Book Review : ‘Physicist’ a Look at Birth of New Ideas

The Privilege of Being a Physicist by Victor F. Weisskopf (W. H. Freeman: $17.95; 235 pages)

Progress is not a smooth process. It occurs in fits and starts. So do many other processes. History, for example. And thought.

Cultures, societies and individuals stay at one level for a while, turning the same ideas over and over in a familiar way, and then something happens that presents a new idea.

This process is not well understood, and it is certainly not predictable. Why an idea takes hold at one time but not at another is largely a matter of chance. The manner of presentation appears to hold the key. Rhetoric may turn out to be at least as important as content.

A new idea can’t be too far out, or it will be dismissed or ignored. It has to be just different enough to be intriguing, but it has to make enough connections with what people already believe so that it makes sense. Noam Chomsky’s radical critique of America may indeed be right, but his starting point is so different from most other people’s that he does not get much of a following.

Unpredictable Changes

When changes occur, sometimes they happen quickly and sometimes they take a while. Here again, no one can predict which is which.

I mention all this because Victor F. Weisskopf’s collected essays, “The Privilege of Being a Physicist,” contain many ideas that advance familiar discussions. “Whenever one way of thinking is developed with great force and success, other ways are unduly neglected,” he writes. “The one-sided religious emphasis of the Middle Ages and the equally one-sided scientific-technological emphasis of our time have released creative forces of enormous power. Think of the medieval creations of art, architecture, and moral philosophy and of the development of science, natural philosophy, and technology in our era.”

Weisskopf is a distinguished physicist who has observed almost all of 20th-Century physics firsthand. He is Institute Professor Emeritus and Professor of Physics Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With his feet thoroughly and unshakably grounded in science, he is able to speak about science with remarkable detachment. He sees its strengths and its shortcomings.

No Absolute Definitions

“Important parts of human experience cannot be reasonably evaluated within the scientific system,” he writes. “There cannot be an all-encompassing scientific definition of good and evil, of compassion, of rapture, of tragedy or humor, of hate, love, or faith, of dignity and humiliation, or of concepts like the quality of life or happiness.”

No matter what we learn about neurology or the biochemistry of the brain, he argues, “There remain important aspects of these experiences that are not touched by the scientific approach. Usually they are the ones most relevant to us.”

In the course of his long career, Weisskopf worked on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos during World War II, which produced the atomic bomb and which impressed the twin themes of science for good and science for evil onto his thought. He is, of course, not alone in this dilemma. Many of his co-workers from the atom bomb project were understandably scarred by the experience.

But Weisskopf’s thoughts have developed beyond hand-wringing. He is not against the acquisition of knowledge about nature--as if anyone could hold back the tide anyway. But he views scientific knowledge as inherently limited and incomplete. Art and science are both vital ways of thinking, he says. They each tell their own truths, and they are both necessary for humanity. Weisskopf’s analysis of the state of contemporary art is both accurate and bracing, coming from a physicist:

‘Art Is Powerful’

“Many creations of contemporary art, especially literature, deal with the tragedy and depth of our lack of purpose and meaning. In this effort our art is powerful, heart-rending, and deeply depressing. . . . We do not often enough find those ingredients that permeated art in past centuries--beauty and hope.”

Several of the essays in the book were written especially for this collection, including one that describes quantum mechanics as well as I have ever seen it described. There are also delightful portraits of Wolfgang Pauli and Werner Heisenberg, two giants of 20th-Century physics with whom Weisskopf worked.

At the same time, a few of the essays are a little bit flimsy. But it would be too much to ask that every page exhibit the same power of thought, abstraction and expression that characterizes so much of it.

Weisskopf’s insights into physics have led him to insights into the areas of life where physics cannot go. His mind works as well in the one as in the other. Sharing his thoughts is the privilege of being a reader.