Roberto de Mattei
Italian scientists probably weren’t surprised when they saw in the bookstores a new work entitled Evolutionism: the Decline of a Hypothesis. Italy does have a fairly substantial Creationist movement, and the statements the book made were pretty close to Creationist doctrine: Dinosaurs didn’t go extinct until 40,000 years ago, what scientists take to be fossil strata are only high-water marks from Noah’s Deluge, etc.
But if they recognized the name given as the book’s author the case became stranger. His name was Roberto de Mattei, also known as the person occupying the second highest office, after only the president, of Italy’s National Research Council, the principal source of funding for scientific research anywhere in the country. Not only that but it began to look as though the Council had even helped to underwrite the cost of publishing the book.
Well, the Italian public is pretty used to scandals, although they usually involve sex or money. Maybe it’s time for a little variety.
Susan Reader says:
From the article, it sounds like Mattei’s appointment was already a scandal…
August 20, 2010, 12:29 pmDale Nelson says:
Lovecraft, the old arch-materialist, proposed an intelligent design hypothesis for humanity in At the Mountains of Madness, as I recall: that we are descendants of some Old Ones lab experiments!
August 20, 2010, 4:41 pmuser@example.com says:
The best bit about the crazier creationists and the flood is that if you do the maths, the oceans would have not only been absurdly full of mud and impossible for anything to live in, they would have been pretty close to boiling. That much water falling from cloud-level has a lot of kinetic energy.
August 21, 2010, 6:07 amRichard Welty says:
in Venus on the Half Shell, i recall that the thesis was that life in the universe was descended from cockroach crap
August 21, 2010, 10:32 pmJohn Armstrong says:
Either the exceedingly long arm of the Texas schoolbook czars, or a concrete lesson in what happens when you make your funding decisions after a long, wine-soaked lunch.
It is a little troubling, the amount of appeasment that goes on as regards the Creationist/Intelligent Design faction.
August 22, 2010, 12:29 amRoberta X says:
Not all of us, sir — only selected Italian politicians and assorted others.
It’s only an hypothesis but it does go a long way toward explaining certain things about some people.
August 22, 2010, 10:05 amCraig says:
Good point Dale, but Lovecraft was only talking about humans, he wasn’t trying to credit the entire universe (multi ?) to the Elder Gods.
August 22, 2010, 4:45 pmLuigi says:
Why not resurrect also the Ptolemaic system?
May 6, 2011, 5:04 pm