of Mathematics’, a lengthy dissertation on paradox and logic in mathematics.
So, I guess he wouldn’t feel completely lost among a gathering of physicists 🙂