Ideology - Science topic

The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster. The market system is the basis of our civilization.

Its only alternative is the Führer principle.

Lv Mises

We are not supposed to ignore our cultural biases in humanities research but rather to learn to work around them. First try to understand what does Eurocentrism means to you. Second try to identify its manifestation in your work, last determine its role in your work

hope it helped a bit

Well Prof. Jamel Chahed in my case I have experienced several unpleasant academic situations where totalitarianism was imposed inside schools & universities in our country:

For example we were banned in Venezuela to have access to foreign journal subscriptions back in 2010 (in our university) when still there was not hyperinflation. In addition, a couple of years later forced to use a software called "canaima" (kind of incomplete linux version given to children in schools firstly and then moved to supplant university computers with a posteriori disaster).

I do not know the results (quantitatively) on how the authoritarian disaster ended since there are not statistics, because whatever happens wrong in the public education sector in Venezuela (more than 90 % of the total) is erased as soon as possible because there is not even a one good experience. Venezuela is a totalitarian failed land in all aspects including education, science and technology. Some university authorities were imposed by a fake supreme court without any meritocracy, and so on. It is too much to say in one thread.

However, anybody can see the results of the illiteracy in teaching STEAM core subjects in middle schools and in universities. Please some articles with results from polls conducted by one Private Catholic University are in Spanish but google translate helps. Lack & total loss of the most basic students competences such as reading and basic maths among many negative results due to Authoritarianism:

https://sumarium.info/2022/10/12/informe-ucab-los-alumnos-de-educacion-media-en-venezuela-cada-vez-tienen-menos-competencias-en-materias-fundamentales/

Kind Regards.

Dear Lucio Muñoz , let me bring in my simple point that economics is still not a science, but a profession, based on certain accounts and accounting methods of society. Even medicine is not a science, but more a science-based practice of empirical evidences via testing procedures. With respect to natural and exact science, I need to mention that the basic assumptions of biological evolution, physical thermodynamics and mathematical information theory are contradictory.

The ideological trap for scientific research and researchers is based on the financial decision: which research and researcher gets funded? Most scientific research is funded by government grants , companies doing research and development, and non-profit foundations; in a perfect world, money wouldn't matter — all scientific studies (regardless of funding source) would be completely objective.

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Great moments in science: Einstein discovers that time is actually money.

Gary Larson

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Very nice! I am glad:)

Individuals change society for good and bad. Individuals get angry at the system and begin movements to change it. Revolutions start with a single person. Sometimes we know their names - Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr, Gandhi, Hitler, Trump* - but mostly we don't.

Questions of ruling ideas and ideologies call for a more subtle approach than that of Marx. Karl Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia was a step in that direction. Proclaimed ideas may be quite different from what is actually believed, and both may be different from what is implicit in practice. Here be cognitive dissonance galore.

'Truth' has a variety of meanings, but the most common definitions refer to the state of being in accordance with facts or reality

If you could read in Russian, I would advise you:

Мочкин А.Н. Фридрих Ницше (интеллектуальная биография). — М., 2005. — 246 с. ("Friedrich Nietzsche: The Intellectual biography") published by the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

@ Ian Stuart

Thank you

Ideology implies certain economic and political orientations related particularly to power. in other words, ideology is essentially linked to the process of sustaining asymmetrical relations of power—that is the process of maintaining domination. Both ideology and Worldview are born in the womb of philosophy. However, worldviews, contingent on cultural traditions of a society, are clusters of ideas, beliefs, shared meanings or understandings, and practices that render social life possible. So, in criticism a distinction between ideology (of the write or novelist) and worldview of people he/she writes about should be made.

Thanks Larry for the information!

Dear Sergio,

Thank you for your suggestions and for giving the topic so much thought! My research is still at a very early stage, of course I am not limiting my focus on China but rather on power dynamics and their relation to cultural/academic practices. Your idea to approach the topic from the perspective of a clash of ideology is also stimulating. This said, the specific school of TS on which I am conducting some preliminary research in connection to the project, namely Eco-translatology, appears - also to many Chinese scholars, who cannot be blamed for expressing "biased" opinion - largely unoriginal and unsound from a scientific viewpoint, and may therefore not be a great representative of the "best ideas" you mention but rather an interesting experiment in academic practices. Anyway, these are all points that deserve to be further developed. I will also read your article with interest, thank you for pointing it to me!

