Abstract
The introductory chapter establishes the relationships among science, science drama, and the history of science through which the arguments of the ensuing chapters will proceed. I argue that recent physics plays make a return to the metaphysical concerns of the early-twentieth-century physicists who were developing quantum theory and relativity. Moreover, they do so while engaging in what Kirsten Shepherd-Barr has characterized as enaction of the science they discuss: producing dramatic forms that manifest scientific content. A concern throughout is the manner in which these enactions alter the ethical stakes for the characters’ decisions.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
I follow Peter J. Kuznick and James Gilbert in acknowledging the debates surrounding the starting date of the Cold War but considering “August 6, 1945, the day the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan and introduced nuclear terror to the world, […] as good a starting point as any” (1). The term “Cold War ” itself was coined in 1946 by Bernard Baruch (ibid.).
For an instructive listing of some of the physics plays of the Cold War , consider Charles A. Carpenter’s bibliography of seventy-six published, English-language plays appearing between 1946 and 1989 “that deal directly and significantly with […] major aspects of the Nuclear Age that relate to atomic weapons (but not to nuclear power)” (2).
- 2.
It is worth noting Schrödinger’s initial offering of this thought experiment as a criticism of some of the uses to which thought experiments were put. He introduces his cat, writing,
Man kann auch ganz burleske Fälle konstruieren. Eine Katze wird in eine stahlkammer gesperrt […] (Schrödinger 812).
One can also construct entirely farcical cases. A cat is enclosed in a steel chamber …. (my translation)
Schrödinger’s criticism is of models at work to shift uncertainty from an ontological category to an epistemological one.
- 3.
This is a problematic way of expressing the idea, as quantum-level events do exist in their indeterminate way, without being observed. Another aspect of the observer effect, the one most commonly associated with it, comes up in analysis of light. When looked at as a particle, light exhibits particulate characteristics, but when light is studied as a wave, it appears to behave as a wave.
- 4.
This is not to say that the decision to follow the law, to undertake the calculation , cannot itself be a responsible and ethical decision . As Derrida writes, “To be just, the decision of a judge, for example, must not only follow a rule of law […] but must also assume it, approve it, confirm its value, by a reinstituting act of interpretation” (“Force” 251). In effect, the just judge decides that this will be the law by which the determination is made and is just (or unjust) in choosing to adhere to the law.
- 5.
Heisenberg ’s principle is also known as the indeterminacy principle.
- 6.
In the introduction to volume one of Peace Plays, Stephen Lowe characterizes the October 1953 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament march in which he (and thousands of others) participated as “a vast dragon of anger and hope” and “a living example of ‘The Theatre of Peace’” (v). At the nucleus of Lowe’s selections are plays intervening in the anti-nuclear movements, though his scope is “a greater debate than just saying NO to nuclear weapons” (vi). Nonetheless, CND is a crucial thematic in many of these plays.
- 7.
Carpenter specifically gives priority to the expansion based on “Pilot Lights”: Open Secret by Ridenour , George Bellak, and Robert Adler. “Pilot Lights” was published in the January 1946 issue of Fortune, and Open Secret came into being within the year. Carpenter also acknowledges a precursor, Wings over Europe, which raises many of the topoi of atomic age plays but anachronistically: Robert Nichols and Maruice Browne’s play was first performed in 1929.
- 8.
In an extended study of nuclear spy stories, two German plays would certainly bear substantial analysis: Friedrich Durrenmatt’s 1962 The Physicists and Heinar Kipphardt’s 1964 In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer.
- 9.
As Frederic I. Carpenter has observed, although Wouk wrote The Traitor “before the Klaus Fuchs case, it prophesied its actual psychology, and achieved success on the wave of public reaction to this and to the Hiss case” (3).
- 10.
In this didactic effort the nuclear dramas of the Cold War bear strong similarity to the popularizations of physics Elizabeth Leane analyzes in Reading Popular Physics.
- 11.
It should be noted, however, that the published ending differs from that originally staged; rather than leaving open the possibility of humanity choosing a safer path for its use of atomic energy, the revised ending focuses on the failures of scientists and politicians. This shift draws Uranium 235 closer to the typical nuclear drama of the time, in keeping its indictment focused on the scientists and politicians rather than with its earlier efforts to display the wider societal responsibility toward scientific understanding. See Shepherd-Barr’s discussion (71–2). For the most part, Cold War science plays allow the audience to safely sit back and watch the drama indict scientists and politicians.
- 12.
In Thermonuclear Monarchy Elaine Scarry concentrates her analysis, in contrast, on the totalitarian concentration of nuclear power in the hands of the few while its effects would be distributed across a population.
