Life in the Universe 159 



this or that aspect of human thought. For example, we can recognize 

 clearly the lines of development of western music or science through 

 many generations of different people. 



In conclusion, readers may ask what human meaning can be ex- 

 tracted from the knowledge which has been gained of the cell, its 

 construction and its achievements. Does it tell us anything about the 

 meaning of life? In the first place, it should be explained that science 

 does not concern itself with ultimate meanings; it is only concerned 

 with what it finds out about things as they exist and the relations be- 

 tween them. It does ask how they came to be in their present state, 

 but it does not ask what they exist for or what is the object of it all. 

 Many scientists deny that there is any sense in such questions. Yet, 

 although science does not provide answers, human beings persistently 

 look for them and have always wanted to round off their useful know- 

 ledge by some conception of the meaning of it all. It is, in fact, a neces- 

 sity of the human mind to have some sort of a unifying conception 

 which will hold together all the fragments of knowledge which have 

 been acquired and which is capable of giving meaning and perspec- 

 tive to human life as it progresses from one generation to another.^ So 

 from a human point of view, we are justified in asking whether we 

 can find any meaning in the extraordinary pageant of events which 

 has been disclosed. Is it all just an accident — as some scientists have 

 suggested — the result of an extremely improbable event which 

 brought together the atoms, forming the first self -reproducing sys- 

 tem; so giving rise to the first germ of life? Or, as has been suggested 

 here, is it not inevitable that such complex systems will be formed 

 whenever suitable conditions occur, i.e. water, radiation and a variety 

 of inorganic substances? Whichever may be the correct view of the 

 origin of life, there can be no doubt that in living systems, as they 

 have evolved and as we find them today, we have chemical systems 

 of a very complicated kind, which form a single family of living 

 things. Are we then justified in regarding life, in all its variety, as 

 merely an exhibition of an immensely complicated chemistry? 



I think we cannot avoid concluding that this is correct as far as it 

 goes, but it is not the whole truth. We can say in this, as in other 

 fields, that the whole is greater than the parts. We may be able to 

 break down the organism into its cells, and the cells into the interlock- 

 ing component cycles of activity, yet the functioning cell is more than 

 the sum of the chemical processes of which it is made up and the 

 organism is more than the sum of the cells of which it is composed. 



This can be illustrated by a simpler example. If we combine a 



^ I cannot justify this statement here, but readers who are interested will find 

 a discussion in my book Science and Human Life (Pergamon Press). 



