Globalizing Mythology: Interpenetrating Knowledge Systems: Science Hinduism and Christianity   

            In any case, Oppenheimer did not see this deeply; despite his complaint to Truman that "Mr. President, I have blood on my hands".[1] He continued to support nuclear weapons, and to see them as a panacea for world problems. Photographs of Oppenheimer shortly before he died resemble Flemish or German paintings of the Man of Sorrows.[2] His refusal to realize his complicity in the murder of so many people turned him into a living ghost. But it is difficult to tell if Oppenheimer suffered over a conscience for the bombing of Hiroshima or merely because he lost power, fame and influence in Washington after his Security Clearance was taken away in 1953.  Oppenheimer had thought of the bomb and of science as a civil religion which would liberate mankind from war. He named the test site of the first bomb Trinity. He took this from one of John Donne's sonnets, the Holy Trinity:

             Batter my heart three personed God; for you
            As yet but knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend;
            That I may rise, and stand, overthrow me, and bend your  
            Force, to break, blow, burn and make me new 

            This expression of a desire to be destroyed, to "break" and "burn" in order to be recreated anew, expresses very well the paradox of knowledge/power. Oppenheimer wanted an apocalyptic renewal of the world, and was inspired to this from many sources; from Marxist theory, from his hatred of Hitler, from Metaphysical poetry, Eastern mysticism and from his idealization of science. The desire for crucifixion and rebirth or on a larger scale, for apocalyptic destruction and rebirth of a new ideal world are really the same impulse.  These are expression of the Christian form of knowledge/power and express a pattern of thought and action that easily allied itself with Oppenheimer's scientific and Marxist belief in remaking the world through scientific progress. His belief in the historical inevitability of scientific progress and his own political beliefs easily coincided with the peril and promise of nuclear weapons.

            There ought not to be any mystery in the fact that knowledge systems orchestrate social relations and thus power relations. Oppenheimer's ability to use Hindu and Christian symbolisms to explain his motives and experiences should not be surprising. The scientific paradigm is a based on a system of knowledge and in the social application of this paradigm there are natural analogies to be made with older or archaic systems of knowledge. Power depends upon complex organizations which must be justified in order to exist. Religions or epistemologies are justifications, or in more recent parlance, the "programs" or "epistimes" that organize the social network into hierarchies. The result of this is that the distinction between "theory" and "practice" is really arbitrary; theories create practices and practices create theories.  The concept of "pure science" or "pure mathematics" functions in our society in an analogous fashion to the gods in metaphysical and mythological systems in older civilizations. Pure science of pure knowledge are abstractions, which pretend to value neutrality, but in fact are screens or mirrors on which purposes can be projected. The "heaven" of yesterday justified the exploitation of most of mankind, just as today  the fictional spaces of mathematics and cyberspace create a system of information control that helps corporations exploit the world.

            The picture of Oppenheimer watching the atomic explosion in the valley in New Mexico called "journey of death"- Journado del Muerto, is thus multilayered. He renames the site Trinity with its connotations of crucifixion and resurrection. But he sees the first explosion as a manifestation of the power of knowledge and briefly thinks he has become like a god. Yet this has only been made possible by the knowledge and power of science and the use of this knowledge by the U.S. military under the directorship of General Leslie Groves.

             There are three systems of knowledge involved in Oppenheimer's epiphany as he watches the first atomic explosion; firstly, and most importantly, the scientific-military-business system; secondly the Christian and thirdly the Hindu systems. These  three systems interpenetrate inseparably in Oppenheimer's imagination. The result of this interpenetration is the death of some 300,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the further threat to all life on earth. This threat is the natural outgrowth of the internal logic of these three systems of belief, once they are implemented on the plane of action. Thus, this one moment in the New Mexico desert brings into question the nature of knowledge and the nature of power. After that moment, Christianity, science and Hinduism, as well as knowledge systems generally, come into question.

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