Resistance

GERMAR RUDOLF, RESISTANCE IS OBLIGATORYceal something extraordinary interesting and important. Then no trulypassionate scientist can resist anymore.2. Urge for Truth and Human DignitySince highest German courts have decreed that there can be a conflictbetween the urge to learn the truth and human dignity, a conflictwhich I will consider later in greater detail, I want to examine first whathuman dignity actually is. We humans ascribe a higher value to ourselvesthan to other living creatures, and consequently we often treatthem in a less than noble fashion. One reason for this certainly is ouranthropocentric worldview, which is to say that we consider our ownspecies to be special precisely because it is our own. The matter is notquite that simple, though, as there is a categorical difference betweenhumans and all other life forms known to us so far. The philosopherKarl Raimund Popper described this difference as follows: 67“the main difference between Einstein and an amoeba […] is thatEinstein consciously seeks for error elimination. He tries to kill histheories: he is consciously critical of his theories which, for this reason,he tries to formulate sharply rather than vaguely. But theamoeba cannot be critical because it cannot face its hypotheses:they are part of it. (Only objective knowledge is criticizable. Subjectiveknowledge becomes criticizable when we say what we think; andeven more so when we write it down, or print it.)”At another place Popper says: 68“Subjective knowledge is not subject to criticism. Of course itcan be changed by various means – for example, by eliminating(killing) of the carrier of the subjective knowledge or disposition inquestion. Knowledge in the subjective sense may grow or achievebetter adjustments by the Darwinian method of mutation and eliminationof the organism. As opposed to this, objective knowledge canchange and grow by the elimination (killing) of the linguisticallyformulated conjecture: the ‘carrier’ of the knowledge can survive –he can, if he is a self-critical person, even eliminate his own conjecture.6768Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge, 4th ed., Claredon Press, Oxford 1979, pp. 24f.Ibid., p. 66.57