I’ve recently started reading American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. So far it’s excellent.
While doing some online research on Oppenheimer, I discovered to my great pleasure that a 2-hour PBS documentary on with special focus on his 1950s McCarthy-like trial was available for free.
It’s fascinating and I strongly recommend it. The only thing that would have made it better was if it had included some references to Richard P. Feynman (who worked under Oppenheimer at Los Alamos).
Here is the link: PBS: The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Michael Graham Richard 
April 2, 2009 at 6:43 pm |
Have you gotten to the part about where he tries to poison one of his instructors? What do we suppose that says about “intelligence” as distinct from emotional intelligence? I suggest the term “intelligence” is thread-worn and perhaps as dangerous to the survival of the human race as is the good doctor’s most famous invention. Humans at their highest order INTEGRATE thought with emotion. We’re at the turning point now, but that has been our post-Enlightenment undoing to date. That we put our *enter irony on cue* faith into our own intelligence rather than blending it with what we should know of our condition. That feelings, all be them as imaginary and multifaceted as chimera, influence our actions and will continue to do so until we pay them the attention which they demand. And in that addressing, that acknowledgement, that process of realization we come to know them as the fleeting being that’s they are. In that understanding comes a release, allowing our full thinking selves to function at peace with ourselves, our fellow beings and the natural world. This is where philosophy faltered and became psychoanalysis now to become a new everyday human consciousness should our hard work and emotionally-engaged efforts bear fruit.