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JD BERNAL BIRTH CENTENARY

A Revolutionary Homage to John Desmond Bernal (1901-1971)

-- Daya R. Varma

THE DECISIVE victory of Marxism by the end of the 19th century as the comprehensive scientific theory of human society and the Great October revolution of 1917 inspired a number of eminent scientists and intellectuals, especially in Britain, to seek a rational approach to science as well as to society. Many were drawn to the left and a good number became members or close associates of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). John Desmond Bernal was one of them. There were many others including John Burrton Sanderson Haldane (a biologist and the fellow of the Royal Society, FRS), Joseph Needham (a Cambridge University biochemist and FRS), Maurice Cornforth (a philosopher) and Christopher Caudwell (a pen name for Christopher St. John Sprigg), a journalist, writer and Marxist theoretician.

Bernal was born in Nenagh, Ireland in 1901. His father’s family was Sephardic Jews who had converted to Catholicism. His mother was an American. Bernal studied in Cambridge, the Mecca of Mathematics. Although Jesuit-educated, Bernal was already a professed atheist in his 20s.

By the age of thirty, Bernal was a Professor of Physics at Berkbeck College, University of London. By mid-1930s, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, the highest British academic honour then and now.

Bernal was a pioneer in X-ray crystallography, which led him to become a leading figure in molecular biology and genetics, a rare union of disciplines. It is said that Bernal came up with numerous brilliant ideas, which he used to scatter but not necessarily pursue. However, his ideas were picked up by his students. Two of these students, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin and Max Perutz went on to become Nobel laureates. The Nobel laureate Max Perutz was modest and generous enough to say: “When I was a student I wanted to solve a great problem in biochemistry. One day I set out from Vienna, my home town, to find the Great Sage of Cambridge (Bernal)… he knew everything, and I became his disciple.” It must have been Bernal’s influence that Nobel laureate Dorothy Hodgkin became a friend of China, which she visited several times; she was entrusted the task of compiling the official biographical memoir of Bernal for Note and Records of the Royal Society.

Bernal was a towering figure in Britain of 1930s, as a scientist, a thinker and activist. His brilliance was not only widely recognized but it was so overwhelming that his contemporaries showered extravagant compliments, unusual in British culture, on him. For example, Julian Huxley thought of Bernal as the wisest man in Britain. He was called a “Sage” by his peers. Indeed Maurice Goldsmith, a critic of Bernal titled his book Sage: A Life of J.D. Bernal (Hutchison Press, 1980). In C.P. Snow’s fictional novel The Search, Bernal is the unusual young scientist Constantine of extraordinary brilliance. For Snow, as his later non-fictional writing reveals, Bernal was “perhaps the last of whom it could be said, with meaning, that “he knew science’.” Equally complimentary remarks were made about Bernal by Joseph Needham. His brilliance as a scientist and thinker was so well recognized that his wartime group was nicknamed as Mountbatten’s “Department of Wild Talents”. Bernal has the unique distinction of having been awarded the highest civilian honour both in the Soviet Union and America; he was awarded the Lenin Prize and the US Medal of Freedom.

A Soviet scientist delegation visited England in July 1931 to participate in the Second International Congress of the History of Science and Technology at London. The Soviet delegation presented their views on history and philosophy of science. This single event is said to have had profound effect on British Marxists. Branson and Heinemann, in their book, Britain in the Nineteen Thirties (London, 1971, pg. 257) called this as a “watershed year”. Similar significance to the visit of the Soviet delegation is given by Helena Sheehan, in her book Marxism and the Philosophy of Science (Humanities Press, 1985, pg. 305-307). The world’s most prestigious science journal Nature, published from London, found it necessary to comment on this event and express concern over the impact of dialectical materialism in the pursuit of scientific research.

Bernal was one of the scientists who attended this conference and was impressed by the unity, philosophical integrity, and social purpose of the Soviet delegation, which he found quite different from his experience with British scientists who maintained a distance from social issues.

