184 AMPHISBAENA 



o: 



Do you mean to say that life itself has now acquired a press 

 agent? 



y: 



Of course not; but there has arisen all over the world a group of 

 young, militant and successful practitioners — evangelists, you 

 might call them — who are spreading the new knowledge with 

 devotion and perseverance. All seems to fit. 



o: 



Or at least you disregard what doesn't. Such must have been the 

 atmosphere when Phlogiston went strong: all seemed to fit until 

 a little balance was brought into play. Even the great Ockham 

 with his immortal razor would no longer succeed in shaving the 

 multicolored beard that is now sprouting all over the beautiful 

 face of biochemistry. Opening one issue of a journal, I am as- 

 sailed by an abysmal cackle of terms, ill-fitting, yet strident, 

 garish and banal. The shockate, the grindate and the sonicate, 

 the suicide and the abortion, the fingerprints and the hot spots, 

 the repressors and the co-repressors, the feedbacks, the pools 

 and the templates, the regulators, the operators and the operons; 

 and floating over the entire allegorical cesspool, the mysterious 

 messengers, angelic or diabolic in their evanescent every- 

 whereness. Have we really arrived at the stage of non-objective 

 biochemistry, of molecular action painting? 



y: 

 You have left out the hybrids and many other things; but I am 

 glad to see that you are fairly familiar at least with our nomen- 

 clature. Let me say, however, that to make a scientific revolution 

 one must break many eggheads. Your objections are ineffective 

 and they will not count in the end. Biological or, if you prefer, 

 genetic information is an extremely important and useful con- 

 cept which even a Shakespearean fool cannot laugh off. Before 

 I go on, I should like to ask you a question. When trying to 



