For the reading and responding assignment, I’m considering using a series of letters and statements by Albert Einstein. Prior to the second world war, Einstein signed several letters to president Franklin Roosevelt, pushing for the U.S. government to begin seriously looking into developing nuclear weapons, in fear that Germany might produce an atomic bomb.
Einstein meant for this to be a deterrent and had always condoned the bombing of Japan at the end of the war. He even released a statement in which he and Bertrand Russel pleaded with the world that the development of nuclear weapons must stop, with the increasing fear of H-bombs.
I also came across a quote from J. Robert Oppenheimer;
“In some sort of sense which no vulgarity, no humour, no overstatement can quite extinguish the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which the cannot lose”.
This is potentially the text I’ll end up working with as it does cover the whole topic, the moral dilemma in which Einstein found himself. Although the quote didn’t come directly from Einstein, it definitely relates to the predicament he found himself in.
The image her is a quick play around I had with the dilemma, one side Einstein is empowering a nation through nuclear warfare and the other represents his peaceful- pacifistic nature. Not an image to be taken seriously, more as a quick statement about the topic.
Planet Snooch 