Re: [Marxism] Partisanship and Objectivity in Theoretical Work: Politics and natural science

[Jim Farmelant <farmelantj@xxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 24 Mar 2006 10:32:59 -0500 Les Schaffer <schaffer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
writes:

>
> i don't really see how Einstein's big idea of relativity contributed
> so
> directly to the bomb.

Out of relativity theory, it was really just the E=mc^2 formula
that was directly relevant to the work of the nuclear scientists.
The broader theory of special relativity was generally not directly
relevant to their work.

>
> people were playing with nuclear reactions independently of his
> work.
> historically, there was a whole branch of physics that took off at
> the
> very end of the 1800's -- nuclear physics -- with a complete set of
> its
> own questions and quandries. Roentgen (X-rays, high energy),
> Rutherford
> (nuclear bombardment before they knew what "nuclear" meant), Walton
> &
> Cockcroft (nuclear reactions, first **confirmation** -- not use --
> of
> E=mc^2).  these are people who dabbled with bombarding materials,
> developing the NOTION of a nucleus as they went along.  Lise Meitner
> confirmed that the 200 MeV yield (U235) of a single nuclear fission
> --
> first calculated using basic 19-th century electrostatics and some
> knowledge of the size of nuclei --  made sense in terms of measured
> "mass defects" and e=mc^2. thus relativity provided  basically an
> (energy) accounting/bookeeping check.  on the theoretical front,
> more
> significant was Bohr's work on the nuclear drop model of the uranium
> nucleus, which gave scientists a *mechanism* for understanding how
> the
> fission process proceeds from bombardment to energy release. Meitner
> used this drop model for her book-keeping check.

If we are going to say that relativity had a role in the development of
nuclear weaponry, then we can't ignore quantum mechanics either.
And unlike relativity, quantum mechanics was the work of many
people: Planck, Einstein, de Brogile, Schroedinger, Heisenberg,
Bohr, Dirac, Pauli, Fermi, Feynman, and many, many other scientists.
Some of these people did go on to work on nuclear weaponry
during WW II.

>
> if there is any place to start giving up on "great person" science,
> maybe we should start here with the atomic bomb.
>
> les schaffer


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