In physical science and in industrial technique... we have emancipated ourselves... from the savage dependence upon catastrophes for progress... In science and in industry we are radicals—radicals relying on a tested method. But in matters of social organization we retain a large part of the conservatism characteristic of the savage mind...

In the strenous autumn of 1945, when scientist tried to provide legislators with a new set of facts and a new concept of military destruction, two courses were advocated. Leo Szliard called for intensive pressure on key individuals; the scientists' lobby, which helped to establish civilian control of atomic energy, was a collective exercise in this technique. Rabinowitch, while supporting this crash program, argued that the radical change in patterns of political behavior required by the new weapons would be achieved only by the long, painfully slow process of education. The education must begin with the scientists themselves for, said Rabinowitch, the scientists had a lot to learn about how to handle political and social evidence as scrupulously as they used laboratory data, and how to think politically with the same blend of imagination and rationality that they applied to scientific questions.

At the time I was brought into the picture, research on the uses of atomic energy had been going on at a gradually accelerating pace since January, 1939, when Lise Meitner explained that the uranium atom could be split. The discovery opened up two divergent paths for its exploitation. Most physical scientsts realized that nuclear energy, derived from the splitting, or fissioning, of the atom, might be used either to generate power for peaceful purposes or to generate super-weapons. In general, however, it was the scientists who were personally acquainted with Hitler's New Order who first became most interested in the possible military uses of atomic energy and its effect on the existing balance of political power.

It is a fact of life on our beleaguered little planet that widespread torture, famine and governmental criminal irresponsibility are much more likely to be found in tyrannical than in democratic governments. Why? Because the rulers of the former are much less likely to be thrown out of office for their misdeeds than the rulers of the latter. This is error-correcting machinery in politics. The methods of science, with all its imperfections, can be used to improve social, political and economic systems, and this is, I think, true no matter what criterion of improvement is adopted. How is this possible if science is based on experiment? Humans are not electrons or laboratory rats. But every act of Congress, every Supreme Court decision, every Presidential National Security Directive, every change in the Prime Rate is an experiment. Every shift in economic policy, every increase or decrease in funding for Head Start, every toughening of criminal sentences is an experiment. Exchanging needles, making condoms freely available, or decriminalizing marijuana are all experiments. Doing nothing to help Abyssinia against Italy, or to prevent Nazi Germany from invading the Rhineland was an experiment. Communism in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and China was an experiment. Privatizing mental health care or prisons is an experiment. Japan and West Germany investing a great deal in science and technology and next to nothing on defense - and finding that their economies boomed - was an experiment. Handguns are available for self-protection in Seattle, but not in nearby Vancouver, Canada; handgun killings are five times more common in Seattle and the handgun suicide rate is ten times greater in Seattle. Guns make impulsive killing easy. This is also an experiment. In almost all of these cases, adequate control experiments are not performed, or variables are insufficiently separated. Nevertheless, to a certain and often useful degree, such ideas can be tested. The great waste would

In learning how to manipulate nuclear energy man has taken the greatest step in the control of the forces of nature since his half-human ancestors learnt how to make and maintain fire. Just as fires can be, and in the early days often were, utterly destructive of life in the forests and on the prairies, so this new power may be utterly destructive of all that has been built up in a thousand generations. Man's moral stature has not grown with his intellectual stature, or rather perhaps it would be fairer to say man's institutions have not advanced as fast as his power to harness the forces of nature to his will. For I am convinced that if a vote could be taken the world over as to whether there was any object in the world for which it was worth while to start an aggressive war, not one man in a hundred would say "Yes." Unfortunately, as we have recently seen, modern developments make it so easy for a few vicious leaders to mislead, control and dominate great nations that the natural, decent human instincts of mankind are no adequate safeguard.

the possible world that excites me the most-the future we can still have on this one. The misuse of science endangers our civilization, but science also has redemptive powers. It can cleanse a planetary atmosphere overburdened with carbon dioxide. It can set life free to neutralize the toxins that we have scattered so carelessly. In a society that aspires to become a democracy, a conscious and motivated public can will this possible world into existence.

