A cross-sectional view of post-atomic bomb physics culture

Every community has a certain “culture” associated with it, a term Traweek formally defines as “a group’s shared set of meanings, its implicit and explicit messages, encoded in social action, about how to interpret experience.” (Traweek, 7–8). In her book, Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists, Traweek examines the culture of the high energy physics community during the late 20th century. In contrast, Cole examines the culture of physicists during the development of the Atomic Bomb in the book, Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the World he Made Up. Shared across this near half-century of time are some of Okun’s characteristics of white supremacy culture. The desperation of a world war might have fueled the characteristics to appear more prominently during the development of the atomic bomb, however echoes of white supremacy culture still linger in the physics community.

Okun presents a rigorous list of cultural characteristics that reinforce white supremacy, but the ones that are most pertinent to the field of physics are:

• A sense of urgency that limits the ability of members of the community to be reflective of their actions
• Individualism limiting collaborative experiences and viewpoints
• An emphasis on objectivity that limits introspection on the social consequences of scientific work

It is certainly reasonable that fears of nuclear fallout historically prompted physicists to work urgently. However, such urgency was not without consequences to the physics that was being done. As Cole describes, “because they were under so much pressure to produce enough U-235 quickly, the physicists had to proceed by trial and error rather than taking the time to really understand the phenomena” (Cole, 54). Fast forward 50 years and Traweek observed postdoctoral students in physics expressing a similar urgency, this time to the almost dehumanizing fear of becoming “obsolete,” like a “detector” (Traweek, 94).

Individualism, on the other hand, has manifested in the physics community through the viewpoint that progress in physics was primarily done at the hands of certain “geniuses.” It was this viewpoint that led to top physicists being removed from posts at universities and funneled into a “lonely mesa in New Mexico” to work on the development of the atomic bomb (Cole, 55). When undergraduate students would go on to study the physics of this time in their coursework, their textbooks, according to Traweek, would subliminally suggest that “science is the product of individual great men” (Traweek 78).

Finally, there is notion of scientific objectivity despite its blatant nonexistence. Okun breaks down objectivity into 1) a disregard of emotional expression and 2) the invalidation of alternative viewpoints. The first form of objectivity was largely present during the development of the atomic bomb. When physicist Robert Oppenheimer confessed his feelings of guilt toward working on the bomb, President Truman referred to him as a “cry baby” (Cole 65). Although Traweek does not note such explicit, fallacious objectivity, she does note that the invalidation of alternative viewpoints remains a problem in the physics community, stating that undergraduate studies present “no debate about alternative interpretations at the same level of analysis” (Traweek, 76).

The 20th century was a time of rapid growth in the field of physics, but the echoes of white supremacy culture that underscored the desperation of the atomic bomb still linger in physics communities. As the sciences once again face the pressures of desperation, not in nuclear fallout but in the midst of a pandemic, it is important to keep an eye out for how these characteristics of white supremacy culture, embedded in the culture of scientists, might emerge in the forefront.

References

1. Traweek, S. (1992). Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists. Harvard University Press.
2. Cole, K. C. (2009). Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the World he Made Up. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
3. Okun, T. (2000). White supremacy culture. Dismantling racism: A workbook for social change groups, Durham, NC: Change Work.