My grandfather's obituary

My mum, Ljubica Erickson, was clearing out a drawer a few weeks ago when she came across an old Yugoslav newspaper. She was just about to put it in the recycling when she noticed that it contained an obituary of her father, my grandfather, Branko Petrović. Milica Durić must have sent it to us when it was published in 1968. As to why it was published in 1968 - 25 years after his death - I can only speculate. The obituary is unsigned and we have no idea who wrote it - perhaps one of his former school pupils? 
The obituary is written in the rather florid style of Yugoslavia under Tito, but it is still an interesting read I think. 
Mum translated it and I reproduce the full text here:

From: Students or Pupils’ Platform Kikinda (Yugoslavia) 1968

Obituary

BRANKO PETROVIĆ

“Happy people are the ones that die with the belief that they deserve the tears of the ones who survive them.” Frederick the Great

To some people life is given generously and all they have to do is drink it up, but others have to run after it soon after their birth and when they finally catch up with it and begin to share their life with others somebody comes along and takes it all away from them. Then instead of a spring song there is darkness of pain and sighs. The worst diversion that leads to this loss is war. That is where the dreams of Branko Petrović were also lost, the professor who knew that blood serves for washing of honourable hands and the greatest ideal of people in war and darkness is freedom. And one more communist of Kikinda’s gimnazija [high school] sacrificed himself. It happened when we needed him the most.

Branko Petrović was born on the 1^st of December 1903 in a Srem village, Lezhimir, in a family of modest means. There he finished primary school. After gimnazija he studied philosophy in Belgrade. During his studies he had many financial difficulties. That did not stop him gaining very good exam results and remaining amongst the best students.

Professor Heldrih, his colleague says about him:

“I knew him as a professor who was hard-working and supportive of students. He loved his work because he loved those he was working with. He believed greatly in them and he confided in them. Sometimes naively. That probably cost him his life. He was a man of wide culture and great zest for his work. He knew and read equally Marxism and the Bible.”

Professor Dragoljub Gavrić holds bright memories about this man, pedagogue and fighter. He writes: “I know Branko Petrović as a man of wide interests. Apart from his own specialism, he was interested in both social and natural science and even in religious studies. Thus he achieved a high level of general culture, which a person needs for work. In his relationships he showed great humanity, respect of other peoples’ views and he wanted to help everybody, especially the youth. In this respect he showed great belief and trust in everybody, but especially in his pupils. I think he hated exploitation of any kind the most. His colleagues trusted and respected him, both of which are necessary for an educator. He was an excellent mathematician and methodologist and by his teaching he created generations with good mathematical education.”

The house where he lived was a meeting place of the resistance. He was arrested several times. The last time, 16 May 1943, he was arrested in the gimnazija and taken to prison in Zrenjanin. Milica Djurić [Branko Petrovic’s partner] went several times to see Špiler [the Nazi Gauleiter of the region] and asked for his release. But it was all in vain, because this progressive professor was a “big poisoner of youth”. He was executed with 160 others on 6^th of September 1943. It was the Germans’ revenge for the murder of one of their soldiers in Šupljija.

That is how was lost a man who with his blood lit up one of our suns of our spring.

ATV4 - better than the Space Shuttle?

Two years since my last post, but the theme is the same: the ISS. Last week I was lucky enough to see not just the ISS on its usual trajectory, but the brand spanking new Automated Transfer Vehicle 4 (The Albert Einstein) on its mission to resupply the ISS.
I found this exciting - much harder to spot than the ISS, so there is a certain thrill just in succeeding in seeing it with the naked eye, and from the centre of light-polluted Brighton, but also a new space vehicle, and a European one as well.
But yesterday I realised that three Chinese Taikonauts had just returned from a week long mission to the Tiangong-1 space module. Equally, if not more thrilling, perhaps? So why is it that I have never made any concerted attempt to see the Chinese space programme in action? I think I am still slightly in thrall to the late 1960s version of space exploration generated by NASA.
Lichtenberg said: 'Our inability to learn in later years is connected with our unwillingness to take orders in later years, and is so very closely.' Waste Book K §24, 1793-1796

Final flight of the Space Shuttle 'Discovery'

For the first time I actually saw the Space Shuttle (Discovery) this evening. As the International Space Station flew over Brighton just after dusk you could clearly see the shuttle following behind it. It was wonderful to watch them both traverse Orion against the southern sky - despite the light pollution you could see them very clearly. There is a certain sense of irony here - this is Discovery's last ever flight and this is its last day in space. I do hope they are all enjoying themselves in orbit - I wish I was there too.

