Sir, - William Wohlgemuth (January 29th), is obviously a most angry person. He is angry about environmental destruction and the nuclear threat, and he is right to be so worried. Where I must take the most profound issue with him is in his identification of scientists as the cause of these, along with their being implicated in the moral decay of the western world and the pollution of outer space. If we were to insert Jew wherever he has scientist then his maunderings would be seen as most profoundly distasteful. Yet, he seems to think that there is a master plan, a "Protocol of the Elders of Science" perhaps.
I am not a scientist. I do however think that the body of scientific work, far from demeaning humanity as Mr Wohlgemuth states, stands as the most profound monument to human endeavour. He seems, on reading his letter, to be fixated, not on science as such, but on certain" branches of it and certain side effects of these branches. Babies and bathwater come immediately to mind.
Perhaps he has been reading too many Gary Larson cartoons, as his letter belongs in the good old tradition of the Baron Frankenstein view of science, all Van Den Graff generators, bushy beards, re animated cadavers and deformed assistants. In writing as he does and in traducing the reputations of all who have made his vastly comfortable material life possible, he shows exactly why Oxford University have appointed Richard Dawkins to a Chair. It is the Chair in the Public Understanding of Science. I suggest that Mr Wohlgemuth takes some time to attend some of the lectures. - Yours,. etc.,
Trinity College,
Dublin 2.