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Sadly, war is always topical, and there seems to be more of it in the news at the moment than will fit. In such a context, the centenary of the start of the "War to End All Wars" is all the more important and poignant, as is the fact that it had to be renamed "World War I" to distinguish it from the sequel.
In his UCL Lunch Hour Lecture (see below) Jon Agar talks about the relationship between science, scientists and war in the context of 1914-1918. It's a powerful and fascinating discussion which I urge you to watch. One thing it made clear to me is that technological capabilities, while they may in some sense be morally neutral, have a profound moral impact. If you have the choice, do you supply advanced technologies to the side you support? Is one side less culpable for murderous intent because its destructive technology is so outclassed as to be largely ineffective? The partisan attitude of scientists such as Fritz Haber, contrasted with the pan-European approach of his friend Albert Einstein, are discussed by Agar, but the parallels with tooled-up Ukrainian separatists and the technological asymmetry in the Gaza conflict struck me.
Another parallel was the post-war triumph of Einstein's General Relativity, driven by the observations of the British (pacifist) astronomer Arthur Eddington. Agar argues that this multinational interaction may, after the high-tech horror, have helped recover some of the reputation of science amongst the population, and repair a fractured scientific community in which French scientists would refuse to attend conferences with German colleagues. Given the horrors that were soon to follow in the 1930s, the limitations of any such recovery are obvious, but that doesn't mean it was worthless.
There is another significant anniversary this year. It is sixty years since the European laboratory for particle physics, CERN, was founded. When I am giving a talk on the Higgs boson discovery (see for example here) I usually start by saying something about how CERN was founded to help rebuild European science after World War II, and rekindle some of the spirit of openness and trust in which science was carried out before those conflicts. Despite the iron curtain and the cold war, it could be counted at least a partial success. And maybe there are echoes there of the Einstein/Eddington triumph of 1919.
Anyway, that's what Agar's lecture brought to my mind. Here it is, see what you think.
Jon Butterworth’s book, Smashing Physics, is out now. A bunch of interesting events where you might be able to hear him talk about it etc are listed here. Also, Twitter.
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