The Science Reader > Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the World He Made Up

What happens to a person schooled in art, science and “ethical culture” who finds himself a pacifist building an atomic bomb, a physicist exiled from science because of his outspoken efforts to stop the madness, a New York Jew raising cattle and teaching high school in the Colorado mountains? If you’re Frank Oppenheimer, you use what you’ve learned from art and science and teaching and ranching to make up your own world...a “museum of human awareness” The Exploratorium in San Francisco--which is soon imitated all over the world.

You try to come up with “social inventions” that protect us against humanity’s worst instincts the way scientific inventions protect us against disease. You relentlessly promote persuasion (which relies on understanding) as an antidote to pervasive coercion (which requires only power) because “when we stop trying to understand things, we’ll all be sunk” You inspire artists, scientists, politicians, writers with your unstoppable optimism, your love of humanity and unfettered sense of fun, your oddly out-of-whack way of looking at things. “The worst thing a son-of-a-bitch can do to you is turn you into a son-of-a-bitch.” “Take things seriously, but not personally.” “Artists and scientists are the official noticers of society.” “Large sections of this so-called inattentive public would come to life in a situation in which they didn’t feel they were being fooled and lied to all the time.”

To the thousands of people influenced by your ideas, you are Tom Sawyer and Yoda, Jesus and Jon Stewart, Einstein and Forrest Gump.

Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the World He Made Up is the story of how a young writer happened upon this marvelous wizard and his “palace of delights,” found a mentor, fell in love with physics, art and the world of Frank, and finally got a chance to tell his tale.