Una autorevole testimonianza e (almeno per me) un esempio per chi
-anche suo malgrado- si trovi impegnato nella ricerca su tecnologie
dall'impiego controverso.
A.
<https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1947/01/a-scientist-rebels/656040/>
[...]
SIR : —
I have received from you a note in which you state that you are
engaged in a project concerning controlled missiles, and in which you
request a copy of a paper which I wrote for the National Defense
Research Committee during the war.
As the paper is the property of a government organization, you are
of course at complete liberty to turn to that government organization
for such information as I could give you. If it is out of print as you
say, and they desire to make it available for you, there are doubtless
proper avenues of approach to them.
When, however, you turn to me for information concerning controlled
missiles, there are several considerations which determine my reply. In
the past, the comity of scholars has made it a custom to furnish
scientific information to any person seriously seeking it. However, we
must face these facts: The policy of the government itself during and
after the war, say in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has made it
clear that to provide scientific information is not a necessarily
innocent act, and may entail the gravest consequences. One therefore
cannot escape reconsidering the established custom of the scientist to
give information to every person who may inquire of him. The interchange
of ideas which is one of the great traditions of science must of course
receive certain limitations when the scientist becomes an arbiter of
life and death.
For the sake, however, of the scientist and the public, these
limitations should be as intelligent as possible. The measures taken
during the war by our military agencies, in restricting the free
intercourse among scientists on related projects or even on the same
project, have gone so far that it is clear that if continued in time of
peace this policy will lead to the total irresponsibility of the
scientist, and ultimately to the death of science. Both of these are
disastrous for our civilization, and entail grave and immediate peril
for the public.
I realize, of course, that I am acting as the censor of my own
ideas, and it may sound arbitrary, but I will not accept a censorship in
which I do not participate. The experience of the scientists who have
worked on the atomic bomb has indicated that in any investigation of
this kind the scientist ends by putting unlimited powers in the hands of
the people whom he is least inclined to trust with their use. It is
perfectly clear also that to disseminate information about a weapon in
the present state of our civilization is to make it practically certain
that that weapon will be used. In that respect the controlled missile
represents the still imperfect supplement to the atom bomb and to
bacterial warfare.
The practical use of guided missiles can only be to kill foreign
civilians indiscriminately, and it furnishes no protection whatsoever to
civilians in this country. I cannot conceive a situation in which such
weapons can produce any effect other than extending the kamikaze way of
fighting to whole nations. Their possession can do nothing but endanger
us by encouraging the tragic insolence of the military mind.
If therefore I do not desire to participate in the bombing or
poisoning of defenseless peoples — and I most certainly do not — I must
take a serious responsibility as to those to whom I disclose my
scientific ideas. Since it is obvious that with sufficient effort you
can obtain my material, even though it is out of print, I can only
protest pro forma in refusing to give you any information concerning my
past work. However, I rejoice at the fact that my material is not
readily available, inasmuch as it gives me the opportunity to raise this
serious moral issue. I do not expect to publish any future work of mine
which may do damage in the hands of irresponsible militarists.
I am taking the liberty of calling this letter to the attention of
other people in scientific work. I believe it is only proper that they
should know of it in order to make their own independent decisions, if
similar situations should confront them.
NORBERT WIENER
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