Says Heartfield: "Hari Kumar tries to make the case that Soviet agriculture did well under Stalin. But we all know that the USSR lost millions to famine in the thirties. We also know that the USSR was *importing* grain from the USA in the 1980s. There is no getting away from the fact that Lysenko's bad science was enforced as a dogmatic belief because it was supposed to demonstrate the superiority of 'Marxist' science. (A child of six could have explained to Stalin that Marxism has no special insights into natural laws if he had been allowed to, but not, apparently to Hari.)"
Reply: i) "we all know that the USSR lost millions to famine in the thirties" - do we now? I must fully assume then, that you have obviously refuted the evidences of Douglas Tottle: "Famine, Fraud & Famine - The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler to Harvard"; Toronto; 1987. Tottle shows clearly the deliberate obfuscation of photographs from the '30s' with the verified photographs from the Civil War era. A mythology ably perpetrated by the Hearst Press agencies; & Robert Conquest; & ... fascists. I would be most happy to review that new data that you would provide.
ii) Heartfield: "There is no getting away from the fact that Lysenko's bad science was enforced as a dogmatic belief because it was supposed to demonstrate the superiority of 'Marxist' science. (A child of six could have explained to Stalin that Marxism has no special insights into natural laws if he had been allowed to, but not, apparently to Hari.)"
Reply: Well a child of 6 maybe, but I am a child of 60. Ah there's the rub. There is perhaps a matter you have not yet understood. That is that if a problem is so flagrantly OUTSIDE the bounds of reason, that it may indeed violate questions of dialectic 'permissiblity'. The proponents of the gene theory were at that time arguing, that the nucleus was "the dictator" of the cell - & totally inviolate from the cytoplasm - all in accordance with the wisdom of Weissman. This is clearly stuff & nonsense, although it has taken DNA genomics to finally lay that old canard down to the earth. Except perhaps, in the more ideologically motivated quarters. Now, if I am NOT the child of 6 years but the child of 60 [Alas & alack, my bones tell me this is true]- at what age are you - metaphorically speaking of course?
By the bye, where did you get the "impression" that I was an un-reconstructed pro-Lysenkoist? A new rub I guess. It appears that your position, is that - "If you are not for "a", then you must be for "b"." An understandable but erroneous position.
- Firstly - Lysenko was - it seems a nasty little power-hungry man who - also resorted to fraud & calumny; - Secondly: Stalin - was NOT pro-Lysenko on the un-reserved basis that it is made out by Joravsky; - Thirdly - One gene - one protein = Biology = WRONG. It does seem that Lysenko's perhaps ONLY, redeeming feature is that he was RIGHT on this insistence. Oh, another one that he was right on, was the matter of developmental triggers-timings-critical periods. I work on embryology, & I might take the liberty of absolutely - ABSOLUTELY, [rare for me to be quite so dogmatic] - assuring you that ALL the rage in the embryology literature is developmental timing. [By the bye, have you heard of vernalisation??]
Even the Mr. Craig Venter's of the ever-so modern day world, have now been [finally] been forced to accept that these last two things are true [i.e. interaction of gene-environment & developmental timing]. Thus, in the history of biology - [Oh, please do not strain yourself to read my full text on this matter] - the real world dialectics of gene and environment have been clearly understood by those whose gaze is not blinkered, to strike at the Western mythology underlying the doyennes of the Gene Theory.
That is in fact, the only way to understand the tragedy of the life of Barbara McClintlock - who should have achieved world recognition for her work on maize genomics much earlier than she in fact, did. We need not discuss Richard goldschmidt who although brilliant & victimized by the Western Genetic schools for his independence, was in some ways often very wrong. I might recommend the definitive history of the cold war genetics - by Jan Sapp. Hari Kumar