Althusser views ideology as a functional necessity of all societies rather than being specific to certain modes of production. This is what the quote means. More specifically, he believes that societies need ideology in order for individuals to be constituted as subjects and made capable of acting on the world and conducting themselves as purposeful beings, such that communist society will also embody ideology and its own ideological apparatuses. This is different from what most scholars would see as a more orthodox Marxist understanding of ideology in that Marx himself used the term ideology as a way of referring to beliefs that arise from deficient material conditions and systematically distort the way people view and understand the world, as in his metaphor of the "camera obscura", so that, on Marx's account, ideology is specific to class society (and possibly only capitalist society, if his concept of commodity fetishism is closely tied to his earlier theory of ideology) and will be superseded with communism, under which individuals will have an unmediated and undistorted understanding of their society. In this sense, communist society for Marx is a society without ideology, whereas this is not and cannot be the case for Althusser. As part of his notion of the "interpellating" role of ideology, i.e. the way in which ideology constitutes subjects, Althusser distinguishes between ideology and science, and sees Marxism as a scientific view of the world, which identifies the operation of history through structures and structural contradictions rather than through determinate human subjects, and so in that sense he retains something of the original Marxist concept of ideology being negative and distorting, and differs from Lukacs, who identifies Marxism with proletarian ideology, but Althusser ultimately insists that we still need ideology because science cannot serve as an adequate basis when it comes to individuals being able to act in the world and in relation to other individuals. I think his essay 'Marxism and Humanism' is the best explanation of these issues, and it is part of the book Pour Marx.

Best Regards Esma Mustafa

Dear Carlos,

Thanks for your reply. There is considerable evidence that there are universally accepted values. Particularly see the work by Schwartz and Bilsky. The values are admittedly very abstract and do not map onto specific behaviors across cultures.

RE the original discussion topic:

Matějŭ, Petr, Michael Smith, and Simona Weidnerová. 2018 “The Role of Basic Values and Education in the Formation of Women’s Work and Family Preferences across Europe.”

I find myself in a similar situation. I think you can indeed test correlations to get some descriptive results. Even some cross-correlations can shed some light on the time sequence of the correlation. However, time series are prone to spurious correlations, so if you intend to infer causality, you might need to go beyond that. On the one hand, error correction models or OLS with lagged dependent variable might be useful. On the other hand, if the number of observations is too low, you might want to go for a more mixed-methods approach, eg engaging in some process tracing.

I'm fairly cynical when it comes to politics. The way I have interpreted the term "post truth" is more akin to "post everyone being constrained to believe in the politically correct narrative, truisms, orthodoxy, formulae, of the self appointed elite BSers."

What is "truth," in politics, other than what the politicians claim it is? What gives politicians the right to claim that political ideas nowadays can be untruthful, just because they go counter to their mantra?

I'll grant that Trump's way of playing fast and loose with the details will lend credence to such self-serving terms as "post truth," but the phony nature of the term becomes obvious when the naysayers seem unable to get beyond minor errors in Trump's ability to get the ultimate decimal fractions exactly right.

Enfin bref, "post truth" is a term that can only be used by those self-important individuals who think they have the corner on "truth." Reminiscent of religious fundamentalism.

Hello,

You may want to look into books by Joerg Rieger to get the neo-Marxist Christian view. His book with Rosemarie Henkel-Rieger titled “United We Are a Force: How Faith and Labor Can Overcome America’s Inequalities” is a look at how Christian theology can work with labor movements.

All ideology implies Praxis this could be religious, political and, as Changguang Jie says, depends of the ruling class. But democracy in a country, in its basis, try to make normal, or at least accept by tolerance the existence of a range of ideologies. In democracies, the most common kind of tolerance are religious, and religions are based in praxis. I do not know all countries, but I believe that's a lot of religious (television and radio) channels around the word. Also we have political channels in Television and Radio too.

Dear Dr. Emad

His Majesty, God created man and created him in the best calendar an mind and was close to him i mean to make the mind of human and instinct, which makes him different from the angels and animals and make love in the heart of the human But evil intervened in the delusion of human where the entry of hatred between humans and thank you.

Regards

Dr. Malik

Dear Claudio,

You might be interested in this article by Stéphane Legrand. I don't think you will necessarily find names that "fit" Foucault's definition, but the author proposes interesting approaches to Foucault's relations to marxism and marxists.

