From: Hubert Mania (humania@t-online.de)
Date: Sun Aug 18 2002 - 04:33:54 MDT
Amara wrote:
> I quote:
> "Germany is at the moment ranked #47 in the international math
competition.
> Third world countries like the Philippines are higher ranked than the
> country of Leibniz, Euler, Gauss, Goedel and Moebius.
Itīs breaking my heart, but I have to admit that Kurt Goedel was from
Austria.
All the other evaluations by your friend are more or less right. But I
cannot share the pessimisms, that the next 25 years will be gloomy for
Germany. Since the 1960s Germany is second behind the USA
in world trade, so it canīt be that bad. But right now there`s much whining
about educational lacks and worries about the young *fun generation* not
being able to cope with the requirements for future knowledge society. Much
of the whining about Germany`s alleged descent in scientific reputation
results from comparing the contribution of German scientists to world
knowledge, especially mathematics and physics before World War II with the
situation today. Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Wernher
von Braun....just to name the celebrities. There has been a great backlash
since the war.
This has been subject of burned out teachers since I have learned to read
and write in the early 1960s. But lately weīve had a handfull of Nobel prize
winners and have some world top nanotechnology teams around, the
silicon-neuron connection was first permormed in a Max-Planck-Institut. But
one thing is true: men and women in government and top society positions are
very *carefull* when it comes to biotechnological issues. The horrors of
Hitler's Third Reich are still present. And research concerning therapeutic
cloning and everything that might arouse only the slightest associations
with Nazi eugenics actually has no chance of being performed by official
scientific research.
So, the whole transhuman agenda of human enhancement is being refused
because in the minds of most people it resonates with either Nazi or
Communist experiments. Germany's history and experience with both ideologies
is too overwhelming. This is no fertile ground for transhumanism.
humania
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