UNDERGRADUATE PAGE
Atomic Sleight-of-Hand
By JAMES FORRESTER (University of Edinburgh)
IN a secluded Edinburgh lecture-hall a world-famous physicist, lecturing to an academic audience, reiterated with quiet per- sistence his belief that the lessons to be drawn from a lifetime of study are so important that they may upset the whole of man's preconceived knowledge of himself and the universe. Almost simultaneously, in a small town in north-west England, a Govern. ment-sponsored exhibition was being held to calm the fears of the local population. The subject of both was the same—the atom—and although Professor Niels Bohr's lectures were abstruse, while the exhibition could not pretend to be much more than a display of miracles left largely unexplained, the interest shown by both academic and lay audiences was, as may be expected, con- siderable. But more important than either event, perhaps, is the relation between the two, and the relation of both to the terrible events of late summer, 1945, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Mr. Bohr is a modest man, modest not only about his knowledge of other fields, but also about his contributions to the study of nuclear physics. Yet the claims that he makes for this branch of science are apparently unbounded. In the future world that he envisages, we are to see nuclear biologists, nuclear chemists, perhaps even nuclear politicians. Though the exact method of application has still to be formulated, the time is soon coming, according to the professor, when the principle of indeterminacy will be applied to moral questions, and the law of alternative explanations (scientifically known as the principle of complemen- tarity) will have to be taken into account by psychologists. Long before this, the whole body of atomic science, as it is understood by a very few today, will have come within the range of the intelligent schoolboy. Professor Bohr is an optimist who sees incalculable benefits in store for the whole human race ; moreover, he is a pioneer, filled with the visionary spirit of a crusader. It is impossible to listen to him without feeling the sincerity of his beliefs in his cause; almost impossible not to accept those beliefs on his word.
In the little town on the West Cumbrian coast, however, there are fears to be calmed. These people have long been inured to the worst horrors of the Industrial Revolution, to work at the coal-face and in the factory, to the unsightly pit-heads and smoking chimneys, made more ugly by their proximity to the wild and wonderful country of the Lakes Now a new factory is under construction, its site already dominated by two giant chimney- stacks. But the people are vaguely disturbed this time. For this is to be Britain's first atomic power station.
The Cumbrians are a diffident people, inheriting the sturdy independence of the peasants portrayed by Wordsworth, and, al- though the new power station promises to bring prosperity back to an area which declined badly in the inter-war years. and has not yet recovered fully, the very new-fangledness is enough to make them suspicious. Moreover, this is a scheme imoosed on them, as it seems, from without. A large number •of tho workmen at present engaged on construction are from .' foreign parts "—that is. from outside the county—and it is foreseen that there will be a further influx of technicians to run the completed plant. Already Government departments have begun buying property in a village near the site, where, it is rumoured. key scientists and technocrats will live in solitary isolation, a foreign and mysterious com- munity, the aristocrats of the Scientific Revolution. To the Cumbrians they might almost as well be men from Mars.
To add to the apprehensions of the local people, there has been an outbreak of rumours concerning the dangers of radio-active materials. Stories have drifted in from all parts of the world grim, humourless stories of research workers and scientists who have died suddenly, or withered completely away. Worse still are the speculations of biologists, who foresee as the result of radio- activity strange and terrifying mutations of the human species itself, which, if they do not utterly destroy, may change the whole nature of mankind. Small wonder that the people in this little coastal town are disturbed. But for the well-known resilience of the human mind, which goes on believing in the best even when the worst is happening, one might wonder that they were not already in revolt. As it is, there is no more than an undercurrent of suspicion, barely conscious, coupled with a slight bewilderment. No doubt the Ministry of Supply was aware of this when it organised the exhibition to initiate the townspeople into the mysteries of atomic science.
The exhibition was staged with all the skill that we have painfully acquired in these matters since propaganda passed from the confines of the Roman Catholic Church to become a secular art. All the implements of this latest triumph of man over environ- ment were there, watched over by scions of the new order of chivalry in their knightly armour. No fire-breathing dragon of old had to contend with more baffling defences than the protective clothing worn by these peaceful citizens of our age of science. For the more easily amused were displayed scale models of the factory, working models of atomic instruments, with charts, diagrams and all the other paraphernalia, and finally the inevitable showpiece, reminiscent of Barnum's or Tussaud's rather than a scientific exhibition—a radio-active conjuring trick.
It was not even a very original trick—a variation of that stock-in- trade of the racecourse boys, " Find the Lady." A card having been hidden in one of three compartments, the onlookers were asked to guess which. Thereupon, the correct one was pointed out by means of a geiger counter. Impressive enough for the idle bystander, like those little mechanical gadgets in shop-windows that seem to support a box of face-powder against the face of a vertical mirror, or the stereoscopic picture advertising somebody's ales. One moves away after a few moments with the comfortable feeling that results from "seeing how it's done," and consequently in a benevolent mood towards somebody's face-powder or some- body's ales or anybody's atomic energy. One does not pause to draw a moral, be it that conjurors and sharpers will be a dis- possessed class in an atomic age, or that portable geiger counters would save the trouble of learning the Culbertson system One does not think at all. The illusion is complete.
Perhaps the Ministry of Supply has soothed the fears of the people living in that little town which is to be honoured with our first atomic power station. If so, there seems every likelihood that the Ministry will continue the treatment, lulling the public into a sense of security with ever more fascinating and more mysterious conjuring tricks, and with the rosy promise of " jam tomorrow." In this way, almost painlessly, we may expect to be overtaken by the revolution in human knowledge of which Professor Bohr has been speaking. One bright morning we shall awake to find ourselves citizens of the atomic world, where every- thing is glorious and free and indeterministic.
Or shall we? The folk of Cumberland may not have been quite so readily appeased after all. They may still remember Hiioshima along with the three-card trick, the ruins of Nagasaki together with the new chimney-stacks. And they may hark back to the last Industrial Revolution, which was also hailed as a glorious affair, and was one, but not for the millions born into our drab towns and employed in our deathly mines and factories. We have still not paid the price of our economic greatness, although that greatness has largely gone. Next time the price may be too heavy for mere humanity to pay.
The men of vision, of whom Professor Bohr is a notable example, arc fast putting into our hands the tools from which this new society can be built, but it is not their function to manipulate them. This function belongs to administrators and technicians and the whole of well-informed public opinion. Among these the practical scientists have a terrible responsibility. Are they accepting it by fobbing us off with parlour tricks? We are travelling at jet-propelled speed towards a new age, but has anyone looked out to see where we are going, and is there anyone in the driver's cabin?
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