Part II
(see Part I) The works of Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832) and Friedrich Hegel (1770 – 1831) would form the foundation of science in Bolshevik Russia, and later in National Socialist Germany, creating the environmental movement we see today.
In 1883, Friedrich Engels (1820 – 1895) wrote Dialectics of Nature where he applied Goethean principles of nature to Hegel’s concept of the Dialectic, creating a hybrid of socialist science. Engels and the enlightenment called for the removal of natural science, and a return to the knowledge of the ancients where the “great founders of Greek philosophy stood in mastery due to their general outlook on nature.”
For the Greek philosophers, the world was something that emerged from chaos, while the natural scientist believed in something immutable, the result of an impulse that was created by God from outside the universe. Engels said that Newton “pompously baptized” empirical science when he conceived of “universal gravitation” as an essential property of matter. Engels called this an unexplained force that supposedly gives rise to the orbits of the planets; criticizing Newton for not properly answering the question about how life came into being, instead answering such questions by “making the creator of all things responsible,” with a divine impulse.
To Engels, both Kant and the Christian definitions of empirical science were immature. The true definition, he said, came from Hegel and his three laws of the dialectics called: “The law of the transformation of quantity into quality and vice versa;” “the law of the interpenetration of opposites;” and “the law of the negation of the negation.” All three were based on the Laws of Thought, where the first was based on the Doctrine of Being, the second on the Doctrine of Essence, and the third on the “Fundamental Law for the construction of the whole system.” Unlike Newton where the universe operates “willy-nilly,” Engels said that the universe “is made out to be arranged [sic] in accordance with a system of thought which itself is only the product of a definite stage of evolution of human thought.”
When it came to the forces of Nature, Engels said that magnets were attracted to metal because they “had a soul” that had an affinity for the metal, just as the Greek philosopher Thales expressed it, not that it has an attracting force that is separate from the soul of the universe. Chemistry, said Engels, was based on the affinities that various chemical substances had for each other; but due to the Dialectic every positive force derived from such an affinity also resulted in a counter force or repulsion somewhere in the universe. Engels would exchange the concept of energy with the concept of force, stating that the universe maintained a balance through the “conservation of force” as opposed to the conservation of energy as maintained by the laws of Thermodynamics.
In Engels’ universe, heat is a repulsive force, acting against the force of gravity and chemical reaction; it is this force that causes a cannonball to fly, and explosives to explode. But things that absorb and store heat turn the positive force into a negative force, so that the heating of the earth, and the sun evaporating water, keeps the sun’s heat from pushing the earth away.
Engels said the friction of the world’s oceans generates heat through their tidal motions, but the proximity of the moon equalizes the periods of the earth’s rotation, and as long as the periods of rotation of the Earth and the Moon differ, the tidal action of the earth subtracts energy from their motions. Engels proved his position using Pythagorean theorems, showing how the tangential accelerating force (based on heat) keeps the moon from crashing into the Earth. Engels’ redefinition of thermodynamics will become the lynchpin of the environmental movement.
Eduard Suess: Theory of Elevation
Building on Goethe’s and Engles’ work was the Austrian geologist Eduard Suess (1831 – 1914). Suess developed the “theory of elevation” to explain why fossils were found on mountaintops, and why the Oceans appeared to rise and fall over time. He based his work on Goethean science along with the support from others such as his good friend Charles Darwin. In 1856, Suess became professor at the University of Vienna, under the von Humboldt method of education, and is today credited with being the first true ecologist. In 1875, he published, The Face of the Earth (Das antlitz der erde), coining the word biosphere. Embracing Weimar Romanticism, Suess rejects empirical science, believing that poetry and the philosophy of the ancients were the only source of truth. As a result, the foundations of Suess’s work were poets such as the Italians Dante Alighieri (1265 – 1321), and Dante’s teacher Brunetto Latini (1220–1294).
Suess describes Dante and Latini saying: “No one in the history of human intellect, stands above these two men; indeed few stand beside them…” About Goethe he says: “All that can move the human soul the great poet has felt, and in the realm of imagination he has traveled farther than any mortal man before him… With a gift of description never before equaled he has led his astonished contemporaries to the heights of the blessed and the depths of the lower world; and now he [Goethe] returns to the starting-point of his mightiest creation, to the examination of that which is greater than all the conceptions of poetry, the actual constitution of the Universe.”
Suess’s science is based on a cosmos that is composed of concentric orbs, including the biosphere, where the “surface of the earth forms a perfect sphere, as does the water.” Suess tells us that, water circulates through hollows in the earth, moved when it awakens from its slumber; like blood it communicates with the heart, so that all waters flow to the sea.
In his theory of elevation, Suess totally ignores natural science, relying on poetry and ancient paganism saying: “It is evident that the earth rises from the Ocean owing to particular elevations of its mass, and not as the result of eccentricity, since in the latter case the dry land would be bounded by a circular outline, and this we know is not the case. The earth cannot elevate itself; nor can the cause be water, fire, or air; the elevating force must therefore be sought in the heavens.”
