THE NEED 

 FOR NEW 

 KNOWLEDGE 



J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER 



The Institute for Advanced Study 



We need new knowledge like we 

 need a hole in the head 

 20th Century American Proverb 



1 HE NEED for new knowledge has not al- 



ways been fully recognized by the authorities, as the story of 

 Adam and the legend of Prometheus remind us. New knowl- 

 edge has been feared as the destroyer of man's innocence and his 

 virtue, as an incitement to pride and insubordination, and as sub- 

 versive of public order and social good. It is, of course, guilty of 

 all these charges. 



Discovery has been most resisted when it has most deeplv 

 altered the terms in which man formulates and understands his 

 place and destiny. Even the description of his physical habitat 

 in space and time was not upset without struggle, without 

 terror, without martyrdom. From its earliest beginnings in Paris 

 to the Newtonian synthesis in the seventeenth century, the 

 universe, closed in space, finite in time, and centered upon the 

 earth, changed, in what then seemed, and largely was, an irre- 



