BIOLOGISTS AND PHYSICISTS AND NAZI SCIENCE Fifty-five years after the end of the Nazi regime in Germany (1933-1945), studies of the active collaboration of a number of German scientists with the Nazis continue to be a focus of attention. Perhaps part of the reason for the attention is puzzlement: These scientists actively collaborated with a tyrannical regime whose essence was totally opposed to the very spirit of science. Hitler, in fact, is said to have dismissed German physics with a wave of his hand and a statement that Germany could do without physics for a thousand years.
What was in the minds of these scientists when they chose to actively support the Nazis? Was it an arrogant belief that their expertise in a science gave them superior insights into the enigmas of political, social, and economic realities? Such questions will continue to be pondered by historians, sociologists, and psychologists. Meanwhile, the contemporary German science community is struggling to deal with its past.
That's just the first article I came to.
You've noted yourself that science is amoral. And yet, you continue to pursue a values assessment as to why scientists would "collaborate," as to why Nazis erred in their determination of just which people to elevate or destroy, based upon the science of eugenics, which was drawn directly from Darwin. You apparently are mounting this as a defense of amoral science, because of the immorality of Nazi actions, choosing instead to focus blame upon the religion that provided you with your definition of morality. Odd.
cherry picking an editorial opinion afterthought?
read the rest
2) According to the new report, Ruedin lobbied successfully for ever broader criteria, and on Ruedin's initiative, the sterilization came to include the "morally ill" -- the Nazi term for the mentally handicapped. This category covered 95 percent of the 400,000 sterilizations carried out between 1933 and 1945. At Ruedin's suggestion, the sterilized included 600 children of black French soldiers and German women in the state of Rhineland, which the French occupied after the First World War.
Perhaps the most significant aspect of all of this is that these policies, which now seem the product of deranged minds, were not proposed and implemented by a few mentally deranged political leaders, but were indeed proposed and implemented by at least part of the German scientific establishment. Why did this happen? And how can the present scientific community prevent such a thing happening again?
The new German investigation has so far focused on the history of four Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, three of which were in the biological sciences and the fourth the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Metal Research in Stuttgart. The head of the research group that produced the report, Carola Sachse, according to the Nature news report, says "it is not known whether Nazi sympathies were the exception or the rule among scientists."