Post by yubochur on Nov 20, 2005 15:27:05 GMT -5
I've been reading about Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project, and I would like to get everybody's opinion on something Oppenheimer supposedly said. I've heard/seen this phrase quoted in variant forms, but the gist of it is that, a few years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oppenheimer declared in a public speech that "scientists have known sin."
After all the effort put into the project during the war, all coordinated and encouraged by Oppenheimer, do you suppose he regretted his role?
I'm inclined to believe that as a scientist, he had no choice but to play his part in the development of nuclear physics; I think Kuhn's social construction of science is a very powerful factor to consider. But the actual execution, the part that would devastate countless lives, was perhaps something that got overlooked in the excitement- both the scientific fervor and the strong anti-German (and pro-American) nature of the project.
It was this second stage, dropping the bomb, especially now that it was on Japan and not on Germany (and German industrial zones and Armies), that was somehow ignored, and only a perch farther down in history could expose the horror .
So that failure to consider its ramifications- that's what I would consider the "sin," although Oppenheimer most likely meant the development of science in that particular direction.
[one last point- If that is indeed waht he referring to, the development of nuclear science, couldn't we just say that it was inevitable that science would reach that far?)
After all the effort put into the project during the war, all coordinated and encouraged by Oppenheimer, do you suppose he regretted his role?
I'm inclined to believe that as a scientist, he had no choice but to play his part in the development of nuclear physics; I think Kuhn's social construction of science is a very powerful factor to consider. But the actual execution, the part that would devastate countless lives, was perhaps something that got overlooked in the excitement- both the scientific fervor and the strong anti-German (and pro-American) nature of the project.
It was this second stage, dropping the bomb, especially now that it was on Japan and not on Germany (and German industrial zones and Armies), that was somehow ignored, and only a perch farther down in history could expose the horror .
So that failure to consider its ramifications- that's what I would consider the "sin," although Oppenheimer most likely meant the development of science in that particular direction.
[one last point- If that is indeed waht he referring to, the development of nuclear science, couldn't we just say that it was inevitable that science would reach that far?)