“In the starry firmament this force cannot for obvious reasons emanate from the moving stars, the moon, sun, or planets; it must therefore be sought in the fixed stars, which exercise this influence, either after the manner of magnets or by the production of active vapors.”
According to Suess’s theory, the amount of water present on the earth at any one time increases or decreases in accordance with “cosmic causes.” He attributes the rise and fall of the ocean floor to the effect of volcanoes and a 147 cubic kilometer hemispherical cavity that swells up to increase the temperature of the ocean, by the action of high-pressure vapors. This is all controlled by the gods of the earth, who were worshiped for thousands of years at the Temple of Serapis at Puzzuoli, located not far from the ruins of Arsinoe (Crocodilopolis) and the temple of the crocodile god Sebak.
What Suess is talking about is the temple built by Alexander’s general Ptolemy I (367 – 283 BC), creating the god Serapis in an effort to syncretize the religions of the empire. Based primarily on the Egyptian god Osiris it was a blending of Egyptian and Greek religions, while the temple itself was based on an Egyptian design. Suess says what brought the temple into disuse was the rejection of the ancient ways when the Christian emperor Flavius Theodosius (AD 347 – 395) renounced the worship of Serapis. Suess devotes a major portion of his work to this temple, its gods, and their manipulation of oceans, fresh water, volcanoes, and earthquakes.
Suess uses his theory to explain the sinking of the lost continents of Atlantis and Gondwana land, because the people transgressed against the gods. Today Suess is credited with the supposed discovery of Gondwana land, said to be part of an ancient contiguous continent that existed before continental drift created the world we see today. Suess is also credited with associating glaciers with sea levels, except that he postulated that sea levels would rise with the creation of glaciers, not the other way around.
In 1895, Suess was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of sciences and he won the Copley Medal of the Royal Society, even though the book references no empirical observations. Suess’s textbook remained popular in Europe for many years. Today environmentalists use Suess’s theories to tie “Global Warming” to earthquakes and the rise and fall of sea levels.
Soviet Science and The Bolshevik Revolution
Before the Bolshevik revolution, Russia was ahead of many countries in science and technology. In fact, Russian agriculture was feeding most of Europe, and Russian industry was supplying Western Europe with oil.
After the Bolshevik revolution, the face of Russian science, technology, and industry would change drastically, as the teachings of Lamarck (1744 – 1829), Engels, Goethe, and Suess, would replace the teachings of the Church, Newton, and other empiricists; in fact, it became illegal to hold any view about creation other than Lamarckism, including Darwinism. Two of the people who were responsible for this were Trofim Lysenko (1898 – 1967) and Vladimir Vernadsky (1863 – 1945).
Lysenko was a close friend of Joseph Stalin and would formalize socialist science into the Soviet Universities and scientific communities. Known as Lysenkoism, the state claims exclusive access to scientific truth and seeks to repress all opponents. Tyrannical means are used to foist socialist ideas and practices upon the country, and to exert the party’s power over the scientific community. Lysenkoism was not the result of erroneous views of an individual, but of the ideological foundations that had been laid when Lenin proclaimed the intelligentsia to be a “non proletarian” stratum of society. Lenin then called for the formation of a new intelligentsia, recruited from the working class and the working peasantry, who would be free of “the imprint of the exploiters.” As a result, Soviet science became a protégé of Bolshevism, and Russia would slip into a dark age.
The strategy of the politicians who ran Soviet science was to criticize the “ideological enemies” of the state, while creating “shinny new soap bubbles” directing attention to their iridescence. When a bubble bursts, the state again blames bourgeoisie scientists who are accused of adopting anti-Marxist positions. This leads to a method of science, where the politicians and scientific leaders indulge in grandiose schemes, manipulation, and deception, so as to retain power and extort financial gain at the public’s expense. We see this today in Obama’s “investment” in green energy projects like Solyndra, which have no scientific or economic basis in reality, but make the right people a lot of money.
While crying, “peace, peace,” in the war against Germany, the Bolsheviks waged a propaganda war against the bourgeoisie, including their science. After the revolution, Newtonian scientists and engineers were either shipped to forced labor camps or executed outright. Later, Stalin would extend this treatment to those who did not pay homage to the “Stalin Cult.” Men of ability were killed outright, including: generals, farmers, engineers, chemists, and even aircraft manufactures.
With so many killed, imprisoned, or fleeing to the West, no one was left in Russia to design, manufacture, repair, or operate the country including: transportation, water, electricity, oil, and agriculture. When combined with the collectivization (nationalization) of farms and factories, Russia was forced back into the pre-industrial age resulting in the death of some six million people. This process would be repeated in China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Cuba – today this kind of deindustrialization is underway in America.
Lysenko is also credited with creating the “science” of agronomy, which is purportedly dedicated to creating healthier food, managing the environmental impact of agriculture, and creating energy from plants – such as algae. His work contributed to the death of millions of people, blaming the great famine on a “low level of our knowledge of agronomy.” At the time of his death in 1976, Lysenko was still in charge of three academies, while enjoying the salary of an academician. This included: honoraria, royalties, a country cottage, a limousine with a personal driver, special medical benefits, special supplies of foods, and so on. A staff of almost 150 was still working under his direction at the Lenin Hills Agricultural Experiment Stationof the USSR Academy of Sciences.
