Part 4 (1/2)
That was a false start. More recently, the Soviet scientists, who had been following two radically dissimilar lines, discovered one that was promising, maybe more than promising. It has been christened by the acronym 'tokamak'. The Americans, who were following a similar path, took up tokamak with vigour, using, as a pleasant cordiality, the same nickname. There had been signs, still being argued about, of a step forward. The tokamak is a ring-shaped tube, like a hollow doughnut. Magnetic fields keep the super-hot hydrogen at the central axis of the tube, so that it cannot touch the metal walls and burn its way out. Another, completely different, approach to fusion power is to package the hydrogen into small pellets only a few millimetres across, and blast them from all sides with laser power or beams of electrons.
At present, no outsider could say more about the state of fusion power with meaning, and the insiders, if they can, prefer not to. It may be years before they know for sure, and longer before either society gets to work on practical engineering. The cost, to begin with, will be stupendous but the rewards will be stupendous too.
What the physicists have done, speaks for itself. It would be jejune to add anything. Their own intellectual structure waits there to be added to, but is unshakeable. The application which has come out of that structure has left us with some threats and more promises. It is for the general intelligence of us all to make the best of both.
Appendices.
I: A New Means of Destruction.
Editorial by C P Snow in Discovery, September 1939 Some physicists think that, within a few months, science will have produced for military use an explosive a million times more violent than dynamite. It is no secret; laboratories in the United States, Germany, France and England have been working on it feverishly since the Spring. It may not come off. The most competent opinion is divided upon whether the idea is practicable. If it is, science for the first time will at one bound have altered the scope of warfare. The power of most scientific weapons has been consistently exaggerated; but it would be difficult to exaggerate this.
So there are two questions. Will it come off? How will the world be affected if it does?
As to the practicability, most of our opinions are worth little. The most eminent physicist with whom I have discussed it thinks it improbable; I have talked to others who think it as good as done. In America, as soon as the possibility came to light, it seemed so urgent that a representative of American physicists telephoned the White House and arranged an interview with the President. That was about three months ago. And it is in America where the thing will in all probability be done, if it is done at all.
The principle is fairly simple, and is discussed by Mr D W F Mayer in more detail on p. 459. Briefly, it is this: a slow neutron knocks a uranium nucleus into two approximately equal pieces, and two or more faster neutrons are discharged at the same time. These faster neutrons go on to disintegrate other uranium nuclei, and the process is self-accelerating. It is the old dream of the release of intra-atomic energy, suddenly made actual at a time when most scientists had long discarded it; energy is gained by the trigger action of the first neutrons.
The idea of the uranium bomb is to disintegrate in this manner an entire lump of uranium. As I have said, many physicists of sound judgement consider that the technical difficulties have already been removed; but their critics ask if this scheme were really workable, why have not the great uranium mines (the biggest are in Canada and the Congo) blown themselves up long ago? The percentage of uranium in pitchblende is very high: and there are always enough neutrons about to set such a trigger action going.
Well, in such a scientific controversy, with some of the ablest physicists in the world on each side, it would be presumptuous to intrude. But on the result there may depend a good many lives, and perhaps more than that.
For what will happen, if a new means of destruction, far more effective than any now existing, comes into our hands? I think most of us, certainly those working day and night this summer upon the problem in New York, are pessimistic about the result. We have seen too much of human selfishness and frailty to pretend that men can be trusted with a new weapon of gigantic power. Most scientists are by temperament fairly hopeful and simple-minded about political things: but in the last eight years that hope has been drained away. In our time, at least, life has been impoverished, and not enriched, by the invention of flight. We cannot delude ourselves that this new invention will be better used.
Yet it must be made, if it really is a physical possibility. If it is not made in America this year, it may be next year in Germany. There is no ethical problem; if the invention is not prevented by physical laws, it will certainly be carried out somewhere in the world. It is better, at any rate, that America should have six months' start.
But again, we must not pretend. Such an invention will never be kept secret; the physical principles are too obvious, and within a year every big laboratory on earth would have come to the same result. For a short time, perhaps, the U S Government may have this power entrusted to it; but soon after it will be in less civilized hands.
THE EDITOR.
II: Einstein's Letter to President Roosevelt.
Albert Einstein.
Old Grove Rd.
