Physics under the Third Reich...new book

"Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics under Hitler by Philip Ball – review"

The Nobel Prizewinners and the Nazis: were Heisenberg et al tacit collaborators?

by

Graham Farmelo

November 6th, 2013

The Guardian

Many scientists see themselves as disinterested pursuers of knowledge, working above politics, cultural whim and intellectual fashion. Yet the public is not always ready to accept this. Despite decades of well-intended initiatives that aim to help scientists "engage" with non-specialists, there remains a deep-seated mistrust of their activities and sometimes even of their results, especially when the findings are ideologically or commercially unpalatable.

Brian Cox's most recent TV series Science Britannica appeared in part to be a thinly disguised plea to his fellow Britons to get behind their boffins. Although science is an international pursuit, Cox celebrated it Britocentrically, aiming to win support for financially hard-pressed scientific researchers in the UK. The message seemed to be: trust me, scientists won't hurt you – just give us all the dosh we ask for, and let us get on with our work. We'll deliver, just as we have before.

It would be interesting to see a German version of Science Britannica. Germany has made colossal contributions to science but it would be hard to argue that, when Hitler came to power, all its scientists were above politics. The behaviour of its physicists and chemists is a source of enduring fascination because the discovery of nuclear fission in the German capital on the eve of the second world war could have resulted in handing the world's first nuclear weapons to Hitler.

The story of physicists under Hitler has been studied frequently and in great depth, though no account has aimed to be quite as comprehensive as this one by Philip Ball, a writer of exceptional versatility and productivity. He discusses the cases of the most prominent physicists, concentrating on three Nobel laureates: Max Planck, discoverer of the concept of energy quanta and doyen of German physics in the 1930s and for decades before; Werner Heisenberg, a pre-eminent theoretician in the 1920s and 30s, having been the first to set out a quantum theory of matter; and Peter Debye, a Dutchman whose work on the electrical forces at the heart of matter earned him the sobriquet "master of the molecule".

It is brave of Ball to focus on this trio, as two of them have already been the subjects of well-known works that have helped to shape our understanding of physicists under the Reich. Planck is considered in the masterly Dilemmas of an Upright Man by the distinguished historian John Heilbron, who shows us how a thoroughly decent patriot struggled to deal with a government of appalling depravity. The case of Heisenberg has been much more widely debated, especially in the wake of Michael Frayn's brilliant play Copenhagen. This turned the spotlight on the meetings between Heisenberg and his Danish friend Niels Bohr, another leading physicist. The cocky Heisenberg, who was based in Germany, talked with Bohr in occupied Copenhagen about the possibility of harnessing nuclear energy, though the details of their conversations are clouded with uncertainties.

Peter Debye is the focus of most of Ball's new material. For many years after the war, it was commonly accepted that Debye was a pragmatist and not a political animal, that he disliked the Nazis and left Germany when they made it impossible for him to continue his work in peace. He left his post as director of the physics section of Berlin's Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in 1940, when he emigrated to the US where he accepted a post at Cornell University that he held until his death in 1966. Forty years later, a Dutch journalist cast doubt on Debye's reputation, suggesting that he had colluded with the Nazis. The accusations were later largely discredited, but Ball considers them again, having made a close study of Debye's archive.

In many of the other books on this subject, authors are prone to accept a "simple-minded dichotomy that makes exiles from Nazi Germany blameless and those who stayed culpable", as Ball neatly puts it. There is none of that here. The behaviour of Debye, Heisenberg, Planck and several others are discussed with even-handedness and empathy, though Ball is not afraid to point the finger occasionally. He notes that, after the war, Debye and Heisenberg often seem to be surprised that they had any case to answer. They seemed to believe that they could wash their hands of all the horrors visited on millions by the government that paid their salaries.

Heisenberg launched a protracted charm offensive to try to restore his reputation, but it was an uphill struggle. Opinions about his wartime behaviour differed widely, even among members of families he knew well. His British friend Paul Dirac would not hear a word against him ("It is easy to be a hero in a democracy") but Dirac's wife had no time for Heisenberg, believing him to be shifty and self-serving.

No matter how many archives are trawled and how many new letters turn up, I doubt that there will ever be a consensus on the morality of the scientists who served under the Nazis. There will always be room for multiple interpretations, even by writers like Ball, who patently have no axe to grind. He has done a fine job of surveying the literature and generously quotes the views of other experts, notably the American historian Mark Walker, the foremost authority on science and technology in Germany in this era. This does, however, weaken Ball's authorial voice and sometimes gives his book the feel of a well-informed review rather than a wholly original work.

