CHAPTER 8 



First Steps towards a Chemistry of Heredity"^ 



1. INTRODUCTION 



An observer of our biological sciences today sees dark figures 

 moving over a bridge of glass. We are faced with an ever ex- 

 panding universe of light and darkness. The greater the circle of 

 understanding becomes, the greater is the circumference of sur- 

 rounding ignorance. But as our sciences expand, their specific 

 gravity appears to become lower. Out of swimmers we have all 

 turned into floaters. A unified and consistent vision of nature 

 has become impossible in our days, at any rate for working 

 scientists. Ironically enough, the only universal scientists left are 

 the publishers of scientific books or the writers of science fiction. 

 Each science protects itself from its neighbors by a cordon of 

 slogans and catchwords; and fashion dictates whether this year 

 we are featuring enzymes or proteins or nucleic acids and whether 

 we wear the molecules long or short. New journals are bom 

 every day by Caesarean section performed by skilful publishers; 

 and as new disciplines are formed, so are new and mutually un- 

 inteUigible languages: a Tower of Babel made of paper. 



The feeling of discouragement before the seemingly chaotic 

 wave of nature, before this self-duplicating cataract, is not new. 

 Long before the unjustly famous "Ignorabimus" of Du Bois- 

 Reymond, innumerable mournful voices could be heard, the most 

 intense, the most heart-rending, being that of Pascal; for here is 



* Reprinted with permission from Intern. Congr. Biochem., 4th Congr., 

 Vienna, Austria, 14 (1958) 21-35. 



References p. 125 



