AMPHISBAENA 183 



In any event, it must have been a pleasant surprise for some 

 biologists to learn that at last they were dealing with molecules. 

 I should have thought that this was what they had been doing all 

 the time. It reminds me a bit of Monsieur Jourdain in MoUere's 

 Bourgeois Gentilhomme who is astonished to hear that what 

 he has been speaking all his life is called "prose". 



y: 

 Surely, you must have heard the term "molecular disease"? 



o: 



Alas, I have; and for a time I thought that this was a disease to 

 which molecules were particularly prone, a sort of molecular 

 measles. But I soon learned that this was another symptom of 

 the general sloganification of science, everything — like in a poor 

 cartoon — having a pithy label hanging from the mouth. Some of 

 these slogans may have been convenient or useful at one time, 

 such as "energy-rich phosphate bonds", "dynamic state of body 

 constituents"; of others, for instance, "messenger RNA", I am 

 less sure. But there are so many of them, and they are so glit- 

 tering, so gUb! The more I hear them, the less I enjoy them. The 

 pecuUar relationship between names and understanding has often 

 been discussed, best perhaps by Mephistopheles. 



y: 



Great concepts require great names. 



o: 



Or perhaps great names can substitute for great concepts. But I 

 beUeve, you had not yet finished. 



y: 

 This is correct, for I now have to introduce the crowning con- 

 cept, namely, "biological information". 



