You can tell just how important this and last century have been by looking at the amount of videos dedicated to each decade. We went from several decades in one video to several videos per decade. I love this series because it not only shows just how far we've come, but also how we got there.
I would very much like to know more about the three physicists who spoke out against lysenkoism in the Soviet Union. Who were they? how did they do it? Was their plea scientific or political? This could be a valuable example in how to effect meaningful change from evidence based knowledge.
Hank didn't mention what Vavilov did - he pinpointed epicenters of agricultural biodiversity. This is massive for agricultural scientists now, and key for those looking to preserve cultural heritage. Look him up, he was great!
Archeology isn't nearly as cool as biology or engineering, so I don't really see an archeology series coming anytime soon, sorry mate. I'm sure theres plenty on it on youtube for you to find, though. Just might not be as entertaining as hank and crash course.. Lol
Hey Crashcourse could you leave sources in the doobly doo so we can cite them for course work as "scholarly" sources for school work... I use these videos the understand concepts which really helps.
This seems like a great reason to do a Sci Show episode on vavilovian mimicry. Rye cannot turn into wheat, but a weed that lives with wheat did turn into rye.
Thank you for mentioning Vavilov, the great mind which could have saved many lifes from famine with his genetic studies on a real frost-proof wheat. No great deed remained unpunished in the USSR 😩
Bit sad the first one to say it at a big scale and apply it was an authoritarian essencialist who wanted to legitimize power, but yeah, at least now that's something most scientists are aware of, even in natural sciences who don't question the status-quo anymore since liberalism and republicanism took over thanks to these sciences. But there's still lots to do to debunk the common myth that science is apolitical, or that the scientific method is apolitical for those who know how it works.
Or, you know, it could be that they just want to be left out of the fight? It's ironic how we often celebrate self-identification and self-definition and yet insist on identifying and defining certain other things for other people. Staying out i.e. wishing to be left alone does preserve the status quo, yes, but that's hardly the equivalent of actively supporting or fighting for it, so why lump them in together? It's a good example of people seemingly trying to intentionally deny nuance, and often comes across as just a stealthy attempt at pushing the same old "you're either with us or against us" ideology.
@@ArawnOfAnnwn even if you just want to be left out that still says that you dont care much about [insert topic here], at least not enough to do anything about it. its not the equivalent of being for or against a certain ideology, but if you're apathetic to something other people find important, they're not obligated to care whether you're actively against them or not, because unless there's a vote your abstaining just looks like support for the status quo.
@@schrodingersGinger Sure you can say you're not obligated to care about the difference - and hence make more enemies. If this were a war between armies, your stance is the equivalent of burning down the villages whose people just wanted to be left alone rather than confronting the actual armed force. You would equate those villagers with the enemy soldiers. Guess who they'll support now? Congrats, you've just turned many of them into active opponents and hence post-facto created the justification for your own actions. "If you're apathetic to something other people find important" - hmmm, I think those villagers caught in the crossfire had something they found important too (their lives), but guess who was unconcerned about that view? What's the end result of all this? Bog standard "you're either with us or against us" behaviour. You can justify that to yourself all you want - it's certainly quite a popular perspective for foreign war, so yeah why not bring it into civil political conflict as well. What could possibly go wrong? May Nike (goddess of victory) smile on your holy crusade, sister...
Vavilov didn't die in prison, though. He starved to death in the Nazi-besieged Leningrad. Also, epigenetics today shows a Lamarckian approach, while mostly misguided, was not entirely without merit.
It's probably why the debate raged for so long, epigenetics and phenotypic plasticity showed just enough of a response that the experiments sometimes supported the acquisition of traits in response to environment and inheritance of them. But on evolutionary scales genetics wins the day, because neither of the others are permanent.
10:43 "Saying you're 'apolitical' just means you're for the status quo." Well well well, if this isn't the most important statement that has been said across all of the crash course serieses.
@@vilwind3522 This isn't propaganda, this is simply a fact. Nothing is apolitical. Even if there is no conscious political move made, it is impossible to disentangle from the actual human minds that did it. Furthermore, even if it was intended to be apolitical, it exists within a real world context where even facts are political. Do you think that transition is the best option for trans people? Well despite the fact that all of our plentiful data supports this, there are people in the real world that don't care about facts and will take their bigotry over the actual research.
@@MFMegaZeroX7 But those that ignore the research are the ones substituting reality for political ideology. The scientific data is apolitical in that politics has no bearing on their *ACTUAL* truth. People can delude themselves to an impressive degree, and can believe whatever they want to believe but nature is apolitical. It exists outside of ideology and no matter how stubbornly some people try, no amount of human belief is going to change it.
Crimson51 Then again, just because it’s truth, doesn’t mean it also doesn’t represent a point of power for something. Truth are basically bedrock for political point.
