nunia
[个人文集]
加入时间: 2005/11/04
文章: 2184
经验值: 5079
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作者：nunia 在 众议院 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org
I highly recommend V. Turchin's book 'The Inertia of Fear and the scientific worldview' published 1981 by Columbia University Press. Until we all pull our resources together into setting up 'underground' and 'aboveground' 'Samizdat' system so that serious writings as Turchin's can reach critical mass, will we see a free China standing against any other totalitarian regime. This is from book's cover jacket:
'The Inertia of Fear and the scientific worldview' Valentin Turchin. Translated by Guy Daniels.
In 1977 the Russian physicist and computer scientist Valentin Turchin was forced to emigrate from the Soviet Union, where he had been involved with the Human Rights Movement, to escape imprisonment. 'The Inertia of Fear', originally distributed through the Soviet underground 'Samizdat' system, was used as an instrument in Turchin's persecution. It is a hard-edged critique of the Soviet regime and the totalitarian legacy of its founders - a moral and intellectual stagnation which Turchin calls 'the inertial of fear'.
Drawing upon his personal experience as a dissident intellectual and his theoretical training in physics and cybernetics, Turchin offers a descriptive anatomy of contemporary Soviet society and a historical analysis of its philosophical foundations. With a carefully developed cybernetics analysis, Turchin locates Marxism's basic flaw in its dependence on nineteenth-century science. The mechanistic world view which Marx and Engels derived from this science, Turchin argues, let to a social system that denied the primacy of consciousness and eventually hardened into the obscurantist dogma of totay's totalitarian regime. Turchin probes every aspect of social illness wrought by this system - from the stifling of creative thought in the arts and sciences to the economic disasters brought about by a rigid and unresponsive bureaucracy.
In response to the devastating results of totalitarianism, Turchin proposes a new approach to the understanding of human values and society which is based on the worldview dictated by twentieth-century science; he uses cybernetics concepts and methods in his analysis, as he does in his criticism. Turchin's conclusions are in great contrast to Marxist 'historical materialism' and vehemently anti-totalitarian. He writes: "It is consciousness which is the governing factor, determining the development of society as a whole..We human beings are free to choose our own fate. And if we do not want totalitariansim, we have the capacity to reject it."
In a pre-publication review of the book Professor Frederick Garghoorn of Yale University has said: "The Inertia of Fear" is a valuable addition to the literature produced by Soviet dissenters. It also sheds considerable light on other subjects, including the policy of the Soviet regime toward dissent, the relative strength of the USSR and the advanced Western industrial nations in the current world-wide sceintific-technological competition, and the state of mind of the Soviet intelligentsia...All who are interested in Soviet dissent will find this book stimulating, sobering, but at the same time inspiring reading."
Valentin Turchin, a leading Soviet physicist until his human rights activities led to his dismissal from his institute post, came to the United States in 1977. Among his many publications is The Phenomenon of Science (Columbia University Press, 1977). He is currently professor of computer science at City College, CUNY.
Guy Daniels, a poet, novelist, and translator, has, in addition to his strictly literary work, translated books by such leading Soviet dissidents as Andrei Sakharov, Roy Medvedev, and Valery Chalidze.
Jacket design: Valentin and Tatiana Turchin.
作者：nunia 在 众议院 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org |
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why 'nine commentaries on CCP' is immoral
