Atomic Age America

Martin V. Melosi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781315509754
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Atomic Age America looks at the broad influence of atomic energy¿focusing particularly on nuclear weapons and nuclear power¿on the lives of Americans within a world context. The text examines the social, political, diplomatic, environmental, and technical impacts of atomic energy on the 20th and 21st centuries, with a look back to the origins of atomic theory.

C H A P T E R 1

A Community of Scientists

Atomic Theory over the Centuries

INTRODUCTION: ATOMIC THEORY TO ATOMIC BOMBS

Atoms and void; matter and space; being and nothingness. These extremes, or sets of apparent contradictions, have become the basis for knowing the world in which we live. These pairings also are at the heart of atomic theory, which unlocked knowledge of the material world. The subject of this chapter seems far removed in time and topic from a book focused on Atomic Age America. Indeed, there is no single, direct historical line between the hypothesizing of atomic theory centuries ago and the atomic bomb. The science behind nuclear weapons was not, in other words, first theorized in ancient times. But in several respects speculation about the physical nature of our universe, why matter and energy shape everything around us, and the way in which we come to know how things work began as a rather simplified atomic theory. A rationalist view of the universe grew up alongside philosophical and religious queries into determining the place of humans on the globe.

Sometimes the free exchange of ideas was muffled by governmental and religious institutions only to reemerge later. Intellectual cross-fertilizing was necessary for a process that led to basic changes in a variety of disciplines to help understand the physical world. It also resulted in refining atomic and subatomic theory. By the 1930s, however (as Chapter 2 demonstrates), warring powers in World War II stifled the free exchange of ideas about the atom, institutionalized science like never before, and directed the application of atomic theory to practical ends—primarily atomic bombs and nuclear reactors. Not all the queries about atoms flowed toward one inexorable conclusion, but the limits on the free exchange of scientific ideas challenged an intellectual process that had been going on for centuries. Therefore, this book needs to begin in the distant past to let us better grasp some of the most important philosophical and scientific ideas that shaped the modern world and our understanding of the atom.

A COMMUNITY OF THINKERS, A WORLD OF IDEAS

Atomism is a very old idea originating with the ancient Greeks and ancient Hindus. Science as we know it today was not practiced in antiquity. Scholars sought answers through philosophy. In fact, there was no physics community for hundreds of years to come. Yet, there has always been a community of thinkers (at least loosely constructed) who shared common interest in perplexing ideas, argued vigorously over the major and even most minor concepts and precepts, and passed along their curiosity and speculations to future generations. Transmitting ideas in ancient times was no easy task, and much was lost simply in the chaos of living. Confusion sometimes occurred in the translation of ideas and concepts from language to language, from culture to culture. Ultimately, scholarly communities survived and prospered, transcending country borders and even continents. A scientific community as we understand it today, however, was not established until the late nineteenth century.

Atomic theory, like other great ideas, depended on collaboration and on sharing thoughts and speculations without fetter. At times politics and religion made such free exchange difficult or impossible. The well-known case of Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) became a prime example, when the Catholic Church forced Galileo to renounce his notion of a sun-centered as opposed to an earth-centered universe. Even when ideas flowed without restraint, grand theories of science were not simply the result of an accumulation of suppositions, discoveries, and inventions. Most big ideas go through paradigm shifts, that is, fundamental changes in the shared common beliefs that govern the thinking of an intellectual community. Scientific revolutions arise out of paradigm shifts. Atomic theory has gone through such change from the fifth century b.c.e. to this day.¹ Twentieth-century chemist and philosopher of science Michael Polanyi identified a “republic of science” (or what I call the “democracy of science”) which operated as “a highly simplified example of a free society” almost tribal in its adherence to its own conventions and practices.² The “community structure of science,”³ and its predecessor scholarly communities, allowed atomic theory to blossom.

ATOMISM IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

The fifth century b.c.e. introduced a precursor to atomism borne out of simple observation as much as through abstract theory. Philosophers initially surmised that water, fire, and/or air were primary (or primordial) substances modified in various ways to produce all matter. They speculated not only about the basic substances but about their permanence and their ability to change. The philosopher Empedocles of Agrigentum in 445 b.c.e. asserted that all existing matter emerged from a combination of four primary substances: air, earth, fire, and water. This idea was most important to the development of atomic theory, especially the notion that building blocks made up nature. Empedocles’s theory endured in one form or another until modern chemistry challenged it many centuries later.⁴

The four primordial elements represented the most basic way to make sense of the physical world. But it was contemplating what the naked eye could not see that revealed the substance of the universe, that is, atoms and void. In the West of the fifth century b.c.e., several Greek philosophers developed and refined the concept that matter consisted of small indivisible particles—atoms or corpuscles (atomos in Greek meaning “indivisible”). Many regard Leucippus (early fifth century b.c.e.) as the founder of atomism. He may have been the first to state the concept of the indivisibility of matter, and the first to assert that all events have rational explanations rather than supernatural causes. About 420 b.c.e. Democritus of Abdera, a wealthy Thracian, further developed this atomic theory (or at least left more writings about it than Leucippus) making clear that atoms were infinite in number, indivisible, made of the same substance, differed in shape and size, and were always in motion. To account for observable changes in the world, he added that things do not differ in their nature. Variations in the position or arrangement of atoms modify them. To make this possible space itself had to be understood as a vacuum (nothingness or void) where motion could take place. The universe, therefore, was composed of the two realities of atoms and void. Others refined the ideas of Democritus, incorporating them into a materialistic philosophy emphasizing a world governed by the laws of nature, rather than by the intervention of a deity or other supernatural forces. The concept of atoms and void, identified as interdependent, challenged and then replaced the idea of primordial substances.⁵