Science is political due to some non-scientists is high positions who fervently deny empirical observation in favour of an encompassing ideological framework. To disagree with such a framework automatically make one's studies contentious to _some_ degree, even if only perceived to be in opposition. Vavilov was seen as a threat to the inflexible Stalinist dogma because he seemed to disagree with the ideals of Marx despite the real observations of his work. Science is therefore forced to be political in opposition to the force of anti-intellectualism.
I've also heard that Lysenko believed that if you were to cut the leaves off of a generation of plants then the next generation would not grow leaves. Completely Ridiculous!
Maybe because it kind of sounds loosely like hussle, but for some reason the name Huxley has a very 'get it done' vibe for me. It's probably just me though.
We should be grateful to Lysenko as he very clearly crippled Soviet agriculture. This single act has been though of by many historians to have doomed the Soviet Union from the 30s and 40s onward. The Soviets were always obliged to buy a large part of their agricultural needs from the international market, a situation worse than even under the Czars.
The scientific method isn't apolitical by your definition, then, but it is politically indifferent (barring those pesky humans doing it). Maybe claiming that science is non-apolitical based on results isn't the best attitude?
I am glad you brought up social construction in this. Many who practice natural science, and most uneducated people (atleast in the west), are either forgetful or ignorant of this. Essentialism is a bad seed that still linger within the human mind.
Amazing to have a list that looks like this: The Modern Synthesizers composed of EB Ford published in 1931 Mendelism and Evolution, Thomas Hunt Morgan -director of the Fly Room from 911-1928, T. Dobzhansky published Genetics and the Origin of Species in 1937... who wants to add on to the list?
Modern Synthesis introduced several changes in how evolution and evolutionary processes were conceived. It proposed a new definition of evolution as "changes in allele frequencies within populations , " thus emphasizing the genetic basis of evolution. (Alleles are alternate forms of the same gene, characterized by differences in DNA sequence that result in the construction of proteins that differ in amino acid composition.) Four forces of evolution were identified as contributing to changes in allele frequencies. These are random genetic drift, gene flow, mutation pressure, and natural selection .The large differences that are observed between species involve gradual change over extensive time periods. Speciation (the formation of new species) results from the evolution of reproductive isolation, often during a period of allopatry , in which two populations are isolated from one another.
The modern synthesis and Lysenkoism I’m not familiar with the video that I had watched but the ideas was very significant to the people especially to us students. The new paradigm for biology one that accounts for change over time in species through exacting quantitative analysis on different real- world populations. Biology changed a lot as scientists combined different ideas, from natural selection to statistics in new ways. Modern Synthesis or “neo-Darwinism” uses Mendelian inheritance- Mendel’s rules to explain how Darwinian natural selection works in real time. People are very unique and intelligent because we don’t stop discovering and inventing different things that are helpful in our society.
We have learned much since Darwin's time and it is no longer appropriate to claim that evolutionary biologists believe that Darwin's theory of Natural Selection is the best theory of the mechanism of evolution. I can understand why this point may not be appreciated by the average non-scientist because natural selection is easy to understand at a superficial level. It has been widely promoted in the popular press and the image of "survival of the fittest" is too powerful and too convenient. During the first part of this century the incorporation of genetics and population biology into studies of evolution led to a Neo-Darwinian theory of evolution that recognized the importance of mutation and variation within a population. Natural selection then became a process that altered the frequency of genes in a population and this defined evolution. This point of view held sway for many decades but more recently the classic Neo-Darwinian view has been replaced by a new concept which includes several other mechanisms in addition to natural selection. Current ideas on evolution are usually referred to as the Modern Synthesis.
The Modern Synthetic theory of Evolution explains the evolution of life in terms of genetic changes occurring in the population that leads to the formation of new species. It also explains the genetic population or Mendelian population, genes pool and the genes frequency. The modern synthesis is the fundamental basis for all current work in evolutionary of biology. So why modern synthesis is important? Modern synthesis is important because it is the union of ideas from various fields of biology. It bridged the gaps between geneticists, naturalists, and paleontologists. And then accordingly the modern synthesis was the early 20th-century synthesis reconciling Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and Gregor Mendel's ideas on heredity in a joint mathematical framework.
Biology basically changed when scientists combined Mendel's and Darwin's theories or ideas that resulted to modern synthesis. Through this, scientists managed to discover more about our genes. It's fascinating to see different people with different nationalities worked really hard to know how life works in plants, animals, and humans. Non stop researching and study can really result to amazing discoveries. I'm excited to see how far humans can make or discover in the area of biology by the use of genetic engineering. But i'm also scared of the possibilities of humans to do anything just to get their desired result which can either be bad or good.
