Teller defends
morality of his recommendation to develop H-bomb
Edward Teller, a senior
research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford
University and the "father of the hydrogen
bomb" defends the morality of his 1949
recommendation that the United States should develop the
hydrogen bomb in response to the Soviet Union's
successful test of an atomic bomb.
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Information:
In the May 22 issue of the
journal Science, Teller writes: "Today there
is perceived to be a strong contradiction between the
results of science and the requirements of morality; for
instance, the application of science has led to the
development of nuclear weapons, while international
morality seems to demand that such results never be
applied and that reearch leading to them should be
stopped. I hold a position radically different from the
general point of view, believing that contradiction and
uncertainty should be embraced."
Teller invokes modern
physics specifically Heisenberg's uncertainty
principle that limits predictions of the future to
probabilities to argue in favor of free will. He
writes that the one major decision in his life that seems
to have made a difference "on a large scale" is
when he decided to take a position favoring hydrogen bomb
development in opposition to that of Robert Oppenheimer,
Enrico Fermi and the other scientists involved in the US
nuclear bomb development project. President Truman took
his recommendation, rather than that of the others, and
decided to go ahead with the program.
"I am still asked on
occasion whether I am not sorry for having invented such
a terrible thing as the hydrogen bomb. The answer is, I
am not," he writes. "Several decades later the
cold war ended with an American victory. It is possible,
perhaps even probable, that my advice to give a positive
answer to the question of the hydrogen bomb played a
significant role in determining his outcome."
The essay is available on
Science Online (registration required) at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/280/5367/1200. SR
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