Max-Born-Institut Berlin (MBI)

Pandora’s box
myself
I regarded as my own. I would have difficulty in adapting to the modern way of doing science
with teams of specialists. The philosophical background of science has always interested me
more than its special results.”
Max Born was also a role model with respect to yet another important aspect – a scientist’s
responsibility to society. As a witness and also as a party involved in the – in the strictest sense
of the word – enormous development of the sciences and technology he warned against the
consequences. Particularly after his return from Edinburgh in 1953, in his lectures and writings
Born took a stance against nuclear armament, which seemed almost inevitable at the height
of the Cold War. Born is one of the most prominent authors of the Göttingen Manifesto of 12
April 1957 published by 18 German nuclear scientists protesting against acquiring atomic
weapons for the German Armed Forces.
In his memoirs, Max Born concludes with a chapter that urges us all to think about our lives,
and from which I take the following quotation: “I am haunted by the idea that this break in
human civilization, caused by the discovery of the scientific method, may be irreparable. Although
I love science I have the feeling that it is so completely opposed to historical development
and tradition that it cannot be absorbed by our civilization. The political and military terror
and the complete collapse of ethics which I witnessed in my life are not symptoms of a
temporary social weakness but are rather the inevitable consequence of the rise of science –
which in itself is one of the greatest intellectual achievements of mankind.”
These words are of great relevance today. It is important that we are aware what a minor role
the nuclear threat plays in public opinion today – even after the threats by North Korea and
Iran. After the end of the Cold War, the threats have shifted. Our attention is not focused so
much on the possibility of the nuclear danger but on the reality of the cynicism of religiously
motivated terrorists. Ultimately, however, the basis for this possible terror has not been reduced,
but has, on the contrary, expanded. Today no one can definitively rule out the possibility
of the fanatics of this world acquiring nuclear weapons and making use of them in a mad orgy
of destruction.
And Born only referred to physical research and its fall, in the Biblical sense, expressed in the
famous statement by Born’s student Oppenheimer with reference to the uranium and plutonium
bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Physics was the leading science of Max Born’s
twentieth century. Much points to biology becoming the leading science of the twenty-first century.
Once again, mankind feels called upon to imitate Prometheus. But we should remember
that after Prometheus the gods sent us Pandora’s box. I believe that hardly anyone today
would assume or even recognize the smallest sign that the process of learning which Max Born,
Max Born • Paul Corkum 51