G. Bugliarello
Dec 1, 1989
Citations
0
Influential Citations
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Citations
Journal
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
Abstract
The use of scientific research for military purposes goes back a long time. Archimedes in Syracuse, and the anonymous inventor of poison gas in the China of the Sung dynasty, were early examples of scientists involved in military research. Ever since, the connection between science and military power has been obvious and strong. Suffice it to think of Leonardo’s war machines or of Prince Henry the Navigator’s and the British Admiralty’s quest for better navigation techniques. Such techniques -as with Archimedes’ levers or solar furnaces-also had a strong civilian application. In fact, it is often hard to decide which was the prior event-the military or the civilian. The difficulty of the separation is particularly striking with the development of explosives. Suffice it to think of Alfred Nobel’s invention. But with the development of more sophisticated weapons in World War I including airplanes, tanks, submarines, and poison gas-and above all with the development of rockets and nuclear weapons in World War 11, there emerged research and scientists in large numbers focused exclusively on military purposes -even if, again, their inventions often had civilian applications. Hiram Maxim’s machine gun, with its rapid killing power, was perhaps the first modem weapon to arouse widespread ethical concerns. These concerns became enormously magnified with nuclear weapons. The prospect of wholesale destruction of hundreds of millions of human beings generated a horrified universal reaction that properly has not abated. On the other hand, nuclear weapons, far more than any other kind of weapon, became a successful instrument of geopolitical stability and discouraged large-scale war; the utility of nuclear weapons continues unabated, as long as they are in the hands of responsible powers. They have, in effect, provided a new twist, a technological one, to the old saying si vis pacem para bellum if you want peace prepare for war. And in so doing, nuclear weapons have also provided us with difficult moral issues. To put it very bluntly, if we accept the fact that the human race seems to continue to be constitutionally prone to violence and aggression and tends to resolve many of its problems by resorting to force, is it unethical to do military research that helps maintain stability (even if not, necessarily, justice)? When might it be proper to object to a particular