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On 2017-08-19 14:26, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:>

https://colddarkstars.wordpress.com/2017/08/18/the-tragedy-of-the-socialist-atomic-bomb/


This article is remarkably inaccurate historically and misleading in regards to the dispositions of "scientists" which it talks about in sweeping general terms that, if applied to any other identifiable social entity (other than class) would be roundly denounced. And in particular it is absolutely slanderous toward Albert Einstein. The sad part is that this author is a leftist who I would probably agree with on almost any given political issue, but through his self-righteousness he displays his ignorance of the history of physics to the point that I find it embarrassing to have to address it. If he had spent two minutes checking out each of his historical "facts" then I would not need to be writing this.....

      Yet, the biggest socialist name behind the
      atomic bomb was Einstein.

This has got to be one of the greatest fallacies prevalent in popular culture based on both historical and scientific ignorance. I guess its prevalence can explain why a physics student could repeat it though he absolutely should have known better. Einstein had absolutely nothing to do with the development of the atomic bomb (or atomic energy for that matter); more on this below. The tiny grain of truth in such a statement is that Einstein discovered the equivalence between mass and energy, given by the well known equation (well known only because it's the simplest of his equations to write down) E=Mc^2. This was just one direct consequence of the special theory of relativity, which he proposed long long before WWII (actually long before WWI) and before anyone had the slightest idea about nuclear fission. And if Einstein hadn't written it, unquestionably it would have been written soon thereafter by other contemporaries of Einstein developing what Einstein would name the theory of relativity, such as Henri Poincare or Hendrik Lorentz (both of whom had already written the "Lorentz transforms," the kernel of the theory of special relativity).

Einstein's work was great, but had nothing at all to do with nuclear fission. It simply stated that when energy is given off by a reaction, such as burning gasoline, a tiny amount of mass is lost which accounts for that energy according to that famous equation. And in the other direction, it allowed nuclear scientists to calculate the energy that would be produced if the particles in an atomic nucleus were reconfigured into different nuclei by subtracting the resulting mass from the original mass, multiplied by that huge number c^2.

    According to relativity, the fissioning of
    an Uranium-235 nucleus  releases  high energy
    particles and heat.

Wrong. Relativity says nothing about the uranium nucleus or fission (which was unknown until decades after the discovery of the theory of relativity). It simply supplied the equation through which you could compute the kinetic energy liberated by such a process by comparing the masses of the uranium and its fission products.

     Yet, the second world war forced Einstein to
     apply the laws that regulate the starry night
     to the science of human massacre.....

     The same man that had a thousand page FBI file.....
     was now an acolyte  of  the cult of nuclear death.

Although the author probably believes these popular fictions, I cannot think of a more slanderous statement that could be made against the great scientist! Of course Einstein never applied any of his expertise to the "science of human massacre" or joined the "cult of nuclear death," if only because he was NOT ALLOWED to work on the Manhattan project (which first developed the atom bomb). Einstein continued on as a theoretical physicist especially in the development of quantum mechanics, very abstract work with no connections to anything as specific as a uranium atom let alone making a bomb with it. It wasn't until the 1930's I believe that nuclear fission was discovered and the possibility of a chain reaction predicted and its energy yield calculated, at which point warmakers in America and Germany suddenly became very interested.

But beyond Einstein, the following narrative greatly distorts the history of the atom bomb and scientists associated with it:

     The atomic bomb had domesticated the brightest
     minds of the world into becoming the mercenaries
     and slaves of presidents and politburos.

This can only be a reference to scientists' role in the Manhattan project. Now we can start actually talking about politics and the social role of scientists. Even viewed in the most critical light, however, the above description of scientists' roles is generally unfair. I don't know anything about Nazi scientists working on the German atom bomb. But the scientists in the US (which included many refugee scientists from Germany and occupied Europe) faced ethical dilemmas, knowing the energy that an atom bomb would unleash. They generally accepted working on the Manhattan project for one single reason: they didn't want the Nazi's to obtain (and use!) the atom bomb first.

Now, you can tell me all about both sides being imperialist/capitalist etc. But faced with the choice of a Nazi victory over the imperialists (also destroying the SU, but that's just a detail) and world domination, I would find it hard to argue against cooperating with the one effort likely to prevent that in the case of success of Germany's nuclear program. I can not denounce as "mercenaries" those scientists for taking that reasonable stand. This was further demonstrated when Germany was defeated in May 1945. With the Nazi danger gone, there was widespread feeling among the physicists working in the Manhattan project, that their work was thus no longer needed. A number of them quit for that reason.

As would have Einstein. Except that he was never even allowed to work on the Manhattan project in the first place, probably because they didn't want someone with left politics, and who was very well known and respected (unlike the others) who could have spoken up in such circumstances. I might also add that their refusal to let Einstein work on the atom bomb shows at least that they understood the lack of connection between Einstein's theoretical work and the atom bomb, even as that popular fallacy gets absorbed and repeated by young physicists as we see here.

Alright, that deals with the historical errors in the article. I'm sure I'd agree with the author in normative terms regarding the role of scientists in society and relative to authority. But here, too, he makes some unfair exaggerations. Maybe these apply more to the author's environment (it doesn't say which university he studies at) and indeed there are many scientists who work for evil governments or corporations in unethical ways and should be denounced. But it is really unfair to say:

     As the material means of scientific self-
     reproduction became increasingly tied to a
     racist, war-mongering State, the scientist
     became more conservative. The scientific
     imagination that once dreamed of utopian
     communism in Mars.....

(Huh? I don't know of anyone dreaming of communism on Mars! Mars would be an awful place to live or build communism!)

I honestly don't know anything about scientists becoming MORE conservative currently or at a particular time in the past. It's true that there is more domination of university research by industry and government (including military) which presents ethical dilemmas for many scientists. So there may be more work opportunities for scientists that are apolitical/unethical. You could say they were "conservative" from the start. But at least at universities and national laboratories, one would not get the impression of many scientists being on the right. The main crime I would say is indifference, apathy. But there is clearly a sizeable minority of scientists who are vocally left wing (and others who simply reject government austerity and bad science policy, especially in the era of Trump!). Announcements shared in university departments often echo these concerns (where I received pleas to join last spring's March for Science, or to fight cuts to university funding, for instance). I never see anything of the sort coming from the right. That isn't because there are no right-wingers in science; I believe it's because they want to avoid embarrassment among their colleagues. Exactly as it should be!

- Jeff










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