Gerry Reinhart-Waller wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Brad McCormick, Ed.D. <[log in to unmask]>
[snip]
> > But back to teaching undergraduates: There is no physics apart from
> > physicists.  There are no grades without teachers and school
> > administrators....  (As Bertolt Brecht proposed: The reason the

(in his play "Galileo").  Brecht's actual statement is much
more poetic [citing from imperfect memory, it goes something
like]: "If the celestial spheres stopped revolving about the
unmoving earth, perhaps the peasants would stop revolving
around the aristocracy, the aristocracy around the bishops,
the bishops around the cardinals and the cardinals around the Pope."

> > Catholic Church did not like Galileo publishing the Copernican
> > theory in the vernacular is that if the people learned that the
> > earth is not immovable, the people might start thinking the
> > social order is not immovable either.)
> >
> > "Yours in discourse...."
> >
> > +\brad mccormick
> >
>
> Hi Brad, I found your above quote of Bertolt Brecht very enlightening.
> Especially that the Catholic Church wanted folks to believe in the
> centrality of the earth in the solar system.  But the second part of the
> quote:  the fear that people might start thinking of social order as not
> immovable -- hmmm.  This idea causes me much confusion.  The movability of
> social classes has been present for at least the past century or so but in
> most socialistic countries this type of social stratification did not work
> because some folks were always "better" than others.  And during the reign
> of Mao, the wealthy from the cities were sent to the country and the
> countryfolk embraced city life.
[snip]

To learn something about the "copernican" reforms of the *early*
years of the Chinese Revolution (the late 1940s), I would recommend
_Fanshen_, by William Hinton (Monthly Review Press).  Hinton was a
tractor driving instructor who worked for the UN.  The book is a
detailed study of how the coming of communism (ca. 1948! not 1970!)
revolutionized the worldview of the peasants in one Chinese village.

Another question: How might Cuba have turned out ha the United States
not done everything in its power to starve the Cuban people into
overthrowing Castro?  We know that, at first, Castro was generally
receptive toward the United States, but for obvious reasons he was
forced to turn to the Soviet Union.

Yet another question: What might have happened in Russia after the
Bolschevik Revolution, had the West not tried in every way it could
to starve the Russian people into overthrowing the Communist
regime, along with actually invading Russia soon after the
Revolution?  A "soviet" is not any kind of Stalinist political
institution.

> Brecht wrote during a time when our world was divided between the good and
> the "other".

No: Good and *evil*.

I had a teacher in graduate school, who was
a quite mild-mannered individual.  During the late 30s, he was an
enthusiastic "communist", due to the "depression" he saw all around him.
He was apparently not important enough to ever have been asked:
"Are you now or have you ever been....?"

> Now the new millennium world has everyone all mixed up and for
> the most part pro-capitalistic (as opposed to socialistic).  IMO, this
> social situation taking place in the new millennium has made everyone
> "equal" and "not equal" at the same time.

In what ways are Bill Gates and even the average employee of
Microsoft "equal" -- not to mention "the wretched of the earth"?
At least Bill's astronomical wealth has not yet made him
immune from dying someday, although I expect that even his
dying will be quite different from most people's....

> And in order for the world to
> realign itself into a workable group, it would appear that firstly the
> groups will align with nationalism, then with family social groups, then
> with education -- a world class stratification will take place based not so
> much on money but perhaps on scholarship.

That would be desirable.  It would even be a start if more
PhDs had some "scholarship", and not just mastery or some
disciplinary domain (an "art" or "science").

> Is this wishful thinking on my
> part or do you also see it as a possibility turning into a reality?   This
> question is addressed to brad or to anyone else.

Alas, I fear that the best astronomical analogy for what
is happening to the world's economic order today is not Copernicanism
or Nicholas of Cusa's noble idea that in an infinite universe,
every point is a center and nowhere is at the periphery.

The ever-intensifying pressure to reduce product cycle times
and the ever-increasing disparities in income, etc. seem to me
to be best metamorphized by the image of a *black hole*.

"Yours in discourse...."

+\brad mccormick

--
   Let your light so shine before men,
               that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)

   Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)

Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [log in to unmask]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
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