While ancient Greeks shaped the idea of atomism, it also was a topic of much speculation in Hindu philosophy in what is now modern India. Which came first? No one knows for sure. There is a distinct possibility that atomism developed independently in the West and East. What seems fairly clear is that while both cultures shared a similar concept, the details were different. For example, the atomic theory of the Nyaya-Vaisheshika movement of Brahmanism joined atomic theory with the idea of the primordial elements (nine rather than four in this case). Atomistic doctrine also appeared in philosophical accounts of Buddhism and Jainism.⁶ Whether East or West, for more than fifteen centuries the atomic theory remained in limbo, fading from memory, contested, or ignored. The philosophical giants of the classical era, Plato (c.427–c.347 b.c.e.) and Aristotle (384–322 b.c.e.) and their followers failed to embrace the doctrine. Plato regarded reason, not perception, as the way to know the world. His universe was governed by an intelligent power (God), and although he believed that matter was eternal, he viewed the observable as a pale copy of the world of forms and ideas. Plato modified the theory of the four elements (placing him in line with atomist thought if not atomic theory) by devising a geographic variation relying more on abstraction than empiricism. Aristotle was clearly the premier anti-atomist of his day. The world, he argued, was as we saw it, interacted with it, and understood it. There was no gap between matter and form. They were bound together. While he accepted atoms as everlasting and supported the idea of the four elements, he rejected the notion of void.⁷ Yet, in the ancient world superstition, myth, and simple observation were making way for a fairly sophisticated set of ideas about the construction of the physical universe.

ANTI-ATOMISM IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE COMING SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

The quashing of the atomic theory in the Christian sphere through the Middle Ages was virtually unconditional. The Catholic Church did not tolerate the notion of primordial substances which questioned the spiritual origins and sustaining of the universe. While comfortable with Aristotle’s theory of the four elements, the Church rejected the idea of the void. Some medieval Christians helped compile historical narratives about atomic theory, but few were even sympathetic to the idea. Jewish philosophers also were staunch anti-atomists. Some Arab scholars embraced atomism, but with a decidedly religious focus. Arab atomism relied on a concept of recurring creation, but creation dependent on Allah’s will and not through real-world cause-and-effect. In this interpretation the material world and the spiritual world were reconciled, unlike in Christianity, where atomism appeared to pose a threat to the notion of an omnipotent God.⁸ By and large atomism faded from thought in the West for hundreds of years. In the fifteenth century, scholars unearthed and published a long-lost work on Greek atomism which helped to invigorate scientific inquiry about atomic theory in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The ancient text raised questions about atomic theory that were particularly well-received in England among such luminaries as physicist and chemist Robert Boyle (1627–1691), an early founder of modern chemistry, and Isaac Newton, who united the laws of physics. England was fertile ground for atomism at the time, since it was well beyond the powerful religious authority of the Catholic Church, which was omnipresent in Italy, France, and Spain. Even in Catholic countries, some individuals hoped to reconcile atomic doctrine with Christian views.⁹

The Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century (really underway in the sixteenth century or earlier) built upon the rebirth of experimental science at the height of the Renaissance, and was receptive to atomism. Scientists of this era drew upon the classical and medieval roots of science in the West as well as works by Islamic scholars. The great advantages for scientific inquiry in this period were the invention of instruments of measurement, such as fine microscopes and telescopes, and improved knowledge of mathematics.¹⁰ German physician Daniel Sennert likely was the first to apply the classical atomic theory to chemistry in 1619. His work, De Chymicorum, described chemical change as the interaction of atoms, distinguishing between atoms of an element and atoms making up a chemical substance. Sennert’s work suggested the existence of different types of atoms.¹¹ However, there was no agreement among scientists and philosophers about atomism during the Scientific Revolution.¹² Any atomic theory worth embracing had to be based on empi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• About the Author
• Introduction: A Most Controversial Technology
• Endnotes
• Chapter 1 A Community of Scientists: Atomic Theory over the Centuries
• Chapter 2 Government Mobilizes the Atom: War, Big Science, and the Manhattan Project
• Chapter 3 Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Aftermath: From Total War to Cold War
• Chapter 4 The Cold War and Atomic Diplomacy: Deterrence, Espionage, and the Superbomb
• Chapter 5 Invincible to Vulnerable in the Age of Anxiety: Massive Retaliation, Fallout, and the Sputnik Crisis
• Chapter 6 Too Cheap to Meter, Too Tempting to Ignore: Peaceful Uses of the Atom
• Chapter 7 To the Brink in Berlin and Cuba: The Military-Industrial Complex and the Arms Race
• Chapter 8 Nuclear Power versus The Environment: The Bandwagon Market and the Energy Crisis
• Chapter 9 The Post-TMI World, Chernobyl, and the Future of Nuclear Power
• Chapter 10 Pax Atomica—or Pox Atomica—at the End of the Cold War
• Chapter 11 Proliferation, Terrorism, and Climate Change: The Atom in the Twenty-First Century
• Conclusion: From Hiroshima to Fukushima
• Index