Michael E. Gorman, Technology, Culture and Communication, University of Virginia
The materials in this Web site constitute a series of case-studies that put environmental ethics at the heart of design. In this draft excerpt from a book I am writing for Kluwer Academic Press, reproduced here with permission, I will outline some of the issues that drove us to create the cases.
Kepler's solution to the misery and confusion around him was to 'sink the anchor of his peaceful studies into the ground of eternity'. Should scientists and engineers be given the luxury of this kind of withdrawal from the world? Invention and discovery have transformed nature. To what extent do the agents who made these changes have to take responsibility for their creations? This question is cogently raised by novels like Frankenstein and Jurassic Park. In both cases, we have creators who are obsessed with inventing a way of bringing what was dead back to life. Dr. Frankenstein was initially obsessed with finding the secret to life; once he found it, instead of publishing it in a refereed journal, he decided to demonstrate his power by creating life. To Hammond, the entrepreneur in Jurassic Park, discoveries were incidental to the goal of cloning dinosaurs. Both were motivated by what Arnold Pacey has called 'technological sweetness' borrowing a phrase from Robert Oppenheimer, who is famous for his statement that one invention used in the hydrogen bomb was 'technically so sweet that you could not argue' against its adoption (Pacey, 1989, p. 81) . Creating life, cloning dinosaurs--these are stupendous technological feats. But neither Frankenstein nor Hammond consider the possible impacts of their discoveries and inventions. Frankenstein imagined that "A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me" (Shelley, 1818, p. 101). But when his eight-foot man stirred, Frankenstein ran from him in revulsion, refusing to accept the consequences for his actions. The creation turned into a monster and Frankenstein ended his life pursuing its destruction. In contrast, Hammond dreamed about building new dinosaur parks as he was devoured by the clones he had brought back to life. The moral of Frankenstein and Jurassic Park is that the inventor of a new technology like the telephone or the microchip should consider the impact of her invention. A contrasting view is exemplified by the 'guns don't kill people, people kill people' slogan of those who oppose gun control. To put it in more general terms, this is the 'technology is neutral' view: a telephone can be used for life-saving communications and for telemarketing. It is up to society, not the inventor, to determine how it is used. To shed further light on this question, let us consider the technology alluded to in the Oppenheimer quote about technological sweetness.
When Matter Becomes Energy
Einstein's discovery that E=MC2 was a significant intellectual achievement, one of the important consequences of his revolutionary theory of special relativity. He derived this equation from the fact that no object could travel faster than light; therefore, as objects approached the speed of light, they had to acquire increasing inertial mass. This discovery suggested that all matter contained an enormous amount of energy. The cold fusion controversy, discussed in the last chapter, illustrates our continuing efforts to tap this potential energy. The cold fusion case also illustrates that Einstein's equation says nothing about how such energy should be tapped. In 1939, Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch published a paper in Nature which suggested that in experiments conducted by Hahn and Strassman, a single neutron had split a nucleus of uranium. Meitner used Einstein's equations to conclude that the total mass of the two nuclei which resulted from the splitting should be equivalent to one-fifth of a proton, or 200 MeV. This calculation matched the result. Frisch termed this process nuclear fission (Beckman, Campbell, Crumlish, Doblowski, & Lee, 1989; Rhodes, 1986) . Results of this experiment spurred efforts to harness the energy released by fission. Leo Szilard, an emigre Hungarian physicist, was particularly concerned that the United States possess such a weapon before Nazi Germany. Many of Europe's best physicists, including Szilard, Einstein, Neils Bohr and Enrico Fermi, had fled to America to escape from fascism. Szilard helped Einstein, an avowed pacifist, draft a letter to President Roosevelt warning about "extremely powerful bombs of a new type" and that nuclear experiments were being carried out in Germany. He urged the President to secure uranium supplies. Were Einstein and Szilard in this case acting like Frankenstein, launching a technological adventure that would spin beyond their control? Szilard saw the bomb as a necessity only as long as the Nazis might build one. As soon as American troops captured German scientists like Heisenberg that were capable of designing such a weapon, Szilard lobbied for a termination of the Manhattan Project (Wyden, 1984). It was, in his view, no longer necessary. But few other scientists listened to him. It seemed ridiculous to stop when they were so close to success, and after the government had invested so much. Szilard next circulated a petition urging that no atomic bomb be used on Japan until the Japanese were given the chance to publicly refuse detailed surrender terms. When a majority of the scientists he was working with at Chicago objected on the grounds that more lives would be saved by using the bomb, Szilard responded that this was "a utilitarian argument with which I was very familiar through my previous experiences in Germany" (Wyden, 1984, p. 176) .
Unlike Szilard, Einstein was not involved in developing the bomb. Not long before his death, he told Linus Pauling, "I made one great mistake in my life--when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that an atomic bomb be made" (Wyden, 1984, p. 342) . Other protagonists felt morally ambiguous about their role in this invention. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Los Alamos facility, described his reaction to the first successful test:
We waited until the blast had passed, walked out of the shelter and then it was extremely solemn. We knew the world would not be the asme. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita: Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him; he takes on his multi-armed form and says, Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds (Rhodes, 1986, p. 676).
Shortly after the war, Oppenheimer reflected on this moment in mythological terms:
When it went off, in the New Mexico dawn, that first atomic bomb, we thought of Alfred Nobel, and his hope, his vain hope, that dynamite would put an end to wars. We thought of the legend of Prometheus, of that deep sense of guilt in man's new powers, that reflects his recognition of evil, and his long knowledge of it. We knew that it was a new world, but even more we knew that novelty itself was a very old thing in human life, that all our ways are rooted in it (Rhodes, 1986, p. 676).
Right after the war, Oppenheimer gave a speech to the Association of Los Alamos Scientists in which he clarified his vision of the scientist's role in creating this kind of novelty:
When you come right down to it the reason that we did this job is because it was an organic necessity. If you are a scientist you cannot stop such a thing. If you are a scientist you believe that it is good to find out how the world works; that it is good to find out what the realities are; that it is good to turn over to mankind at large the greatest possible power to control the world and to deal with it according to its lights and values... It is not possible to be a scientist unless you believe that the knowledge of the world, and the power which this gives, is a thing which is of intrinsic value to humanity, and that your are using it to help in the spread of knowledge, and are willing to take the consequences (Rhodes, 1986, p. 761).
For Oppenheimer, the scientist is a Promethean hero who must bring fire and other great marvels to humanity, regardless of the consequences. Science, in this view, corresponds to a kind of Golem --a creature made magically from clay and water that grows stronger every day and will follow your oorders, protecting you from enemies. But it is clumsy and unless carefully controled Òmay destroy its masters with its flailing vigourÓ (Collins & Pinch, 1993, p. 1) .
Stanislaw Ulam, who shares with Edward Teller credit for inventing the hydrogen bomb, recalled that his Aunt Caro was related to the legendary Rabbi who created the Golem. Norbert Wiener, upon hearing this story, said to Ulam, "It is still in the family!" (Rhodes, 1995). Teller's response to those who doubted that a hydrogen bomb should be build suggest he saw science as a kind of Golem: "If the development [of such a weapon] is possible, it is out of our powers to prevent it" (Rhodes, 1986, p. 757). Oppenheimer's scientist is morally obligated to push for new discoveries, regardless of the consequences; Teller's scientist is carried along by an inevitable tsunami of technological momentum. In contrast, Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet inventor of the hydrogen bomb, spent much of the rest of his life trying to end the totalitarian government that benefited from his discovery. Like Frankenstein, he literally gave his life in an effort to chain the monster he had created.