Na.s.sau Point Peconic, Long Island August 2nd, 1939.
F D Roosevelt, President of the United States, White House Was.h.i.+ngton, DC.
Sir:.
Some recent work by E Fermi and L Szilard, which has been communicated to me in ma.n.u.script, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation which has arisen seem to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration. I believe therefore that it is my duty to bring to your attention the following facts and recommendations: In the course of the last four months it has been made probable through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and Szilard in America that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large ma.s.s of uranium, by which vast amounts of power and large quant.i.ties of new radium-like elements would be generated. Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future.
This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable though much less certain that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory. However, such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air.
The United States has only very poor ores of uranium in moderate quant.i.ties. There is some good ore in Canada and the former Czechoslovakia, while the most important source of uranium is Belgian Congo.
In view of this situation you may think it desirable to have some permanent contact maintained between the Administration and the group of physicists working on chain reactions in America. One possible way of achieving this might be for you to entrust with this task a person who has your confidence and who could perhaps serve in an inofficial capacity. His task might comprise the following: a) to approach Government Departments, keep them informed of the further development, and put forward recommendations for Government action, giving particular attention to the problem of securing a supply of uranium ore for the United States; b) to speed up the experimental work, which is at present being carried on within the limits of the budgets of University laboratories, by providing funds, if such funds be required, through his contacts with private persons who are willing to make contributions for this cause, and perhaps also by obtaining the co-operation of industrial laboratories which have the necessary equipment.
I understand that Germany has actually stopped the sale of uranium from the Czechoslovakian mines which she has taken over. That she should have taken such early action might perhaps be understood on the ground that the son of the German Under-Secretary of State, von Weizscker, is attached to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Inst.i.tut in Berlin where some of the American work on uranium is now being repeated.
Yours very truly, (Albert Einstein).
III: The Moral Un-neutrality of Science.
Speech by C P Snow delivered in 1960 to the American a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science Scientists are the most important occupational group in the world today. At this moment, what they do is of pa.s.sionate concern to the whole of human society. At this moment, the scientists have little influence on the world effect of what they do. Yet, potentially, they can have great influence. The rest of the world is frightened both of what they do that is, the intellectual discoveries of science and of its effect. The rest of the world, transferring its fears, is frightened of the scientists themselves and tends to think of them as radically different from other men.
As an ex-scientist, if I may call myself so, I know that is nonsense. I have even tried to express in fiction some kinds of scientific temperament and scientific experience. I know well enough that scientists are very much like other men. After all, we're all human, even if some of us don't look it. I think I would be prepared to risk a generalization. The scientists I have known and because of my official life I think I've known as many as anyone in the world have been in certain respects at least as morally admirable as most other groups of intelligent men.
That is a sweeping statement and I mean it only in a statistical sense. But I think there is just a little in it. The moral qualities I admire in scientists are quite simple ones, but I am very suspicious of attempts to over-subtilize moral qualities. It is nearly always a sign, not of true sophistication, but of a specific kind of triviality. So I admire in scientists very simple virtues like courage, truth-telling, kindness in which, judged by the low standards which the rest of us manage to achieve, the scientists are not deficient. I think on the whole the scientists make slightly better husbands and fathers than most of us, and I admire them for it. I don't know the figures, and I should be curious to have them sorted out, but I am prepared to bet that the proportion of divorces among scientists is slightly but significantly less than that among other groups of similar education and income. I do not apologize for considering that a good thing.
A close friend of mine is a very distinguished scientist. He is also one of the few scientists I know who have lived what we used to call a Bohemian life. When we were both younger, he thought he would undertake historical research to see how many great scientists had been as miscellaneously fond of women as he was. I think he would have felt mildly supported if he could have found a precedent. I remember his reporting to me that his researches hadn't had any luck. The really great scientists were depressingly 'normal'. The only gleam of comfort was in the life of Jerome Cardan; and Cardan just wasn't anything like enough to outweigh all the others.
So scientists are not much different from other men. They are certainly no worse than other men. But they do differ from other men in one thing. That is the point I started from. Whether they like it or not, what they do is of critical importance for the human race. Intellectually, it has transformed the climate of our time. Socially, it will decide whether we live or die, and how we live or die. It holds decisive powers for good and evil. That is the situation in which the scientists find themselves. They may not have asked for it, or may only have asked for it in part, but they cannot escape it. They think, many of the more sensitive of them, that they don't deserve to have this weight of responsibility heaved upon them. All they want to do is get on with their work. I sympathize. But the scientists can't escape the responsibility any more than they, or the rest of us, can escape the gravity of the moment in which we stand.
