AMPHISBAENA 181 



old thing, why not conserve the convenient brand name? After 

 all, if you want to describe a syndrome you must first give it a 

 name. The one advantage, for instance, that I can see in using 

 the term "molecular biology" is that it puts nearly all that is 

 unknown in biochemistry into one convenient corner. But I 

 wanted to say a word about transforming DNA. I well remember 

 the great excitement with which I followed the first discoveries 

 concerning specific pneumococcal deoxyribonucleic acid. Then 

 we still spoke of "desoxyribonucleic". In fact, this was probably 

 the main reason for my becoming interested in the nucleic acids 

 at about that time, 1944 or 1945. But there has been a consid- 

 erable period since then and not so very much has happened in 

 this field; and I must confess that my misgivings about the 

 justification of expanding these few observations on micro- 

 organisms to the entire realm of life have been growing at an ever 

 increasing rate. Generalization has its definite uses in science; 

 without it we should all soon be without a job. But at the same 

 time, there is a great danger of its gliding into glibness. It was in 

 1889 that the great Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt wrote a 

 letter to a friend in which he warned of the oncoming of what 

 he called "les terribles simplificateurs". Just as the locusts, once 

 they are through with a field, have simplified it horribly, could 

 we not say that this is also true of some of the great generali- 

 zations in biology? Color and variety, the pulsations of accident 

 and fate, the tremendous urges and instincts, the pendulum of 

 birth and death: all have disappeared and we are left with what 

 I once called "a plantation of match sticks". So, when I Usten to 

 the arguments that microbial transformation proves the gene 

 character of DNA, I must ask: is this discovery one of the 

 features of the unity of nature or one of the facets of its diversity? 

 That's where the dialectics has to come in to which we referred 

 at the beginning of our little disputation. 



y: 



I can see, you want to keep your cake and sell it. You are an 

 intolerable mystic, and I have had the feeling that, while you 



