The winner of seven Oscars, Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer (2023) is not only a feast for the historian of science but an overall fan favorite. Although classic themes such as the role of theory and experiments, individual and group work, material conditions, socio-political dimensions and the emergence of “big science” feature prominently in this biopic, the film is not so much about the hardcore science itself but more so about the existential meaning of the Manhattan Project and its director, theoretical physicist and so-called “father of the atomic bomb,” J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967). In what follows I will explore the presented images of the atomic bomb and of Oppenheimer in terms of their symbolism.
Not a traditional tale of science
Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) is portrayed as a creative genius succeeding Einstein (Tom Conti) and Bohr (Kenneth Branagh), but this is not a traditional story about how science triumphantly progresses.
Oppenheimer is not the typical modern hero of science, in control and master of both his own fate and nature. His attempt to offer guidance regarding the optimal detonation altitude is rejected. He stays awake the entire night before the bomb is dropped, anticipating a call that never comes. President Truman (Gary Oldman) dismisses Oppenheimer, emphasizing that “Hiroshima is not about you.” Oppenheimer is seemingly powerless in the wake of what he has created, vulnerable to greater forces at work.
Similarly, the filmdoes not depict science as a progressive and triumphant force solely for good. “We imagine a future, and our imaginings horrify us,” Oppenheimer warns. His close friend, Isidor Rabi (David Krumholtz), doesn’t “wish the culmination of three centuries of physics to be a weapon of mass destruction.”
There is no traditional story about science, but is there a story at all? Contingencies and idiosyncrasies seem at times to dictate the plot. Kyoto is removed from the list of potential bombing targets partly because secretary of war Henry Stimson (James Remar) visited it on his honeymoon. Oppenheimer’s security clearance is withheld because of Lewis Strauss’ (Robert Downey Jr.) petty search for revenge. The Nazi nuclear program is hindered due to Hitler’s bias against quantum mechanics because he deems it “Jewish science.”
A tale nonetheless
Yet, there is a tale being told. The film does not pretend it is simply recording random facts. On the contrary, Nolan proposes an organizing principle that guides his and our interpretation. With the introduction of the film, he invites the viewer into a Greek myth: “Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. For this, he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity.” In the story of Prometheus, the gods who punish Prometheus (who is also a god) are the bad guys. They don’t want humanity to have this knowledge. In Nolan’s film, Oppenheimer is—in the words of Niels Bohr—“an American Prometheus. The man who gave them the power to destroy themselves.”1 Oppenheimer has become “Death, the destroyer of worlds.”2
To what extent we are to apply the myth to Nolan’s Oppenheimer is not spelled out. For example, who exactly are the “other gods” in the film, politicians or other scientists (or both)? Or do they represent Oppenheimer’s tormenting consciousness?
What tale exactly?
In the myth of Prometheus, it is out of his love for mankind that he steals fire from the gods (withheld by Zeus out of revenge). The fire itself brings only good things: metallurgy, art and more. Besides punishing and eternally tormenting Prometheus, Zeus’ wrath consists of sending Pandora and her jar, the contents of which is released once accepted: disease, war and poverty.
The question, “were we ready for the atom bomb?” (a more positive reading would be: atomic energy) is answered by Nolan’s Oppenheimer with a resounding “no.” Although the test is called Trinity and Oppenheimer cites poet John Donne’s words “batter my heart” that call upon the Christian God to intervene and make anew, with the “revelation of divine power” (Oppenheimer’s words) comes a dark realization. At the end of the film it is finally revealed what he and Einstein spoke about: alluding to an arms race, Oppenheimer believes they have started a chain reaction that will destroy the world. So which is it: is Oppenheimer Prometheus or is he Pandora?
The Promethean (positive) trope seems more prevalent in ancient myth. The oldest known version of this can be found in the Sumerian King List, perhaps the oldest surviving Ancient Near Eastern text. Some of the kings are listed together with their apkallu, divine advisors that give knowledge and wisdom. The involvement of the apkallu legitimate the kingships. Socrates speaks of his daemon, a personal god, who warns him not to do certain things. In Roman times, the emperor had a genius, a spirit that gave him knowledge.3
The poisoning of the apple during the first sequence with Oppenheimer and Bohr invokes perhaps the most famous version of the symbolism as found in the Hebrew Bible. Here humankind is offered the knowledge of good and evil by a cunning snake. Once accepted death is released into the world, and both mankind and the snake suffer consequences. However—in seemingly a coming together of the Promethean and Pandoran tropes—it is insinuated that the gift itself is good; it is just that humankind was not ready yet. We see this pattern repeated in Genesis 4: herding livestock, music and metallurgy are associated with evil origins. They are good but the real question is: how do humans wisely incorporate them into their existence? “You can lift the stone without being ready for the snake that’s revealed,” Bohr says as the camera zooms in on the apple in his hand.
More than a tale?