The 1930s were turbulent years of the 20th century. Italy had come under the fascist rule of Mussolini. There was every indication that Hitler would rise to rule Germany. The Great depression had already started showing its effect on the lives of people. Social democracy had practically collapsed as an alternate movement. Soviet Union had started showing signs of recovery from the imperialist blockade. For those who could see a little farther, the choice was between fascism and communism. It was thus very natural that a large number of intellectuals were drawn within the fold of the communist movement.

In India too, the best minds in universities leaned towards communist party of India and the communist movement was able to exercise some influence on the Indian independence movement. Recognition of fascism as the greatest danger against humanity as a whole, led communist parties the world over to respond to this new situation.

The period of Popular Front against fascism was inaugurated in July-August of 1935 at the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern at which Dimitrov gave the keynote address.

Obviously, the call for the Popular Front had serious impact on the left forces in Britain. The popular front led to the launching of the Left Book Front in May 1936, which drew massive support. Other professionals such as doctors, teachers, poets and scientists also formed similar groups. Bernal was a key figure in scientific contribution during World War II and said to have played an important role in the planning of the D-Day. One such grouping was Cambridge Scientists’ Anti-War Group. The Association of Scientific Workers (a successor to the national Union of Scientific Workers founded in 1918) was revived. Bernal was at the center of all this and his defense of the idea of social responsibility of science, named by some as “Bernalism” won many supporters, and of course, many opponents. The concept of the social responsibility of science was opposed by advocates of “purity of science and science for its own sake”.

Many factors must have pushed Bernal to the left and join the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). However, his dedication to science and belief in Marxism as the only science of human society must have been an important factor influencing the course of his entire life. Bernal introduces his book Marx and Science (International Publishers, NY, 1952) with the following paragraph: “A few weeks ago I was taking a distinguished poet from the west coast of Africa to see the grave of Marx in Highgate cemetery (London). There as we stood alone by that simple monument I reflected how the man who was buried there was known and revered in every part of the world today. I thought of how he had affected every aspect and field of human thought, natural science as much as any of the economic and political fields that were his particular concern.”

Bernal goes on to say: “To talk of the contribution of Marx to science seems almost superfluous, for Marx himself was a scientist. Starting from the observation and practice of the most difficult of them – the science of human society in its historic development – he had come to comprehend the whole range of sciences.” One might add here that the term “observation” used by Bernal about Marx certainly refers to Marx’s profound respect for facts and his ability to draw the most telling conclusion from them. Paradoxically it is Marx’s respect for facts, as clearly stated in his writings about India, the potential impact of Indian railways on Indian feudal structure, the break down of village community etc, which has come under fire from minions pretending to be more concerned about the Indian people, its culture, the gender issues and so on than Marx.

Bernal’s own commitment to Marxism and by direct implication to atheism must have been inspired, among other, by the following text from Marx’s A criticism of the Hegelian Philosophy of Law, which Bernal quotes (Marx and Science, International Publishers, New York, 192, pp. 11-12): “...The struggle against religion is thus indirectly the struggle against the world whose spiritual aroma is religion.”

“Religious suffering is at once the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of the heartless world, as it is the soul of soulless condition. It is the opium of the people.” Bernal is delighted to add that “the phrase ‘opium of the people’, was pretty strong medicine for the clerical reactionary regime of the day.” Bernal’s emphasis on these words of Marx is perhaps highly relevant to today’s India and the rest of the world where considerable emphasis is placed on imaginary dissociation of “real teaching” of religion from its inhuman activities. In the specific conditions of India, Hinduism is serving as the vehicle of political domination by the Sangh Parivar in its attempt to convert India into a fascist state.