Best regards

Denis

I'm not convinced that education is structured to encourage profound thinking.  Indeed, if we are limiting observation to the undergraduate level, it isn't providing either knowledge  or thinking ability.  Arum and Rosa (2011) reported that about 40% of undergraduates showed no evidence of improved critical thinking after two full years of university work.  I still remember a study from 20 years ago conducted among undergraduates at the University of Florida, asking participants to look at an outline map of North America and asking them to identify the state of Florida.  Only 11% answered correctly.  More recently, I asked one of my classes to name the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, and no one had a clue.  I had quite a few Japanese students in that class, so I then asked--in all fairness, I thought--the name of the Japanese prime minister.  No one knew, not even the Japanese students.

With regard to ideology, my view is that we all are vulnerable to ideological manipulation.  Young people are no doubt more susceptible owing to the fact that they are naive about people and how the world works.  Consider how eagerly undergraduates here in the States engage in uncivil actions to prevent conservatives from speaking on college campuses, yet how adamant they are in claiming freedom of expression for themselves.  Issues today are so complex that we all struggle to separate right from not-so-right.  Do we believe that all young people should have access to college?  Well, sure.  Do we believe that we should lower the admission standards--a necessary act--in order to achieve that goal?  Well, the answer depends on our ideology and our sense and definition of "fairness."  Both propositions are governed by ideology--but they are in conflict.

I believe that every identity has an ideological component, in some identities it is stronger in some identities it is weaker (Ehala 2015). This ideologgical component is expressed in the form of "core values" (Smolicz 1981), or "sacred values" (Tetlock 2003). So in your case, the core values of Maoist identity/ideology and ethnic identities were in conflict, I think. All three papers should be available online. If you do not have access, I can send. 

Ehala, M. 2015 "Blurring of collective identities in the post-Soviet space". Sociolinguistic Studies, 9 (2 August 2015), 1 - 26. Available From: http://ekkam.ut.ee/et/data/uploads/martini-artiklid/blurring-published.pdf

Smolicz, J. (1981). Core values and cultural identity. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 4(1), 75-90.

Tetlock, P. E. (2003). Thinking the unthinkable: Sacred values and taboo cognitions. Trends in cognitive sciences, 7(7), 320-324.

To the extent that followers of any one religion believe that they are following 'the right and only path' in this world, perhaps toward some kind of salvation in the next, then religion must inherently tend to an exclusion continuum.

Therefore, it seems to me that you need to be studying 'us' versus 'them', in which study, stereotyping will surface.

Perhaps a Phenomenological approach?

Thank you, Girish Sir. 

Mathew Sharpe and Geoff Boucher: Žižek and Politics: A Critical Introduction may be of some help to you.

In addition to what Dr. Grover mentioned above, opposition to Israel was one the main goals of Nasserite Arab Nationalism. Further, Nasserism was mainly in Egypt and Syria but Baath party has different national permutations. With respect to nationalism, Baathism might have a stronger nationalist component than Nasserism.  

Whatever the motives of professional politicians – often suspect and sometimes well-meaning – clearly, as Pannilage Upali proints out, a great many people are involved in politics to make the world a better place, not through gaining Power but through giving people power over their own lives and those of their communities. (Power with a capital P vs power with a lower case p: a Spinozan distinction between control over others vs self-constitution, highlighted and adapted by Gilles Deleuze and Antonio Negri.) This was explicit in Emiliano Zapata’s refusal to “seize power” during the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) and it has been a cornerstone of the indigenous Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas, Mexico since 1994. See John Holloway’s formulation in Changing the World without Taking Power: the meaning of revolution today (2010).

the internet provides a powerful and accessible means for radical ideas to be shared and reinforced among st large audiences. motivational factors make it more likely that someone may want to utilize the favorable conditions presented by modern technology to subscribe to radicalized ideas. Of course, with  large percentages of the world’s population in poverty and indeed many sections of wealthier societies experiencing varying levels of discrimination on grounds such as ethnicity or religion, these motivational factors alone are not enough to explain how an individual could be radicalized. It is perhaps the ideologies of groups which are the key area where a difference can be seen between radicalization and violent radicalization.

Perhaps it would help to start by defining "liberalism," which used to mean belief in liberty but in some quarters has come to mean advocacy of equality.

