ABSTRACT
In the mid twentieth century, theologians, philosophers, physicians, lawyers, politicians, social scientists, and activists joined debate in a world where civil and human rights were being rethought, and where judgments regarding the protective boundaries of life were lagging behind advances in science and technology. General Omar Bradley’s Armistice Day speech three short years after two atomic bombs had been dropped on Japan is exemplary. Addressing his audience, Bradley warned:
Our knowledge of science has clearly outstripped our capacity to control it . . . Man is stumbling blindly through a spiritual darkness while toying with the precarious secrets of life and death. The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.1
