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The Central Role of Energy in Soddy's Holistic and Critical Approach to Nuclear Science, Economics, and Social Responsibility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Thaddeus J. Trenn
Thaddeus J. Trenn
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut, Riemerschmidstrasse 7, D-8130 Starnberg, W. Germany.
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Extract

Frederick Soddy (1877–1956), one of the foremost radiochemists of his day, was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Soddy was also among the first of the scientific leaders of his age, along with Blackett (1897–1974), Bernal (1901–71), and others, to become interested in the social implications of their work. In 1950 his colleague Paneth wrote that currently ‘there is widespread discussion on the responsibility towards the community of men of science and particularly experts in radioactivity; but a perusal of Prof. Soddy's non-chemical writings of no less than thirty years ago [viz., during and after the first world war] shows how strongly he felt the duty to fight for a better order of things'. Soddy was a complex iconoclast often derided for dealing with what seemed to be disparate interests. What, it could be asked, could monetary reform possibly have to do with radiochemistry? But to make sense of Soddy, the question must rather be formulated in the other direction: What fundamental concern did Soddy have that enabled him to embrace holistically a variety of seemingly diverse activities? The answer can be given in a word: energy. And the way in which Soddy dealt with this issue involved him directly with social economics as well as with the social responsibility of scientists.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , November 1979 , pp. 261 - 276
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1979

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References

NOTES

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3 Soddy, F., Science and life: Aberdeen addresses, London, 1920, p. 6Google Scholar. The original address entitled ‘Science and life’ was given in December 1918.

4 F.Soddy, concluding statement from Typescript-A of Soddy's biographical records, in the Bodleian Library, Soddy-Howorth Collection, 4 (Alton, 2).

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13 Ibid., pp. 199–200.

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15 Ibid.

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid.

18 Ibid., p. 201.

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39 Ibid., p. 487.

40 Ibid., p. 492.

41 Ibid., p. 488.

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51 Ibid.

52 Ibid.; Keynes, J. M., A tract on monetary reform, London, 1923Google Scholar, ‘constituted an attack on one of the main pillars of the British economic system’, and, according to Stewart, , op. cit. (30), p. 22Google Scholar, Keynes found himself ‘virtually alone’ in his rejection of Britain's return to the pre-war gold standard system; cf. Keynes, , A treatise on money, London, 1930.Google Scholar

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60 Ibid.

61 Soddy, , op. cit. (26), p. 20.Google Scholar

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63 Ibid.

64 Ibid., pp. 292–3.

65 Bernal, John Desmond, The social function of science, Cambridge, Mass., 1967 (original edn., London, 1939), p. xv.Google Scholar

66 Ibid., p. 386.

67 SirHall, Daniel et al. , The frustration of science, London, 1935 (reprinted New York, 1975)Google Scholar. This contains a Foreword by Soddy on the inversion of science; chapter I by Sir Daniel Hall on science and agriculture; chapter II by J. G. Crowther on aviation; chapter III by J. D. Bernal on science and industry; chapter IV by V. H. Mottram on medicine; chapter V by E. Charles on the invention of sterility with respect to the population explosion; chapter VI by P. A. Gorer on bacterial warfare; and chapter VII by P. M. S. Blackett entitled ‘The frustration of science’. Blackett insists that science must become involved in social and economic issues: ‘Unless society can use science, it must turn anti-scientific, and that means giving up the hope of the progress that is possible. This is the way that capitalism is now taking, and it leads to Fascism’ (p. 139). The only other alternative envisioned here is socialism, which encourages science, instead of rejecting science like fascism. These claims of Blackett clearly set the tone of the volume.

