Nuclear Concepts

Early 20th century marked tremendous and fascinating discoveries in physics and chemistry. For the first time in human history hard evidence was produced supporting the existence of atoms. In his book Imagined Worlds, the eminent astrophysicist Freeman Dyson calls the changes in physics that occurred in the 1920 s, a concept-driven revolution; theory had primacy over experiment. Quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity explained atomic and nuclear structures. Yet, the technology for accessing the atomic and subatomic levels remained rather primitive. It was not until decades later that serious technological applications appeared.

The dreams of ancient and modern man are written in the same language as the myths whose authors lived in the dawn of history. Symbolic language is a language in which inner experience, feelings and thoughts are expressed as if they were sensory experiences, events in the outer world. It is a language which has a different logic from the conventional one we speak in the daytime, a logic in which time and space are not the ruling categories but intensity and association. Erich Fromm (The Forgotten Language, 1937)