Bibliography
Brecht, Bertolt. Life of Galileo. Bertolt Brecht: Collected Plays. Eds. Ralph Manheim and John Willett. Vol. 5. New York: Vintage, 1972. 1–98.
Büchner, Georg. Woyzeck. Georg Büchner: Complete Plays, Lenz and Other Writings. Trans. John Reddick. New York: Penguin, 1993. 109–138.
Butler, Elizabeth M. The Fortunes of Faust. Magic in History 4. Cambridge: Cambridge U P, 1979.
Carpenter, Charles A. Dramas of the Nuclear Age—A Descriptive List of English-Language Plays. Studies in Comparative Literature. Vol. 29. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000.
Carpenter, Frederic I. “Herman Wouk and the Wisdom of Disillusion.” The English Journal 45.1 (1956): 1–6, 32.
D’Andrea, Paul and John Klein. The Einstein Project. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 2004.
Derrida, Jacques. “Force of Law: ‘The Mystical Foundation of Authority’.” Trans. Mary Quaintance. Acts of Religion. Ed. Gil Anidjar. New York and London: Routledge, 2002. 230–98.
Dietz, Steven. Foolin’ Around with Infinity. New York: Samuel French, 1990.
Dürrenmatt, Friedrich. The Physicists. Trans. James Kirkup. New York: Grove Press, 1964.
Einstein, Albert. “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies.” The Principle of Relativity. 37–65.
Frayn, Michael. Copenhagen. New York: Anchor, 1998.
Haynes, Roslynn D. From Faust to Strangelove: Representations of the Scientist in Western Literature. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
Ibsen, Henrik. An Enemy of the People. Four Great Plays by Henrik Ibsen. Trans. R. Farquharson Sharp. Toronto: Bantam, 1981. 129–215.
Kipphardt, Heinar. In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Play Freely Adapted on the Basis of the Documents by Heinar Kipphardt. Trans. Ruth Speirs. New York: Hill and Wang, 1969.
Kuznick, Peter J., and James Gilbert. “U.S. Culture and the Cold War.” Rethinking Cold War Culture. Eds. Peter J. Kuznick and James Gilbert. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001. 1–13.
Leane, Elizabeth. Reading Popular Physics: Disciplinary Skirmishes and Textual Strategies. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007.
Lowe, Stephen. Introduction. Peace Plays. London and New York: Methuen, 1985. v–vii.
MacColl, Ewan. Uranium 235. Glasgow: William MacLellan, 1952.
Marlowe, Christopher. Doctor Faustus. Doctor Faustus with The English Faust Book. Ed. David Wootton. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 2005. 1–66.
Minkowski, Hermann. “Space and Time.” The Principle of Relativity. 73–91.
Morgan, Charles. The Burning Glass: A Play. New York: St. Martin’s P, 1953.
Morgan, Elaine. Licence to Murder. London: Samuel French, 1963.
Penniston, Penny. Now Then Again. New York: Broadway Play Pub., 2001.
Plotnitsky, Arkady. Complementarity: Anti-Epistemology After Bohr and Derrida. Durham and London: Duke UP, 1994.
The Principle of Relativity: A Collection of Original Memoirs on the Special and General Theory of Relativity: By H. A. Lorentz, A. Einstein, H. Minkowski and H. Weyl. Trans. W. Perrett and G. B. Jeffery. Rpt. Ed. Methuen: 1923. Trans. of Das Relativitatsprinzip. 4th ed. Teubner, 1922. New York: Dover, 1952.
Ridenour “Pilot Lights of the Apocalypse.” Fortune 33 (January 1946), 116–7, 219.
Scarry, Elaine. Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing Between Democracy and Doom. New York and London: Norton, 2014.
Schrödinger, Erwin. “Die Gegenwärtige Situation in Der Quantenmechanik.” Naturwissenschaften 23.48 (1935): 807–12.
Shepherd-Barr, Kirsten. Science on Stage: From Doctor Faustus to Copenhagen. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U P, 2006.
Stoppard, Tom. Arcadia. London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1999a.
Stoppard, Tom. Hapgood. Tom Stoppard: Plays Five. London: Faber and Faber, 1999b. 483–593.
von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. Faust. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Doubleday, 1963.
Walker, Martin. The Cold War: A History. New York: Holt, 1995.
Wouk, Herman. The Traitor. New York: Samuel French, 1949.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Halpin, J.G. (2018). Introduction: Ethics and Physics in Contemporary Plays. In: Contemporary Physics Plays. Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75148-1_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75148-1_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-75147-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-75148-1
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)