WWII:began optimistically as Science, ended tragically as Engineering..

WWII, in other words, began in Modernism and ended in post-Modernism.

It should be understood at the onset that Science's task is strictly pedagogical and that it doesn't have to provide answers that are true, in any realistic sense, merely ones that are correct.

In other words, an excellent science experiment also is an excellent exam question.

Ironic convergent property of Modernity : collectivist thrust from reductionism !

Politically, Modernity (1873-1973 RIP) , had a strong collectivist thrust, exalting the collective nation, race and planet over the individual being.

At the same time, and in a typical reductionist fashion that at least had the virtue of consistency, this collectivist superstructure was fully explained as simply the consequence of many trillions of highly individual actions at the basement fundamental level of Reality.

Wartime Penicillin's coke-addled Janus Month : March 1943

In March 1943 (midway through the war) , for the very first time in WWII, a part of wartime penicillin research that had been hitherto public was finally and effectively put under official government censorship : anything involving the chemistry of penicillin.

At the very same time, other (hitherto effectively secret) parts of the penicillin story were about to become globally publicized in official government propaganda !

"I am not making this up", as Canada's Liberal Party is wont to say.

Contra Chris Mooney , SCIENCE & REPUBLICANS once exchanged bodily fluids quite happily ...

Michael Marshall

In the 1930s, when FDR and the Democrats were racking up their impressive majorities ,about the only place the twosome couldn't catch flies was in college towns ---- they voted Republican.

Yep.

Science - conservative Modernist/Progressive Science - was very popular with the not-yet-angry-wealthy-white-guys back then.

For it had demonstrated, from the example of Nature, that it was natural and inevitable for the big and the powerful to vanquish the small and the weak - and those red letter passages in the New Testament be damned.

(I mean had this Jesus guy ever even so much as run a single lab experiment ??)

Conservatism is the business of relishing certitudes in an uncertain world and Science, Modernist Science, sure delivered some beauts.

But after 1945, Auschwitz and Hiroshima, scientists - the younger ones particularly - started having their doubts and by the late 1970s they were coming on to replace the dying and retiring modernists in science's positions of power.

The certitudes of modernist science had actually been proven wrong almost as soon as they were publicly uttered but these failings were downplayed and buried--- until the post war post modern generation found the courage to speak up.

As scientists showed the world to be even more uncertain than any lay person imagined possible, the conservative personality left the ship of science in droves.

What college town today votes Republican? - the idea seems absurd.

In which case, Chris Mooney is right and I am wrong.

But look it up - they did once.

In spades....

The Science of CERTITUDES to the Science of UNCERTAINTY : no wonder conservatives dislike the new science...

Michael Marshall

It is a given that conservative personalities crave certitudes and fear uncertainty.

(To be clear - this means, for example, that Russian conservative personalities yearn for the good old days of Stalin and fear greatly
the fact that tiny Estonia isn't under Russia's firm thumbs.)

Modernist Science was full of certitudes - all lies of course, the sort of self-flattering lies we humans delude ourselves with.

As those lies were exposed - by further scientific activity - scientists gradually abandoned modernist science and became more commensal and green --- and more and more willing to accept that humanity's knowledge had its limits and human uncertainty would always exist about life and reality.

Conservative personalities naturally found this hard to take and abandoned post-modern science and this age of commensality and sought out the old science of certainty in whatever elderly nooks it could be still found in.

Conservative personalities haven't changed - never can and never will - that is what makes them conservative.

But scientists have ....