Michael Frayn’s play Copenhagen deals with the 1941 meeting between German physicist Werner Heisenberg and his Danish counterpart Niels Bohr. The Nobel laureates met in secret to discuss the atomic bomb. The two men’s work on quantam mechanics had revolutionized atomic physics, but why Heisenberg went to Copenhagen (especially when he and Bohr were on opposite sides of the war) has never been definitively answered. In Frayn’s play, the scientists meet once again to discuss physics and the metaphysical. Following last Sunday’s sold-out performance at the Winter Garden Theatre, a public symposium was held to discuss some of the issues raised by the play. Varsity writer Julian Dunn was there to take in the play (see review in the Arts section) and the talk that followed.
Copenhagen raises a lot of questions, not only about the specific details of that meeting, but also about science and ethics in general. Did Germany fail to produce the nuclear bomb before they were defeated because Heisenberg had moral qualms and deliberately sabotaged the effort, as he later claimed? Or, was the failure solely a technical one, based on Heisenberg’s inaccurate mathematical calculations and difficulty in obtaining materials? And how do we deal with similar dilemmas between science and ethics today?
These issues and many others were the subject of an hour-long panel discussion following Sunday’s matinee performance of Copenhagen. Moderated by Globe and Mail science columnist Stephen Strauss, the panel consisted of Scott Menary, an experimental particle physicist at York University, James Brown, a professor of the philosophy of science at U of T, and John Moffat, a theoretical physicist at the University of Waterloo.
The panel touched on many issues raised by the play. Professor Moffat pointed out “the two great problems” Heisenberg had to solve in order to build the bomb, and why he failed. The first problem was how to enrich uranium-238 into fissile U-235. Ironically, the most knowledgeable scientist on this matter, the Jewish Gustav Hertz, had already fled Germany by that point, and many other leading Jewish scientists had already been killed or had escaped.
The second great problem was how to moderate the nuclear reaction to avoid a meltdown. Heisenberg selected heavy water (D2O) as a moderator, not realizing that the more readily available graphite would have sufficed. Heavy water is extremely difficult to make and there were not enough facilities in Germany during wartime to make enough heavy water for the reactor.
Moffat felt that Heisenberg truly did want to build a bomb, but that he was driven by fear-ultimately justified by post-war intelligence revelations-that the Allies were building atomic weapons themselves and planning to drop them on his homeland. It is instructive to remember, Moffat said, that ultimately “the only people who used such a bomb were us.”
Moffat’s view of Heisenberg and his actions led the discussion into the realm of science, politics, and ethics. An audience member asked how scientists can guard against the immoral use of technology in cases where the question is not so clear-cut as atomic weaponry.
James Brown responded by saying that this is clearly a problem, but claimed that, with the exception of certain rogue scientists acting as nothing more than PR shills for biotechnology companies, the misuse of technology has occurred largely at the hands of militaristic governments. Menary supported Brown by citing Einstein’s post-war regret at having written to Roosevelt during the war to warn him about the dangers of Germany’s nuclear program, a letter which arguably led to the acceleration of the Manhattan Project. For Einstein, his distrust of government in general was not limited to the enemy.
Brown cited the Nuclear Missile Defence shield proposal as an example of how the ethical and scientific issues of the play relate to our own “frightening times.” He outlined a number of reasons why it is a bad idea, but concluded by saying that, unlike Frayn’s Heisenberg, the decision on whether the shield gets deployed is not an individual one. “We have to push our governments to make the right decision,” Brown said.
In short, the panelists noted that scientists can only provide the technical guidance as to whether or not certain things can be done, but ultimately it is up to society as a whole to mediate their interaction with our civilization. It is the non-scientists who frequently have to be even more vigilant against the misuse of science.
