I write a Mon­day Col­umn every cou­ple of months for 3 Quarks Dai­ly. Pre­vi­ous posts are col­lect­ed here. This is the lat­est one.

“the point is…this is exact­ly what hap­pened in Vietnam…a tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tion to a human prob­lem…”

- Joe Pen­hall, Land­scape with Weapon (2007)

If you were a physi­cist in the 1920s and 30s, all roads led to Copenhagen’s Bleg­damsvej 15. This was where Niels Bohr’s Insti­tute of The­o­ret­i­cal Physics was locat­ed. The Ukrain­ian-born physi­cist George Gamow recalled that “the Insti­tute buzzed with young the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cists and new ideas about atoms, atom­ic nuclei, and the quan­tum the­o­ry in gen­er­al”. [1]

He was a superb foot­baller and had played to near pro­fes­sion­al lev­el as a young man. But in physics the tall, soft­ly-spo­ken Niels Bohr was in a league of his own. Ger­man physi­cist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker said after meet­ing Bohr: “I have seen a physi­cist for the first time. He suf­fers as he thinks.” [2] Togeth­er with Ernest Ruther­ford, Bohr had mapped the struc­ture of the atom, and lat­er, in the 1920s, he helped shape the quan­tum rev­o­lu­tion, despite strong resis­tance from its founder, the for­mer patent offi­cer from Bern – Albert Ein­stein. Einstein’s debates in the late 1920s with Bohr on quan­tum the­o­ry were like a sci­en­tif­ic clash of the Titans. Ein­stein could nev­er accept the inde­ter­min­is­tic quan­tum mechan­ics that grew out of his own 1905 paper on the pho­to­elec­tric effect.

Bohr’s annu­al con­fer­ence, to which he invit­ed about thir­ty physi­cists, was the high­light of the physics’ year. From the 3rd to 13th April 1932, the bright­est minds in physics gath­ered togeth­er in Copen­hagen. In a few years’ time, many of these same physi­cists would be work­ing on the atom­ic bomb. But for now, they still had time for a lit­tle light-heart­ed play act­ing.

Each year the con­fer­ence end­ed with what George Gamow called a “stunt per­tain­ing to recent devel­op­ments in physics”. [3] The year before, Gamow had round­ed up pro­ceed­ings with a car­toon his­to­ry of quan­tum mechan­ics, star­ring Mick­ey Mouse in the lead role. [4] In 1932, as it was the cen­te­nary of Goethe’s death, they decid­ed to stage a ver­sion of the Ger­man writer’s great­est play, Faust.

Writ­ten when the indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion was trans­form­ing Ger­many, Goethe’s Faust rais­es key ques­tions regard­ing sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, ques­tions such as what is the pur­pose of knowl­edge, and how can we have progress with­out increas­ing human suf­fer­ing?

Goethe’s Faust is a pro­to-sci­en­tist (the word ‘scientist’ was not coined until 1834), whose desire to know nature’s deep­est secrets, leads him to strike a fate­ful bar­gain with Mephistophe­les. In the six­teenth cen­tu­ry, the sto­ry of Faust had been used by the Church to fright­en peo­ple about the dan­gers of for­bid­den (i.e. non-Chris­t­ian) knowl­edge. Goethe’s play re-works the clas­sic theme for the mod­ern age. His Faust cel­e­brates the spir­it of inquiry, while high­light­ing the dan­gers of mis­ap­plied knowl­edge. True sci­en­tif­ic under­stand­ing, Goethe sug­gests, is life-affirm­ing and cre­ative, not destruc­tive and exploita­tive.

The 1932 Faust was re-writ­ten and, of course, great­ly abridged by the younger sci­en­tists at Bohr’s con­fer­ence. Their lit­er­ary skills were no doubt boost­ed by the prod­ucts of Copenhagen’s oth­er claim to fame – the Carls­berg Brew­ery, which also hap­pened to be one of Dan­ish science’s most gen­er­ous bene­fac­tors. Max Del­brück, who would lat­er become a cen­tral fig­ure in the post-war rev­o­lu­tion in mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gy, did most of the writ­ing.

The play is re-worked into what is essen­tial­ly a humor­ous skit at the expense of the lead­ing physi­cists of the day. Goethe’s char­ac­ters were replaced with con­tem­po­rary physi­cists, their younger col­leagues don­ning masks to play them on stage. Mephistophe­les became the iras­ci­ble Aus­tri­an Wolf­gang Pauli, while Faust became Paul Ehren­fest, a close friend of Ein­stein. The role of God was reserved, appro­pri­ate­ly enough, for their host, Niels Bohr.