Nonetheless, this is an impressive assessment; Ball's judgments on his three protagonists are well-reasoned, nuanced and, in my view, fair. Planck emerges as a good man, though "paralysed by a predicament for which his conservative education had never prepared him". Heisenberg, craving approval from the regime he disdained, seems not to have been the covert opponent of the Nazis that he later presented himself to be, but a tacit collaborator. In many ways Debye behaved honourably, but his refusal to reflect openly on his time working under the Nazis "is itself an act of moral irresponsibility", Ball concludes.

One of the virtues of Ball's book is that it helps us to appreciate better the contribution of other physicists during the war. Less than four months before it broke out, the head of Birmingham University's physics department, Mark Oliphant, was soothing the fears of locals worried by the nuclear experiments he was doing. His new cyclotron was purely "for humanitarian work … not to release energy for destruction", he reassured them repeatedly. Ten months later, two of his colleagues – both refugees from mainland Europe, one of them a former student of Heisenberg's – became the first scientists to discover how to build the Bomb. They and other British colleagues continued to work on this, and a little over three years later joined the Manhattan Project, whose results were later to astonish the world.

Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics under Hitler

by

Philip Ball

ISBN-10: 1847922481
ISBN-13: 978-1847922489

George Orwell and the atom bomb

"Orwell's 5 greatest essays: #4, "You and the Atomic Bomb""

by

Michael Hiltzik

November 5th, 2013

latimes.com

For anyone interested in the politics of left and right--and in political journalism as it is practiced at the highest level, Orwell's works are indispensable. This week, in the year marks the 110th anniversary of his birth, we present a personal list of his five greatest essays.

Published a mere two and a half months after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Orwell's "You and the Atomic Bomb" is notable as one of the first efforts to divine the social and political implications of a new weapon of previously unimaginable power. Its fame arises from Orwell's coinage of a new term for the permanent standoff the bomb would foster between two great powers, the United States and the Soviet Union: the "cold war."

The social and political aspects of nuclear weapons had been debated for a year by physicists working on the Manhattan Project, though even most of them--thanks to the requirements of secrecy within the project--were unaware of how far the overall work had progressed until the bombs were dropped on Japan. With the blasts, the issues were thrown open for public debate.

Orwell places the bomb properly within the historical continuum. "It is a commonplace that the history of civilisation is largely the history of weapons," he writes. "Ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon — so long as there is no answer to it — gives claws to the weak."
 
As for the cold war, that infinite "peace that is no peace," Orwell foresees that it will not be long before the Soviets join the Americans as sole possessors of the bomb's secrets.

"From various symptoms one can infer that the Russians do not yet possess the secret of making the atomic bomb; on the other hand, the consensus of opinion seems to be that they will possess it within a few years. So we have before us the prospect of two or three monstrous super-states, each possessed of a weapon by which millions of people can be wiped out in a few seconds, dividing the world between them."

In at least one regard, Orwell's vision was no more farsighted than anyone else's in 1945: What happens when one of those super-states collapses?

"You and the Atomic Bomb"

by

George Orwell

1945

Considering how likely we all are to be blown to pieces by it within the next five years, the atomic bomb has not roused so much discussion as might have been expected. The newspapers have published numerous diagrams, not very helpful to the average man, of protons and neutrons doing their stuff, and there has been much reiteration of the useless statement that the bomb ‘ought to be put under international control.’ But curiously little has been said, at any rate in print, about the question that is of most urgent interest to all of us, namely: ‘How difficult are these things to manufacture?’

Such information as we — that is, the big public — possess on this subject has come to us in a rather indirect way, apropos of President Truman's decision not to hand over certain secrets to the USSR. Some months ago, when the bomb was still only a rumour, there was a widespread belief that splitting the atom was merely a problem for the physicists, and that when they had solved it a new and devastating weapon would be within reach of almost everybody. (At any moment, so the rumour went, some lonely lunatic in a laboratory might blow civilisation to smithereens, as easily as touching off a firework.)

Had that been true, the whole trend of history would have been abruptly altered. The distinction between great states and small states would have been wiped out, and the power of the State over the individual would have been greatly weakened. However, it appears from President Truman's remarks, and various comments that have been made on them, that the bomb is fantastically expensive and that its manufacture demands an enormous industrial effort, such as only three or four countries in the world are capable of making. This point is of cardinal importance, because it may mean that the discovery of the atomic bomb, so far from reversing history, will simply intensify the trends which have been apparent for a dozen years past.

It is a commonplace that the history of civilisation is largely the history of weapons. In particular, the connection between the discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie has been pointed out over and over again. And though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the following rule would be found generally true: that ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example, tanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon — so long as there is no answer to it — gives claws to the weak.

