162 NUCLEIC ACIDS, DECODING, ETC. 



A few years ago, in 1953, I had the task of introducing a sym- 

 posium on conjugated proteins, and I should like to cite a portion 

 of my introduction. 



". , , Scientists, like little fishes, swim in schools. When we open one of our 

 scientific journals these days, we find a very uneven distribution of topics. 

 Some important fields are almost entirely neglected, others seem to ex- 

 plode into bursts of unbelievable mediocrity. Really valuable contributions 

 in the fields most in vogue at present probably are just as scarce as those 

 dealing with the stepchildren of present-day biochemistry. But not all 

 disciplines make it so easy to call each mush a "homogenate", each soup 

 a "partially purified extract", and to speak — when you have nothing 

 whatever — of a "system". There is a real danger that our science may 

 suffocate in its own excrements." 



This, I fear, has come about. Prepackaged concepts have become 

 widely used; a form of collage makes it easy to give a pleasingly 

 abstract shape to what many of us were wont to consider the 

 most concrete thing in the world. Instant Science: just take a 

 teaspoonful and add hot air. 



Conscience — that safety valve of human hybris — has no longer 

 a place in science. A spurious, artificially ordered universe permits 

 the bestial grinding out of facts, many of them actually pseudo- 

 facts, micro-idols of an Easter Island of the mind. The vox 

 humana may still be a stop on the organ; but where is it found 

 in our scientific papers? We are being invited to dig deep holes 

 to hide from the consequences of our atomic discoveries; but 

 there will be no hole deep enough, once we have learned to 

 manipulate the genetic material. Goethe's "Zauberlehrling" has 

 become the prototype of us all. It will also be nice to watch the 

 consequences of the attempt to tickle the Universe, as in the 

 projected atomic explosions in outer space: Daedalus sending up 

 Icarus to provoke the sun. These infinite spaces of which Pascal 

 dreamed, is it not time that they came to the end of their infinity? 



DNA now is a magic name, the philosopher's stone of our days, 

 the quintessence of contemporary alchemy. Since I have been 

 able to follow the development of this remarkable creature from 



