Scientific Involvement in CBRN Warfare - Essay Example

The Rhetoric of Science and the Issue of WMD Proliferation What determines how scientists reach consensus on their opinions? Ideally agreement in the scientific community occurs after the impartial collection of evidence and testing theories leads to an inescapably best explanation for a given phenomena. For example, the theory of evolution has gained increasing acceptance over the decades since Darwin’s day by a slow accumulation of data that, when viewed as a whole, points to the theory’s basic truthfulness. Is this always the case, however? There is reason to doubt it. Science is, after all, a human activity, and humans are notorious for being less than fully rational. Aristotle knew this well when he wrote his Rhetoric, a guide to the basic techniques of persuasive speech. Since his days both the study and practice of rhetoric has continued. With the emergence of modern science in the 17th century, scholars of rhetorical methods have sought to understand what drives science forward: a dispassionate quest for answers or a contest between rhetoricians from opposing camps. This question becomes especially pertinent when scientific opinions are formed in an atmosphere of only partial facts. A modern example is the contemporary debate over string theory in the world of physics. Is string theory a promising avenue of research, or is it merely a vacuous philosophy masquerading as legitimate science? The answer to that question depends on which scientist you ask. While there is agreement on all asides that string theory is still in an embryonic stage after decades of intensive work, there is strident debate among physicists as to whether work on should continue to dominate the lion’s share of resources devoted to asking fundamental questions about the universe. Another contentious area in the scientific community is what role if any that science has to play in the development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Should scientists work to create more of these sorts of weapons? The answer to that question is, like the debate over string theory, a matter of opinion. Conversely, the matter of whether science can contribute to finding ways to defend against WMD is hotly argued. This paper will examine the rhetorical devices used by Albert Einstein in his quest to persuade President Roosevelt to devote the federal government to developing an atomic weapon. This is pertinent not only to an understanding of history, but also to a comprehension in the ways that rhetoric determines how research dollars will be allocated.. While the term WMD can encompass any number of weapons under the chemical-biological-radiological-nuclear (CBRN) umbrella, the class of weapons that occurs to most minds when mass destruction is mentioned is thermonuclear devices, in particular the atomic and hydrogen bombs. Issues revolving around them have occupied scientists since they were first conceived of in the 1920s. Albert Einstein saw their destructive potential early on, and used rhetorical means to impress upon then-president Franklin D. Roosevelt the likelihood that they could be built. In 1939 he sent the commander-in-chief a personal letter, which read it part: In the course of the last four months it has been made probable - through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and Szilard in America - that it may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated. Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future. (Einstein, First Letter to Roosevelt) This has the dispassionate air of a scientist simply repeating a matter of fact. But it also contains an urge to action known to rhetoricians as an appeal to fear. This is quite simply a technique by which a person or persons is moved to a desired action by forecasting dreadful consequences if they fail to act. (Ayotte, 7) Einstein’s intention was to get the president to take seriously the possibility of the Axis developing atomic weapons first, if his administration didn’t move swiftly to push its own research efforts forward. Later in the same letter, Einstein builds on this appeal by creating a visual image in Roosevelt’s mind of the destructive power of the hypothetical weapon: This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable - though much less certain - that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory. (Einstein, First Letter to Roosevelt) Here the great scientist invites Roosevelt to see in his own mind a picture of the weapon’s destructive potential. Looking back in retrospect, it appears that even Einstein himself did not fully comprehend just how much power a nuclear weapon would unleash. He writes of destroying ports and some of the area surrounding them, when he may as well have described the effect such a weapon would have on New York City. Of course, a true rhetorician will seek to maintain a sense of credibility, and he may have feared that making the bomb sound too destructive may have only created scepticism in Roosevelt’s mind that such an awful device could ever actually be constructed. Having created an ominous spectre in Roosevelt’s mind, Einstein concluded his first letter to the president with the following statement: I understand that Germany has actually stopped the sale of uranium from the Czechoslovakian mines which she has taken over. That she should have taken such early action might perhaps be understood on the ground that the son of the German Under-Secretary of State, von Weizsäcker, is attached to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institute in Berlin where some of the American work on uranium is now being repeated. (Einstein, First Letter to Roosevelt) This comment serves two purposes, from a rhetorical point of view. It reinforces the