The solution has tended to be reflexivity, which is how one escapes any subjectively closed circle.  if you google Fairclough reflexivity on scholar.google.com, you'll find several papers that are citable that take one perspective or another on helping to solve the issue.

"implicit metapragmatic strategies" are one way of speaking about "norms" and can be addressed from a variety of angles - Politeness Theory, for instance, can be seen as a description of several codified implicit metapragmatic strategies (see Gino Eelen (2000) A Critique of Politeness Theories). Another angle is that of theorized indexicality (the language-ideological angle, simply put), and here here, Goffman's "Frames" (and attached to it notions such as footing and entregisterment) can be very inspiring, especially when read through the angle of Agha (2007, Language and Social Relations). Agha stresses the "emblematic" function of certain "frame/register triggers" - particular formal patterns (a word, an intonation contour, a syntactic pattern, a code switch etc) invoke an entire set of expected follow-ups, where "expected" stands for normatively patterned and ordered (also therefore: mutually ratified) discourse in such a way that recognizably meaningful exchanges are enabled. Let's take an example. Two relative strangers at a reception are talking about a joint acquaintance, first in superficial and polite terms restricted to standard descriptive utterances such as "he's quite a force in our field", "he has a very good reputation", until the moment where one of them says "to be honest, he's a bastard"; this, then opens a space in which tone, contents and even variety can change from formal to informal, from superficial to anecdotal gossip, etc. There has been a shift in implicit metapragmatic strategy, one can say.

For any bounded system, energy in - energy out across the boundaries = energy accumulated inside the boundaries. For instance, using this formula you can easily express the rate of temperature change in an insulated stirred tank containing an electrical heater as a function of the mass flow through the tank, the fluid heat capacity and density, the tank volume and the heater power.

I think a large part of the problem with evaluating NPG or NPM is the absence of an adequate, multi-disciplinary and historical theoretical framework and associated empirical methodology. At present we  have academics and policy makers from different fields and divergent interests examining issues in a fragmented manner.

Bevir's work on governance makes an effort to give an overarching view of the field of governance which is great. But, it remains too abstract as there is again an absence of a 'point of view' from which  purchase can be gained in order to make the notion of governance one which can be fruitfully employed to investigate concrete problems.

The problem of evaluation here could be tackled at two levels: looking at the politics/political economy of NPM and NPG and/or looking at their epistemology. ie. using two foundational disciplines to provide deeper-level explanation and understanding.

 I try to do the former in: > W Gill-Mclure (2014) 'The politics of managerial reform in UK local government: a study of control, conflict and resistance 1880s to present', Labor History 55 (3), 365-388. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0023656X.2014.913417

and the former  in a paper examining paradigm shifts in science - in particular in industrial relations:

My answer may seem to be unusual since I'll approach the subject from a chemist's bird's eyes. In chemistry, we used to classify catalysts into (2) types: (i) Homogeneous (which means that the catalyst exists in the same phase as reactants). (ii) Heterogeneous (which indicates that the catalyst exists in a phase different from the phases of the reactants). This classification went on for years & is still adopted in general introductory courses.

Recently, progress in the field of catalysis increased the types to (4). The two additional types are: (iii) Homogeneously heterogenized catalysts. (iv) Heterogeneously homogenized catalysts.

Now, apply types (iii & iv) to answer the question about co-existence between nationalism and multiculturalism within a national state setting and there ought to be a way out from what appears to be a paradox. Human intelligence can work out a satisfactory resolution which is good for all provided that earnest intentions prevail.  

Dear Shahla,

Speaking from my personal experience, the best way to analyze proverbs is to use to cognitive semantic approach and view each proverb as a metonymic reframing of a general situation (in your case gender-related inheritance rights violation) as a specific one (the situation presented in each one of the proverbs you'll be analyzing). As to situations, they are defined by: 1) their temporal frame; 2) the agents and the patients/beneficiaries involved in the activity; 3) the activity itself (state, dynamic state, process or event). In any case, you can perform deep structure analysis of each [proverb first (The case for case revisited, Fillmore 1968) and then, after you've uncovered the essence of each situation under scrutiny, you can turn your attention to the semantic component of each proverb. The question you need to ask here is, What are the means of conceptualizing a highly abstract sphere of life, such as  ideology or culture, as a specific event, activity or process. For example, in Bulgarian we have a proverb that says, He who bends his head low does not get hurt by a sword. Historically, this is a reflection of the time when Bulgaria was dominated by different invaders, but the specific situation through which this is conceptualized is one of taming violence through obedience and docility.

