The second was the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre. I felt as if I were witnessing someone walking over my grave. In those images of exploding planes and collapsing buildings, I saw the potential destruction of the human species.
Both events happened, both were a huge step in alternate directions: triumph and annihilation.
One day we may look up at the sky and see the first alien star-ship visiting us from another civilization. One day we may pick up an intelligent message from outer space, just as Carl Sagan imagined in Contact. One day we may even invent our own inter-galactic space vehicle and go for a look.
On the other hand, one day we may look up and see a mushroom-shaped cloud, for a fraction of a second, before we lose our eyes and our lives. There is a very good chance that on that day mankind will finish the job started at Hiroshima on August 6 1945, and put an end to the human saga. On that day, if there is a God, he will weep. It will have been such a horrible waste!
Which of the two alternate futures awaits us depends, to a large degree, on the scientists themselves. Not just on the breakthroughs they provide, leading us to a possible glorious future but, more importantly, on the ethical stand they take when bribed or coerced by madmen to produce weapons of mass destruction.
Without the greatest brains of the twentieth century (Einstein, Bohr, Oppenheimer, Feynman, Teller, etc.) political leaders would be more or less harmless fools. They might mess up everything they touch, but could not threaten all of humanity and every living species on the planet with extinction. It was scientists who gave them the tools of total annihilation.
No “ethics of science” course was ever taught to me as a physics student at university. Medical students now grapple with the ethics of medicine as it manifests in subjects such as cloning, euthanasia, abortion, stem-cell research and genetic manipulation. They are given a philosophical & legal framework in which to consider these issues, and guidelines for coping with them.
Nothing highlights the issue of ethics in science as well as the dilemma confronting scientists in the Manhattan Project. The justification for developing a nuclear weapon seemed overwhelming. None of those great scientists contributing to it were evil or greedy monsters. What they were is unbelievably naïve. We can see from their writings after the atomic bomb became a reality and they felt horrified by what they had done and scrambled to influence national policy in a positive direction.
After the Nagasaki bombing, members of the Scientific Panel – Lawrence, Oppenheimer, Compton, Fermi -- wrote a letter to Henry Stimson, Secretary of War on August 17, 1945:
The development, in the years to come, of more effective atomic weapons, would appear to be most natural element in any national policy of maintaining our military forces at great strength; nevertheless we have grave doubts that this further development can contribute essentially or permanently to the prevention of war.
Robert Oppenheimer expressed his fears more forcefully on his last day as director of the Manhattan Project:
What scientists should never forget: the arbiter of any theory is experiment. Arguments aside, the world did not face total destruction before nuclear weapons were developed. Now it does.If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the name of Los Alamos and Hiroshima.
As Richard Rodes writes in The Making of the Atomic Bomb:
Nothing will change this fact! Yes, the war might have lasted longer without it. Yes, there might have been another world war or two without the nuclear deterrent, instead of the many, many small wars all over the world that have killed millions since WWII. But humanity would not face the possibility of extinction today if scientists refused to participate in that ‘superb and magnificent’ project of evil and insanity.…the death machine that we have installed in our midst will destroy the nation-state, ours and our rival’s along with most of the rest of the human world. The weapons with which the superpowers have armed themselves – collectively the equivalent of more than one million Hiroshimas – are linked together through their warning systems into a hair-trigger, feedback-looped contrivance, and no human contrivance has ever worked perfectly nor ever will. Each side is hostage to the other side’s errors. The clock ticks. Accidents happen.
The ethical precept that should be taught to science students all over the world, should be the same as that of the Hippocratic Oath for medical students: “First, do no harm!” Say no to weapons research, say no to projects that harm the environment, that cause pain and suffering to life on this planet. Nothing can be simpler.
