J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER 



There were societies in the past in which neither of these 

 questions would have seemed difficult. Their difficulty today 

 derives in part from the great growth of knowledge; it derives in 

 part from the very great changes in the world which technology 

 has brought about. These have combined to weaken and emas- 

 culate the public sector of our life, the sector which in past 

 societies has been the seat of politics, art, religious practice, 

 and the general sense of common purpose, and which encom- 

 passed the common elements of knowledge, myth, and sensi- 

 bility. I contrast this public presence, not with the individual 

 alone, nor with the family, but with something else, and in 

 itself quite good. We live most social lives, and few of us can 

 complain of solitude. We are banded together in communities 

 and guilds of great variety and varying purpose: members of a 

 profession, part of a corporation, inhabitants of a suburb. As a 

 consequence, a great deal that is known to one of us is not 

 known to another, and much even of what is known to all men 

 of science is not present in the public life. 



All of us know some of the ways in which this has come 

 about. The rapidity with which knowledge grows makes it 

 hard for professional men to be aware of all that is new in their 

 own fields. The instrumental and traditional character of the 

 new knowledge, based so largely on the accumulated skill and 

 learning of the past, makes its transmission to others in other 

 communities difficult, arduous, and time-consuming, or else 

 sadly superficial and even misleading. The vastness of our 

 society and its cherished inclusiveness have complicated all 

 problems of communication, and have limited in a cruel way 

 the healing help of friendship in uniting disparate arts and 

 skills and insights. There are many other reasons, surely many 

 of which I am not adequately aware. Surely we should not 

 estimate too lightly the damaging effect, on the quality of 

 public life, of having so large a part of knowledge alienated 



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