Making penicillin is not brain surgery or rocket science --- its harder !

Humans still can't make penicillin or most other beta lactam antibiotics.

At least, we can't make them anywhere as cheaply and as environmentally friendly as can the small, weak, under-rated (and frankly second or third rate) penicillium slime.

This is something worth remembering when we explore why Dr Martin Henry Dawson did not have a preferential option towards the poor, weak and small ---- all impressions garnered during WWII to the contrary.

Dawson's preferential option actually was for the special qualities hidden inside the supposed second and third raters

Dawson's point was rather along the lines that 'the mobility speed and grasping strength of the penicillium fungus (to re-use this familiar example) was indeed incredibly small and weak, third or fourth rate, at least when compared to that of humans or indeed of mice'.

But in 1940, Dawson felt the penicillium were being unfairly underrated totally, rather than selectively, by scientists and the public.

Because in some other areas, such as in making penicillin, the fungus were the world champions, far and away.

Each of us, no matter how 'advanced' or 'defective' we appear to be, has various weaknesses and strengths , together with some totally unique attributes.

In a total world of global commensality - as in a never yet seen Total War - there is always a need for a 'ministry of all the talents'.

A need for a world with all of us being valued for what we have and cherished for what we hold uniquely -- rather than being dismissed for what we have not have ......

Their revolutions WERE rhetoricized : Jacob Burckhardt's "terrible simplifiers"

Just as the famous Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt had earlier predicted, the Age of Modernity (1865-1965) was a time when 'terrible simplifiers' made that century the most violent and horrific on record.

A time of Grand - simple - Narratives, of soaring rhetoric , when all of life's problems and solutions seemed 'clearcut' , to use a word greatly overused by Sir Howard Florey, a much honored doyen of Modernity.

To his great penicillin rival, Martin Henry Dawson, nothing was ever simple or clearcut - a viewpoint that naturally won him no honours at all during the Era of Modernity.

And Dawson died in 1945, years away from being honoured under the very different value system of our current post-modern Era of Global Commensality....

As a political animal, I do tend to see Modernity as an ideology, not an Era

I freely admit, that as a longtime political animal (and as an Dal '80 political science graduate) I do tend to see the world through the glasses of 'political' ideologies.

That is, I see our internal/personal ways of viewing reality ultimately having sharp public/political (power/force/violence) consequences.

So, in many ways, JANUS MANHATTAN'S CHILDREN is as much a work of political science as it is of history.

This is because of its focus on WWII's shortfall between modernity's ideologies and physical reality.

This will encompass, just for example, examining the pre-WWII ideas about armies clashing vs WWII actual acted-out clash of physical armies vs post-WWII ideas about what did happen during those clashes.

War imagined (pre and post) versus War lived, to freely adapt Lucy Riall's definition of the new approach to biography in academic history.

History is particular good at going into German and Soviet archives and counting dead tanks to find out if Prokhorovka's reputed claim as the 'greatest tank battle in history' actually happened as publicly remembered.

While Political Science is excellent at determining what public/political capital that all the world's soldiers, politicians, deniers and video game designers made out of Prokhorovka's myth.

Similarly, conventional histories of WWII strategy are content to simply that the UK had less population and soldiers than Germany and so Britain was loath to invade Europe without American help.

But I intend to ask what private prejudices lay behind the Allied unwillingness to think of getting the 6 million strong volunteer dark-skinned Indian Army to invade occupied Europe --- instead of a waiting for a mere million white American conscripts instead ?

But I suspect that so strong is the hold of Modernity-cum-racism still upon the western mind that historians - even today - are loath to even think my suggestion can be taken seriously enough to be examined before being dismissed.

This is why I so adamantly reject the claim of Modernity 'merely' being a period in time (an Era), a period of time when the ideology of socialism/communism clashed with those of liberal/conservative capitalism and of fascism.

Instead I see these admittedly better known ideologies as being (during the Era of Modernity hegemony) absorbed into and completely affected by, the larger and newer supra-ideology of Modernity.