An important problem you need to solve, however, before you start the analysis is the criteria of excerpting your corpus. One way to do so is to look for proverbs with certain lexical items as key semantic components. Another way to compile your data is to think of a prototypical specific situation (say family relations and the obligations of women in the house) and take out all the proverbs that relate to this. Then you can short-list only those that are associated to the issue of ideology.

To illustrate this technique, I'm sending you a relevant excerpt from my PhD thesis.

Good luck in  your research,

Milena

TCI-R includes a dimension called "Transcendence". That dimension is divided in facets:

Self-forgetful vs. self-conscious experience.

Transpersonal identification vs. self-isolation.

Spiritual acceptance vs. rational materialism.

Enlightened vs. objective

Idealistic vs. practical

I don't know if you want this kind of approach, if not try looking for "meaning" in life or something related.

I think majority of scholars nowadays do not think about oral coposition of Homeric poems, but rather as written texts in the culture full of oral poetry.

Here are a few other good papers and books:

PIVEN, Frances Fox, CLOWARD Richard A. Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail, New York: Blackwell, 1979.

JACOBS, Lawrence R, SKOCPOL, Theda (dir). Inequality and American democracy, New York : Russell Sage Foundation, 2005.

BÈGUE, Murielle. Le rapport au politique des citoyens en situation défavorisée. Une comparaison européenne : France, Grande-Bretagne, Espagne. Sous la direction de Serge Paugam. Thèse de doctorat : Sociologie : Paris : Institut d’Études Politiques, 2007.

OESCH, Daniel. « Explaining workers’ support for right-wing populist parties in Western Europe : Evidence from Austria, Belgium, France, Norway and Switzerland », International Political Science Review, vol. 29, n° 3, pp.349-373, 2008.

DIERCKX, Danielle, FRANCQ, Bernard. « Participation politique des personnes en pauvreté », in DIERCKX, Danielle, VAN HERCK, Nicolas, VRANKEN, Jan (dir.). Pauvreté en Belgique, Leuven : Acco, 2010.

MAYER, Nonna. « Les effets politiques de la crise : le vote des personnes pauvres et précaires en 2012 », Informations sociales, vol.6, n°180, 2013, pp.52-59.

MAYER, Nonna. « Bring the poor back in ! Inequalities, welfare and politics », European Political Science, 13, 2014, pp.187-200.

Yes. My research question is to identify the influence of ideology on women's movements. Secondly to access how the organizations are guided by a particular ideology?

Thanks for mentioning my piece, Ferenc. I think Marcelo is talking about modal realism and moral realism, neither of which has much to do with political realism. As to why the latter is popular now, well, I wouldn't say it's popular with the mainstream of the discipline, but it may be popular with those who perceive the mainstream to be in crisis, or plain boring.

In our University we have experience of different academic tutors from partner colleges contributing to a degree programme delivered by the University. My experience of this form of pedagogy has been very positive. The programme is an early childhood studies degree that requires different speicalisms to come together if pedagogy is to be successful. This pedagogical approach appears to be a means of meeting the requirements of differentiated learners.

Philadelphia, PA

Dear all, 

I am still wondering about Professor Horcher's proposals on recent developments in political theory in GB and in Europe generally, and I hope we will see some further contributions along those lines. 

I came across the following short "cartoon" analysis of the European debt crisis, which I hope may be of interest to readers of this thread:

I thought this worth a look, if only as providing some talking points. I'm sure that elements of the account may be disputed. In spite of that, the piece may be useful in getting at some features of the economic problems in Europe and their relation to political questions and problems. I want to see Europe growing again. 

This "cartoon" analysis places considerable emphasis on the idea of the need for a unified fiscal policy among the members of the Euro zone. The idea seems to be that the ECB provides a single monetary policy, but that low interest rates and political pressure brought on excessive borrowing leading to very significant economic problems for countries needing to service very high levels of debt. The connected austerity policies have proved very burdensome in several European countries. In the past, Euro zone constraints upon national fiscal policies have prove ineffective, but these have been insisted upon as a condition of debt bailouts. 

