Whenever I read news stories about "activists" who demonstrate against nuclear weapons or nuclear power installations, or express outrage about toxic waste hazards, or allege the dangers to society and human life of research and development on frontiers such as biotechnology or ABC warfare (atomic, bacterial, and chemical), I cannot just dismiss it all as emotional imbalance. Instead a web of wonder starts to spin itself. This essay examines that web.

As an epigraph we might borrow the conclusion of Daniel Greenberg's The Politics of Pure Science. He asks, "Is there such a thing as "socially responsible" science? At one time most inhabitants of the pure science community would have doubted this. But in recent years, more and more scientists have come to question the comfortable notion that science is absolved of responsibility for what is done with their work."

My own guess is that ethical neutralists still abound in scientific circles, even though there are some distinguished ones like Leo Szilard and Hans Bethe and Linus Pauling who have stoutly denied that the neutralist doctrine is valid. The