At around 8/5/06 11:57 pm, Shane Mage wrote:
>>> Not so. The truth is that "there is always wrath and contempt
against any Nazi held up as an Important Thinker."<<<
Ravi:
>> I presume you do not use any transistors in your life, since
Shockley was such a racist? ...<<
Chris Doss wrote:
> Right on Ravi. It's cheap demogogic, emotic crap that attempts to shut off debate and thought.<
(1) If I may speak for him, Shane was criticizing the notion that H was an _Important_ thinker, not as a thinker per se. That is, he was criticizing undue intellectual admiration. Even if we accept H as a thinker (perhaps a second- or third-tier one), however, Jerry's dissection of H's ideas made a lot of sense to me: H's thought seems inextricably intertwined with the fascist world-view. Of course, I am far from being a scholar of H's ideas, having been totally deterred by the density of his prose.
(2) While H's works don't seem to stand up under scrutiny, Shockley's contributions to electronic engineering do. For S, you can separate the transistor from the man. They still work. (Similarly, Marx's ideas work -- when applied critically -- despite all of _his_ faults.) On the other hand, H's ideas don't seem to stand up independent of the man. (However, see the disclaimer under point #1, above.)
BTW, is it true that Hannah Arendt was H's lover? or am I confusing H with someone else? -- Jim Devine / "Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats." -- Howard Aiken