Jan
Golinski
Copenhagen as history of science narrative.
Science
and theatre have had a troubled relationship, which still awaits its
historian. Francis Bacon denounced the
“idols of the theatre”: the seductive showiness of established systems of
philosophy. Bacon believed these
systems owed their dominance over the minds of men to the beguiling charm of
their dramatic presentations, like painted stage machinery displayed to
ignorant peasants. Notwithstanding
Bacon’s strictures, the empirical science that he inspired found it had to
develop its own kind of dramaturgy: an experiment was, at least in certain
circumstances, a kind of show.
The leading experimental philosophers of the seventeenth century
appreciated this. Robert Boyle narrated
the small-scale tragedy of a bird’s death in his air-pump. The little lark died after agonized
convulsions, “her breast upward, her head downwards, and her neck awry.” “The whole tragedy,” Boyle concluded, was
over “within ten minutes of an hour.”
Joseph Priestley, a century later, who used mice to test the
breathability of the gases he made in his own experiments, was to see them
resurrected by Anna Laetitia Barbaud who wrote a dramatic dialogue in which one
of them voices a plea for animals’ rights.
These
were not human dramas, of course, but pathetic miniatures with animal
stand-ins. But Priestley also invoked
the values of drama in connection with the human story of the history of
science, of which he was a pioneering practitioner. What he called “philosophical history” was said to present a
“sublime” spectacle, a scenario more morally uplifting than the confused and
contingent one of “civil” history. In
the early nineteenth century, William Whewell advocated a history of science in
which, “the progress of knowledge only … is the main action of our
drama.” Priestley and Whewell saw a
value in dramatic spectacle when its purpose was pedagogical. Apparently, for the history of
science—natural philosophy teaching by example, as it were—the idols of the
theatre were an asset rather than a threat.
This was to make the history of science into a peculiarly impoverished
kind of drama. To engage the sense of
the sublime among its readers, history simply had to present an impressive
spectacle, in the views of Priestley and Whewell. The characters were superhuman heroes and the only element of
plot was the upward march of progress, guaranteed by divine providence. There was no call for conflict or tension,
resolutions or twists. This kind of
history was not disfigured by the chaotic mess of warfare and politics; its
sublimity resided precisely in its freedom from such elements of strife, which
are usually regarded as the engines of human drama. In Aristotelian terms, there might be “discoveries” in this kind
of dramaturgy but there were no “reversals” or “peripeties.”
It
is hard to imagine any playwright being inspired to produce a work along these
lines. And, if they did, the result
would arguably not be dramatic at all.
There is a substantial difference between genuine drama and the kind of
artificial dialogues philosophers and scientists have found useful for their
didactic purposes. Dialogue, which
Galileo, Boyle, and others adapted from ancient philosophical predecessors, is a
tool of pedagogy rather than a form of dramaturgy. It may conjure up a setting and characters (more or less richly
delineated), but everything remains under the control of the author,
who—crucially—is also identified with one of the characters in the conversation. Thus, scientific or philosophical dialogues
tend to merge into expositions of the author’s own point of view, even when
they also allow the author to preserve a degree of deniability over what is
argued, as Galileo certainly wanted to do as regards the Copernican doctrine
advocated by his character Salviati in the Dialogues Concerning Two Great
World Systems (1632). Even modern
scientific dialogues, like John Casti’s The Cambridge Quintet (an
imaginary conversation on artificial intelligence featuring Alan Turing and
Ludwig Wittgenstein), still fall short of real dramatic quality. Though there is some tension of opposing
viewpoints in Casti’s text, there is also a lot of straight exposition of
ideas—enough to try the patience of any plausible dramatic characters or any
genuine audience. There are also
shortcomings in plot and character development, elements which are essential to
true drama but secondary to the purposes of pedagogical dialogue.
If
real drama will always burst out of the straightjacket Priestley and Whewell
designed for their histories, can it nonetheless have a significance for the
work of historians of science? I think
it can, and I want to argue the point with specific reference to Michael
Frayn’s Copenhagen. Frayn’s play
has tensions and twists a-plenty; there are discoveries and peripeties, and
there is a peculiar kind of plot. It
doesn’t present the sublime spectacle of the onward march of scientific
knowledge, but it is nonetheless a drama with potential implications for the
history of science. I think, furthermore,
that its popularity with audiences in many locations should be taken as an
encouraging sign of public receptivity to more complex historical narratives
than Priestley or Whewell aimed to provide.
I take the play’s success as an indication that people want more than to
be awed by the spectacle of progress, that they want to escape the baleful
influence of the idols of the theatre that have too often held sway over the
history of science.
One
of the distinctive features of Frayn’s drama is its abandonment of the pretense
of naturalistic narrative. Unlike, say,
Brecht’s Galileo, it does not purport to show us an episode from history
or to tell us how things actually happened.