The great age of democracy and of national self-determination was the age of the musket and the rifle. After the invention of the flintlock, and before the invention of the percussion cap, the musket was a fairly efficient weapon, and at the same time so simple that it could be produced almost anywhere. Its combination of qualities made possible the success of the American and French revolutions, and made a popular insurrection a more serious business than it could be in our own day. After the musket came the breech-loading rifle. This was a comparatively complex thing, but it could still be produced in scores of countries, and it was cheap, easily smuggled and economical of ammunition. Even the most backward nation could always get hold of rifles from one source or another, so that Boers, Bulgars, Abyssinians, Moroccans — even Tibetans — could put up a fight for their independence, sometimes with success. But thereafter every development in military technique has favoured the State as against the individual, and the industrialised country as against the backward one. There are fewer and fewer foci of power. Already, in 1939, there were only five states capable of waging war on the grand scale, and now there are only three — ultimately, perhaps, only two. This trend has been obvious for years, and was pointed out by a few observers even before 1914. The one thing that might reverse it is the discovery of a weapon — or, to put it more broadly, of a method of fighting — not dependent on huge concentrations of industrial plant.

From various symptoms one can infer that the Russians do not yet possess the secret of making the atomic bomb; on the other hand, the consensus of opinion seems to be that they will possess it within a few years. So we have before us the prospect of two or three monstrous super-states, each possessed of a weapon by which millions of people can be wiped out in a few seconds, dividing the world between them. It has been rather hastily assumed that this means bigger and bloodier wars, and perhaps an actual end to the machine civilisation. But suppose — and really this the likeliest development — that the surviving great nations make a tacit agreement never to use the atomic bomb against one another? Suppose they only use it, or the threat of it, against people who are unable to retaliate? In that case we are back where we were before, the only difference being that power is concentrated in still fewer hands and that the outlook for subject peoples and oppressed classes is still more hopeless.

When James Burnham wrote The Managerial Revolution it seemed probable to many Americans that the Germans would win the European end of the war, and it was therefore natural to assume that Germany and not Russia would dominate the Eurasian land mass, while Japan would remain master of East Asia. This was a miscalculation, but it does not affect the main argument. For Burnham's geographical picture of the new world has turned out to be correct. More and more obviously the surface of the earth is being parceled off into three great empires, each self-contained and cut off from contact with the outer world, and each ruled, under one disguise or another, by a self-elected oligarchy. The haggling as to where the frontiers are to be drawn is still going on, and will continue for some years, and the third of the three super-states — East Asia, dominated by China — is still potential rather than actual. But the general drift is unmistakable, and every scientific discovery of recent years has accelerated it.

We were once told that the aeroplane had ‘abolished frontiers’; actually it is only since the aeroplane became a serious weapon that frontiers have become definitely impassable. The radio was once expected to promote international understanding and co-operation; it has turned out to be a means of insulating one nation from another. The atomic bomb may complete the process by robbing the exploited classes and peoples of all power to revolt, and at the same time putting the possessors of the bomb on a basis of military equality. Unable to conquer one another, they are likely to continue ruling the world between them, and it is difficult to see how the balance can be upset except by slow and unpredictable demographic changes.

For forty or fifty years past, Mr. H. G. Wells and others have been warning us that man is in danger of destroying himself with his own weapons, leaving the ants or some other gregarious species to take over. Anyone who has seen the ruined cities of Germany will find this notion at least thinkable. Nevertheless, looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery. We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity. James Burnham's theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications — that is, the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of ‘cold war’ with its neighbors.

Had the atomic bomb turned out to be something as cheap and easily manufactured as a bicycle or an alarm clock, it might well have plunged us back into barbarism, but it might, on the other hand, have meant the end of national sovereignty and of the highly-centralised police state. If, as seems to be the case, it is a rare and costly object as difficult to produce as a battleship, it is likelier to put an end to large-scale wars at the cost of prolonging indefinitely a ‘peace that is no peace’.

Raymond Loewy--birthday

Some of us have no idea who Raymond Loewy was. Best said... industrial designer and probably best known for his design of the streamlined GG1 of the Pennsylvania Railroad. My youth longed for the model train engine but, alas, we had A. C. Gilbert's American Flyer line and they never offered the engine. Lionel did but Lionel trains were expensive and took up a lot of space. Nevertheless, the Penn RR GG1 was a cool streamlined engine and quite popular. It was the lead engine for the Broadway Limited run from New York to Chicago.

Google paid tribute to him today...