ominous tone of the earlier passages, and it also gives a supporting argument for the need to take the nightmare scenario seriously. Further use of rhetorical devices can be seen in Einstein’s second letter to the president, in which he wrote approximately since months after the first: Since the outbreak of the war, interest in uranium has intensified in Germany. I have now learned that research there is carried out in great secrecy and that it has been extended to another of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, the Institute of Physics. The latter has been taken over by the government and a group of physicists, under the leadership of C. F. von Weizsäcker, who is now working there on uranium in collaboration with the Institute of Chemistry. The former director was sent away on leave of absence, apparently for the duration of the war. Einstein the rhetorician builds on the ominous tone of his first letter by using here facts to support his appeal to the president. Note how he does not overstate the matter. Nor does he try to overreach by saying something to the effect of “this is absolute proof that you must commit major resources to the atomic project now!” He merely adds additional scenes to the mental motion picture he started in Roosevelt’s mind months before: brilliant scientists pushing ever forward to develop the ultimate weapon, so enthused as to its potential that they are redirecting financial, intellectual and academic resources in great quantities. The president is left to answer the question: would they be doing this if there was nothing to the whole thing? Apparently Einstein was unimpressed with the effect that these first two communications had on the president. He followed them up with a third letter, in which he sounds less analytical and more heartfelt: I am convinced as to the wisdom and the urgency of creating the conditions under which work can be carried out with greater speed and on a larger scale than hitherto. (Einstein, Third Letter to Roosevelt) What is going on here? Why hasn’t the president alredy acted upon Einstein’s urges? Why does the Nobel prize winning physicist still have to try to persuade? Why does he make a special effort to impress upon him the urgency of the matter? Insight into why this may have been the case comes from Why Was Darwin Believed? Darwin’s Origin and the Problem of Intellectual Revolution: Anyone advancing a novel idea must face the "Catch 22" of intellectual change. If an idea is truly radical, how can it be understood, let alone believed? Without a shared context of assumptions, an idea cannot even be intelligible, let alone persuasive. Yet to the extent that an idea is indebted to convention, it comes into the world hostage to the older and opposed ideas necessary in order to explain it. Analogous to the logical paradox of Achilles and the tortoise, the tension between radical novelty and convention constitutes a rhetorical paradox: If conventional ideas are necessary in order to explain radically novel ones, how can novelty ever overtake convention, since to challenge convention one must, and at every step in ones argument, reinforce it? (Campbell, 1) The conundrum Campbell outlines in this passage captures the essence of the challenge that Einstein faced in persuading Roosevelt to decisive action. The world of the time had never heard of nuclear weapons. The most destructive devices available were high explosives, which even when combined together into massive conventional bombs and dropped on cities might only cause incidental damage to a building or two. Great Britain had withstood wave after wave of bombing runs by the Luftwaffe; still London stood. How, then, could Einstein convince someone of that era, a man unversed in advanced physics, that a weapon of such nightmarish potential could actually be constructed? How could he persuade Roosevelt that, after watching great cities survive the effects of hundreds of massive conventional bombs, a single bomb of a new design could reduce said city to radioactive rubble? Of course history records the final results. Roosevelt was at last moved to commission the Manhattan Project, and massive amounts of resources were poured into the effort to build such a weapon. But the time and effort necessary for no less a figure than Einstein to push the engine of government to invest in such an effort is illustrative of the role that rhetoric plays in science’s ongoing development. This being the case, it is fair to ask the question: how much of what science “discovers” is due to the success or failure of a single figure trying to direct the apportionment of limited resources in a peculiar direction? If one body or researchers says that a vaccine for AIDS is just around the corner, and another says that the search for such a vaccine will only squander resources that could be used to research cancer, what decides who wins the day? Einstein’s campaign to move Roosevelt to action is but one example of a rhetorical contest that continues unabated to this day. Works Cited Ayotte, Kevin. The Art of War: Aristotle on Weapons and Fear. Web. Available at http://www.csufresno.edu/communication/faculty_staff/faculty/documents/ayot te-theartofwar.pdf. Accessed 1 December 2011. Campbell, John Angus. Why Was Darwin Believed? Darwins Origin and the Problem of Intellectual Revolution. Web. Accessed 5 December 2011. Einstein, Albert. First Letter to Roosevelt. Web. Available at http://hypertextbook.com/eworld/einstein.shtml. Accessed 30 November 2011. Einstein, Albert. Second Letter to Roosevelt. Web. Available at http://hypertextbook.com/eworld/einstein.shtml. Accessed 30 November 2011. Einstein, Albert. Third Letter to Roosevelt. Available at http://hypertextbook.com/eworld/einstein.shtml. Accessed 29 November 2011. Read More