The Making of the Atomic Bomb

“It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they are found because it was possible to find them.” 

Oppenheimer expresses the ambivalence of scientists who first stop at nothing to understand the atom, then wonder whether they have unearthed knowledge that may destroy humanity. 

“The authority of scientific opinion remains essentially mutual; it is established between scientists, not above them.” 

Michael Polanyi, a theoretician in chemistry and economics and a philosopher of science, sets out the essence of the scientific project, that it is ruled by truth rather than politics

“‘It is wrong,’ he told his colleagues repeatedly, ‘to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is’—which is the territory classical physics had claimed for itself. ‘Physics concerns what we can say about nature.’” 

Part of Bohr’s greatness is that he insists on delving ever deeper into natural phenomena. His goal is not simply to know how the parts of reality fit together but to know why they do so. The “why” of things reveals much more than simply their “what.”