Abstract
Physicist Percy Bridgman has been taken by Heather Douglas to be an exemplar defender of an untenable value-free ideal for science. This picture is complicated by a detailed study of Bridgman’s philosophical views of the relation between science and society. The normative autonomy of science, a version of the value-free ideal, is defended. This restriction on the provenance of permissible values in science is given a basis in Bridgman’s broader philosophical commitments, most importantly, his view that science is primarily an individual commitment to a set of epistemic norms and values. Considerations of external moral or social values are not, on this view, intrinsic to scientific practice, though they have a broader pragmatic significance. What Bridgman takes as the proper relation between science and society is shown through analysis of his many writings on the topic and consideration of his rarely remarked upon involvement in the most problematic example of “Big Science” of his day: the atomic bomb. A reevaluation of Bridgman’s views provides a unique characterization of what is at stake in the values in science debate: the normative autonomy of science.
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Notes
Bridgman’s speech which became “Scientists and Social Responsibility” was in fact given a year before Oppenheimer’s Little Lecture. Oppenheimer alludes to a very similar lecture given by Bridgman the year prior at Princeton (see Wigner et al., 1947).
For example, Bridgman was one of the signatories of the 1955 Russell-Einstein maniefesto (1955), which urged peace in the face of hydrogen bombs.
The relevant materials were declassified and made available to the Harvard Archive in 1974 (Kenneth Bainbridge to C. A. Elliott, May 6, 1974). Walter must have been familiar with all of the material therein, so, presumably, it was excluded due to a lack of space and its perceived lack of consequence for his physical and social thinking. I note that Bridgman’s involvement is mentioned in Hoddeson et al. (1993) and Hawkins et al. (1983), though neither source references the archival material that grounds the discussion here.
Bridgman’s motivations are clearer in light of his remarks on the necessity of universal war service in the face of the draft in his final book: “Perhaps the most important such limitation is that it is only the young men who are physically able to fight in the front line. This cannot be avoided. How, then, shall the rest of us conduct ourselves? It seems to me that the only decent way for the rest of the community to act is for everyone else to devote himself to to making such a contribution as he can to the common efort to ward off the common danger. This means universal compulsory service for everyone in wartime. The ideal would be for everyone to find the niche in which he could make the most effective contribution.” (Bridgman, 1959b, p. 302) Working for Oppenheimer allowed Bridgman to find his niche.
BCF (1990), DSM Folder 54 Compton A. H. 1941–1942.
BCF (1990), DSM Folder 54 Compton A. H. 1941–1942.
See Urey et al. (1948), commentators included leading physicists I. I. Rabi and Lee DuBridge.
For more on reactions to Operations Crossroads and a contextualization of Bridgman’s remarks, see Wellerstein (2016).
NNSA/NSO Nuclear Testing Archive, NV0128609.
These records can all be found in the Bridgman papers at the Harvard Archive HUB4234.17, quotes courtesy of Harvard library. All uncited quotations in this section are from these files.
“It is almost a year since you and I discussed the possibility of your helping us in the project on which I am now engaged.” Oppenheimer to Bridgman, November 8, 1943. See also the letters between Oppenheimer and Conant cited in the above subsection.
NNSA/NSO Nuclear Testing Archive: NV0309126 (Allison to C. S. Smith, CC Openheimer 1945); NV0309137 (Jette to Bridgman, CC Openheimer, Allison, Smith 1945); NV0309138 (Smith to Oppenheimer, CC Allison, Peierls, Bacher, Holloway, Morrison, Bethe, Smith 1945); NV0309140 (Smith to Oppenheimer, CC Allison Peierls, Bacher, Holloway, Morrison, Bethe, Metropolis, Smith 1945).
See Oppenheimer to Conant, November 8, 1943 in BCF (1990), DSM Folder 141 Oppenheimer.
Evidence of Bridgman’s acting in an advisory or negotiating role in the transfer of a cyclotron from Harvard to Los Alamos can be found in “Interview of Robert R. Wilson by Lillian Hoddeson on 1980 November 18”, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD USA, www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/30094-5.
“[Bridgman] stated, however, that the award could have nothing whatever to do with the work he did for the Government, and dampened rumors that he had been one of the ‘silent’ men behind the creation of the atom bomb by disclosing that his war work had consisted of experiments testing the effects of high pressure on steel used in armor plating. Bridgman deprecated the value of this work and said that it had been discontinued even before the end of the war.” (“Percy W. Bridgman chosen for Nobel prize in physics” 1946).
Thermodynamics and probably electromagentism, the latter of which Bridgman took over from B. O. Peirce, leading to his great concern with the foundations of special relativity.