Wolf­gang Pauli’s rude­ness was leg­endary. In the play he blunt­ly tells the painful­ly polite Niels Bohr (aka God) that his lat­est the­o­ry is “Crap”. [5] But their gen­tle­man­ly host, Niels Bohr, is also gen­tly mocked. His almost patho­log­i­cal fear of being too crit­i­cal becomes the mot­to of the play, embla­zoned on the text’s cov­er: “Nicht um zu kri­tisieren” (Not to crit­i­cize). Even Ein­stein doesn’t escape unscathed. His flawed uni­fied field the­o­ry, which had cre­at­ed a media storm of inter­est when it was pub­lished in 1929, is lam­pooned by his young col­leagues as the son of a flea.

Faust is depict­ed as a proud, even vain, fig­ure, one who is deeply dis­sat­is­fied by what he has learnt and what physics can offer. Mephistophe­les tries to tempt Faust by con­vinc­ing him to accept one of the more out­landish the­o­ries in quan­tum physics – Pauli’s own idea of the neu­tri­no, a par­ti­cle with­out mass or charge. If once he can make Faust say to such a the­o­ry “Ver­weile doch! Du bis so schön!” (Stay! You are so beau­ti­ful!) then he has won his wager with God.

At times the play is anar­chic, even Dadaist, in its cel­e­bra­tion of the bizarre world of quan­tum the­o­ry. But in the 1930s the new physics was itself full of weird and won­der­ful notions. Niels Bohr once greet­ed one of Pauli’s the­o­ries with the com­ment: “We are all agreed that your the­o­ry is crazy. The ques­tion, which divides us, is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being cor­rect. My own feel­ing is that it is not crazy enough.” [6]

The physi­cists trans­form Faust’s death scene at the end of Goethe’s play into a moment of supreme bathos. Mephistophe­les ush­ers a press pho­tog­ra­ph­er on stage and it is this that is Faust’s undo­ing. Paul Ehren­fest utters Faust’s famous dying words, just as he is about to be immor­tal­ized by the pho­tog­ra­ph­er:

“Faust (high­ly excit­ed, he takes a pose for the press pho­tog­ra­ph­er)

To this fair moment let me say:

‘You are so beau­ti­ful – Oh, stay!’

A trace of me will linger ’mongst the Great,

With­in the annals of The Fourth Estate.

Antic­i­pat­ing for­tune so benign,

I now enjoy the moment that is mine!” [7]

Although humour was the last thing in Goethe’s mind as he penned this poignant scene, in the physi­cists’ ver­sion of Faust it becomes a won­der­ful­ly wit­ty moment, albeit with seri­ous under­tones. The younger physi­cists are mak­ing fun of their col­leagues’ van­i­ty and self-impor­tance. Indeed, by high­light­ing the theme of fame, they were mak­ing an impor­tant point: in the com­ing years nuclear physi­cists would indeed enter the pub­lic eye and fea­ture ever more fre­quent­ly in the media.

After Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki were destroyed by the new sci­en­tif­ic super­weapon, the pub­lic would come to view sci­en­tists such as Ein­stein and Oppen­heimer with both respect and fear. Even­tu­al­ly, as they were drawn ever clos­er to the gov­ern­ment and the mil­i­tary, the price physi­cists would pay for their Faus­t­ian bar­gain was to be immor­tal­ized as Dr Strangelove, the ulti­mate dooms­day man.

At the end of the play, a physi­cist who had entered the media spot­light in 1932 made a brief appear­ance as Faust’s over-ambi­tious famu­lus, Wag­n­er. James Chad­wick is por­trayed by his fel­low physi­cists as “a per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the ide­al exper­i­men­tal­ist”. He walks on stage after Faust’s death scene wear­ing the scientist’s trade-mark lab coat and bal­anc­ing a black ball on one fin­ger.

This rather sin­is­ter look­ing fig­ure announces an extra­or­di­nary dis­cov­ery, one of which Faust him­self would have been proud. James Chad­wick had found one of the basic con­stituents of mat­ter: the third ele­men­tary par­ti­cle after pro­tons and elec­trons, the neu­tron.

The dis­cov­ery of the neu­tron, just before the Copen­hagen con­fer­ence, was a sem­i­nal achieve­ment for mod­ern nuclear physics. Its dis­cov­ery made pos­si­ble Leo Szilard’s idea in the fol­low­ing year of a self-sus­tain­ing chain reac­tion. Indeed there are Faus­t­ian echoes here too. For in 1932 Szi­lard read HG Wells’s nov­el The World Set Free about a Faus­t­ian sci­en­tist dis­cov­er­ing how to release the ener­gy locked in the heart of the atom. [8] Szilard’s dis­cov­ery helped open the door to the atom­ic bomb.