RIP Wawilow, Stalin was a monster. However linking it to Marx is wrong. Marx himself hated orthodoxy and generalisations of his work which is why he denied to be a Marxist himself. Trotzky was a agreeing with Marx´s personal opinion more than say Stalin, they both shared the internationalist perspective, such as Rosa Luxemburg and incidentally Albert Einstein. We can conclude that not only science but also the ideas of Marx themselves which are inherently internationalist, fell prey to the totalitarian state of the soviet union and there relevant part is still discredited today as a result.
I don't quite understand what is meant by "all forms of science are political." I get the feeling my definition of political differs from yours. My understanding is that science is apolitical because the process of doing science actively filters out political ideology to keep it from affecting the empirical collection of data. Sure, some people use science to further political goals, but the science itself isn't political. To claim so is like saying cardboard is political because some people make protest signs out of cardboard. (The video hasn't made the precise argument that science is political because politicians use science politically, but some people in the comments have)
One of the key ideas is that scientists themselves must make choices about what to study and all scientists live within political societies. It's a broader conception of political than, for instance, running for parliament or arguing for an -ism.
I believe he means that scientists doing science aren’t living in a vacuum. Discoveries aren’t made in a vacuum. The times can influence what we study, in turn, influencing what we discover.
@@ShinoTheTank Well that *really* wasn't implied in the statement made by the video. Also, though what gets studied may be determined politically, the scientific process is explicitly designed to be apolitical. Funding and field may be political, but conclusions are not. The video claims that *all* science is political, which implies that even if field and funding weren't determined politically, science still would be political, which I find to be ludicrous.
@@Dr.CaveCurinas I mean considering the entire show has been about how societies have influenced science I think it was fair to assume you would have picked that up earlier.
The conclusion that all systems of science are political needs to be qualified (or add 'according to a postmodernist view'). Just putting it there is lazy.
I mean... crash course tends to skip an awful lot of detail all over the place. There’s way more technicality and horror to eugenics than just racism. Yes if you elide that stuff it’s problematic, but including it loses focus.
@@greenredblue He described Darwinism and Mendelism very specifically. The description of eugenics was very dismissive. I would have suggested not mentioning it at all if diminishing the atrocities of the field was going to be the case.
Putting a modern lease on the past isn’t useful unless you are looking to make some political point. Scientists were doing the best they could using the new and powerful understandings that these discoveries opened. Racial sciences entailed many things that straight up violate our contemporary sensibilities. However, it’s not like these scientists were evil people. Obviously there is a record of heinous practices of various entities that were informed by some of these evolutionary and eugenics sciences, from the American eugenics movement to the Nazi racial policy. However, abortion rights and planned parenthood are still enacting eugenics polices that were very much informed by the eugenics movement, and it is in full force, being pushed under the guise of feminists ideology and women’s reproductive rights. But it started as a way of culling certain populations from the gene pool. I am doubtful that many people would say that planned parenthood is full of a bunch of evil racists.
That criticism of being "apolitical" may sound good, but have you thought about what you're saying there? How can a scientist be either political or for the status quo, when the act of using the scientific method is both reducing the bias of the scientist's opinions and upending the status quo?
Science that gets funded often is that which the status quo finds useful. The way science is reported is often from the viewpoint of the status quo. the scientific method is useful, but peer review isn't flawless, and outliers in data are almost always theorized about from within the status quo before trying to be integrated into more accurate understanding (i.e. even though it could end up "upending the status quo" the act of performing science itself doesn't do that since politics is made of human feelings.)
@@azertyQ Except that properly performed science still creates data that wasn't there before. That's the entire point. Thus, trying to perform science without also causing change is absurd, and historically has never worked out, because even that which the status quo finds useful does not itself maintain the status quo. To frame things only in terms of the status quo and whether it's maintained completely misses the actual long-term effects of having an active scientific community. As such, why would "apolitical" science be in favor of the status quo rather than being blindly in favor of whatever changes happen to come? Put in a more general sense, if a person ignores a debate both during the debate process and after a decision is made, including not paying attention to or simply accepting the effects of that decision, then at what point did they express any feelings about that debate? Also, your explanation in parentheses is a non-sequitur and doesn't match the statement before it. A healthy dose of skepticism before throwing away an existing theory doesn't rely on feelings, and doesn't exclude the simultaneous proposing of alternatives.
Even the best done research has some implications for humankind and will not be value free. Hence the term political. Not as an offensive term but saying everything happens in a certain socio-economic time and context.
@@anothervoice4831 But the issue is that science *is* value-free in its determination of reality. That's what makes it science. There is a world of difference between a normative expression of personal ideology and a descriptive statement regarding an objective fact. Just because it has implications for humankind doesn't mean it therefore has some kind of moral value. For instance, the shift from classical descriptions of gravity to relativity didn't happen because of some shift in social values or economic environment, it was because the empirical evidence showed that relativity was a more accurate description of reality during the eclipse of 1919, and this shift would have happened regardless of the sociopolitical context.
