C P Snow The Physicists A Generation Th

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.It did work, and after 1945 the physicists were burdened with the moral dilemma over the making and the using of the bomb; and on top of that the dilemma over secrecy – which in effect meant keeping things from the Russians.That latter dilemma sharpened as the Cold War came into being, sharpened as the conflict between loyalty to the nation-state and loyalty to the individual conscience became absolutely explicit.That dilemma, too, may be one to which there is no solution in the abstract; and Snow himself seems to recognize that.In ‘The moral un-neutrality’ his view appears to go one way: in another speech, called ‘State v.individual’ it appears, if not to go the other way, at least to be unresolved.Human affairs, it seems to me, depend upon a degree of trust.If, within one’s own society and state, one can’t rely on that degree of trust, the social life becomes, to put it mildly, precarious.Individual conscience is essential and mustn’t be denied.But often it isn’t a sure guide to action.As a general rule, it isn’t a guide sure enough to let one break one’s obligations and one’s oaths.That, for me at least, is a general rule.Clearly there are situations when it wouldn’t be overriding.The problem is, as in all ethical problems in real life as opposed to the textbooks, where the line is drawn.Nevertheless, although during the Hitler war secrecy obtruded in the lives of professional scientists who until then, especially during the Golden Age, had never given a thought to it; although it has still not been cast out – as well as national secrecy we now have commercial secrecy, God wot – Snow still considered the scientific profession to be the one that offers its members the greatest freedom.(He did not die – as Wells did, seeing many of the things he’d hoped for not having come to pass – in despair, far from it.) In 1970 he delivered a speech at Loyola University in Chicago, ‘Freedom and the scientific profession’, in which realistic acquiescence to the way the world was going is uplifted by hope.As I have used the word ‘freedom’ myself, I must quote his menacing opening paragraph about it.Freedom is a word that needs using carefully.Too often we have used it as a political slogan and done ourselves no good in the process.If you use words for political purposes, they soon lose whatever meaning they may have had.If you are tempted to brandish the word ‘free’, remember that over the gates of Auschwitz there stretched – and still stretches – the inscription Arbeit Macht Frei.Language is the most human thing about us: in a sense, the invention of language made us human: but language, perhaps for the same reason, is the greatest expression of human falsity, or if you like, of original sin.So much for the word ‘free’.Snow excludes both the political and metaphysical usages, and concentrates on its usage in our day-to-day living, particularly in our working-lives.It was in order to avoid that kind of subjectivity that I chose some questions which we can all answer.They are matter-of-fact questions, just as the freedom to which they refer is a matter-of-fact freedom.I don’t apologize for this.Unless we know what being free means in our working-lives, we aren’t likely to be specially sensible about what being free means anywhere else.Well then.How free are you to choose your work? From day to day? From year to year? How free are you to explain it? To say what you think about it? How free are you to earn your living through your work? In your own country? In other countries? Anywhere in the world?And then in answer:Of all the people I’ve known, the only group who would say ‘Yes’ to that whole set of questions are the professional scientists.Even then not without qualification and distinctions, which I shall come to presently.But, by and large, professional scientists have the possibility of acting more freely than any other collection of human beings on earth.Answering my simple questions, they can say – at least as soon as they are out of their apprenticeship or training for research – that they can choose what kind of work to do.Their subject for research – that is at their own disposal, just as much as what a writer selects to write about or a painter to paint.Very few of us have that degree of freedom: certainly no politician has, though the more inflated may fool themselves that they have.And the scientists are entirely free to publish what they have done, how and where they please: they are under no constraints: they can publish the results of their work however they like.Unlike other kinds of creative person, they are normally not interested in any kind of commercial influence.There is another fact which separates them decisively from the rest of us.Their skill is international in the fullest sense.No other group of professional people (except perhaps musicians and ballet dancers) can say as much.A scientist has the potential to earn his living, and to do his proper work, anywhere.Many have demonstrated this.The qualifications have to be taken seriously.Especially in the physical branch of the scientific profession, for those physicists who have remained or become soldiers-not-in-uniform: they are restricted in their choice of work, in their movement from country to country, and in their right to publish.The next restriction upon physicists comes with the necessity, as Snow remarks in the book, to work, if they want to choose particle physics, in teams and wherever the necessary large machines happen to be [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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