This essay is the source of the “no holds barred” phrasing referenced by Oppenheimer (1948) and was presented at a Princeton’s Bicentennial Conference in a session on “Physical Science and Human Values” in 1946—Perhaps the incoming director of the Institute of Advance Studies was in attendance. Originally in Wigner et al. (1947) and republished with his other writings on science, technology, and society in Bridgman (1955).
For an account of the secularization of the moral virtues associated with scientific practice in Victorian England see Shapin Bellon (2014). For a look at this process focused on the American context and the interwar period, see Shapin (2008, Chap. 5). A somewhat different accounting for Bridgman’s account of scientific virtue in terms of Puritanism can be found in part 5 of Walter’s (1990) biography.
See, for example, Carnap (1967).
“[A]lthough I have often been accused of solipsism, nothing could be further from what I am trying to get across[...] [I]t does seem to me that the solipsist position does indeed not make sense[...] [I]t does not follow that the solipsist has not caught sight of a fundamental problem[...]” (Bridgman, 1938, p. 153).
See Bridgman (1959b) for more discussion, a sample: “[C]riticisms of my writing have frequently accused me of solipsism. These criticisms have always puzzled me. However, it is only recently that I have come to appreciate that use of the first person, which is all that I am urging, need involve no commitment whatever with regard to a solipsistic ‘ego’ or ‘self,’ the implied existence of which is what I suppose has principally disturbed the critics. My use of the first person in reporting has the neutrality of grammar. That it can have such neutrality I regard as an important observation.”(1959b, p. 4)
With the usual caveats: under standard conditions, etc.
“As a matter of observation I report that the mere statement by another that a certain line of conduct is desirable or good is powerless to affect me to action unless I come to see that it is desirable or good. At the very least, I myself must want my own conduct to be ‘good’. The springs of my conduct are my springs; unless some motive appeals to me it is not a motive.” (Bridgman, 1938, p. 155)
Douglas sometimes has a somewhat different argument for role responsibilities: no one is better suited (or maybe even capable at all) of evaluating the consequences of scientific developments other than scientists, so they have a duty qua scientists to take into account the consequences of their work. This does not seem to me to generate a role responsibility in the manner with which I am concerned. I do not have a special role responsibility to save a drowning child because I am the only person close enough to do it. There is a general responsibility to save the child and I happen to be best placed to meet it, but the responsibility is not in virtue of my role as closest-to-the-child.
For Bridgman there is no singular scientific approach. Science is distinguished by its subject matter rather than its method; it is a specific form of the more general practice of intelligence. Operational analysis is the application of intelligence to itself.
See Ward (2021), p. 58.
See Bridgman (1938) p. 261.
This bottoms out in a sort of emotivism—“oughts” and other moral “objects” are (more or less useful) societal fictions that serve to align the interests of diverse actors in a society, see Bridgman (1938), pp. 250–257, 281.
For more on the etymology: “Let us then borrow our terminology from Aristotle, and let that factor in life phenomena which we have shown to be a factor of true autonomy be called Entelechy, though without identifying our doctrine with what Aristotle meant by the word
. We shall use this word only as a sign of our admiration for his great genius; his word is to be a mould which we have filled and shall fill with new contents. The etymology of the word évre\(\lambda \)éxeia allows us such liberties, for indeed we have shown that there is at work a something in life phenomena ‘which bears the end in itself,’ 
.” (Driesch, 1908, p. 144)This distinction is similar to Longino’s (1990) distinction between constitutive and contextual values. The main difference between Bridgman and Longino being that Longino sees science as essentially a social enterprise, which makes room for the scientific role of contextual values.
I thank a referee for raising this objection.
There is no implication that the existence of claims on an individual by society is essentially Marxist, nor that Bridgman makes such an error—for him it is indicative of a broader trend.
From “Science and its Changing Social Environment” republished in Bridgman (1955), p. 409.
. We shall use this word only as a sign of our admiration for his great genius; his word is to be a mould which we have filled and shall fill with new contents. The etymology of the word évre
.” (Driesch, References
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Acknowledgements
My sincere thanks to the reviewers of this paper for extremely detailed and helpful comments that greatly improved the manuscript. I would like to thank Christian Damböck for raising this topic to my attention. I’d also like to thank Porter Williams, Matthew Wiseman, and Rachel Keith for general discussions about the value-free ideal debate. Thanks to Junjie Dong for his shared interest and enthusiasm in Bridgman’s work and his relation to the Manhattan Project. Special thanks to Alex Wellerstein for providing me with some archival materials and for some hints on how to read between the lines of some formerly classified information. Thanks also to Maggie Boyd, the archivist at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for providing me with some information and a photograph.
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This work was supported by a grant from the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics.
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Jalloh, M. Bridgman and the normative independence of science: an individual physicist in the shadow of the bomb. Synthese 203, 141 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-024-04567-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-024-04567-2