I have talked about our efforts to combat the misuse of nuclear energy. Let me now tell you how this very same energy is used for the benefit of humankind.
At the IAEA, we work daily on every continent to put nuclear and radiation techniques in the service of humankind. In Vietnam, farmers plant rice with greater nutritional value that was developed with IAEA assistance. Throughout Latin America, nuclear technology is being used to map underground aquifers, so that water supplies can be managed sustainably. In Ghana, a new radiotherapy machine is offering cancer treatment to thousands of patients. In the South Pacific, Japanese scientists are using nuclear techniques to study climate change. In India, eight new nuclear plants are under construction, to provide clean electricity for a growing nation — a case in point of the rising expectation for a surge in the use of nuclear energy worldwide.
These projects, and a thousand others, exemplify the IAEA ideal: Atoms for Peace.
But the expanding use of nuclear energy and technology also makes it crucial that nuclear safety and security are maintained at the highest level.

Can we grasp also that not only have inventions up to date, which would have contrived this, been neglected or misused, but that just around the corner new inventions, such as the application of atomic energy, will, if they arc allowed, change and improve our lives out of all recognition?

The different strands of radical thought seek to lift a veil from our eyes in order to emancipate us from domination, cowardice, or repression. They unmask in order to liberate.

Apart from the question of food, there is the question of energy. It seems clear that, if it were financially worth while, fairly economical methods could be discovered by which more use would be made than at present of energy from the sun. And in theory there is no calculable limit to what can be got out of atomic energy. When people have discovered how to turn hydrogen into helium, sea-water will become their raw material, and it will be a long time before this source of supply is exhausted. Speaking of less specific possibilities, we have to reflect that man has existed for about a million years, and scientific technique for at most two hundred years. Seeing what it has already accomplished, it would be very rash to place any limits upon what it may accomplish in the future. Scientific knowledge is an intoxicating draught, and it may be one which the human race is unable to sustain. It may be that, like the men who built the Tower of Babel in the hope of reaching up to heaven, so the men who pursue the secrets of the atom will be punished for their impiety by providing by accident the means of exterminating the human species, and perhaps all life on this planet. From some points of view such a consummation might not be wholly regrettable, but these points of view can hardly be ours. Perhaps somewhere else, in some distant nebula, some unimportant star has an unimportant planet on which there are rational beings. Perhaps in another million years their instruments will tell them of our fate, and lead them to agree on an agenda for a conference of foreign ministers. If so, man will not have lived in vain.

If you want to do evil, science provides the most powerful weapons to do evil; but equally, if you want to do good, science puts into your hands the most powerful tools to do so. The trick is to want the right things, then science will provide you with the most effective methods of achieving them.

We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity.

One of the most disconcerting issues of our time lies in the fact that modern science, along with miracle drugs and communications satellites, has also produced nuclear bombs. What makes it even worse, science has utterly failed to provide an answer on how to cope with them. As a result, science and scientists have often been blamed for the desperate dilemma in which mankind finds itself today. Science, all by itself, has no moral dimension. The same poison-containing drug which cures when taken in small doses, may kill when taken in excess. The same nuclear chain reaction that produces badly needed electrical energy when harnessed in a reactor, may kill thousands when abruptly released in an atomic bomb. Thus it does not make sense to ask a biochemist or a nuclear physicist whether his research in the field of toxic substances or nuclear processes is good or bad for mankind. In most cases the scientist will be fully aware of the possibility of an abuse of his discoveries, but aside from his innate scientific curiosity he will be motivated by a deep-seated hope and belief that something of value for his fellow man may emerge from his labors. The same applies to technology, through which most advances in the natural sciences are put to practical use.

Another scientific development that we find difficult to absorb into our traditional value system is the new science of cybernetics: machines that may soon equal or surpass man in original thinking and problem-solving. [...] In the hands of the present establishment there is no doubt that the machine could be used – is being used – to intensify the apparatus of repression and to increase established power. But again, as in the issue of population control, misuse of science has often obscured the value of science itself. In this case, though perhaps the response may not be quite so hysterical and evasive, we still often have the same unimaginative concentration on the evils of the machine itself, rather than a recognition of its revolutionary significance.