>No, eventually you get Lysenkoism, where the authorities start choosing what theories are correct for some reason or other, for reasons that leave them utterly disconnected from truth.
I don't think so.
I think that most people take a single historical example (USSR) and at a certain paranoid era and extrapolate it to every kind of totalitarian or vaguely similar society -- as if its some inevitable byproduct.
An authoritative society can just as easily be quite hands off with sciences (as long as they don't meddle in politics, e.g. not so with social sciences for example).
In fact, post-Mao China has already diverted a lot from USSR (and of course of USSRs under-productivity).
They already have pragmatic (if authoritarian) political goals and approaches, and could not care less what Mao said or what the "laws of historical materialism" are, etc -- whereas early communist elites were hang up on such things.
One added difference between USSR then and China now (besides the obvious huge change in productivity and wealth) is that Chinese elites also know about Lysenkoism and its results.
You don't need to go to extremes to find this process happening. Like I said, it's already happening in the West, right here, right now. Plenty of sciences have been damaged or almost destroyed in the West by creeping authoritarianism and even now the sights have been set on the "hard sciences" and engineering. There's little reason to believe it's going to be any slower in China than where there at least the residual fumes of openness of inquiry and thought, and some people who still operate as if that's the order of the day.
Knowing it's a bad idea doesn't seem to stop anybody here, because the driving forces of politics and power don't care. Submission is more important than correctness.
I don't think so.
I think that most people take a single historical example (USSR) and at a certain paranoid era and extrapolate it to every kind of totalitarian or vaguely similar society -- as if its some inevitable byproduct.
An authoritative society can just as easily be quite hands off with sciences (as long as they don't meddle in politics, e.g. not so with social sciences for example).
In fact, post-Mao China has already diverted a lot from USSR (and of course of USSRs under-productivity).
They already have pragmatic (if authoritarian) political goals and approaches, and could not care less what Mao said or what the "laws of historical materialism" are, etc -- whereas early communist elites were hang up on such things.
One added difference between USSR then and China now (besides the obvious huge change in productivity and wealth) is that Chinese elites also know about Lysenkoism and its results.