The Promise of Medical Science 
ago I felt I had enough experience to be able to tackle a com- 
plex biological problem. I chose motion, that is, the function 
of muscle. My laboratory was soon able to isolate from muscle 
two sorts of molecules, which could be described in the language 
of classical chemistry, and which, if put together in the right 
order, formed something like an artificial muscle, which could 
move outside the body and could thus be analysed with the 
current methods. I was convinced that within a matter of weeks 
we would completely understand how muscle generates motion. 
Then I worked for twenty years without making progress. One 
important point I overlooked was “organization”. “‘Organi- 
zation”? means that if nature puts two things together in a 
meaningful way, something new is generated which cannot be 
described, any more, in terms of the qualities of its constituents. 
This is true through the whole gamut of complexity, from 
atomic nuclei and electrons up to macromolecules or a com- 
plete individual. Nature is not additive. If this is true then the 
opposite is also true, and when I take two things apart I have 
thrown away something, something which has been the very 
essence of that system, of that level of organization. 
I have quoted my own research to stay close to home, but 
once one starts on this line more questions come to one’s mind. 
What is the meaning of the cell? Why are all higher forms of 
life built of such small units of approximately equal size? What 
is the meaning of this most basic unit of living systems? But 
cells are not little empty boxes. The electron microscope has 
revealed a wealth of structure and organization within the cell, 
dominated by laminar formation. What is the meaning of these 
lamellar formations? There is no answer to these questions. I 
do not mean to say that we are not approaching these problems 
at all. Study of the macromolecules which build these higher 
structures is one approach, and the laboratory of F. O. Schmitt 
has shown that these macromolecules have built into them a 
tendency to join spontaneously in a meaningful way. But this 
does not answer the question about the real meaning of these 
cellular or subcellular formations. Intermolecular forces are 
short-range forces and do not explain the meaning of these 
IQI 
