Why?

[khall]

       Why do we blame Einstein, Oppenheimer, et al for the horrors of the atomic bomb? Shouldn't the fault lie firmly on Democritus's shoulders? (I had to look up his name, you can file that under 'failures of the American education system'.)

K.

Comments

[musicman]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hendrik_ter_Brugghen_-_Democritus.jpg

I love this portrait! Lots of bright intelligence and joy.

[keetara]

The joy of discourse and discovery is so very present in this painting. Wonderful!

[grail76]

Largely because he described a structure while they described a result?

[khall]

       Was partly about...knowledge and history. If Demokritis had been taken seriously 2000 years ago, and that had lead to the invention of electricty 1000 years early say...or...as I said to keetara we choose to blame one person/entity for one thing, but choose different arbitrary conditions for another instance/act. Just an interesting sociology.

K.

[keetara]

I wouldn't blame any of them. The horrors were the results of power hungry people who decided that the use of what had been learned about atomic structures and such would be best put to the expedient means of destructive force used against others.

Granted, now, that scientists do need to be responsible for the direction their ~own~ research takes. Meaning that if it is something that ~can~ be used destructively, it WILL be used destructively.

And the flip side to this, is that without all of the wars, "police actions", and destruction, we would not have much of the advances that we have today. There is something about conflict, and bloody conflict at that, that brings out some of the most creative thought processes in humans. Mother of necessity and all.

[khall]

zomg smart, practical, analytical girls==my kryptonite. Mostly the post was an ironic comment on 'blame' and guilt and...attachment of responsibility in our culture. The sorta...superstition of anti-science and how...arbitrary and...human, I guess, it is. We don't blame the inventor of fire, we blame the arsonist. But we do blame the tobacco company, the scientist, etc, etc. Just interesting to me.

K.