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Via David, a UD Reader:

This memory of Robert Wilson, a physicist who in 1969 testified, in front of a congressional committee, on behalf of a proposed particle accelerator.

[Senator John Pastore asked] Wilson — a veteran of the Manhattan Project — … “Is there anything connected with the hopes of this accelerator that in any way involves the security of the country?”

… “No sir, I don’t believe so.”

“Nothing at all?” Pastore asked.

“Nothing at all.”

Pastore pressed further: “It has no value in that respect?”

… “It has only to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of man, our love of culture. It has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending.”

The incident introduces an essay in Scientific American about “the sheer joy of discovery, of pushing the boundaries of human knowledge, as essential a component of the human spirit as the greatest works of art, of music, of literature.”

Margaret Soltan, September 23, 2011 9:15PM
Posted in: intellectuals

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