There is, of course, one way to contract out. It has been a favourite way for intellectual persons caught in the midst of water too rough for them.
It consists of the invention of categories or, if you like, of the division of moral labour. That is, the scientists who want to contract out say, we produce the tools. We stop there. It is for you the rest of the world, the politicians to say how the tools are used. The tools may be used for purposes which most of us would regard as bad. If so we are sorry. But as scientists, that is no concern of ours.
This is the doctrine of the ethical neutrality of science. I can't accept it for an instant. I don't believe any scientist of serious feeling can accept it. It is hard, some think, to find the precise statements which will prove it wrong. Yet we nearly all feel intuitively that the invention of comfortable categories is a moral trap. It is one of the easier methods of letting the conscience rust. It is exactly what the early nineteenth-century economists, such as Ricardo, did in the face of the facts of the first industrial revolution. We wonder now how men, intelligent men, can have been so morally blind. We realize how the exposure of that moral blindness gave Marxism its apocalyptic force. We are now, in the middle of the scientific or second industrial revolution, in something like the same position as Ricardo. Are we going to let our consciences rust? Can we ignore that intimation we nearly all have, that scientists have a unique responsibility? Can we believe it, that science is morally neutral?
To me it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise there is only one answer to those questions. Yet I have been brought up in the presence of the same intellectual categories as most Western scientists. It would be dishonest to pretend that I find it easy to construct a rationale which expresses what I now believe. The best I can hope for is to fire a few sighting shots. Perhaps someone who sees more clearly than I can will come along and make a real job of it.
Let me begin by a remark which seems some way off the point. Anyone who has ever worked in science knows how much aesthetic joy he has obtained. That is, in the actual activity of science, in the process of making a discovery, however humble it is, one can't help feeling an awareness of beauty. The subjective experience, the aesthetic satisfaction, seems exactly the same as the satisfaction one gets from writing a poem or a novel, or composing a piece of music. I don't think anyone has succeeded in distinguis.h.i.+ng between them. The literature of scientific discovery is full of this aesthetic joy. The very best communication of it that I know comes in G H Hardy's book A Mathematician's Apology. Graham Greene once said he thought that, along with Henry James' prefaces, this was the best account of the artistic experience ever written. But one meets the same thing throughout the history of science. Bolyai's great yell of triumph when he saw he could construct a self-consistent non-Euclidian geometry: Rutherford's revelation to his colleagues that he knew what the atom was like: Darwin's slow, patient, timorous certainty that at last he had got there all these are voices, different voices, of aesthetic ecstasy.
That is not the end of it. The result of the activity of science, the actual finished piece of scientific work, has an aesthetic value in itself. The judgements pa.s.sed on it by other scientists will, more often than not, be expressed in aesthetic terms: 'That's beautiful,' or 'That really is very pretty!' (as the understating English tend to say). The aesthetics of scientific constructs, like the aesthetics of works of art, are variegated. We think some of the great syntheses, like Newton's, beautiful because of their cla.s.sical simplicity, but we see a different kind of beauty in the relativistic extension of the wave equation, or the interpretation of the structure of dioxyribonucleic acid, perhaps because of the touch of unexpectedness. But scientists know their kinds of beauty when they see them. They are suspicious, and scientific history shows they have always been right to be so, when a subject is in an 'ugly' state. For example, most physicists feel in their bones that the present bizarre a.s.sembly of nuclear particles, as grotesque as a stamp collection, can't possibly be, in the long run, the last word.
We should not restrict the aesthetic values to what we call 'pure' science. Applied science has its beauties, which are, in my view, identical in nature. The magnetron has been a marvellously useful device, yet it was a beautiful device, not exactly apart from its utility, but because it did, with such supreme economy, precisely what it was designed to do. Right down in the field of development, the aesthetic experience is just as real to engineers. When they forget it, when they begin to design heavy power equipment about twice as heavy as it needs to be, engineers are the first to know that they are lacking virtue.