Hi Platt and all,
PLATT
> Intellect and art do not
> flourish in a totalitarian societies where what you say, write or paint
can
> get you a one way trip to rat infested cell.
Let me share a surprising anecdote about my experiences as a scientist.
During the 1980's, the "Soviet" delegation to a large international
conference would typically consist of just a very few prominent Russian
scientists (usually party members, often good scientists). These privileged
soles would mix with hundreds of Westerners. Only in the 1990's did
scientists from E. Europe start coming to international conferences in any
numbers. What surprised me was that whereas we already know about the
research that fitted in with the mainstream, the lesser known Russian
scientists sometimes turned up with highly unusual, even crackpot ideas.
One favourite of mine was a poster at a plant physiology conference about
the effect of "thought waves" on seed growth. I've used this as a teaching
example of what science is NOT - I don't think that particular poster should
have been accepted by the conference organisers. But the point of this is
not that Russian science is bad - most of it compares favourably with the
west. The point is that in the 1990's we started to see the great variety of
science that the old totalitarian Soviet regime had been supporting, and
some of probably WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN FUNDED in the West.
My point is that only SOME intellect and art is encouraged to flourish in
the so-called free societies of the the West. For many original thinkers,
their originality is their ticket to the ranks of the unemployed.
Jonathan
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