CONCLUSIONS 



look not outside but inside the organism and in particular to study, with all the new 

 tools foreshadowed in Chapter i, and no doubt many others besides, not merely the 

 external attributes of chromosomes (their numbers, shapes and homologies) as in this 

 book, but rather their intimate molecular structure. We have here the usual atomic 

 components of the inorganic world harnessed together in a manner which strikes a 

 physicist as unfamiliar. This has been eloquently expressed by Schroedinger in a little 

 book called What is Life? with which all biologists should be acquainted. We know 

 enough about chromosome structure to be certain that their remarkable power of 

 initiating and controlling development is due not to the statistically determined 

 behaviour of bulk matter but to the delicate adjustment of the spacial pattern of 

 a relatively small number of individual atoms in a molecular fabric. It is this fabric 

 which now needs to be studied to determine its properties and laws of behaviour. More- 

 over, once again this must be done objectively, without preconceptions derived from the 

 inorganic world. For though we may be certain that matter has not ceased to be 

 matter by becoming harnessed into a novel configuration, the consequences of such a 

 configuration must also be expected to be novel and must first be explored for their 

 own sake before they can be used to explain other phenomena. 



The problem of evolution is thus only one aspect of a larger problem of life, of growth 

 and of reproduction. And if we could really know how an organism contrives both to 

 develop and to transmit its likeness with such surprising fidelity from generation to 

 generation we might after all have unravelled the greater mystery. 



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