Raymond Loewy [Wikipedia]

Plato, Socrates, Phaedrus...and yes, Eros

"When Socrates Met Phaedrus: Eros in Philosophy"

by

Simon Critchley

November 3rd, 2013

The New York Times

Crazy Hot

Let me set the scene. It’s hot. It’s really hot. It’s the middle of the Greek summer. Socrates is in Athens where he bumps into an acquaintance called Phaedrus. They say hi. They begin to talk.

Phaedrus is a little excited. He has just heard what he thinks is an amazing speech on love — eros — by the orator Lysias. For the ancient Greeks, eros denoted both sexual pleasure and was the name of a god. That is, love has both physical and metaphysical aspects.

Socrates persuades Phaedrus to read him the speech (he has a copy hidden under his cloak). After a long morning listening to speeches, Phaedrus is eager to stretch his legs and Socrates agrees to accompany him on a stroll out of the city. What is remarkable is that this is only time in all the Platonic dialogues that Socrates leaves the city of Athens. He is no nature boy. Trees have nothing to teach him.

Indeed, the climate influences this dialogue more than any other text by Plato that I know. Such is the heat of eros described by Sappho,

Sweat pours down me, I shake
all over, I go pale as green
grass. I’m that close to being dead

Like I said, it’s hot.

The two men walk some distance along the Illisos River. They are both barefoot and walk in the water. Sweat pours down their faces. They decide to sit down by the banks of the river in the shade of a broad-leaved plane tree — in Greek, a platanos. A Plato-tree. It is hardly mere accident that the shade that provides the shelter for the dialogue is broad-shouldered Plato — from platus, meaning broad— the tree in which cicadas sing.

Socrates tells a story about the cicadas. Because they were so enthused by the Muses, cicadas sing constantly, stopping for neither food nor drink until they die. If cicadas are inspired by the Muses, Socrates suggests, then philosophers should be inspired by cicadas. The difference between philosophers and cicadas is that the former don’t sing so beautifully or so constantly … although they do get to live a little longer.

Lounging under a tree by the river, Phaedrus remarks that Socrates appears “to be totally out of place.” In leaving the city, Socrates seems to leave himself behind, to become beside himself, to become ecstatic, indeed a little manic. Love or what the Greeks call eros, as Socrates insists, is “manike,” a madness. It’s crazy hot.

Eros Is a Force

What is eros? More specifically, what is the eros of philosophy and the philosopher? We commonly understand it to be a force that compels physical love, but we might also speculate as to whether eros is a force that compels philosophy, a force that is somehow outside the self, but towards which the soul can incline itself, what Socrates calls a god, a force that perhaps even compels the philosopher to leave the cave in Plato’s “Republic.” Of course, it is not at all clear how the first prisoner in the cave emancipates himself. He frees the others, but who frees him? It is unexplained in the text. Perhaps eros is the animating and primal force that shapes philosophy and moves the philosopher to break free from the cave and move towards the light.

It is peculiar indeed that the enabling condition for freedom is a force that compels: a compulsion, a necessity. Unconditional freedom appears to be conditioned by what contradicts it. Eros, in making philosophy possible, somehow turns the freedom of the philosopher inside out, back to front. It is a nice, if totally incidental, peculiarity that the numerals of this year, 2013, looked at upside down, backwards and with a slight squint, spell eros (see here or here). Perhaps we can only see eros back to front, in the form of indirect communication, like a dialogue.

Philosophy’s Primal Scene

But how are we to understand the nature of eros as it appears in Plato’s “Phaedrus”? And here we approach the central enigma of the dialogue. For it appears to deal with two distinct topics: eros and rhetoric. My thought is very simple: I will try and show that these twin themes of eros and rhetoric are really one and they help explain that peculiar form of discourse that Socrates calls philosophy.

For the ancient Greeks, there was obviously a close connection between the passions or emotions, like eros, and rhetoric. We need only recall that Aristotle’s discussion of the emotions is in the “Rhetoric.” Emotion was linked to rhetoric, for Aristotle, because it could influence judgment, in the legal, moral or political senses of the word.

Of course, in the Athens of Socrates’ time, the two groups of people capable of stirring up powerful emotions were the tragic poets and the Sophists. Let’s just say that Socrates had issues with both groups. Tragedy, again in Aristotle’s sense, stirs up the emotions of pity and fear in a way that leads to their katharsis, understood as purgation or, better, purification. The Sophists exploited the link between emotion and rhetoric in order to teach the art of persuasive speech that was central to the practice of law and litigation. Classical Athens was a very litigious place, but mercifully did not have lawyers. Therefore, men (and it was just men) had to defend themselves and Sophists taught those who could pay a fee how to do it.

