Percy Bridgman was one of the great minds America has produced. He won the Nobel Prize in physics and wrote some penetrating things about the logic and practice of science. But his suicide note was short:
It isn’t decent for society to make a man do this thing himself. Probably this is the last day I will be able to do it myself.
He was suffering from metastatic cancer. He had to kill himself with a gun because our society is not decent enough to allow us to do for humans what we routinely do for our dogs and cats: give them a humane way to die.
Yesterday’s note was about Bridgman’s contention that we have not absorbed the conceptual revolution that occurred in physics in the early 20th century into the rest of our “enterprises of intelligence.” He thought that the revolution in our basic understanding of the way the universe works should prompt us to review our thinking on everything else, including ethics.
One obvious example: We haven’t been able to use our minds intelligently about humane ways to end life in the face of incurable disease and relentless suffering.
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