Can inventors remain responsible for harmful uses of their inventions that they did not intend?

But she was innocent. I know, I feel she was innocent; you are of the same opinion, and that confirms me. Alas! Victor, when falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness? I feel as if I were walking on the edge of a precipice, towards which thousands are crowding and endeavouring to plunge me into the abyss. William and Justine were assassinated, and the murderer escapes; he walks about the world free, and perhaps respected. But even if I were condemned to suffer on the scaffold for the same crimes, I would not change places with such a wretch.” I listened to this discourse with the extremest agony. I, not in deed, but in effect, was the true murderer.

He was oppressed, he was indeed scared, by his sense of the immense consequences of his discovery. He had a vague idea that night that he ought not to publish his results, that they were premature, that some secret association of wise men should take care of his work and hand it on from generation to generation until the world was riper for its practical application.

“It is good. You will do things which will help people. He whose thoughts are full of the highest turns away his eyes from people. Instead you will serve them.” “That is good,” whispered Prokop, on his knees. “Now you see,” said the old man, pleased, and squatted down on his heels. “Tell me, what’s this—what do you call it? Your invention?” Prokop raised his head. “I’ve ... forgotten.” “That doesn’t matter,” the old man reassured him. “You’ll take up other things. Wait a moment, what was it I was going to say? Aha! Why was there such a great explosion? That’s more people injured. But look about and search; perhaps you’ll find ... well, perhaps only such pf-pf-pf,” he said, blowing out his soft cheeks, “you see? So that it should only be puf-puf ... and do something which will work for people, do you understand?” “You mean,” muttered Prokop, “some sort of cheap energy, eh?” “Cheap, cheap,” agreed the old man, delighted. “So that it could be very useful. And shine, and warm, you understand?” “Wait,” said Prokop reflectively, “I don’t know—that would mean experimenting all over again ... from the other end.” “That’s it. Start from the other end and there you are. There, you see, you’ve something to begin with right away. But leave that other. I’ll get your bed ready.”

[…] I must take a serious responsibility as to those to whom I disclose my scientific ideas.

Men sometimes speak as though the progress of science must necessarily be a boon to mankind, but that, I fear, is one of the comfortable nineteenth-century delusions which our more disillusioned age must discard. Science enables the holders of power to realize their purposes more fully than they could otherwise do. If their purposes are good, this is a gain; if they are evil, it is a loss. In the present age, it seems that the purposes of the holders of power are in the main evil, in the sense that they involve a diminution, in the world at large, of the things men are agreed in thinking good. Therefore, at present, science does harm by increasing the power of rulers. Science is no substitute for virtue; the heart is as necessary for a good life as the head.

But Minos held that a labyrinth and an annual provi¬ sion of 50 youths and 50 virgins were excessive as an endowment for re¬ search, and in order to escape from his ruthless economies Daedalus was forced to invent the art of flying. Minos pursued him to Sicily and was slain there. Save for his valuable invention of glue, little else is known of Daedalus. But it is most significant that, although he was responsible for the death of Zeus’ son Minos he was neither smitten by a thunderbolt, chained to a rock, nor pursued by furies. Still less did any of the rather numerous visitors to Hades discover him either in Elysium or Tartarus. We can hardly imagine him as a member of the throng of shades who besieged Charon’s ferry like sheep at a gap. He was the first to demonstrate that the scientific worker is not concerned with gods.