Socrates’ inability to defend himself in the law court and how such an inability is the defining criterion of the philosopher, recurs in dialogue after dialogue, in the “Apology” obviously, but with particular power in the “Theatetus,” as I tried to suggest in very first column of The Stone in 2010. The philosopher is presented as a kind of madman or fool, like Thales, who falls into ditches because he is contemplating the stars. This is why the Thracian maid laughs. The philosopher is continually contrasted with the pettifogging citizen who speaks in the law court. Where the latter is skilled in speaking in court against the clock — the klepsydra or water-clock that quite literally steals time — the philosopher has no sense of time and consequently takes his time, but uses it badly. The philosopher’s inability to defend himself persuasively in the law court leads directly to being found guilty and sentenced to execution. Socrates’ inability to defend himself leads to his death.

Such is the primal scene of philosophy. Socrates is the tragic hero whose death moves the drama off the stage of the Theater of Dionysos on the south slope of the Acropolis into the heart of the city of Athens. To understate matters somewhat, there is no obvious historical alliance between philosophy and democracy. In killing Socrates (and it is highly arguable that this was justified), Athenian democracy stands indicted.

Who Is Phaedrus?

Philosophy’s main question, then and now, is how might there be a true speech which refuses the corrosive effects of bad rhetoric and sophistry? This brings us back to the “Phaedrus.” The purpose of the dialogue is to arouse an emotion, specifically a philosophical eros, in the rather unphilosophical Phaedrus.

We have to be honest about Phaedrus. Who is this guy? He is not the kind of feisty, angry and highly intelligent opponent that Socrates finds in Callicles from the “Gorgias” or even Thrasymachus from the “Republic,” let alone the superior intellect of the Stranger from “The Sophist” whose stunning dialectical ability reduces Socrates to silence.

Phaedrus is a more simple soul. We might define him as a being who lives in order to receive pleasure from listening to speeches. He is like someone nowadays who compulsively watches TED talks. So Socrates gives him that pleasure in order both to please and persuade him. Not just once, but twice. Indeed, the sheer length of Socrates’ second speech on eros might arouse our suspicion for we know from elsewhere that Socrates hates long speeches, even delivered by the most eloquent of speakers. Why is Socrates doing what he hates?

Now, I am not suggesting that Phaedrus is stupid, but he’s perhaps not the brightest spark in Athens (admittedly a city with many bright sparks). There appear to be many facts of which he is unaware and he also keeps forgetting Socrates’s argument and needs constant reminders. “So it seemed,” he says at one point, “but remind me again how we did it.” And this occurs during a discussion of recollection versus reminding. Phaedrus forgets the argument during a discussion of memory. You get the point.

Much of Socrates’s rather obvious and extended passages of irony in the dialogue also seem to pass him by completely. Occasionally, Phaedrus will burst out with something like, “Socrates, you’re very good at making up stories from Egypt or wherever else you want.” Phaedrus is very nice but a little bit dim.

Directing the Soul: Bad Rhetoric and Good

Rhetoric is defined by the Sophist Gorgias as inducing persuasion in the soul of the listener. But Socrates goes further and defines rhetoric as what he calls a techne psychagogia, an art of leading or directing the soul, a kind of bewitchment that holds the listener’s soul spellbound. Of course, the irony here is that it is precisely in these terms that Socrates criticizes the effects of tragic poetry in the “Republic,” which is why the poets cannot be admitted into a philosophically well-ordered city.

However, Socrates’s speeches in the “Phaedrus” are precisely this kind of bewitching psychagogy. Phaedrus, who loves speeches, is completely entranced. His soul is conjured by Socrates with complete success. The dialogue brings Phaedrus to love philosophy by loving philosophically.

Now, it might appear on a superficial reading that the question of eros disappears in the second half of the “Phaedrus.” But this is deceptive, for the forensic discussion of Lysias’s speech on eros leads to a definition of artful or true speech. The dialogue culminates in a definition of the philosopher as the true lover or lover of truth, by which point Phaedrus is completely persuaded by Socrates.

The intention of the “Phaedrus” is thus to persuade Phaedrus. Nothing more. The purpose of the dialogue, as Alexander Nehemas has convincingly suggested, is to inflame philosophical eros in Phaedrus that gives him the ability to distinguish bad rhetoric, of the kinds found in Lysias’s speech and in Socrates’s first speech, from true rhetoric, of the kind found in the second speech and then analyzed in the second half of the dialogue.

What does this suggest about philosophical dialogue? I think it leads us to the view that each dialogue is radically singular, as singular as a proper name of its title. This is why the dialogue is called in Greek “Phaidros.” The dialogue is addressed to a specific and named interlocutor. It meets Phaedrus on his ground (it even walks out with him barefoot into the countryside) and brings him to philosophical eros. It meets him in his own terms, namely in terms of his questionable estimation of the high importance of speeches. It meets him by accepting his preferences, his prejudices, his sense of what matters, and then slowly turning his sophistical delight in speeches into a commitment to philosophy.

