When I was younger, I thought science would make good things for everybody. It was obviously useful; it was good. But then during the war I worked on the atomic bomb. This result of science was obviously very serious — it represented the destruction of people and put our future at risk. I had to ask myself, "Is some evil involved in science?" I thought long and hard about this question, and I will try to answer it in this talk.
The first way in which science is of value is familiar to everyone: scientific knowledge is an enabling power to do either good or bad — but it does not carry instructions on how to apply it. Such power has obvious value — even though the power may be denied by what one does with it.
Another value of science is the intellectual enjoyment it can provide us with. When we look at any question deeply enough, we feel the excitement mystery coming into us again and again. With more knowledge comes a deeper, more wonderful mystery, inspiring one to look deeper still. Never concerned that the answer may let us down, with pleasure and confidence we turn over each new stone to find unimagined strangeness, just like opening a box of chocolate.
I would now like to turn to a third value that science has. The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of great importance. When a scientist doesn't know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has an idea as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt.
Our freedom to doubt was born out of deep and strong struggle against authority in the early days of science. In order to progress, we must not forget the importance of this struggle; we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Permit us to question — to doubt — to not be sure.