Lysenko was awarded the Stalin Prize (first degree) three times, was named a Hero of Socialist Labor, and received the country’s highest honor, the Order of Lenin, eight times. For over a quarter of a century, in his own name or through figureheads, Lysenko controlled many governmental or public agencies dealing with agriculture, biology, and medicine, while participating in the leadership of Soviet peace organizations. Today Lysenko’s scientific methods are still in use around the world, including the United States of America – where they are inflicting great harm.
Vernadsky and the Biosphere
Vernadsky was the founder and the first president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kiev (1918) and helped start the Tavrida University in Crimea. As part of the Soviet apparatus, Vernadsky set out to describe the physics of living matter so as to eliminate the need for an otherworldly God, while explaining how life started in the first place, plugging the hole that Darwin never filled. To do this Vernadsky would use Lysenkian science to build on the work of Edward Suess and his concept of the biosphere. This would include the addition of the noosphere, a concept of cosmic mind named after Plato’s concept of the nous – the divine mind of the universe.
Socialist science usually builds on some legitimate discovery, taking advantage of the public’s ignorance. For Suess it was an assertion that the stars and the sun provided the life force of the cosmos, and Vernadsky would build his new “science” on the discovery of x-rays and cosmic radiation. In 1913, the British physicist Henry Moseley (1887 – 1915) studied x-rays emitted by different elements and found that each element has a distinctive x-ray emission “fingerprint”. This was followed in 1927 by the discovery of “cosmic rays” by the American physicist Robert Millikan (1868 – 1953) at MIT. Later identified as subatomic particles, cosmic rays provided Vernadsky with a plausible explanation for Suess’s assertions – the perfect ingredients for a “shiny new soap bubble.” Vernadsky would use the concept of cosmic rays to start a new field of pseudo science that could describe the functioning of the universe without God.
Empirical science and the second law of thermodynamics said what Vernadsky was attempting to do violated the basic laws of physics. So like Kant, he changed the definitions of empirical science and thermodynamics so they supported his conclusions. Vernadsky then used these definitions to create what he called geochemistry, and biogeochemistry, which were based on the pseudo scientific study of Carbon Dioxide. Today supposed experts rely on such pseudo-scientific degrees to spread environmentalism, a central tenant of the socialist faith.
Vernadsky argued that Newton presented a materialistic worldview, producing a “mechanistic and reductionistic science, more and more separated from evolving nature.” He said that while the followers of Newton had met with limited success, the main problem was that empirical science, including statistical mechanics and the second law of thermodynamics, abandoned the “holistic” tradition of the ancients. Vernadsky said that Newton made it unfashionable for “eminent scientists” to return to the holistic vitalizism of yesterday.
Next, Vernadsky announced that science itself would need to evolve beyond Newton in a way that allowed thermodynamics to “connect organisms with their environment, life with Earth, and Earth as a planet with its cosmic environment.” As a result, he said, the cosmos can be seen as an “evolutionary phenomenon, the result of metabolism connecting the living organisms, the energy flow, and the cycling of chemical elements.”
The Concept of Empirical Generalization
To accomplish his goals, Vernadsky replaced the Newtonian concept of observation, theory, and experimentation, with the concept of “empirical generalization.” Such a “generalization” requires no verification after it has been deduced as a “fact” provided by a “political utterance,” from an “enlightened thinker” an idea first employed by Karl Mannheim and Critical Theory as described in the book. One such utterance would say:
“During all geological periods (including the present one) there has never been any trace of abiogenesis (direct creation of a living organism from inert matter). Throughout geological time, no azoic (i.e., devoid of life) geological periods have ever been observed. Therefore contemporary living matter is connected by a genetic link to the living matter of all former geological epochs. Thus it follows, that the number of atoms bound together by life is unchanged; the global mass of living matter has been unchanged throughout geological time.”
Vernadsky is said to have done for space what Darwin had done for time. While Darwin showed all life descended from a remote ancestor, Vernadsky purported to show that all life was a single entity, transforming earthly matter in consort with the cosmic energies of the sun through cosmic rays. Since the number of atoms bound together by life is unchanged, the mass of the biosphere has remained the same for all time. This has the effect of saying that the earth has always been alive, so there is no need for life to start and evolve separately from the geology of the world. However, like all political utterances, proof is not only unnecessary, it is also unwanted.
The End of Part 2
Part 3 will begin with
Global Warming, Hippies, and the Church of Ecology
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Mr. Peach (visit his website) ·is a retired engineer who spent a great deal of his life traveling the world to solve problems for fortune 500 companies and the U.S. Government.·After serving 8 years in U.S. Naval Air he went to work for Litton Guidance Systems as a field engineer, working in the Middle East and Asia. For the next 12 years he worked as a systems engineer for Hughes Aircraft where he was involved with the F-14D, F-15E, and the F/A-18 tactical aircraft………..read more