The Purpose of Philosophical Dialogue

Philosophy is addressed to a particular and existent other, not the empty personification of some particular virtue or vice (which is arguably the error of the dialogues of later philosophers like Berkeley and Hume, which can appear oddly contrived and wooden). Dialogue is the attempt to persuade that other in terms that they will understand and accept, whatever it is that they believe. Otherwise, philosophy is building castles in the air with its concepts, its systems and its bizarre jargon, which go right over the head of someone as unphilosophical as Phaedrus.

In philosophy, we have to meet the other on their ground and in their own terms and try and bring them around, slowly, cautiously and with good humor. Socrates does not say how awful he finds Lysias’s speech and he shouldn’t. It would mean that the dialogue had failed and we should note that Platonic dialogues do sometimes fail. For example, Callicles simply refuses to play Socrates’s question and answer game and the “Gorgias” ends up as a crazed monologue of Socrates talking to himself. Socrates doesn’t always get his way.

But the “Phaedrus” is a success in that Socrates completely persuades his interlocutor. We might want to say that a philosophical dialogue is more like a case study in psychotherapy, which also sometimes fail. Such case studies might be exemplary and thereby exert a general claim, as the “Phaedrus” unquestionably does, but each dialogue is a singular and highly specific case.

Philosophy as Performance

Socrates specifies the conditions that any rhetoric must meet in order to be a philosophical rhetoric capable of engendering eros. If rhetoric is a kind of psychagogia, or soul-leading, then a philosophical rhetoric must be based on knowledge of the nature of various kinds of soul and which sorts of speeches would appeal to which sorts of souls.

Socrates then goes on, and listen closely to his words,

    On meeting someone he will be able to discern what he is like and make clear to himself that the person actually standing in front of him is of just this particular sort of character…that he must now apply speeches of such-and-such a kind in this particular way in order to secure conviction about such-and-such an issue. When he has learned all this…then, and only then, will he have finally mastered the art well and completely.

Of course, this is an exquisite commentary on the very situation in which Socrates finds himself during the “Phaedrus.” He has to make his speech address the “the person actually standing in front of him.” Namely, Socrates has to speak to Phaedrus in terms that he will accept “in order to secure conviction.” He will have to say the right thing in the right way at the right time to the person right in front of him.

The sheer reflexivity of the “Phaedrus” is astonishing. It is not only a piece of the most beautiful writing that, in its final scene, denounces writing. It is also an enactment of the very conditions of true philosophical rhetoric theorized in the dialogue. It is the enactment of philosophical theory as a practice of dialogue. The opposite of a self-contradiction, the “Phaedrus”is a performative self-enactment of philosophy.

If eros is a force that shapes the philosopher, then rhetoric is the art by which the philosopher persuades the non-philosopher to assume philosophical eros, to incline their soul towards truth. But to do this does not entail abandoning the art of rhetoric or indeed sophistry, which teaches that art, although it does so falsely. Philosophy uses true rhetoric against false rhetoric.

The subject matter of the “Phaedrus” is rhetoric, true rhetoric. Its intention is to show that veritable eros, as opposed to the kind of vulgar pederasty that Socrates criticizes and which was the Athenian specialty of the time, is both subject to true rhetoric and the subject of true rhetoric. Philosophical eros is the effect of rhetoric, of language used persuasively. To state the obvious, sometimes it succeeds, and sometimes it fails.

[Simon Critchley is Hans Jonas professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York and is the author of several books, including “The Faith of the Faithless,” and “Stay, Illusion!: The Hamlet Doctrine,” co-written with Jamieson Webster.]

The plot thickens...Harper Lee vs Monroe County Heritage Museum

"Lawsuit divides town which inspired classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird"

Pulitzer-winning author Harper Lee accuses local museum in Monroeville, Alabama, of exploiting her literary fame

by

Paul Lewis

November 1st, 2013

The Guardian

More than 50 years have passed since Harper Lee published To Kill a Mockingbird, her gripping novel about racial injustice in deeply segregated Alabama. Now the town where Lee was born and raised, and which served as the inspiration for her best-selling book, has once again become the scene of an unsettling legal dispute that has divided the community.

This time Lee, who at 87 is profoundly deaf and almost totally blind, is not the author of the story but – on the surface at least – its protagonist.

In a move which has shocked Monroeville, Lee, who resides in an assisted-living facility in the town, is bringing a lawsuit against the local museum, accusing the small, not-for-profit institution of exploiting her fame and the prestige of her Pulitzer-winning book without offering compensation. The museum is fighting back, condemning Lee’s lawsuit as “false” and “meritless” and warning that the legal action could destroy an institution that honours the author's legacy and provides an economic boost to the town.

