Nicholas Mosley - Hopeful Monsters

The machine that was being built in Cambridge in the autumn of 1931 was more elaborate than Rutherford's toy-like apparatus of 1919; but it still had a bizarre appearance like something constructed as a prop for a modern ballet. It was like an outsize village pump crowned with a tin top hat: whoever worked it had to sit in a tea-chest lined with lead; this was to protect him from possible effects of radiation. But such was the excitement of the time that physicists did not worry much about radiation. What were to be bombarded now were the nuclei of lithium atoms — it was known that these were potentially unstable. They were to be bombarded with protons accelerated artificially to enormous speeds, so that this time there would be a man-made release of energy which, it was hoped, would be of a different order of strength from that achieved naturally by

Rutherford. But of course some of the excitement was in not exactly knowing what the effects might be: any energy released could presumably be used for either creation or destruction.

As early as 1914 H. G. Wells had published a story called 'The World Set Free' in which there had been imagined a release of power with just such ambivalent potentiality: this story had become formative of my own imagination in my childhood. Wells had described how the tapping of nuclear energy might transform the world: one lump of coal might be sufficient to drive an ocean liner across the Atlantic; nuclear-powered aeroplanes might flit in the sky like moths. He had also described how such energy could be used for destruction — or indeed how there could be interaction between destruction and creation. Atomic bombs could be built and there would thus be the threat that the human race, even the whole earth, might be destroyed: but also might it not be that the threat of such destruction would provide just the impetus that humans required to take a step forwards in evolution? On the brink of self-annihilation, they might find themselves driven to come together to formulate a system, a state of mind rather, in which there might be no more war. In Wells's story, part of the human race was in fact destroyed; but the remainder came to its senses. I wondered in 1931 — How better might humans be pushed to come to their senses?

There was the Indian god Shiva, was there not, who was the god of both creation and destruction — or rather of the interaction between the two — who danced within his circle of fire. Humans have always known — How can you have creation without destruction? Energy is just energy: it is up to humans to choose between, or to handle, the two.

When I got back to Cambridge I went to see Donald to find out what was going on. Donald had stopped doing philosophy and was back in physics: he had been encouraged to do this, he said, by Wittgenstein. I said 'When did that happen?' Donald said 'After that party.' I thought — Oh yes, at that party, there were a lot of things happening all at once!

I said to Donald 'But with this attempt to split the atom, has anyone any idea what the effects might be?'

Donald said 'Of course they wouldn't carry on with the experiment unless they thought that they had it under control.'

I said 'But they wouldn't learn anything if they had it perfectly under control.'

Donald said 'The experiments are to observe changes within an atom, not changes within human beings.'

I said 'Mightn't they be interconnected?'

Donald said 'I am a physicist now: I think philosophy is senseless.'

I went to see Melvyn: it was as if he had never left his room. His white face seemed to be made of cloth. I thought — Perhaps the bodies of politicians assume the consistency of puppets: to be successful, they have to be things that cannot change.

I said 'Have you thought how odd it is that these things should be happening in physics just at a time when old orders of things in the political world are cracking up? When there seems to be some impetus on every level for change. I mean humans will either harness new energy as a result of these crack-ups or else they can blow themselves up. Does it not make one think that there may be some connections between these apparently different orders of things — the human and the scientific?'

Melvyn said 'Ducky, who have you been reading, St John the simply Divine?'

I said 'No one in the north seemed to care very much about the activities of National Shipbuilders Security Limited: they know that if no one wants more ships then more ships can't be built. They want to make some sort of protest about this order of things: but they don't want to change it.'

Melvyn said 'Ducky, stop being an organ-grinder, and on the concrete situation start sharpening a few knives.'

I said 'As a matter of fact, I think National Shipbuilders Security Limited are thinking of building some concrete ships, then they will sink, and there won't even have to be a war.'

Melvyn said 'Darling, has anyone told you that you're becoming a bore?'

I went to see my mother as soon as I had come down from the north: my father was away on a lecture tour in Russia. I bicycled to the village which I seemed to have been away from for years: there were the walls on which I had climbed as a child; the gate through to the lawn on which I had eventually been able to beat my father at croquet. I wondered — I feel I have left childhood behind, because I am trying to look after a child?

I found my mother sitting on the seat in the bow window where I had sat with her so many times in the past: where I had rested my head on her shoulder while she read to me stories of boys going out in search of wisdom and hidden treasure, or how they had been

helped by the answering of riddles. My mother had the light behind her: I thought — I usually imagine her with the light behind her: she is the Indian goddess Deva, or Kali, of creation and destruction. Then — Why is it that the goddess of creation and destruction has two names, while the god Shiva only has one? Is it because it is difficult for men to accept that with their mothers the two are one? I said 'Hullo.' My mother said 'Hullo.' I wondered — But do I mean that this makes women, mothers, more or less devious: or, of course, both?

My mother said 'Did you have a nice time?' I said 'Yes, thank you.' She said 'What did you do?' I said 'We were building this Recreational Hall, you know.' My mother said 'How sweet!'

I thought — she is angry with me because I have not visited her much this summer? She has been drinking? Or, of course, both.

I had begun to notice, as well of course as not to want to notice, that my mother had begun to drink quite heaviiy at this time.

She said 'And did people love you for that?'

I said 'Not particularly.'

'Did you think they would?'

I had gone up to kiss her on the cheek. When our faces were together I smelled the scent that might have been a cover-up for something different.

I thought — But of course, between mother and son, there is creation and destruction.

I said 'What I don't see is, why the working class don't start a revolution.'

I thought — But I have just been describing to Melvyn why they don't.

She said 'Well that's quite obvious, isn't it?'

'Why?'

'People don't want to die.'

'I thought Freud said they did.'

'Oh you've only been home two minutes, and you're going to get at me about Freud, are you!'

I thought — Oh yes, all conversations are for the purposes of defence or attack. I should just be making flicking movements with my hands.

I said 'As a matter of fact, I want to ask you something very important.'

She said 'Oh what is that?'

I said 'You know how Freud was struck by how many of his

patients said that they had had incestuous relationships with their parents, and then he thought that in fact they were having fantasies — '