Henry Dawson vs Newton, Dalton & Darwin...

During his brief life, (Martin) Henry Dawson managed to have three seemingly wildly different careers : in the Military during WWI, in Academic Science in the interwar years, and in Popular Science during WWII.

But these differences are only apparent , not real.

A hybrid between a billiard ball and a bowl of jelly : Modernity's 'the horror, the horror'

Hard to imagine Modernity ever being really comfortable at the Seaside : hard to ever imagine it capable of being relaxed and comfortable that close to such an un-modernist miscegenation of land and water.

the "THEATRE" of war : 1939-1945

WWII started out on a note of uplift in 1939, with its three actors (Scientific Racism, Scientific Capitalism and Scientific Socialism) all united in eating the scenery but ended in farce in 1945, as the scenery proceeded to eat the three actors.

These actors can't be said to lack ambition.

All Optimists - without exception - are Social Darwinists ; all Pessimists are Altruists

Always the OPTIMIST

Its a Fact. Its a Dogma, a Law, a Commandment you can carve in stone - by definition, all 'blue sky' optimists must be Social Darwinists. Just as, again by definition, all cautious, skeptic, 'grounded' pessimists must be altruists.

Deniers: it is all about CONTROL not CLIMATE ...

Michael Marshall

No climate denier or skeptic is really claiming that Newtonian Science has no impact upon the physical world.

Newtonian Science's ability to impact the physical world , even the ability to blow it all to pieces, is never seriously denied by the deniers.

Impacting the physical world is the raison d'etre of Newtonian Science, after all.

What they violently deny is the claim that their science could ever become uncontrollable and unpredictable.

Oh, the horror , the horror !!!!!

Newtonian science, please remember, was only secondly a useful tool to better physically control our world.

First and foremost it was a mental health tool, to help some of us better control the scary demons of uncertainty, ambiguity ,mystery and imprecision that haunt the inner recesses of our unconscious.

It promised bromides of certitudes to its addicts and none were more addicted to it than the many scientists who became scientists precisely because Newtonian Science promised a way through an scary uncertain world.

Its never about climate with the deniers, its always about control --- we offend their core being when we say their entire life's work is out of control and destroying us.

They have spent their entire lives fending off the darkness of ambiguity and uncertainty with the nightlight nostrums of Newton and Dalton , and yes even Einstein .

Now in the twilight of their careers, they are terrified that our 'out-of-control' claims just might be right....

2011: creation of clash of 1840s darwin/dalton versus 1940s dirac/dawson

The "Four Ds" are not "The Four Divas" but two groups of conflicting scientists who laid the ground for the world most of us are destined to live , reproduce and die in - the 21st century.

John Dalton and Charles Darwin, scientists from the 19th century, still bulk out 21st science education for most of us, thanks to the ego issues of the teaching class, who can not accept that the world is not fully composed of definite answers to definite questions.

But our century is actually the dialectic result of the WWII clash between the scientific certitudes of Darwin and Dalton colliding with the scientific uncertitudes promoted by Paul Dirac and Henry Dawson, scientists definitely of the 20th century.

Plenty of irony in the latter pair.

Dirac's QUANTUM PHYSICS said the behavior of a billion radioactive atoms are predictable in true Daltonian fashion, but  the activities of any one individual radioactive atom is not.

In contrast, Dawson's QUORUM BIOLOGY agreed that a single individual bacteria was as dumb as Darwin said all the"primitive races" were, but that collectively a billion bacteria were collectively (and unpredictably) smart in ways we are only beginning to comprehend.

Both agreed that the smallest entities of matter and life were not as stable and as dumbly inert as civilized man had assumed.

Conversely, WWII itself seemed proof enough that civilized man was not as smart as he had thought.

From above, such Phaetons as Albert Einstein fell back earthward, while from inside the ground itself, Penicillium rose up in our esteem to meet Einstein midway to dine with him at Life's commensal table...