It is the kind of ugly public dispute that Lee, an intensely private figure who has spent her life avoiding the spotlight, might have been expected to avoid. Unsurprisingly, Monroeville has been awash with with rumour about whether Miss Nelle, as the author is known locally, was personally responsible for the decision to sue the museum.

The answer to that question is complicated, but it appears to involve Lee’s 102-year-old sister, Alice, and a close associate, an attorney who happens to be married to a relative of Truman Capote.

Capote is the other literary great who spent much of his childhood in Monroeville, living in a house next-door to Lee. The pair became close friends and Lee famously assisted Capote when he researched the Kansas murder that formed the basis of another classic, In Cold Blood.

Both Lee and Capote are honoured in the Monroe County Heritage Museum, which attracts 30,000 visitors a year. Most come in April and May, when the restored 1903 courthouse, which served as a model for the To Kill a Mockingbird movie, starring Gregory Peck, becomes the backdrop for a theatrical production of Lee’s novel.

Lee’s only published novel is one of the great works of 20th century literature. It has sold 30 million copies and, according to her lawsuit, is on the required reading list for more than three-quarters of American high schools. The book is set in the 1930s in the fictional town of Maycomb, a place almost indistinguishable even today from Monroeville, a place of 6,500 people which adheres to Lee’s description of “an island in a patchwork sea of cotton fields and timber land”.

The extent to which Lee’s novel is an accurate reflection of her upbringing in the town is the source of much debate – and is likely to feature in the legal case. Lee's legal complaint recognises that the book was “inspired by Ms Lee’s home” in Monroe County, but adds: “Nonetheless, the setting, plot and characters are products of Ms Lee’s imagination.”

On 19 August, her lawyers filed a trademark application. The museum filed an opposition, prompting the lawsuit served on 15 October, which takes issue with the museum’s website and gift shop, which it accuses of “palming off its goods”, including t-shirts, coffee mugs other various trinkets with Mockingbird brands. The museum says the gift shop generates a paltry $28,000 a year, and helps employ a few “pitifully paid” people from the town.

The lawsuit even takes a swipe at Monroeville, saying the “desire to capitalize” on the fame of Lee’s book is evident in the town’s choice of logo: a mockingbird and the cupola of the Old County Courthouse.

Yet Lee, who stopped granting full interviews in 1964, has herself made clear that To Kill a Mockingbird was partly rooted in the Monroeville she knew. Her father, Amasa Coleman Lee, was, like the novel’s Atticus Finch, a local attorney and state senator. There are obvious streaks of Lee in the young female narrator of the story, Scout, and her close friend Dill appears at least loosely based on Capote.

“It is and it isn’t autobiographical,” Lee told the New York Herald Tribune in 1962. “The trial, and the rape charge that bring on the trial, are made out of a composite of such cases and charges. What I did present as exactly as I could were the clime and tone, as I remembered them, of the town in which I lived. From childhood on, I did sit in the courtroom watching my father argue cases and talk to juries.”

For much of the last quarter of a century, Lee appears to have had an ambivalent view of the museum. Instinctively uncomfortable with anything that brings unwanted attention, she is once said to have complained about the “cottage industry” that has grown around the novel. But until now, the only time she is known to have expressed that view to the museum was in 2002, when it published a cookbook based on the character Calpurnia – an incident mentioned in the lawsuit.

According the museum, when Lee said that she wasn’t happy, they quickly removed Calpurnia’s Cookbook from the shelves – copies are still stored in the attic.

On the other hand, there is evidence the museum has had the tacit blessing of Lee’s family and friends. A plaque on the wall bears the name of the author’s nephew, Dr Edwin Lee, a local dentist. Some of those closest to Lee, including a lifelong friend, the Reverend Dr Thomas Lane Butts, have served on the museum’s board. And three years ago – on the 50th anniversary of the novel’s publication – Lee herself visited the museum, with the Hollywood actress Patricia Neal. When the museum sent Lee flowers, she replied with a note which read: “My dearest friends, the roses are spectacular and I love them, sincerely yours, Nelle Harper Lee.”

Since then, Lee’s health has deteriorated. Her infirmity partly explains a second, unrelated lawsuit that the author brought earlier this year against her literary agent. In that case, Lee’s lawyers claimed Samuel Pinkus, the son-in-law of the writer’s long-time agent, Eugene Winick, had duped Lee into signing over the copyright on the book. The case was settled two months ago.