Similarly, in the hetro hegemony of today's Era of Postmodernity, these sub-ideologies along with that of the fading Modernity survive (all in altered postmodern forms) but all must compete against the fastest rising supra-ideology of Open Commensality....

Tortoise vs Hare : predicting our world in 1945....

On September 2nd 1939, when the British Empire declared war on the German Empire (thus ensuring we would have another world war), there were two main scientific theories predicting the shape of our world at the war's end.

The far more popular theory at the time was called Modernity, Social Darwinism or simply 'Might is Right'.

 It said Evolution was a vertical affair, with wiser and more mighty entities inevitably and naturally replacing entities that were weaker and more foolish.

The other, far less popular theory, saw Evolution as a horizontal activity, with the weaker and simple-minded entities continuing to co-exist for ever and ever, in global commensality, with the bigger and more complex entities.

It even went further than that.

It claimed that on not-infrequent occasion, the smaller and more simple would even triumph over the larger, more complex and more sophisticated entities in the fundamental effort to survive.

Now it is obviously that these diametrically opposed theories could not both be right.

"the hyssop and The Cedars" will look closely at the course of  WWII to see how accurate each scientific theory was in predicting the twisting course of that awful - and unexpectedly awfully long - war.....

This un-civil war of words is "The News Story of the Century" and it is 3000 years old ...

    On one side : the SKY GODs , utopians clinging to outdated science, all to bolster their denial of any limits to humanity's potential in a limitless Universe.
   On the other side: the EARTHLINGs, realists accepting the newest science, believing that the Earth is a rare, perhaps unique, human-friendly planet that nevertheless operates under biological and material restraints that must be obeyed.

   On the question of whether humanity's carbon pollution of the atmosphere will change our climate in highly de-stabilizing ways, these two sides are better known as Deniers versus Doomers.
    I believe the new science brings us much good news along with the bad.
    The new post 1945, post-modern science's central metaphor of global commensality says that 'all life on Earth dines at one table, shares but one lifeboat' , that all life survives by taking in each other's laundry - recycling scarce biological resources over and over.
   It reassures us that Life has endured some hard knocks on Earth over the last 4 billion years, but it has surmounted them and flourished - by not having its grasp exceed its reach, Robert Browning to the contrary.....

Science entangled within Society, Society entangled within Science : dining at a common table

   "Global Commensality" is such a protean metaphor, n'est ce pas ?
    Global, of course in the French sense, means all-encompassing.
    Commensality - of course means "dining together", which has to be the world's second oldest intimate "profession".




    Science and Society influence each other so much, round and round and, it is as if they dine together frequently at some common table.
   Like Mr Dooley's Supreme Court, do the journals NATURE and SCIENCE follow (and review) the election returns -- and the Supreme Court?
  Of course, eventually.
   Just as the Supreme Court- most famously in "Buck versus Bell" - eventually follows (reviews) NATURE and SCIENCE.
  This is why GCR's name (global - commensality -review) is a bit of a tease and a bit of a pun: yes it is following and reviewing the eternal re-cycling of scarce life-resources among on all life forms on Earth.
   But it is also following and reviewing the co-mingling of the body fluids of Science and Society as they work with and against each other, stuck together on this tiny lifeboat we call our only home....


   

DENIERS are liberals, DOOMERS are conservative, n'est ce pas ?

   Wrong, wrong, wrong.
   Totally wrong : this oddball idea that DENIERS are conservatives.