I suggest that criticism of the play by historians ought to start by acknowledging
the non-realism of its style; to expect a work of this kind to give an
“accurate” picture of historical events is to ask it to be something other than
it is. The fundamental purpose of the
play is not to depict events; if it were, the action would occur at a specific
time and place—a historical setting would be delineated—and in Copenhagen
it isn’t. It does, however, seem
important that the characters in the play correspond to real individuals,
historical persons who left memories and records of their lives. It was part of Frayn’s declared purpose to
portray Niels and Margrethe Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in a way that is broadly
consistent with what is known about them.
Otherwise, the play would not have characters with these names who
discuss episodes in which the real individuals were involved. It seems quite legitimate to try to measure
the dramatic representation of a historical figure like Heisenberg against the
testimony of other sources. When the
individual concerned is the subject of fierce controversy as regards his
political morality and personal integrity, then the playwright may be held to
account for choosing to portray him in a certain way in a drama. It would be unwise, however, to jump to
conclusions as to what judgment of Heisenberg this particular play is
rendering. Before doing that, it seems
essential to consider how the characters are developed in the course of the
plot.
I
propose that the dimension of narrative structure or plot is more fundamental
than the depiction of events or the development of character in Frayn’s
play. Assessments of how accurately
episodes correspond to historical reality or how true-to-life the characters
are have to be premised on an understanding of the play’s narrative
structure. We cannot judge the accuracy
with which episodes are depicted until we understand how those depictions
function within the play; we cannot assess the characters until we grasp how
the characters express themselves through the unfolding narrative. This is particularly important because the
play has a very non-classical plot structure.
To
focus our discussions of this, I offer the following schematic outline of the
plot.
[DIAGRAM: Act I and
Act II are mapped out in the same way.
Aligned left are topics discussed by the characters outside a specified
framework of time and place. Indented
are depictions of events or discussion topics that appear to unfold within a
specific time-frame. There are several
of these, introduced by some remark that indicates when it is. Some are reenactments of the 1941 visit of
Heisenberg to Copenhagen, which is the central subject of the play. Sometimes these are punctuated by the bell
(in the staged production, if not in the play script). Further indented are a few incidental remarks
that briefly interrupt the action.
Then, aligned right are hypotheses about the crucial problem of the
play—why did Heisenberg come to Copenhagen?—together with responses to the
hypotheses voiced by the characters.]
One
thing that emerges from this kind of mapping is a clearer sense of what the
play is about: it appears that this is not a historical drama but a
meta-historical one. Rather than
participating in the development of some action, the characters are exploring
various possibilities for what happened in history. Comparison of them with the historical individuals after whom
they are named has to acknowledge that the characters are not developed as they
would be if the action were to unfold in a realistic way. Nor are the episodes depicted realistically;
when more than one version of an event is offered, the illusion of realism
cannot be sustained. Rather, the
characters voice different possible interpretations of what the historical
individuals were actually doing, what their conscious intentions and
unconscious motives might have been.
The characters speak not for themselves, in other words, but for the
scholars and others who have tried to account for the individuals’ actions. They are participants in a dramatization of
the process of historical inquiry; the spectacle they present to us is not
history ready-made but history in the making.
Once
we realize this (and most commentators on the play have realized it, at
least implicitly), we can begin to ask what the play is telling us about how
history is made. It is notable, for
example, that the final hypothesis is cast in the form of a “thought
experiment,” considering how things might have turned out differently if the
Copenhagen encounter had taken a slightly different path. If Bohr had listened a little longer and
allowed Heisenberg to get into the topic of nuclear fission and the necessary
critical mass for a weapon, the latter might have been stimulated to perform
the calculation that could have given the Nazis the bomb. This is a little exercise in “virtual
history” of the kind that some historians have also been engaging in
recently. One motive for such
exercises, aside from their intrinsic fascination and popular appeal, is to
draw attention to the contingencies of history, to the impossibility of ever
completely explaining historical events.
If a slight perturbation in the balance of the encounter between Bohr
and Heisenberg could have produced such a radically different outcome to World
War II, then isn’t what happened to a significant degree the outcome of
chance? Isn’t it pure hubris for
historians to lay claim to explain what actually happened if things might so
easily have been entirely different?
Heisenberg’s concluding soliloquy on his encounter with the SS
man—whatever its other dramatic implications—confirms this sense of the massive
contingency of history, of how in wartime so many individuals’ lives hang by
the slenderest thread of chance.
Although
the concluding hypothesis of the play raises a counterfactual historical
vision, it does so without conveying a sense of finality. New speculative possibilities are opened up
at the end of the action, rather than being closed off. If we read this as an allegory of the
process of making history, then it suggests the open-endedness of historical
inquiry. Divergent interpretations of a
contested episode, like Heisenberg’s visit to Copenhagen in 1941, are likely to
persist. Conclusive resolution of
exactly what happened may well continue to elude us, even when the participants
are truly “all dead and gone” and the historians can move in to take
unchallenged control. Even new findings
in the archives won’t necessarily resolve all uncertainty. Of course, newly found documents will
constitute evidence that will have to be taken into account, perhaps closing
off certain possibilities, but no document compels its readers to interpret it
in just one way. Controversy, spurred
by differences over interpretation of the archival record, is likely to
persist, just as uncertainty persists in the play. By modeling this situation within the action of his drama, Frayn has communicated very
effectively how historians make history in a climate of pervasive and continuing
uncertainty.
