Detour

The "forced draft of war" is popularly supposed to have produced great advances in science. A vulgar error, says Professor I. I. Rabi, Chairman of Columbia University's Physics Department. In the current Atlantic Monthly, Professor Rabi looks gloomily back at the last five years --and gloomily ahead at the immediate future:

"The same profound questions which furrowed the brows of physicists before the war . . . are still with us. The physicist returning from the war has no vast amount of literature to digest. . . because his own dusty files contain virtually the last words written upon the subject.

"With atomic bombs and radar in mind, the skeptic may well ask what the physicist thinks he has been doing during these past five years, if not physics.

"To answer [this question], the physicist must attempt to explain the two aspects of his science. There is, first, the creative intellectual activity which constantly pushes back the boundaries of our understanding of natural phenomena. Second, the industrial activity which applies the results of scientific knowledge . . . to satisfy material human needs and whimsies. The first is the science of physics proper, and the second is the side of physics which has been called the inheritance of technology. If the science of physics lags, the inheritance of technology is soon spent. In these war years, the inheritance of technology has been exploited to the point where further substantial progress can only come from an advance in the science of physics."

Most of the physicists who forged scientific weapons with such spectacular success are anxious to get back to their true love: theoretical work. But Professor Rabi is not sure that they will be encouraged (or allowed) to do so. Once dismissed as misty dreamers, they are now being courted with alarmingly possessive ardor.

Real science cannot thrive except while pursuing a high, non-practical purpose: "The physicist returns from the war to cultivate his science. We are the inheritors of a great scientific tradition and of a beautiful structure of knowledge. It is the duty of our generation to add to the perfection of this structure and to pass on to the next generation the best traditions of our science for the edification and entertainment of all mankind."

But "the physicist has become a military asset of such value that only with the assurance of peace will society permit him to pursue scientific knowledge in his own quiet way. Our rejuvenated military forces are building giant laboratories (any one of which can use up all of our currently available and really well-trained physicists), and hope to stock them with men who can continue their scientific research and still adhere to the . . . regulations of the Civil Service Commission."

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