The story of Prometheus strikes me as being more than merely a tale we tell to bring order—beginning, middle and end—to otherwise seemingly random and contingent moments, events, sayings and doings. The basic structure of the myth—knowledge coming from “above”—does not appear to us as mere mythology: something we talk about as great but mere stories of old. No, for us it is myth proper: it seems to hold more weight and we seem to participate in it.
We have all experienced (and experience daily) receiving this or that piece of information (from our parents, friends, teachers, clergy, government officials, social media etc.). Or a thought seemingly out of nowhere simply presents itself in the forefront of our mind, providing insight. In any case, we experience receiving knowledge or a skill from outside of ourselves (for better or for worse) and we consequently ask ourselves the question: What do I do with it? Do I reject it? Do I incorporate it into my existence and if so, how? The reverse is also true: when (if at all) do I pass on this or that knowledge or expertise to someone without it? My point here is that the Promethean symbolism is so basic that it seems inevitable. Time and time again we rely on it to make sense of reality. Case in point: Oppenheimer.
Symbolism in historiography of science
Symbolism also seeps into our historiographical analyses. Take for example this account by Dutch philosopher and journalist Rob Wijnberg in his 2023 Voor ieder wat waars:
The fact that people saw Truth as ‘something from above’ was also partly due to the fact that it came from there in a practical sense. Truth came mainly from those above—from ecclesiastical elites of wealthy origins…The lack of access to information, of opportunities to do one’s own research, made the spread of Truth as hierarchical as its content…Also, for centuries Christianity prohibited and thwarted what we now call “science”—the systematic investigation of the nature of the world. Truth was beyond man’s reach and had to remain there.4
Without mentioning the Promethean myth by name, Wijnberg essentially invokes its basic structure. The Promethean fire here is Truth, withheld by the gods, described here as the (Christian) elite.
Another example I happened to come across in a recent article by University of Lisbon historian of science Maurizio Esposito. In the article entitled “The Historian’s Craft in the ‘Periphery,’” he challenges the notion that we should do away with the “center-periphery” distinction when it comes to writing about science in Latin America in relation to the “center,” in broad terms richer and industrialized Northern Hemisphere countries.
For a variety of reasons, some have discarded the center-periphery distinction as a meaningful notion but, Esposito argues, that would be a hasty and dangerous conclusion. With sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein he points out that we still need to account for why it was the West that thrived and dominated the rest of the world. Also, “by denying European credit, we deny European blame.”5 In short, “the only way to be consistently anti-Eurocentrist is to keep the categories of ‘center’ and ‘periphery’ in place. An historiography without this distinction would be a poorer and unfair historiography.”6
Additionally, some critics of the center-periphery distinction have argued it is undermined when you realize that the so-called periphery did not passively receive knowledge from the center but that knowledge coming from the North “went through a complex process of adjustment, contextualization, and appropriation which changed its original meaning.” However, Esposito is not convinced that the move from reception to appropriation requires the dismissal of the center-periphery distinction. It actually confirms it: “After all, if there are neither centers nor peripheries, why would we need the notion of ‘appropriation’ at all?” Similarly, Esposito points out that network analyses, although very productive, cannot do away with the center-periphery distinction as “networks are hierarchically structured according to an historically determined logic of power relations (economic and epistemic).”
For Esposito, “a properly historicized CP [center-periphery] distinction, unencumbered from simplistic assumptions about the nature of science and its supposed linear diffusion, is still a very valuable historiographic category.”7 My takeaway here is that symbolism, put in terms of hierarchy or center-periphery, remains relevant. In other words, isn’t this a particular instantiation of a Promethean-type myth? Knowledge, whether passively received and/or creatively appropriated—whether for better (Promethean) or for worse (Pandoran)—comes from above (or the center) and is incorporated into the life of the South. Following Esposito’s argumentation, this is not a patronizing analysis. On the contrary, it allows for a fair analysis. It is a symbolic analysis that does justice to how we perceive and participate in reality and how, consequently, we inevitably write history.
Genius, humility and wisdom
What does it say about our view of science that for centuries now we have declared the “best” scientists to be geniuses. I am not making a necessary etymological connection with the spirits of the Roman emperors (I have not looked into the history of the word), but I am making a symbolic point.
The eighteenth-century naturalist was called a genius of observation. In the nineteenth century, a positivist view of science was accompanied by the genius scientist who managed to free himself from all philosophical and theological speculation and secure, actual, positive knowledge. A true hero, just like Prometheus.
Of course, the modern conception of genius would not be truly modern if it did not also contain an anti-Enlightenment version in itself. Perhaps the prime example of the genius-type was math prodigy Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920). Without having received formal education Ramanujan solved the wildest theorems. It is said that he only left India for Cambridge after his mother was told in a dream by a Hindu goddess that he was to go. Ramanujan himself later reported a dream in which the same goddess revealed to him complex mathematics. Ramanujan may have not been the originator of the famous line, “it was revealed to me in a dream,” but he is arguably the one person people associate with what is, I think, the greatest science meme out there:
All this to say that the concept of genius has been part and parcel of the modern picture of what science is and how it operates. Of course, among historians of science the image of science began to shift in the twentieth century when we started to focus more on the everyday, “normal science” of specific groups. However, as Esposito’s article above shows, can we really avoid invoking Promethean-type symbolism to write our histories?