No, you're not. Trying to deny the scientifically established facts because of a political agenda, is a big problem in climate studies. Well, not in the scientific community itself, they have a general consensus on what's happening, with the usual differences in details. It's more when it comes to public perception and political application that denying that consensus and promoting quacky pseudoscience, is an issue.
While lamarkian genetics are not correct in that they prioritize environment and experience over selection and of course know nothing of modern genetics, it is true that through DNA methylation experience can account for some phenotypic variation. Not defending any of the theories or practices presented, just an interesting note I thought.
Not sure I believe the apolitical statement, sometimes you aren't informed enough to take a political stance on any given topic, acknowledging that isn't pro-status quo so much as an admittance of your weakness in that area. It's definitely possible to do scientific research absense of political agenda (though obvious bias might still play in) and that absense of agenda is what people mean when they say that their research is bipartisan or apolitical, and the idea that the truth is politically motivated is often used to dismiss it in the cases of climate change and evolution.
I don't think that meant scientists are solely driven by the political ideology. What I think it meant was we all live in a political context, where there are multiple theories that explain everything and suggest different methodological tools, the funding agencies determine what should or should not be studied and all scientific results affect humans in some way or the other. Hence the term political. In other words, just because we have stringent measures in lab, it doesn't mean our science is valueless. Just my understanding.
@@anothervoice4831 The thing is that science is descriptive, not normative. "Values" are by definition, normative. Additionally, science is a empirical description of reality, regardless of political context. Gravity exerts a force given by F=GmM/r^2 no matter if you live in a capitalist, communist, monarchist, or anarchist society, and no amount of human "values" are going to change that. This is what we mean when we say science is valueless.
GNSECtube a gene is a section that of DNA that is transcribed into RNA, bordered by an activator region with regulators somewhere before it and a terminator region after. After transcription the RNA may then undergo splicing followed by translation into a protein
The thing I don’t like about this definition of apolicity is that it makes it sound as if *remaining* apolitical means you will inevitably ‘be conservative’.
If you are reading this i hope you have a Awesomely Amazing day/night🔷🔺 To the people who got to read this all of your dreams and wishes will come true Love from a small youtuber who’s dream is to hit 20k
There's a bit of a mental gymnastics. Science is not itself political, otherwise it would be all lysenkoist. Science can be used in politics as it can be used for war. But science isn't war and it's also not politics.
And thus no, having apolitical science means that you make an effort to avoid politics from influencing your results, not being political and allowing some sort of universally agreed upon politics (as is implied by "supporting the status quo" since there are many approaches to politics believe it or not, and science doesn't completely shift every 8 years between theories like politics does in the US or completely differ between countries as politics does in general) push your results in the direction of "the status quo". In fact that's the exact same reasoning lysenko used; not similar, exact! It's a shame you have to spread this misinformation guys.
@@anothervoice4831 well I did say reasoning. Of course the conclusions are different since lysenko actually rejected all "capitalist science". The fact is though that capitalism is the status quo, so you can dismiss it by the logic provided. The main issue is poor wording as nd misunderstanding. As I said, science can be used in politics but it is not itself political.
"now, all systems of science are political ,saying they are apolitical just means you're for the status quo, but lysenkoism wasn't even science anymore" excuse me crash course but what politics does climate change or chemical evolution support?
But... there ARE racial differences in humans that matter scientifically. Diseases are science, race is genetic, genes present in certain races affect susceptibility to certain disease. That's "disease" in the sense of dis-ease, for those that want to pick apart the meaning of the word.
Those are genetic markers associated with certain populations, not race. What Hank means is that races like "white" and "black" have no genetic or biological basis.
Those are racial populations though. Parsing his meaning is useless, just as it was with the unattributed "all science is political" line. There are absolutely genetic differences between "white" and "black" populations. They aren't universal, but they're there. Just because it isn't a readily apparent racial difference doesn't make it not a racial difference. It is in fact a scientific difference between populations defined by race. That point that it isn't what those people were interested in doesn't change reality.
@@Tfin But "white" and "black" aren't specific enough to be useful in that sense. Africa and Europe have always been very genetically diverse. A white person from Norway isn't likely to have the same genes and susceptibility to disease than someone from Italy. Same things can be said for Ethiopians and Ghanaians. If the genes that determine your skin colour directly affected your response to disease then it would be different (although even then, there are multiple genes and alleles involved), but I'm not aware of any evidence in that direction.
Please don't shove Marxism down people's throats, as you tried to do in the video on modern Chinese hisory. It's highly opinionated, not factual to say 'all science is political'. That's binary thinking which is highly associated with incorrect predictions (See Philip Tetlock's work).