Lichtenberg would, perhaps, have been surprised, although unlike some of his contemporaries he didn't discount the possibilities of human flight:

'Who would wish to say how far the perfectability of man can go? From the child who reels and staggers on his nurse's hand to Terzi [a famous tightrope walker that Lichetnberg has seen at Sadler's Wells theatre in London], who would wish to assert that men will never learn to fly?' Waste Book E §78, 1775-1776.

Scanning the Horizon

I've been away from my blog for some time, largely due to confining my writing efforts to other projects. However, yesterday evening's BBC2 Horizon titled 'Science Under Attack' has given me something to write about here.
The programme featured the incoming president of the Royal Society Sir Paul Nurse, Nobel laureate and leading geneticist. Sir Paul presented the audience with a passionate call for better understanding of science, and for scientists to communicate their work in more open and understandable ways. All well and good, if perhaps rather predictable, and it was interesting to see Sir Paul gently probe some climate change and HIV/AIDS deniers. Science, Sir Paul told us, with its staunch scepticism, objectivity and endless questioning of itself, can provide answers but only when all evidence is examined correctly and appraised using impartial perspectives.
Then Sir Paul turned his attention to the controversy surrounding GM crops, a subject which, he thinks, shows a 'mutual misunderstanding between the scientists and the public'. He meets a leading GM crop scientist and the programme shows footage of anti-GM campaigners ripping up crops and denouncing GM foods as bad for the environment and for people. Sir Paul goes on [this is a verbatim transcript, commencing at 53'25'']:
'The controversy surrounding GM was something I really wanted to understand. I went and talked to members of the public to find out why they were so against it. And one thing that came up very often was that they were against eating food with genes in it, and that's something that would never occur to a scientist, as a scientist obviously knows that all food has genes in it, but, I mean, why should a member of the public know that? What had happened here is that we scientists hadn't gone out there and asked what bothered the public, we hadn't talked to them about the issue, not had dialogue with them.'
Let's take a look at this in more detail:
1) Sir Paul has 'gone and talked to members of the public'. Who, when, how? What did he ask them? What does he mean by 'very often'? I would not let my undergraduate research methods students get away with this level of vagueness. Personally, I have never met a single person who does not want to eat GM foods because the food might have genes in it. Does Sir Paul really think that all those anti-GM campaigners don't understand what genes are, that they are against GM because they might eat food with genes in it? Does he really think that the general public are so ignorant of science and that only scientists know that 'all food has genes in it'?
2) Sir Paul is very dedicated to science, as we might expect, but seems to be completely unaware that social scientists have carried out extensive research into why the public do not want GM foods. Presumably social science is of a lesser status than science so it is not worth bothering with. No point in talking to a sociologist of science on this topic - what could they tell us?
3) According to Sir Paul's argument GM foods would have been adopted in the UK if only scientists had explained their case better. So, it is all our fault, the stupid lay public, who did not understand the science. This line of argument reflects a very common trope in popular science communication, that the public are ignorant and need scientists to come along and enlighten them. [See chapter 6 in my 'Science, Culture and Society' (Cambridge: Polity 2005) for more on this].
4) About thirty seconds later Sir Paul goes on to ask 'How can we win back the confidence of the public?'. Try not insulting our intelligence, and sticking to your own precepts.
5) One minute later Sir Paul reiterates what the project of science is: an endeavour that is built on observation, respect for data, respect for experiment. That clearly, by his standards, doesn't apply to finding out things about society. Philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend, in 'Science in a Free Society' (London: New Left Books 1978), points out that scientists are often very unscientific about other knowledge claims, simply relying on assertion and status.