In any case, no doubt Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a type of genius. According to Bohr, Oppenheimer asked the only good question during the lecture. He’s haunted by visions of an invisible world. His theoretical bend does not always translate well, however. According to Rabi, “You’re the greatest improviser. But this you can’t do in your head.” Similarly, upon hearing that their German colleagues have split the uranium nucleus, Oppenheimer denies the possibility solely based on his theories. Lawrence informs him however that “there’s just one problem…next door. Alvarez [their colleague] did it.” After a pause Lawrence continues: “Theory will take you only so far.” When Oppenheimer calls himself a humble physicist, General Groves (Matt Damon) quips: “If I ever meet one I’ll let you know.”
The descriptor genius and the scientific virtue of humility are seemingly opposites. Although both only make sense in certain epistemological pictures of how “science” develops, I think their symbolic meanings remain relevant. Do you place yourself “below” or do you place yourself “above?” How do we acquire wisdom? The antagonist in Nolan’s film, Lewis Strauss, says of Oppenheimer: “Genius is no guarantee of wisdom. How could this man who saw so much be so blind?”Dutch historian of science Reijer Hooykaas writes in a 1962 article that “scientists are the priests and interpreters of secular culture.” To the Christian Hooykaas, the resulting scientism—that is, the notion that science is the highest or even only form of knowledge—has yielded disaster:
The expectation that we would be able to handle the new situation in a sovereign way, has proved a fallacy; we sometimes feel ourselves not the lieutenants of the God who created us, but the slaves of the god we created. The more power we have won over nature and human life, the more powerless we feel towards the Moloch we have made ourselves.8
Now that the history of science has become the history of knowledge, “science” is considered only one of many types of knowledge. As historian of science Lorraine Daston describes: “All cultures cultivate knowledge; all erect a hierarchy of more or less valued forms of knowledge (closely correlated with the social prestige of the knowers)—but not the same forms and the same hierarchies.”9 What has not changed, however, is the age-old question: what do we do with the knowledge we acquire and what does it mean to become wise?
Jelmer Heeren is currently a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Religion and Theology, VU Amsterdam, exploring the meaning of the work of Dutch historian of science Reijer Hooykaas (1906-1994). The project is co-financed by the VUvereniging.
- Nolan based his film on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s biography called American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (New York: Vintage Books, 2005). ↩︎
- Although this phrase means something different in the original Hindu sacred text Bhagavad Gita, in the film it’s used without context to denote Oppenheimer’s self-image as the ultimate Prometheus. See James Temperton, “‘Now I become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.’ The Story of Oppenheimer’s Infamous Quote,” Wired, July 21, 2023, https://www.wired.co.uk/article/manhattan-project-robert-oppenheimer. ↩︎
- See e.g. Matthew Bunson, “genius,” in Encyclopedia of the Roman Empire, ed. Matthew Bunson(New York: Facts On File, 2002), 238 and Mehmet-Ali Ataç, The Mythology of Kingship in Neo-Assyrian Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2010), 150. ↩︎
- Wijnberg, R. Voor ieder wat waars (Amsterdam: De Correspondent, 2023), 40-41 (my translation from Dutch). For a direct rebuttal of Wijnberg‘s claim that ”Christianity prohibited and thwarted what we now call ‘science’ for centuries,” see this Dutch language podcast in which historian of science Floris Cohen addresses the issue: David Boogerd, host, with Stefan Paas and Floris Cohen, “De ‘clash’ tussen wetenschap en geloof: Darwin, Einstein en Galileo,” De Ongelooflijke Podcast (podcast), November 12, 2023, https://www.nporadio1.nl/podcasts/de-ongelooflijke-podcast/98769/167-de-clash-tussen-wetenschap-en-geloof-darwin-einstein-en-galileo-met-floris-cohen-en-stefan-paas. ↩︎
- Wallerstein, I. “Eurocentrism and its Avatars: The Dilemmas of Social Science,” Sociological Bulletin 46, no. 1 (1997): 35, as quoted in Maurizio Esposito, “The Historian’s Craft in the ‘Periphery,’” in Handbook of the Historiography of Latin American Studies on the Life Sciences and Medicine, ed. Ana Barahona (Cham, CH: Springer, 2022),46. ↩︎
- Esposito, “The Historian’s Craft in the ‘Periphery,’” 46. ↩︎
- Esposito, “The Historian’s Craft in the ‘Periphery,’” 60. ↩︎
- Hooykaas, R. “A New Responsibility in a Scientific Age,” Free University Quarterly 8 (1962): 80, 93. ↩︎
- Daston, L. “The History of Science and the History of Knowledge,” KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge 1, no. 1 (2017): 145. ↩︎