ABSTRACT
J. Robert Oppenheimer uses the concept of complementarity in an enlightened, if rather novel way. It serves to vindicate his antinomic vision of physical and human nature. In The Open Mind, Oppenheimer reveals himself as a man possessed by the social import of the atomic power he helped unleash. The difficulty with Oppenheimer's position is that in place of the inviolable closed system, his complementarist framework compels him to set up the immutability of the open system—the pluralistic, directionless world of radical empiricism. For Oppenheimer, antinomic relations extend to the social as well as the inner functioning of science. For the most part, The Open Mind is a series of separate lectures on the theme of science and peace. It reveals Oppenheimer to have been aware from the outset that "there is only one future of atomic explosives—that they should never be used in war".
