Chapter 101 Chapter 18 The Magician and the Apprentice: Schools of Natural Science 3

3 After World War II, the political temperature of science plummeted.The radical ideas in the laboratory quickly ebbed from 1947 to 1949.At that time, ideas that were regarded as nonsense or paradox elsewhere became the standard for scientists in the Soviet Union.It was so serious that even the most loyal communists ever found the fallacies of Lysenko's faction unacceptable.What's more, it is becoming more and more obvious that the various regimes modeled on the Soviet system, whether material or spiritual, are really unattractive, at least to scientists.On the other hand, no matter how loudly the propagandists clamored, the Cold War confrontation between the two great blocs of East and West never aroused the political heat that fascism had aroused among scientists.Perhaps it is because of the traditional affinity between liberalism and Marxist rationalism.It may also be because the Soviet Union, unlike Nazi Germany, never had the power to engulf the Western world.

As for the developed Western world, its political and ideological voices have remained silent for a generation in the field of natural science.Today the natural sciences enjoy their intellectual victories, as well as inexhaustible financial support.The generous funding of scientific research by governments and big corporations has indeed encouraged a group of researchers who take huge research funding for granted.Scientists prefer not to fret about the wider impact and significance of their work outside their own confines—especially if they are military projects.Their only action, at most, was to protest against the authorities' refusal to publish their research results.In fact, take the example of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which was established in 1958 to meet the challenge of the Soviet Union. Most of its now Ph.D. The ranks in the army are average, and they don't ask too many questions about the theoretical basis of their work tasks.But back in the late 1940s, scientists were still agonizing over whether to join a government agency dedicated to wartime biochemical research.Times have changed, and now this type of unit obviously doesn't have so many troubles to consider when recruiting people.

Somewhat surprisingly, entering the second half of this century, it was on the ground of the Soviet bloc that science took on a stronger "political" air - if it had any.In fact, the main spokesman for dissidents in the Soviet Union was actually a scientist Andrei Sakharov (1921-1989), and it was not by accident (Sakharov was the main engineer of the Soviet Union's hydrogen bomb manufacturing in the late 1940s). principal).Scientists are outstanding representatives of the middle class in a large number of emerging science and technology majors.This class is the greatest achievement of the Soviet system; but at the same time, this class is also most directly aware of the weakness of the system.Soviet scientists were far more important to their institutions than their counterparts in the Western world.Because it is them, and only they, that make this backward economy, which is useless in other respects, able to face the United States with pride and appear as another superpower.In fact, for a short time, they even helped the Soviet Union reach the pinnacle of leading the West at the pinnacle of technology, space exploration.The first artificial satellite (i.e. Sputnik, 1957), the first co-crew flight (1961, 1963), and the first space walk were all pioneered by the Russians.Concentrated in research institutes or special "science cities", the authorities are deliberately soft-hearted and allow a certain degree of freedom to be eloquent and talk freely. It is no wonder that the environment of experimental research will breed dissatisfied critics sound.Because the prestige and status of scientists in the Soviet Union were beyond the reach of any other industry in the country.