1932 was an impor­tant year as regards the sci­ence of the super­weapon. Wern­her von Braun was hired by the Ger­man army to design rock­et engines, the first step on the path towards ICBMs. In the same year Harold Urey announced the dis­cov­ery of a new hydro­gen iso­tope known as deu­teri­um. This would become the fuel for the hydro­gen bomb. These are pow­er­ful reminders that the tragedy of Goethe’s Faust was about to be played out on a world stage. Clear­ly, the lessons of the play and of Goethe’s sci­ence were still pro­found­ly rel­e­vant.

In Part II, Act 2 of Goethe’s Faust, Wag­n­er (Chad­wick in the 1932 per­for­mance) uses alche­my to cre­ate not a neu­tron but a homuncu­lus, a minia­ture man. In this scene Goethe crit­i­cizes what he con­sid­ered to be a mis­guid­ed approach to sci­ence. Wagner’s alchemistic attempt to cre­ate the homuncu­lus com­bines allu­sions to both Paracel­sian recipes and con­tem­po­rary advances in chem­istry, such as Friedrich Wöhler’s syn­the­sis­ing of urea in 1828. [9] But sig­nif­i­cant­ly Wag­n­er only suc­ceeds because Mephistophe­les is present. Goethe high­lights the fact that Wagner’s approach to sci­ence is flawed and super­nat­ur­al inter­ven­tion is required to make it work.

Faust has turned his back on alche­my and the knowl­edge of books at the begin­ning of the play. As Faust dis­cov­ers, nei­ther words, books nor instru­ments alone lead to true knowl­edge. His pas­sion­ate desire to grasp ‘the inmost force / That bonds the very uni­verse’ (ll.382–3, “was die Welt / Im Inner­sten zusammenhält”) is a sci­en­tif­ic and philo­soph­i­cal goal Faust pur­sues tire­less­ly through­out his life, regard­less of the cost to him­self or oth­ers around him. [10] But he too has much to learn about sci­ence and knowl­edge. For Goethe, one of the most impor­tant lessons was that the route to sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge and self-knowl­edge was a par­al­lel process. As he wrote in 1823: “The human being knows him­self only inso­far as he knows the world; he per­ceives the world only in him­self, and him­self only in the world.” [11]

At the end of the play Goethe high­lights the dan­gers of the mis­ap­pli­ca­tion of sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge. Thanks to the temp­ta­tions of Mephistophe­les, Faust has lost touch with the insights he has gained into both nature and him­self. His over­am­bi­tious attempt to reclaim land from the sea, a hasty and hubris­tic act which results in the deaths of the old cou­ple, Bau­cis and Phile­mon, rep­re­sents Goethe’s fears about the mis­use of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. It is one thing to under­stand the laws of nature – the forces that bind the uni­verse – and to be able to con­trol these laws. It is some­thing else entire­ly to be able to use this pow­er wise­ly.

By per­form­ing Faust in 1932, the physi­cists cre­at­ed some intrigu­ing par­al­lels between Wag­n­er and Chad­wick, as well as the neu­tron and the homuncu­lus. Goethe used the scene in Wagner’s lab­o­ra­to­ry both to belit­tle alchemy’s sup­posed achieve­ments and to crit­i­cize mech­a­nis­tic sci­ence for its hubris­tic attempts to play god. What, one won­ders, would Goethe have made of Chadwick’s dis­cov­ery of the neu­tron?

Goethe’s notion that sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge and self-knowl­edge should evolve hand-in-hand, is a deeply sug­ges­tive theme when one looks at the his­to­ry of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry sci­ence. What is the point of know­ing nature’s deep­est secrets, Goethe asks, if humankind nev­er attains self-knowl­edge? The Faus­t­ian physi­cist might con­trol the forces of nature but he does not under­stand, let alone con­trol, him­self.

It is fas­ci­nat­ing that the atom­ic physi­cists gath­ered at Bohr’s Insti­tute in spring 1932 chose to per­form Goethe’s play at this piv­otal moment in the his­to­ry of sci­ence. Six years lat­er, one of the twen­ti­eth century’s great­est play­wrights began a work that would raise pro­found ques­tions about the pur­pose of sci­ence in the atom­ic age. After many revi­sions, the final ver­sion of Bertolt Brecht’s Life of Galileo was first per­formed in 1955. By then, as Oppen­heimer said, the sci­en­tists had known sin and the world was liv­ing in fear of an immi­nent nuclear holo­caust. This huge­ly influ­en­tial play reflect­ed the wide­ly-held view that twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry sci­ence was in cri­sis.

