In an article entitled “What would be better not to discover” (EL PAÍS, June 17, 2023), Antonio Muñoz Molina warns of the dire consequences of some scientific and technological discoveries. In the truest sense of the word it is logically excellent, but scientifically it contains aspects that must be considered. Muñoz Molina says that he spoke to a pilot who flew over Hiroshima after the bombing and drew some conclusions that moved me.
I was born four August after this atrocity and over the course of my career have met seven Manhattan Project participants with whom I have not spoken extensively on the matter, save two with whom I have spent hours. The depth, the silence and the rambling of these gazes can justify the author’s fears. It is also based on the fact that ancient myths and stories warn that human curiosity can sometimes be disastrous because there are knowledge and techniques that have destructive rather than beneficial effects. I agree, except for one nuance that I consider essential: not some potentially harmful knowledge, but all. All. That’s the nuance.
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The vast majority of the physicists and engineers involved in the Manhattan Project were pacifists and progressives, and none of them believed that the bomb would be dropped on civilians. When some of them recognized the intentions of the military and President Truman, they paid for their resistance not only with reprisals.
Think of the man who made the most crucial discovery he wasn’t supposed to make: New Zealander Ernest Rutherford. Looking at two pictures prompted him to do so. One was an X-ray of a hand with a coin and a ring, showing the bones and tendons clearly. The other came from the same hand but was made using the new phenomenon of radioactivity. A real bungle that was worthless, but… what was the nature of that radiation? The previous one was of atomic origin and this one appears to be of nuclear origin. And Rutherford discovered just that: the existence and fundamental properties of the atomic nucleus, predicted by Leucippus and Democritus and extolled so accurately and beautifully by Tito Lucretius Caro in the thousands of verses of his De rerum Natura.
When confronted with an unknown phenomenon, investigation is carried out without any motivation or technological expectation. I think it’s interesting to know what Rutherford was radically opposed to, as some are now doing about artificial intelligence, for example, and it brings us closer to the thesis of Muñoz’s article. to aviation. Rutherford said that in wars, planes would inevitably be used to machine gun poor soldiers. He was right, but little did he know that aviation would shape the development of mankind in some aspects, and not necessarily for the worse. Most notably, his predictions and fight against aviation were utterly irrelevant. On the other hand, there is no hospital that does not have a nuclear medicine service, where the atomic nucleus does not provide fascinating images of the inside of the human body and its physiology, making medical diagnoses accurate and treatments for terrible diseases extremely effective.
We scientists belong to the world in times of peace and to our countries in times of war. That horrible phrase was not mine, but Fritz Haber, a chemist who synthesized ammonium to create fertilizers that alleviated the hunger of millions and produced the devastating gas from the trenches during our first apocalypse.
Think of every scientific or technical advance since we discovered how to start a fire. If you don’t want to look so far away, let’s think of the 20th century and its viruses, transistors, artificial satellites, radars, genetic engineering, microchips… After the pandemic we’ve been suffering, it’s clearly a massive one and even global virus eradication is far more feasible, cheaper, and efficient than a barbarism of atomic bombing that no one would even think to begin. Yes, nobody
In contrast, I contend that the same precaution must occasionally be taken with certain modern beliefs that use science in illicit ways. Swiss and German state researchers have recently developed genetically engineered rice that could flood vast areas of the planet with vitamin A where the normally poor people are endemic to deficiency.
The unfortunate discoverers decided not to patent the process. The Greenpeace organization saw this as a Trojan horse for multinational companies to do business with and the campaign against the golden rice was fierce. The European authorities ignored the matter and did not support the scientists: dealing with environmentalists was out of the question. Up to the massive open letter from 109 Nobel Prize winners in science, supported by tens of thousands of scientists. I will only reproduce two sentences and the final apostille:
“We accuse Greenpeace of misrepresenting the risks, benefits and effects of genetically modified foods because, according to all scientific evidence, they are just as, if not safer than, any other.” The World Health Organization estimates that 250 million people have a vitamin A deficiency -suffer from lack. Among them are between 250,000 and 500,000 children under the age of five who go blind every year from this deficiency. Half of them die within 12 months after losing their sight.”
The last sentence should not be forgotten: “How many poor people must die in the world for us to consider this a crime against humanity?” It is better not to report on the victims of the horror.
Yes, the dire penalties that can come from Pandora’s box have many facets, including promoting climate change by forcing Europe’s largest industrial power to burn the worst bituminous coal, lignite, demolishing wind turbines if necessary and, if necessary , of course also to the damned (although declared green by the European Parliament) nuclear energy.
Scientists need not fear the possible consequences of their findings for one reason: they are useless. Those who manage their discoveries are politicians with powerful tools that, at best, we have all placed at their disposal: the judiciary, international negotiation skills, and the armed forces.
Prometheus, Pandora and the gods involved are more than the myth and story told by Muñoz Molina: they exist and we all are. We’re the ones who must decide, without intimidation or regret, what to do with genetic engineering, space conquest, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, intelligent and nanometer-sized robotics, neural interfaces between the brain, computer, and machine, virtual reality, and everything else the lush offers and fascinating forest of science and technology.
Tonight I will remember the four John, Henry, Rudolph and especially Lise. Yes, to the lovely Lise Meitner, the so-called Jewish Mother of the Atom Bomb, who never practiced Judaism, was never a mother, and gave up working on the Manhattan Project, but she was the one who discovered nuclear fission.
As the magnificent thermonuclear cauldron that is our sun quietly hides, I will think of many others who have enabled more than ninety percent of the eight billion people that we are to survive, no matter how unbearable the inequalities between us are. This, and the possibility of our extinction, is our sole responsibility. Science, all science, will only encourage us to move forward freely, calmly, and in a balanced manner if we are sane. The only crucial thing we shouldn’t have discovered is the war.
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