International Human Rights Network of Academies and Scholarly Societies Proceedings - Symposium and Seventh Biennial Meeting, London, May 18-20, 2005 (2006) / Chapter Skim
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The Max Perutz Memorial Lecture: The Archimedean Lever: Right in the Face of Might
The Max Perutz Memorial Lecture: The Archimedean Lever: Right in the Face of Might
Pages 83-101
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From page 83... ...
We are very fortunate in having a good friend of Max from Cambridge, Sir John Meurig Thomas, here with us to help pay tribute to Max. He is a very distinguished chemist and has received a number of awards.
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From page 84... ...
He founded, with Sir Lawrence Bragg and John Kendrew, the Medical Research Council (MRC) Unit of Molecular Biology in the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, in 1947, and then he was the principal scientific architect of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB)
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From page 85... ...
Max rejected as nonsense the view, popular among modern sociologically oriented philosophers of science, that scientific truth is relative and shaped by a scientist's personal concerns, including his or her political, philosophical, even religious instincts. When he attacked such opinions, he once quoted Max Planck's memorable assertion: "There is a real world independent of our senses: the laws of nature were not invented by man, but forced upon him by that natural world.
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From page 86... ...
similarly encouraging diffraction patterns from haemoglobin and chymotrypsin. But it was not until the late 1950s, under the aegis of Sir Lawrence Bragg, that he finally reached his target of elucidating the structure of haemoglobin.
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From page 87... ...
Max it was who first demonstrated the validity of the method, by computing the X-ray diffraction patterns of haemoglobin with and without a mercury tag. (Sir Lawrence Bragg was so thrilled that, to quote Max, he "went around telling everyone that I had discovered a goldmine")
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From page 88... ...
My friendship with Max extended over the last 24 years of his life: we lived a few doors from one another; we were members of the same Cambridge college, Peterhouse; and for part of that time I had responsibilities for running the Royal Institution and the Davy Faraday Research Laboratory, places where he and John Kendrew had been readers for 13 years, from the time of the appointment of my predecessor-but-one, Sir Lawrence Bragg, as director. Through my friendship with Max, I benefited enormously from his wisdom, guidance and humour, which I grew to appreciate during our numerous walks around the playing fields adjacent to our homes, while strolling in the Botanical Garden, or sitting for tea in the intimacy of our homes.
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From page 89... ...
that scientific truth must be conceived as a valid truth that is independent of humanity. Knowing that the premier academics and scholarly bodies of the world are committed to the restless pursuit of truth and knowledge (as Max was)
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From page 90... ...
Wiesel We very much appreciate your tribute to Max, whom we all admired. It is interesting to see how his devotion and professionalism to science led to openness.
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From page 91... ...
If one were to view, in a unilateralist manner, human action and human forms of association brought about and reinforced by such action as being informed in the first instance by such considerations as power and self-interest, then one would be forced to concede that moral principles, as well as the legal norms that come to express them, are but secondary outgrowths or constructs or appendages whose origins are rooted in that power and self-interest. Furthermore, such principles and norms, unless specifically conceived to undermine the primary principle of self-interest -- a matter which the realist view does not entertain as being consistent with its understanding of human nature -- will by definition play the role of reinforcing that self-interest, and the political order or system that is built upon it.
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From page 92... ...
Calculative skills in particular address the individual's contextual placement and consequently the social or associative requirements, even on egotistic grounds, for defining that behavior. Such skills are just as inherent to human nature as that nature's egotistic impulses, but as they come to be applied to the latter the resultant products, as principles for action, in proving to be a more effective means for the achievement even of egotistic ends, therefore come to occupy a higher logical order, so to speak, than the objects defined exclusively by the egotistic impulse.
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From page 93... ...
Indeed, human beings or states, at certain periods of their evolutionary histories, can be observed to act purely on the basis of blind egotistic interest. More often than not, however, as a child grows older and becomes more familiar with her calculative skills and her contextual human surroundings, she learns to temper that instinct by those skills in cognizance of the requirements of being part of a context, if not also by natural sympathy or instinctive compassion toward others, or by what can come to be described using these terms as a moral sense.
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From page 94... ...
One might ask oneself if one could conceive of a moral lever and a specific point in human relationships at which it might be placed, such that the world's moral order can be caused to change, or such that the emancipatory process of transformation referred to can be reinforced. Let us pose this question in another, down-to-earth way: assuming that Israel, informed by a realist perspective, unjustly and by force deprives Palestinians of the basic values of freedom and equality, would Palestinians then have no choice, or be better off, responding in the same way, or could we conceive of a situation in which, cognizant of a higher logical order of principles for action, Palestinians stand to gain from remaining steadfastly committed to that higher order, while refusing to respond with violence or force, and insisting on acting as a paradigm of the moral will?
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From page 95... ...
Let us take as an example of the first element two cases from the Israeli-Palestinian context, one being that of Israel's Labor Party loss of the elections in the aftermath of the Camp David talks, which resulted in the replacement of Barak by Sharon as a negotiation partner; the other being that of Israeli polls, which show a dissonance between electoral behavior and political desires. The argument has been cogently made that Sharon's election was partly made possible by an apparent or perceived Palestinian rejection of peace with Israel; and that, likewise, a persistent popular support for the draconian measures by Sharon are partly a result of Palestinian acts of violence.
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From page 96... ...
Cognizant of this distinction, an Archimedean lever in this context would therefore be one that, in addition to its nonviolent feature, will also and through a gravitational dynamic be so manipulated as to succeed in "lifting up" or "drawing out" these latent dispositions to the political surface, making those dispositions, rather than surface and immediate concerns, inform expressed political behavior and attitudes. Nonviolence as a moral means of effecting political change therefore consists of both pressure, as well as of gravitational dynamics.
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From page 97... ...
of an Archimedean lever, it becomes obvious that the most effective manner in which it can be used, at least in some contexts in which a latent positive disposition at the public level exists, is when one party to the conflict, using attraction or gravitational -- rather than pressure -- dynamics, so organizes its behavior as to bring about (or draw out) the desired attitudinal change in the other.
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From page 98... ...
In conclusion, then, it would seem that Palestinians are best positioned to embody the role of an Archimedean moral lever. This not only consists in replacing force by nonviolence as they set about to achieve their human political objectives.
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From page 99... ...
Khaldoun's theory of what compassion actually is, I think, far more developed than that of David Hume, although David Hume, of course, in terms 99
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From page 100... ...
Wiesel That surprises me. I think many of us in the Western world thought that this would provide an opportunity, rather than being a positive/negative development for future peace in the region.
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From page 101... ...
That is the major element. To the extent that the citizens, the individuals, become true owners of the society in which they live, true partners, to the extent that the principles of freedom and equality are truly in effect, they fully become part of the political order, and the kind of thing that has happened in Bosnia would probably be avoided.
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