Brecht’s Galileo is a Faus­t­ian char­ac­ter, who ini­tial­ly boasts that he would hap­pi­ly live out his life in a dark, win­dow­less prison if he could but dis­cov­er the secret of light. But at the end of his life, under house arrest and – like the aged Faust – near­ly blind, Galileo has realised that sci­ence is about more than describ­ing the laws of nature.

Brecht believed that, as a human activ­i­ty, sci­ence had a moral dimen­sion that was increas­ing­ly ignored. In the midst of the cold war, as the super­pow­ers and their sci­en­tists trans­formed the laws of nature into ever more ter­ri­ble weapons of mass destruc­tion, Brecht called for a more human-cen­tred sci­ence, a point he makes by para­phras­ing Galileo’s con­tem­po­rary Fran­cis Bacon: “I believe that the sole objec­tive of sci­ence con­sists in reduc­ing the drudgery of human exis­tence.” Accord­ing to Brecht, the alter­na­tive is that each advance in sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge results in “progress away from human­i­ty”. The sci­en­tists’ shrieks of Eure­ka! will one day be greet­ed by “a uni­ver­sal cry of hor­ror” because of the ever more lethal tech­nolo­gies their dis­cov­er­ies make pos­si­ble. [12]

Goethe would no doubt have been flat­tered that a cen­tu­ry after his death some of the world’s most gift­ed physi­cists per­formed a ver­sion of his great­est play. He would, how­ev­er, have been appalled to dis­cov­er that soon sci­en­tists such as these would cre­ate weapons that could incin­er­ate tens of thou­sands of peo­ple in an instant. Would he have been sur­prised though? I doubt it.

Today, despite the myr­i­ad dis­trac­tions of an increas­ing­ly tech­nol­o­gized cul­ture, the lessons of Goethe’s Faust remain pro­found­ly rel­e­vant to us all. As Brecht so elo­quent­ly put it in the final scene of Galileo:

“May you now guard science’s light

Kin­dle it and use it right

Lest it be a flame to fall

Down­ward to con­sume us all.

Yes, us all.” [13]

Ref­er­ences

The issues sur­round­ing the physi­cists’ Faust are dis­cussed at greater length in my book, Dooms­day Men: The Real Dr Strangelove and the Dream of the Super­weapon, and in an arti­cle for the cur­rent issue of the Pub­li­ca­tions of the Eng­lish Goethe Soci­ety, avail­able to down­load here.

1. George Gamow, Thir­ty Years That Shook Physics, 1966; repr Mine­o­la, N.Y., 1985, 51.

2. Cit­ed in Richard P. Feyn­man, Don’t You Have time to Think?, Lon­don, 2005, xii.

3. Gamow, 167.

4. John Cana­day, The Nuclear Muse: Lit­er­a­ture, Physics and the First Atom­ic Bombs, Madi­son, 2000, 268, n.

5. The Bleg­damsvej Faust is on micro­film 66 of the Archive for the His­to­ry of Quan­tum Physics (Amer­i­can Philo­soph­i­cal Soci­ety). An Eng­lish ver­sion, togeth­er with the illus­tra­tions, is in Gamow, 165–218.

6. Bohr cit­ed in Robert Ehrlich, Eight Pre­pos­ter­ous Propo­si­tions, Prince­ton, 2005, 5.

7. Gamow, 210.

8. H.G. Wells, The World Set Free: A Sto­ry of Mankind, 1914; repr. as The Last War, Lin­coln, 2001.

9. P.D. Smith, ‘Scientific Themes in Goethe’s Faust’, in Paul Bish­op, ed., A Com­pan­ion to Goethe’s Faust, Rochester, N.Y., 2001, 198–99.

10. See ibid., 194–220.

11. “Der Men­sch ken­nt nur sich selb­st, insofern er die Welt ken­nt, die er nur in sich und sich nur in ihr gewahr wird. Jed­er neue Gegen­stand, wohl beschaut, schließt ein neues Organ in uns auf.” Goethe, “Bedeu­tende Fördernis durch ein einziges Geistre­ich­es Wort” (1823), Werke, Ham­burg­er Aus­gabe, 1981, vol 13, 38; tr. Dou­glas Miller: Goethe, Sci­en­tif­ic Stud­ies, Prince­ton, 1995, 39.

12. On Brecht and Bacon see PD Smith, Metaphor & Mate­ri­al­i­ty: Ger­man Lit­er­a­ture and the World-View of Sci­ence 1780–1955 (Oxford, 2000), 304; all quotes in this para­graph from Brecht, Life of Galileo, scene 14.

13. Life of Galileo, Scene 15; tr. Charles Laughton (Pen­guin, 2008).

“Hütet nun ihr der Wis­senschaften Licht

Nutzt es und mißbraucht es nicht

Daß es nicht, ein Feuer­fall

Einst verzehre noch uns all

Ja, uns all.”