Beyond the Bomb: Werner Heisenberg and Jєωιѕн Science

When Munich celebrated its 800th anniversary in 1958, Werner Heisenberg, who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1932, was the speaker. He invoked "the Ludwigstrasse from the Siegestor to the Feldherrnhalle bathed in sunlight," which was precisely the path Mike Jones tread roughly 60 years later. "All that is Munich," he continued, "but what does that have to do with science?" As if answering his own question Heisenberg said that "both the present and the future, as everyone says, are being determined by science and technology."

Heisenberg's faith in science remained unshaken despite the atom bomb. Science was another word for truth to him, and "scientific ideas will spread only because they are true. There are objective and final criteria assuring the correctness of a scientific statement." Did this apply to Jєωιѕн science? Heisenberg had defended Albert Einstein against the attacks of nαzι physicists who complained of his "Jєωιѕн science." But was the Jєωιѕн science of psychology that was deployed after the war to destroy the moral fiber of the German people "true"?

Because Heisenberg could read the ancient Greek philosophers in their own language, it is safe to assume that he understood the importance of the concept of Logos, and that his term "central order" or "central realm" was meant to convey that term to a German-speaking audience. If so, his understanding of Logos was shorn of at least 2,300 years of development. It is no surprise, then, that Heisenberg had little to no effect on the crucial issues facing the Federal Republic during the time of his greatest cultural influence. When it came to the battle over the social engineering of the German after World War II, Heisenberg was hors de combat. The claim that he should have been involved is not as strange as it may seem if we remember that the Allies based their program of social engineering on science, albeit the Jєωιѕн science of psychology. Heisenberg, as a defender of Jєωιѕн physics during the nαzι era, could have made a significant contribution to this debate if he had wanted to, but there is every indication that he would have considered participation in it as, if anything, infra dig for a Nobel Prize laureate. But, as Mike Jones discovered while hiking in the mountains of Bavaria, the silence surrounding the tragedy is about to end.