Heisenberg in the Atomic Age
Cambridge University Press, 3/4/2010
EAN 9780521821704, ISBN10: 0521821703
Hardback, 558 pages, 23.4 x 15.6 x 4 cm
The end of the Second World War opened a new era for science in public life. Heisenberg in the Atomic Age explores the transformations of science's public presence in the postwar Federal Republic of Germany. It shows how Heisenberg's philosophical commentaries, circulating in the mass media, secured his role as science's public philosopher, and it reflects on his policy engagements and public political stands, which helped redefine the relationship between science and the state. With deep archival grounding, the book tracks Heisenberg's interactions with intellectuals from Heidegger to Habermas and political leaders from Adenauer to Brandt. It also traces his evolving statements about his wartime research on nuclear fission for the National Socialist regime. Working between the history of science and German history, the book's central theme is the place of scientific rationality in public life - after the atomic bomb, in the wake of the Third Reich.
Part I. Introduction
1. Science and the public sphere
2. Tracking Heisenberg
Part II. Culture
3. The scientist as bildungsburger
4. Physics as philosophy
5. The culture of the vent
6. Bildung als konsumgut
dilemmas of the literary public sphere
Part III. Politics
7. Science, politics, and power
initial orientations
8. A new research system
9. Science policy in the atomic age
10. Expansion and uncertainty
11. Politics in the public sphere
12. Speaking of the Third Reich
denazification
13. Speaking of the Third Reich
war work
14. Speaking of the Third Reich
into the public sphere
Part IV. Scientific Reason in the Public Sphere
15. The public reach of reason after 1945
Epilogue.
'In this deeply researched and imaginatively conceived book, Carson authoritatively delineates Werner Heisenberg's influential role in the shaping of West Germany, integrating his engagements in politics, physics, and culture and revealing how his vision was shadowed by the history of the Third Reich. A must read for anyone interested in Heisenberg the man and the reconstruction of his country during the postwar years.' Daniel J. Kevles, Yale University