🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <pete.036g@bignode.equinox.gen.nz>, pete@bignode.equinox.gen.nz (Pete Moore) writes:
>baylor@force.ssd.lmsc.lockheed.com writes:
>>
>>Although, when I was in college I had heard a story (with attributed quotes, 
>>which makes it more credible) about the communist party originally rejecting
>>the concept that there was no ether (a hypothesized medium through which
>>light waves were supposed to propagate) and therefore no absolute (true 
>>rest) frame of reference for motion, because the idea that there are no 
>>absolutes is contrary to the principal of dialectic materialism.
>>Time frame on this story is a good 80 years ago, but tall tales might
>>have stretched it to the story Koenig told.
>
>The following is quoted without permission from Banesh Hoffman's biography
>`Einstein':
>  In 1965-67 the Russians brought out the complete scientific works of
>  Einstein in 4 volumes ... But in earlier days Communist officialdom had
>  never quite known what line to take about Einstein's theory of relativity.
>  In 1952 a Soviet Academician attacked it as being contrary to Dialectical
>  materialism, the philosophical basis of Marxism, and he chided certain
>  Soviet scientists for supporting Einstein's theory. On receiving a letter
>  about this, Einstein replied in lighthearted vein, saying that it had
>  cheered him up considerably.
>
>The promotion of Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union during the same period is
>probably the most notorious example of this kind of thing.  

That's what I was trying to remember!! The actual quote included references
to other well-discredited early scientific theories, (maybe the 
spontanious generation of rats from dirty rags & grain?) and would be 
well worth an upload, if only I had it.