The Physicists - Fear of the Unknown

          After reading through the play, one theme was particularly prominent to me, which was the fear of the unknown. Being written in the same era as the invention of the atomic bomb and the cold war, I could only imagine terrors that would be haunting everyone, everywhere around the war. The fear of military weapons, the unpredictable power of science and the fear of simple tomorrow were probably only a few of the widely spread anxieties.

          Readers were introduced to a less intense form of this fear when Mobius started yelling at his wife and children, cursing them to die in the deepest hole of the Mariana trench. It was clear that they were shocked and scared of Mobius because they did not know how far gone his mental state was at the moment and how bad and ugly the situation was going to be. They were not equipped with the knowledge of handling a mentally unstable patient and the fact that there were two murders beforehand at the same drawing room did not help.

         At the end of the story, Mobius himself revealed that he was fearful of the consequences if his works on the Principle of Universal Discovery were to be published:

        “The result is – devastating. New and inconceivable forces would be unleashed, making possible a technical advance that would transcend the wildest flights of fantasy if my findings were to fall into the hands of mankind.”

     Even though Mobius was the founder of the Principle of Universal Discovery, he himself did not fully understand the possibility and impact of his discoveries. Being sideline to a raging war, a highly terrified mentality would choose to obey its paranoia and assume the worst at circumstances. Therefore, it was not unusual for Mobius to expect the worst of mankind and to assume that his shared knowledge would be put to use in devising new technologies to bring more harm to mankind that was far beyond imagination.