Is it any wonder that the public has concerns about science when the leaders of the scientific community operate in this way? The assumption that science is just great, and all it needs is to explain itself better, is a dangerous one. It assumes that there is only one valid form of knowledge, and that this knowledge can somehow be wholly objective. As Evelyn Fox Keller pointed out recently in an article in New Scientist on the controversy surrounding 'climategate': 'If they [climate scientists] are to be blamed at all it is for adhering to an image of science as capable of delivering absolute (and value-free) truth: an image most scholars recognise as indefensible, and one that, among themselves, most researchers accept as unrealistic.'

Scientists and non-scientists need to recognise their mutual connections and their mutual location inside society. Reinforcing an idea of the 'separateness' of science is dangerous and will simply lead to less trust and understanding. Sir Paul is, I fear, part of the problem not part of the solution.

Lichtenberg:
'It is a question whether in the arts and sciences a best is possible beyond which our understanding cannot go. Perhaps this point is infinitely distant, notwithstanding that with every closer approximation we have less in front of us.' Notebook A: 2

Time passes

It's been over a year since I last posted to this site, but then I've been busy and short of time. That seems to be the default setting for me these days, not enough time and too much to do.
Lichtenberg, in between some thoughts on the nature of genius, described my life: 'Those who never have time do least'. Notebook K, 1793-1796.

There's a war on

I'm struck by how little discussion, in academic life and in the media, there is of the role and actions of the UK armed forces. We are, after all, at war in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and British troops, 'insurgents' and local civilians are losing their lives in ever-increasing numbers. During the Cold War there was a lot of discussion of how the armed forces should be organised and deployed, what their role and composition should be, and who our enemies really were. Now, with both main political parties largely agreed on 'defence' policy, and with no serious military threat to face, there is little comment or academic analysis, particularly in the social sciences.
This is strange: the role of the military in the Cold War was far more prescribed and delineated by treaty agreements, parliamentary committees and external scrutiny of the MoD. The possibility that the government could send the armed forces into conflict without securing support from parliament and the country was unthinkable; whatever one may have thought of the Falkland's conflict it must be admitted that Thatcher had a fair amount public opinion on her side. But now the government deploys troops in Afghanistan without any public debate or discussion. Why Afghanistan? There are, of course, many reasons, although the ostensible one provided by HMG is implausible. Similarly with Iraq. And the impending conflict with Iran. How did we get to this state of affairs? It may be, for all that I find it a depressing conclusion, that the support of much of the population for our government's military forays abroad is actually there, in the sense that many people don't care anymore, and aren't much interested: silence is assent.
I would like to think that UK academics will take more notice of war and conflict: ignoring it as a topic for debate in universities is part of the problem. But whether or not that will make much difference remains to be seen.

Lichtenberg: 'A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.' Notebook E 1775-6

Keep practising

I would like to be a proper football fan, but I’ve never really got the hang of it. My partner asked me today, as we watched some of the World Cup, what the offside rule is. I have a rather vague idea about this – I know it is to do with where people are on the pitch – but that’s about it, and I confessed my ignorance. I never ‘learned football’ properly, but have managed for years to ‘get by’ with a little knowledge and a lot of luck. But even if I had had the rules of the game drilled into me at school it would have done little good for understanding today’s game: rules change and conventions shift with time. That means you need to keep up your ‘game’. To be able to talk football you need to spend at least some portion of your time practising your lines, and practising your delivery of those lines.
There is some irony in this: it is so ‘un-English’ to practice. Flanders and Swann’s ‘A Song of Patriotic Prejudice’, about why the English are superior to all other nations, summed this up nicely:
“And all the world over, each nation's the same.
They've simply no notion of playing the game.
They argue with umpires, they cheer when they've won
And they practice beforehand which ruins the fun!”

Lichtenberg loved England, living there in 1770 and again from 1774 to 1775 but had a sharp eye for the local scene:
“If countries were named after words you first hear when you go there, England would have to be called Damn It.” Notebook F: 1776 – 1779