68 Soddy, , op. cit. (67), pp. 7–9Google Scholar. Soddy refused to accept the socialist gambit and followed neither the rank individualism of Gesell nor the creed of Wells. He preferred democracy. ‘The dispute between Socialism and individualism centres on one point, the question of the ownership of revenue-producing enterprise … [The alternative], democracy stands for a fair deal between the individual and the community … Do not trust labels. Look well to realities. An equally sinister fate is as likely to come from Socialism itself [as from extreme individualism or Fascism]. If it does not understand the origins of social injustice, it is as likely to end in an oligarchy, supported by military power …’; Soddy, , Inversion, op. cit. (32), p. 47Google Scholar. Cf. Soddy, F., ‘What I think about socialism’, Socialist review, 08 1928.Google Scholar A decade later, Soddy expounded further on this point in the light of the political polarity that had hardened in the meantime. ‘There is growing up among the masses, who have no part in or liking for the power-politics of their rulers, a feeling of fatalism that the threatened conflict is inevitable. According to the Marxist doctrine, capitalism carries within itself the seeds of its own collapse, so that they are coming to regard communism as the only alternative. My thesis is that the threatened collapse of our Western civilization has nothing to do with the political issues between capitalism and communism, but is the consequence of its false money system. Not only the impending collapse but its whole development, culminating in this very concentration of power into two opposing world-groups, has been due to the creation and issue of money having passed out of the hands of the several nations, at first into the hands of private bankers and now into the supranational Money Power which has usurped sovereignty over the whole Western World. The alternative is for the West certainly not communism, which … would be the substitution of one form of tyranny for another … [but] the restoration to the several nations of their traditional sovereign powers over the creation of money, and … an honest money system, with money of constant purchasing power, operated, not for profit, but … as a public service, like those provided for the maintenance of just weights and measures …’; Soddy, , op. cit. (29), p. 2.Google Scholar

69 Soddy considered science to be the creator of wealth, but under the inversion of science the ‘exploiters of the wealth of the world are not its creators’. Under this inversion, from ‘the point of view of the community, capital is not wealth but debt, the not owning by the community of the resources of the planet whereon it resides …’; Soddy, , op. cit. (3), pp. 23–4Google Scholar. The rise of the ‘scientific civilization’ which Soddy advocated would meet with many obstacles, as he acknowledged just after the first world war. ‘The war being now over, it is not out of place to add that an even greater danger than neglect awaits the scientific investigator, the danger that he along with every other creative element in the community will be remorselessly shackled and exploited to bolster up the present discredited social system. There is abundant evidence since the war that science rules the world, and he who would aspire to rule it must first rule science’; Soddy, , op. cit. (3), p. 109Google Scholar; cf. Soddy, F., ‘Social relatons of science’, Nature, 1938, 141, 784–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70 Soddy, , op. cit. (67), p. 9.Google Scholar

71 Wells, , op. cit. (37), p. 781.Google Scholar

72 Ibid., p. 777.

73 Bernai, , op. cit. (65), pp. xxxiv–xxxvGoogle Scholar. These comments appear in his essay ‘After twenty-five years’ included in this volume and originally published in Goldsmith, M. and Mackay, A. (eds.), Society and science, London, 1964.Google Scholar

74 Soddy, , op. cit. (4).Google Scholar

75 Mumford, Lewis, ‘Commemorative message’, in Commemoration of Professor Frederick Soddy, London, 1956/1958, pp. 11–12Google Scholar. The lack of alertness and sensitivity here described is represented typically by Soddy's biographer and close colleague in earlier research on isotopes, Sir Alexander Fleck: ‘The basis of his thought for the whole of his life after coming to Oxford was an endeavour to resolve the weaknesses of our modern civilized life … [Soddy's] main conclusion was that “it was entirely due to the fictitious money system which arose contemporaneously with the birth of the scientific civilization and that now was being purposefully and consciously used to frustrate it and to preserve the earlier civilizations founded on slavery” … To most of us,’ Fleck admitted, ‘these writings have little attraction and the best that can be said of them is that they represented an attempt to base a monetary system on an assessment of energy quantities … He continued to write and think on these lines until the 1950s but the impact of these writings tended to diminish’; Fleck, Alexander, ‘Frederick Soddy’, Biographical memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 1957, 3, 210–11Google Scholar. Twenty years later it can be asked whether Soddy's views should not have attracted more attention within the scientific community, and whether to have ignored them can be justified.

76 Barber, , op. cit. (22), p. 293.Google Scholar

77 Soddy, , op. cit. (3), p. 172.Google Scholar