No shots exchanged, no fisticuffs,never even met : The WWII clash of Szilard and Dawson.

((This was originally posted to my discontinued blog, "THE CONTINUING STORY OF THE LITTLE BOY AND THE BABY GIRL", on July 15th 2011. The blog's subtitle, equally long-winded, was : . because WWII, PHYSICALLY, may be over, but mentally and intellectually the clash continues ----- with the fate of humanity on this planet hanging in the balance.))

WWII is usually thought of as the clash of arms and the clash of pre-existing (unalterable) values : Allied GOOD versus Axis EVIL.

But it really was the clash and exchange of mutable ideas during the course of 1939-1945 - everyone's ideas , even Hitler's, were altered over the course of those six years of war.

I am most interested in the deepest, the most fundamental of those opposing ideas, not merely the surface 'political' differences --- and I find them most clearly expressed in the words and actions of two immigrant academics on the campus of wartime Columbia University in Manhattan.

They knew of each other's existence, if only through newspaper stories and gossip, but they never seemed to have met, let alone engaged in polemics together.

If pushed, they might well have thought of each other as like- minded ; fellow travelers more than intellectual opponents.

But the wartime projects they set in motion, I believe, spelled out what WWII was all about clearer than anything else that so consumes the war's historians.

Their clash of worldviews was never seen as resolved and so WWII continues today; carrying on ,disguised, in bloody regional wars and  in the clash of opposing value systems in nations nominally at peace.

But in the realm of Science, their clash was resolved - one side clearly lost the scientific battle but nevertheless went on to win the propaganda war and continues to do so.

The fate of humanity hangs on us admitting that WWII was, above all else, a clash of scientific theories and that based on the evidence, one side was clearly proven wrong.

Despite this, this is the type of science, the losing side, the incorrect side, is still taught in public schools and undergraduate classes and  is still - literally - killing this planet....