title: Hostile environmental intellectuals? Critiques and counter-critiques of science and technology in West Germany after 1945.
abstract: Paul Forman, in his work on physics in Weimar Germany, advanced the thesis that an irrationalist current within German intellectual history was then suddenly exacerbated in a context of defeat and political crisis. After World War II, Germany's situation was if any thing even more catastrophic; nevertheless, a comparable climate of irrationalism arose only in a limited way. The collapse of National Socialism was, in effect, sufficiently explicable on rational grounds to resort to a philosophical fatalism. F. G. Jünger, as a possible exception, put forward a theory of autonomous, demonic technology as an explanation; many cultural critics of the time, however, found these views unrealistic and favored an integration of technical and humanistic approaches. Moreover, even a new wave of (sometimes apocalyptic) literature of environmental crisis focused on specific scientifically analyses rather than a diffuse cultural pessimism.
authors.affiliation: Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA. beylerr@pdx.edu
authors.forename: Richard H
authors.initials: RH
authors.lastname: Beyler
mesh_terms: D005858:Germany; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006791:Hostility; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D028683:National Socialism / Q000266:history; D011287:Prejudice; D012586:Science / Q000266:history*; D012931:Social Environment; D013672:Technology / Q000266:history*; D013997:Time Factors