Frayn’s
play cannot prove any of this about history, of course. It can remind historians of the importance
of contingency and the persistence of uncertainty, and it can perform the very
valuable function of communicating these things to a wide public audience, but
what counts as history will be established within historical practice
itself. It will be up to us whether we
incorporate within our historical writings any dramatic techniques that reflect
the uncertainties of our craft: for example, by introducing “multiple voices”
into our texts, as historians in certain other fields have been doing to
represent the viewpoints of different ethnic groups involved in episodes of
conflict. Are we historians of science
prepared to exhibit the work of making history within our texts, displaying its
contested and uncertain origins? Or
will we continue to hide all that away, believing that readers will only accept
a version of the traditional “straight story”?
One virtue of Frayn’s play is that it should inspire us to build a
relationship of greater trust with our potential audiences. We could try to raise the relationship
beyond the level at which the public is expected to pay its devotions to the
sublime spectacle of scientific achievement.
The popularity of Copenhagen may well indicate a public capacity
for more sophisticated understandings of history, which professional historians
ought to recognize.
Copenhagen
is important and valuable for historians because of its willingness to cross
the line between the genres of fiction and history. It is a play (as one feels inclined to emphasize when
reading some of the scholarly critiques) but it isn’t just a play
(because—notwithstanding its non-realism—its historical reference is so
direct). Precisely because it is a
fiction, it can explore issues of how history is made with a freedom usually
denied to themselves by historians; it can even recruit scientific metaphors
such as “uncertainty” to provide a vocabulary for the debate. The value of the work lies in the tensions
between its status as a product of creative imagination and the philosophical
and moral claims that it makes about historical reality and historians’
practice. It is not possible to exclude
either dramatic or historical dimensions from an analysis; each cuts across the
other. To extend the metaphors from
physics still further, one might say that the fictional and historical aspects
of the work are “complementary” variables, not specifiable independently of one
another. The fertility of their
interaction is the measure of the productivity of what Clifford Geertz called
“blurred genres”—not, that is to say, the elimination of distinctions between
history and creative fiction but the bleeding of elements of style and content
across the boundary between them. History
won’t become drama, but it can benefit greatly from a deeper engagement
with it, not least in reaching across the gulf that too often separates us from
the wider public.
Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen: An outline of the plot.
[B = Bohr, H = Heisenberg, M = Margrethe]
ACT I:
Why did he come?
All dead and gone
H and B: father and son?
September 1941 (Memory like a dream)
Nazi surveillance
Fission—could H be working on it?
bell Treacherous opening civilities
Pleasanter subjects: skiing … enemy occupation
Working on fission? Has H come to borrow the cyclotron?
(Mustn’t jump to conclusions)
Contacts with Britain, America?
B protected by German embassy Has H come to tell him this?
(No)
Memories of Göttingen 1922
H’s competitiveness in skiing, physics
Uncertainty, two-slit experiment, shooting Casimir/Gamow
H on music and love
Christian’s death
B & H go for walk, return (M on B’s walking)
What did H say?
Fission chain-reactions, uranium isotopes
Copenhagen in 1947: what happened in 1941?
H asked for moral advice; told B that
fission could be used for weapons
B’s “misunderstandings”
Let’s start again: what does H want to say?
Seeking absolution?
H wants to know if Allies are building
a bomb
H on love of country
H: did Allied physicists stop to think?
H’s experience of bombs in Berlin
H wanted B to tell Allies to stop
(The gall of it! Bold skiing!)
H soliloquy on Farm Hall, news of Hiroshima
B’s role at Los Alamos: anything to defend?
H’s 1942 meeting with Speer: the reactor program, a happy time
Why did you come? Another draft
bell It’s the 1920s again
ACT II:
H in Copenhagen, 1924: walking, Elsinore, B’s train trip
Copenhagen Interpretation: B & H together or apart?
Matrix mechanics, Schrödinger, Uncertainty Principle, complementarity
Implications for the observer’s role in reality …
impossibility of knowing one’s motives
H’s career
M: H came to Copenhagen to show off
Why didn’t B have H killed?
B’s escape from Denmark
M: H didn’t understand physics to
build bomb
H gave Hahn figure of 1 ton critical mass
at Farm Hall
(Hadn’t done the calculation on U-235)
Why not?
One more draft of the 1941 visit
bell Each observing the others
The walk, the question
A thought experiment: what if B had
listened?
What if H had done the calculation?:
a terrible new world
H should thank B for having misunderstood
Saving of Danish Jews after tip-off
B’s role at Los Alamos
H’s soliloquy on encounter with SS man
Lost children, preserved by the moment in Copenhagen