Although Bernal was a card-carrying member of the CPGB only until 1933, there was neither a shift in his scientific and political activities nor in his sense of discipline. Bernal remained a materialist and scientist to the end of his life while many others such as Haldane, Eddington and Whitehead drifted to idealism. Bernal remained a supporter of Soviet Union. For instance, he did not publicly express his disappointment following the arrests of Soviet physicists Weisberg and Houtermanns, although he conveyed his opposition to these actions to the Soviet ambassador in London, Ivan Maisky. Perhaps in the larger interest in the midst of Cold War, he did not find it appropriate to express his disagreement over events in Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

As a scientist and a Marxist thinker, Bernal dealt with practically every aspect of the society, which could be served by science and treated scientific pursuit as integral part of human social development. It could be said that Bernal carried the tradition of Engels, the significance of whose writings on science, dialectics, nature and motion were ignored by most traditional academics who could not shed their professional arrogance. Many believe that had physicists paid attention to Engels’ works, perhaps quantum theory and the theory of relativity would have been formulated earlier than it was; if so it was a great loss. Bernal’s own Marxist understanding of science is apparent from his both works The Social Function of Science and Science in History.

Bernal writes: “Marxists have some way of analyzing the development of affairs which enables them to judge far in advance of scientific thinkers what the trend of social and economic development is to be. The uncritical acceptance of this, however, leads many into believing that Marxism is simply another providential teleology, that Marx had mapped necessary lines of social and economic development which men willy-nilly must follow… The relevance of Marxism to science is that it removes it from its imagined position of complete detachment and shows it as a part, but a critically important part, of economy and social development…The task which the scientists have undertaken¾the understanding and control of nature and of man himself¾is merely the conscious expression of the task of human society….In its endeavour, science is communism (emphasis mine).” (Bernal, The Social Function of Science, pp 414-415).

Bernal’s idea of adherence to the discipline of science has been a subject of considerable debate within the communist movement all over the world including in India. Sometimes the attitude of the communist movement was to persuade its scientific workers to function in the party as working class organizers. At other times, communist parties thought that scientists should excel in their own fields as long as they can continue to place science in the service of the society. In Britain, for example, these two lines are clearly reflected in the two diametrically opposing statements of Rajani Palme Dutt, [the author of India Today]: “ “The Communist Party (of Great Britain) stands with modern science” [Report to the 16th National Congress of the Party, 1943]; “First and foremost, he should forget that he is an intellectual..” (In the article “Intellectuals and Communism”, The Communist, September 1932). This dilemma was also inherited by the Indian communist movement as reflected in the debates within the Indian Scientific Workers’ Association and within the Student Federation of India.

Bernal was a great friend of the Indian people. He visited India several times and developed close association with a number of scientists and historians.

For Bernal science itself is an integral activity of the society and for that reason all branches of science, not only humanities, contribute to social development. Bernal authored many books, listed below:

1. The World, the Flesh and the Devil, 1929

2. The Frustration of Science, 1933

3. The Social Functions of Science 1939

4. The Physical Basis of Life 1951

5. Marx and Science 1952

6. Science and Industry in the Twentieth Century 1953

7. Science in History (Cameron, New York1954) [The 1954 edition was later published in four separate volumes]; Volume 1 contains, Part 1: The emergence and Character of Science, Part 2: Science in the Ancient World and Part 3: Science in the Age of Faith. Volume 2 contains Part 4: The Birth of Modern Science and Part 5: Science and Industry. Volume 3 contains Part 6: Science in Our Time. Volume 4 contains Part 7: The Social Sciences Past and Present and Part 8: Conclusions.

8. World Without War 1958

9. The Origin of Life 1967

10. The Extension of Man: A History of Physics before 1900, 1972

11. Science, Internationalism and War 1975

Source: Marxism and Philosophy of Science Volume 1 by Helena Sheehan, Humanities Press, London, pp. 303-316; Review of M. Goldsmith’s Sage: A life of J.D. Bernal by R.M. Young in Radical Science Journal, No. 10, 85-94, 1980; Bernal’s books; discussion with MIT (Boston)-based Science historian, Dr. Abha Sur.

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