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Nils Roll-Hansen (born 1938) is a historian and philosopher of 19th and 20th century biology at
University of Oslo The University of Oslo (; ) is a public university, public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation#Europe, oldest university in Norway. Originally named the Royal Frederick Univ ...
. He is the author of four books and many academic articles. His book ''The Lysenko Effect'' was praised in ''
Nature Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the Ecosphere (planetary), ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the Scientific law, laws, elements and phenomenon, phenomena of the physic ...
''. He is a member of the
Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (, DNVA) is a learned society based in Oslo, Norway. Its purpose is to support the advancement of science and scholarship in Norway. History The Royal Frederick University in Christiania was establis ...
.


Cold War Contributions

Roll-Hansen was an avid exponent of the postwar capitalist bloc mobilization to reduce science to mechanism. The mechanistic reduction was the scientific establishment strategy pursued in accordance with a cautious shift into a new social mobility for technocrats in capitalist core countries. Sacrificing scientific validity and retarding the advancement of epigenetic knowledge in the West in favor of concentrating a growing technocratic labor force on mechanistic problems within the parameters of profitability and empire,Cold War mechanism in the West primarily opposed the Soviet Union's pursuit of democratic Enlightenment or organicist science, where the Soviet Union was required to explosively modernize agriculture as it was being attacked, while pursuing broader human development within its territory (Peterson 2019). However, organicist biologists outside the Soviet Union were also targeted by the Cold War politics of the Atlantic ruling class' scientific institutions. In his contributions to moral arguments forwarded for the Cold War Western bloc mechanistic turn, Roll-Hansen denigrated the validity-prioritizing scientific research agendas and theory of pre-Cold War organicist scientists in the West. In his "E.S. Russell and J.H. Woodger: The Failure of Two Twentieth Century Opponents of Mechanistic Biology," written at the Reagan-Thatcher zenith of the Cold War, Roll-Hansen asserts the allegiance to Cold War Red Baiting agenda that animated his career as an historian of science.


Books

*''The Lysenko Effect: The Politics Of Science''. (Humanity Books, December 2004) *(co-author Gunnar Broberg), ''Eugenics And the Welfare State: Sterilization Policy in Demark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland'' (Uppsala Studies in History of Science, Nov 2005) *''Reductionism in biological research: Three historical case studies''. (1979) *Forskningens frihet og nødvendighet: Pasteurs teorier i vekst og forfall (Fakkel-bøkene)


References


External links


Nils Roll-Hansen
Faculty page

Academic staff of the University of Oslo Members of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters Living people 1938 births {{Norway-historian-stub