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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
My contention in what is to follow is that in a very important sense we have no atomic secret whatsoever. It is not ours to hide or to share. More than ever it is ours to seek. So far it remains quite undiscovered.
Like good philosophers we must pay attention to the terms used in our assertions. We must point out where we meet the requirements of usage and where we decide to use terms in a definite way, although usage is vague. Thus, the term “atomic” is a misnomer, but it is a misnomer here to stay. It means “nuclear.” Like all good people we must continue saying “atomic” in this connection when we mean “nuclear,” but we must not forget this fact and substitute what we know about the atom for what we do not know about the nucleus. We must also realize that the term “secret” has at least a double use: one, which means that the knowledge is possessed by an exclusive few; another, which means that the knowledge is possessed by no one, as in the expression “a secret of Nature.”