   Only the Liberal mind holds that reality is totally knowable and totally perfectible with the application of enough human willpower.
   So we hear the Liberal mind at work when we hear the Denier proclaim: "If there is too much carbon pollution in the atmosphere, we will find the technology to sequester it back into the ground, cheaply, easily and safely."
    And : "Let us not impede the ever upward pace of progress by all these alarmist doubts and fears."
   By contrast, it is the Conservative mind that doubts that humanity is perfectible, it is the conservative who, in a theological sense, believes that all of us are sinners.
   If they further believe that Jesus - strictly according to the Bible, seems to have liked having sinners at His dining table - then they end up at one with GCR :
    If all are sinners, and sinners end up at the big table, then we all dine at the big table : global commensality in a nutshell.
   Doomers doubt that perfect solutions exist to safely allow ever-increasing HCP (human carbon pollution) of the atmosphere - or that they are easily and cheaply obtained .
   They worry the actions of a few excessive-carbon diners will spoil the dinners of all, carbon-diners or not - a highly conservative viewpoint, by any standard.
   Funny old world, ain't it ?

COMMENSALITE versus COMMENSALISM: c'est simple

   You've heard of commensalism, no matter how vaguely.
   It was born in 1874 , about the time some natural historians/ naturalists re-birthed themselves as biologists ----- so it is very much part of the sacred dogma in the Church of Biology.

   I'll define it this way (hopefully in a way that most biologists would approve): you are peacefully eating your dinner and minding your own business, and I come up and start eating your food, without as much as a 'by your leave' or 'I beg your pardon' - and if I neither pay you or shot you after I finish eating, then I am a commensal and I practice commensalism.
   Ugh ! Sounds pretty attractive, doesn't it ?
   Wait, wait , it gets worse ---- in this definition, albeit unofficially, all commensals are weak and tiny and stupid while their forgiving hosts are big and strong and smart.
   And kind, very kind.
   Is this stuff real or what ? Are biologists drinking their own koolaid or what ?
   Well ,if you view reality from a top of an Ivory Tower like a sort of Professorial Harry Lime, all lifeforms beneath you are nothing but dots, and yes you can view commensality (the other word) in this severely deranged fashion.
   Commensality, both the word and the concept, are thousands of years old - which is to say, thousands of years older that the 1874 neologism of commensalism.
   Today's concept of commensalism remains perhaps the best prism we have, into the soul of 19th century Social Darwinism, Eugenics and that biologist manque chappie, A. Hitler.
   It's mean, it's heartless and it's totally inaccurate.
   Commensality can be mean and heartless too.
   If it is closed commensality, it means only your kinda people ever get invited to dine with you on $16 orange juice --- if the rest have no food and starve, that's tough --- am  I supposed to be my Chadian sister's keeper?
   Ie, the caste system as practiced in India or at any golf and country club here, is closed commensality.
   Canada's food aid policy under the heartless Harper's conservative party is closed commensality too - the only food aid he intends to voluntarily give out, is to nations that do not really need it.
   Jesus - no word if he was ever a biologist , or a conservative , and I sure hope not - practiced open commensality.
   You remember - Him inviting civic servants (tax collectors) and HOs ( ladies of that oh so fertile crescent) to break communion with him - the nerve !
   Global commensality - my 2012 neologism - is different yet again, yet strangely related to Jesus and  to the biologists.
   Like Jesus's vision, it is very open - only open, this time, to all life on the planet.
   Not an open invite commensality though - more like "we're all stuck in this together, get over it, suck it up, adapt" type of globally-open commensality.
   Like the biologists' vision, it still involves the very big and the very small in commensal relationships.
   Yes, some of  the small do still sponge off the big - but in turn all of the big sponge off all the small.
   More accurately, most of the very small could survive very well if the big never existed --- but all the big would die in months if none of the very small ceased to exist.
   So, global commensality is this blog's name ---- and its game.
   Modernity - the science of humanity in the 150 years between the Reform Act of 1832 and the Diversity legislation of the early 1980s  - saw all life other than AWGs as mere dots, in Harry Lime's sense of that word.
   Man - and I do mean man not woman - viewed reality from the top of a horn of ivory, as in a dream.
   Man was a sky god, above and outside Nature.
   Think of modernist science as limit-DENIERS, and you won't go far wrong.
   By contrast, our post-modern world increasingly accepts humanity is embedded fully into nature at the ground level, with this planet our only lifeboat - and with us depending on all other life for our continued survival.
   This blog is on the side of this new science and these new scientists.....