Dr Faustus of Modern Physics - Department of Speech, Music and ...

Chapter 9
Doped Scienctists or Science
I have nothing to worry about on any level. (Lance Armstrong)
To seek means to enhance human capabilities beyond natural limitations,
is a temptation which a young mind may not resist and an old mind can get
used to. To resort to performance-enhancing drugs or doping to win Tour de
France is a veritable Faustian deal: It gives immense immediate fame which
is instantly defamed once it is discovered.
Through the history many artists, writers, musicians, performers and
politicians, have been using drugs to improve their creativivity and performance,
with varying success. Hemingway is the icon of a successful
writer/alcoholic with an unsuccessful ending. President Kennedy used amfetamine
to resist Khrushchev during the Cuba Missil crisis, but no drugs
helped in Dallas.
Doping in science can be given two meanings:
• Scientists are taking drugs to liberate themselves from the restrictions
of rationality.
• Science itself is being doped to liberate it from restrictions of rationality.
No drug seemed to help scientists to solve the paradoxes confronting classical
physics at the turn to the 20th century, and so what remained was to try to
dope science itself by removing restrictions of determinsim, causality, reality
of space-time and logic. This book asks if this was done and if so if it was a
crime. The reader is invited to give an answer.
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