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Abraham I. Fet
Abraham
Ilyich Fet (1924-2007) belonged to a particular "species of human" that
is
becoming extinct today: he could be rather a man of Renaissance in late
Medieval Italy or Enlightenment in France in the 18th century, or a
bright representative of intelligentsia in Russia of the 19th century.
A.
Fet got his basic university education in mathematics and submitted a
brilliant candidate (PhD) thesis at Moscow University being barely 24
years old. The mathematical results of his doctoral (DSc) thesis,
presented later at the same University, still remain unsurpassed. He
mainly published papers in mathematics, but he was also enrolled to
research in physics that he started in collaboration with Yuriy B.
Rumer, the famous Russian theoretical physicist. The results of their
joint work were published in two co-authored books Theory of
Unitary Symmetry (1970) and Group Theory and
Quantum Fields
(1977). Then there followed Symmetry Group of Chemical
Elements,
a book written by Fet alone, which presented a new physical perspective
of the System of Chemical Elements and has become classics.
His
research interests, however, were not limited to mathematics and
physics. He remarkably explored many sciences and humanities, among
which biology, economics, history, philosophy, sociology, psychology,
and even literature, music, and arts. Moreover, being an encyclopedic
scientist, he was not just an "erudite": with his powerful intellect,
he built up a solid worldview from seemingly dispersed lines of
knowledge.
First
and utmost, Abraham Fet was a thinker, and his thinking was a blend of
intellect, passion and concern. His major concern was about the fate of
Mankind; he felt himself an active and responsible protagonist rather
than being an observer "heeding to good and evil with equanimity,
knowing neither pity nor ire".
A.
Fet thought a lot on the human society, on the biological and cultural
nature of man, on religious beliefs and ideals, and on the social
mission of the intelligentsia, which he saw primarily in enlightening.
He summarized his ideas in numerous essays and several books: Pythagoras
and the Ape (1987), Letters from Russia
(1989-1991), Delusions
of Capitalism, or the Fatal Conceit of Professor Hayek
(1996), and
finally Instinct and Social Behavior
(2005). The latter became his main work, where he investigated the
history of culture in terms of ethology, with the aim to "reveal the
impact of the social instinct on the human society, to describe the
conditions frustrating its manifestations and to explain the effects of
various attempts to suppress this invincible instinct". That was his
discovery and first study of a social instinct unique to humans, which
he called "the instinct of intraspecific solidarity". With
comprehensive historic examples, he has convincingly demonstrated how
the morals and love for our neighbors originated from tribal solidarity
within a minor kindred group and how the mark of kinship spread
progressively to ever larger communities, as far as the entire mankind.
Two previously
published books, together with a wealth of unpublished manuscripts, are
now coming to the public with his Collected Works
in seven volumes. (This publicaiton is jet just in Russian; an English
volunteer translator is wanted. Ask Ludmila Petrova aifet@academ.org,
for detail.)
With
his excellent command of seven European languages, Abraham Fet not only
had an extremely broad range of reading but also chose some important
books and translated them for his friends and broad public. It was
especially valuable in the conditions of harsh censorship in the Soviet
times, when many books, for instance on psychology, were forbidden.
Thus he translated Eric Berne, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, Gregory
Bateson, and many others. Being himself fascinated with the works of
Konrad Lorenz, Fet was the first to introduce Lorenz's main books to
the Russian readers. Namely, he translated Das sogennannte
Böse
("The So-Called Evil"), Die acht Todsünden der
zivilisierten
Menschheit ("Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins"), Die
Rückseite des
Spiegels ("Behind the Mirror"), which were then published
twice in
post-Soviet Russia.
Abraham Fet was
an ardent opponent to tyranny. Although being more a thinker than an
active public person, he signed the "Letter of 46"
in spring 1968 in defence of imprisoned dissidents. That lost him his
job, both at the research institute and the university, and left him
unemployed for years, to survive from occasional earns. Another reason
of his dismissal, though, besides the very fact of signing the letter,
was rather his spirit of independence and straight speaking. He called
things the way he saw them, were they professional or personal
characteristics of his fellows, or intrigues of functionaries or the
privileges in science. A moral maximalist, Abraham Fet despised those
who "lived as the others do" and called this lifestyle "the life of
insects".
Beginning
with the mid-1970s, Fet closely followed the events which took place in
Poland. He perceived the revolt of 1980-1981 as the start of collapse
of the so-called socialist camp. His book The Polish
Revolution
written in the wake of the events was anonymously published in 1985 in
Munich and London. He not only provided deep review of the Polish
events but also disclosed their historic prerequisites, demonstrated
the outstanding role of the Polish intellectuals and foretold the
further historic paths of the country.
Making
retrospective of Fet's life and works, we can definitely put his name
along with the most outstanding scientists and thinkers of the 20th
century. He was among those who rarely get recognition during their
lifetime. Rather than being in line with the "spirit of epoch", his
ideas were against the mainstream. However, these are the ideas that
are worth the most as they blaze truly trails to the science of the
future and appeal to the future Mankind. Let his memory live for ever!
A. V. Gladky,
L.
P. Petrova, R. G. Khlebopros
 Original PDF copy of this
biographic
article
published in Progress
in
Physics, vol.11, issue 3, (2015)
can be downloaded from here.
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