An alternative to unification of fiscal policies across the Euro zone might be very significant banking regulation at the level of the Euro zone. In any case, it seems that all the proposed solutions have various political difficulties. (There are very significant political pressures to keep interest rates very low.) So, one might say, that there is a problem of "governability" in the Euro zone. As is emphasized by various Euro-skeptics, and which I take to be true, there has never been a successful monetary union which did not involve very significant political union. Still Europe wants to have its monetary union (and I don't think that "the Euro has failed") without sufficient political union. Certainly, the theme of European federalism has been widely resisted in recent years.  We may recall the time when "ever closer union" was a unifying goal of the E.U. 

My own sympathizes rest with the gigantic efforts and achievements of the E.U., and emphasis on problems here do not put this in doubt for me at least. 

H.G. Callaway

Christian Krötzl in the University of Tampere has made his dissertation concerning to pilgrimage and traveliing during Middle Age. Christian.Krotzl@uta.fi

It is important to remember that the so-called "semiotic square" is derived from "Aristotle's Logical Square" and therefore a projection of classical Aristotelian (formal) logic, with its advantages and drawbacks. Its main virtue as I see it is in helping specify terms that stand in some form of determined relationship (contrariety - contradiction - implication). Therefore it may be of great help in reducing the vagueness or "fuzziness" of certain concepts which are used in building theories or interpretive models, especially when the terms that express these concepts are also everyday words, and thus often polysemical. Right now, for instance, I am working on demonstrating, via several case studies, that 'Public vs. Private' is not a valid category, even though it has informed---and continues to inform---scholarship in any number of domains. So, in the end, it does indeed devolve into semantics, in the sense that it contributes to (better) defining the words that we use to express concepts in our research---and a lot can hinge on words when they happen to be common rather than technical terms with a very precise and stable definition.

I've following climate negotiations through the analysis of publicly available documents, internal drafts, and interviews with negotiators from Brazil and other countries. I've also had the chance to help other sectors of the government to align their strategic plans with a better understanding of the international context. Since I'm still involved in this process, I did not have the chance to reflect deep and hard this issue, but I have developed some preliminary thoughts that could address your question:

1) International negotiations are extremely hermetic to outsiders (including policy-makers): UN institutions are a complex web of interlocking agreements, work groups, groups, frameworks, each one embedded in long-standing arguments;

2) Scholars are not doing a good job in untangling this process: in the view of negotiators, the bird-eye view accounts provided by political scientists fail to grasp the intricacies of the negotiation process. For instance, a senior Brazilian negotiator (with a PhD in political science) has said explicitly that in his view scholars "do not have a clue of what is going on". I believe this is partly due to the complexity of the negotiations, but also due to the dynamics of publishing which are more interested in papers that are short in size and broad in scope, than studies focusing on specific controversies;

3) Very few people make very important choices: given the distance between negotiators and government officials and the general public, quite often negotiators (and ministries of foreign affairs) promulgate their own agendas simply because they have not received orders to do otherwise. Of course, on broader issues such as targets, higher levels of government are involved, but "the devil is the detail", and many decisions about crucial issues, such as MRV, are left to "technicians" with little democratic interference;

4) Social scientist could play a key mediating role: give the above, social scientists could have a more central role in climate politics. But for that we would need to reconsider our publishing strategies and collaborate more closely with NGOs and journalists to give publicity to our findings and analyses.

I hope it helps!

Rogerio,

you are writing in his post:

"A person who says scientist will be neither an idealist nor a materialist, must be a dreamer!"

yes, this is a true. I'm also a dreamer... This is my nickname given by my friends.

I am a dreamer in scientific work, and in private life, and in my favorite pastimes (outside of academic work), i.a. in translated into Polish the texts of my favorite poet - Peter Sinfield (this term may sound strange, because I do not know whether the many of his countrymen - the British, include Sinfield to poets), which at least a few can be found on the internet (on the Polish website of the King Crimson group, such as the track to which I've included a link: http://king.crimson.art.pl/teksty/Wake/picturespl.html).

I want to say, that nothing is black and white. Actually there is no "pure idealists" and "pure materialists" among scientists. If the materialist does not dreaming about doing something great, it does not reach this. If idealist loses itself in dreams, it will not achieve anything.

I think, the best is to find the "golden mean".