Despite the vision and farseeing wisdom of our wartime heads of state, the physicists have felt the peculiarly intimate responsibility for suggesting, for supporting, and in the end, in large measure, for achieving the realization of atomic weapons. Nor can we forget that these weapons as they were in fact used dramatized so mercilessly the inhumanity and evil of modern war.In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Physicists feel responsible for creating atomic weapons and acknowledge the evil they wrought. They carry a unique, inescapable knowledge of sin.
- In plain terms
- Scientists feel guilty for making atomic weapons and accept they know sin.
- What can you take from it?
- Scientific knowledge carries heavy moral responsibility.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Should creators bear moral weight for how their work is used?
- Can knowledge of sin be unlearned?
Another view
It places undue burden on creators rather than users.
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