February 08, 2022
5.
Comprehension
AUGUST 6, 1945 – The
day the atomic
bomb was dropped on Hiroshima
- brought home to all of us in a dramatic fashion the significance
of science in human life. The impact of that bomb has left us stunned and confused. Certainly we laymen are
frightened by science as we never were before. And certainly too, we are
bewildered by the power which science has suddenly placed in our
laps – bewildered and humbled by our realization of how unequipped
we are, in terms of ethics, law,
and government, to know how to use it.
That, I think, is the first reaction of a layman to
the stupendous repercussion of that bomb on Hiroshima. And the first
question that comes to his
mind is this: what use are radio and automobiles and penicillin and all the
other gifts of science if at the
same time this same science hands us the means by which we can blow ourselves and
our civilization into
drifting dust? We have always been inclined to think research and
technology as being
consciously related to human welfare.
Now, frankly, we
are not so
sure, and we are deeply troubled, by the realization that
man’s brain can create things which
his will may not be able to control.
To the
layman it seems as if science were facing a vast dilemma. Science is the search for truth, and it is based on the glorious faith that truth is worth discovering. It springs from the noblest attribute of
the human spirit.
But it is this same search for
truth that has brought our civilization
to the brink of destruction; and we are confronted by the tragic irony that when we
have been most successful in pushing out
the boundaries of knowledge, we have most
endangered the possibility of human
life on this planet. The pursuit of
truth has a at last led us to the tools
by which we can ourselves become the destroyers of our own institutions and all the
bright hopes of the race.
In this situation what
do we do – curb our science
or cling to the pursuit of truth and run the risk of having our society torn to pieces?
It is on the basis of this
dilemma that serious questions are forming in the
public mind. Unless research is
linked to a
human and constructive purpose,
should it not be subject to some kind of restraint? Can our scientists
afford to be concerned solely with fact and not at all with value and
purpose? Can they legitimately claim
that their only
aim is the advancement of knowledge
regar dless of its
consequences? Is the layman justified
in saying to
the scientists: ‘We
look to you
to distinguish between that
truth which furthers the
well-being of mankind and that truth
which threatens it?
One of the scientists who played
a leading role
in the development
of the atomic bomb said to the newspapermen: ‘A scientist cannot hold
back progress because of
fears of what
the world will
do with his discoveries’. What he apparently implied was
the science has no responsibility
in the matter, and
that it will plunge ahead in the pursuit
of truth even if the process leaves the world in dust and ashes.
Is that the final answer? Is there no
other answer? Frankly, as a layman, I do not know. Offhand, this disavowal
of concern seems
callous and irresponsible. But we may
be facing a situation where no other answer is realistic or possible. To ask the scientist
to foresee the use – the good or
evil of the use – to which his result may be put is doubtless beyond the realm of
the attainable. Almost
any discovery can be used for either social or
anti-social purposes. The
German dye industry
was not created
to deal with
either medicine or weapons
of war; and yet out of that
industry came our sulphur drugs and mustard gas. When Einstein wrote his famous
transformation equation in 1905 he was
not thinking of the atomic bomb, but out
of the equation came one of the principles
upon which the bomb was based.
Willard Gibbs was a gentle
spirit whose life was spent in his laboratory at Yale University,
and who never dreamed that his
work in mathematical physics
might have even a remote relationship to war; and yet it
is safe to say that his ideas gave added power to the armaments of all nations in both World War
I and World War II.
I suspect that
the way out of the
dilemma is not as
simple as
the questions now being
asked seem to imply. The good
and the evil
that flow from scientific research
are more often
then not indistinguishable at the
point of
origin. Generally they
are by products, or they represent
distortions of original purpose, none of which
could have been foreseen when the initial discovery was made. We are driven
back to a question of human motives and desires. Science
has recently given
us radar, jet
propulsion and power sources
of unprecedented magnitude.
What does society want to do with them? It can use them
constructively to increases the
happiness of mankind or it can employ them to tear the world to pieces.
There is scarcely
a scientific formula or a process or a commodity which cannot be used for war purposes, if that is
what we elect to do with it. In brief, the gifts
of science can be used by evil men
to do evil even more obviously and
dramatically than they
can be used by
men of goodwill to do good.
I fear
there is no easy way out of our dilemma. I would not absolve the scientists from some measure
of responsibility, for they are men of superior training and insight and we are entitled to look to them for help and leadership
more help and leadership, I venture to add, than have
thus far been given. However, I note
that a considerable number of scientist
who were connected with the atomic bomb project have
publicly expressed their apprehension of the consequences of their own
creation. ‘All of us
who worked on
the atomic bomb, said Dr Allison of the
University of Chicago,
had a momentary
feeling of elation when our experiment met with success; but that
feeling rapidly changed to a feeling of horror, and a
fervent
desire that
no more bombs
would be dropped.
Nevertheless, in the long run I do not
believe that we shall be
successful
in making science
the arbiter of
its discoveries. Somehow
or other society itself must assume that responsibility. The towering
enemy of mankind is not science but war.
Science merely reflects the social forces by which it is surrounded. When there is peace, science is constructive; when there is war, science is perverted to destructive ends.
The weapons which
science gives us do not necessarily
create war; they make
war increasingly more terrible,
until now it has brought us
to the doorstep of doom.
Our main problem therefore, is not to curb science but to stop war to substitute law for force and
international government for anarchy
in the relations of one nation
with another. That is a job in which everybody must par ticipate, including the
scientists. But the bomb on Hiroshima suddenly
woke us up to the fact that we
have very little time. The hour is late and our work has scarcely begun. Now we
are face to face with this urgent
question: 'Can education and tolerance atd understanding
and creative intelligence run fast enough to keep us abreast with or own
mounting capacity to destroy?
That is the question which we shall have to answer one way or another in this generation. Science must help us in the answer, but the main decision lies within ourselves.
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