Until 2011, Lee’s financial interests had long been protected by her sister, Alice, who was herself profoundly deaf, and relied upon lip-reading. Now 102, Alice Lee is, like her sister, known as a formidable character in town, having practiced law with the venerable Barnett, Bugg, Lee and Carter law firm.

The Carter in that firm is Tonya Carter, the lawyer most people in Monroeville seem to think has been given power of attorney by Harper Lee. There is no known documentary evidence to support that suggestion, and Carter has not responded to requests for comment. But two sources close to Lee confirmed that Carter had indeed been given power of attorney by the author.

Carter is also a well-known figure in Monroeville. She is married to Patrick Carter, a pilot who happens to be a cousin to Capote, and the couple run a restaurant, Prop and Gavel, a stone’s throw from the museum. With resentment over the lawsuit running high, some locals say they are boycotting Carter’s restaurant in protest. That may be unfair. Even if Carter does have power of attorney over Lee’s business affairs, she may still be acting on explicit instructions from Lee – or at the very least consulting with the author.

Legal papers submitted in the lawsuit filed against Lee's literary agent, in May, said that while the author's physical health had seriously deteriorated since a stroke in 2007, it had not affected her “mental capabilities”.

But in a small town like Monroeville, it does not take long for ill-feeling to spread. The lawsuit, much like the fictional rape trial Lee portrayed in To Kill a Mockingbird , is forcing locals to take sides.

Stephanie Rogers, 29, the museum's executive director, talks of two “camps” emerging in Monroeville, but insists most people are behind the museum. “I haven’t heard anything else the other way,” she said. But dissenting voices can be heard, even if they are whispered. In the Courthouse Cafe, across the road, a hushed debate was recently overheard.

“The thing about small towns like this: everybody will put a foot in if they think they can make a dollar,” a woman said. “I think it is bad that they’re acting like Harper Lee don’t exist.”


Harper Lee sues Monroe County Heritage Museum...it's about bucks

Thanksgiving Day comet

An October 8 view of the comet from the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter near Tucson.

"Comet On Target for Thanksgiving Roasting"

November 1st, 2013

StarDate

A comet that’s caused a lot of excitement is racing toward a close encounter with the Sun on Thanksgiving Day. It will pass about 700,000 miles above the Sun before whipping around and heading back toward deep space. That could make the comet easily visible to the unaided eye for a few weeks after the encounter.

An automated asteroid-hunting telescope, part of the International Scientific Optical Network (ISON) in Russia, discovered Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) on September 21, 2012. Some comet-watchers quickly suggested that it could become as bright as a full Moon late this year.

Continued observations, however, show that it’s not brightening as much as those optimistic projections indicated. However, the comet appears to be holding together as it approaches the Sun, suggesting that it could survive its encounter and brighten enough to see without aid in early December.

ISON probably came from the Oort Cloud, a vast shell of icy bodies that extends up to one light-year from the Sun. These bodies are leftover “building blocks” from the birth of the solar system, so they contain the same mixture of materials that gave birth to Earth and the other planets. Studying them helps scientists understand how Earth and the other planets took shape.

The comet probably is making its first pass by the Sun. As it nears the Sun, solar heat vaporizes some of the ice at its surface, surrounding the comet’s nucleus, which appears to be about three miles in diameter, with a big ball of gas and dust. Sunlight and the solar wind push some of this material away from ISON to form a tail.

The comet will get brighter as it approaches the Sun, but more difficult to see through the Sun’s glare. It will shine at its brightest as it passes the Sun, although it will be too close to the Sun to view safely. In early December, though, it will move into the morning sky, where it could put on a reasonable display for a few weeks.

ISON will pass closest to Earth on December 26, at a distance of about 40 million miles.

Nanotyrannus forever in combat

An artist's rendition.

"A Fossil Shows Dinosaurs Permanently Locked In A Fight"

by

Sarah Jacoby

October 31st, 2013

Popular Science

This month, two fossilized dinosaurs, locked in eternal battle, will be auctioned off at Bonhams in New York City. Experts expect them to fetch one of the highest ever prices for a fossil, up to $9 million. The pair’s prehistoric fight was intense. The carnivore, called a Nanotyrannus, sports a cracked skull, and 26 of its teeth are lodged in the body of an herbivorous Triceratops-like dino. But the fossil’s significance goes beyond the action; the find, predicted to be more than 90 percent complete, could yield definitive evidence about whether the Nanotyrannus is actually a new type of dinosaur or just a young T. rex—evidence that other fragmented fossils can’t provide. Discovered in 2006 on private land in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana, the cretaceous-era duo is priced too high for any museum to purchase outright, which is why it’s headed to the block.

Nanotyrannus [Wikipedia]