Voices in the labyrinth: dialogues around the study of nature.

Abstract

VOICES IN THE LABYRINTH: DIALOGUES AROUND THE STUDY OF NATURE ERWIN CHARGAFF* Preface For the four essays printed here and in the spring issue of this journal I have chosen the dialogue form which permits a free and widely ranging discussion of concepts and ideas that find no ready place in more conventional articles. The three dialogues and the short epilogue proceed gradually from the particular to the general. Although they are in no way reproductions of actual conversations, many of the more inane remarks were, at one time or another, contributed by friends or colleagues. I am very grateful to the Elsevier Publishing Company for permission to use the first dialogue which was written in 1961 and published in my book Essays on Nucleic Acids (Amsterdam: Elsevier Publishing Co., 1963). It is printed here, in a somewhat revised form since it is the ground from which the subsequent pieces, written in 1972 and 1973, arose. The fabled beasts that lent their names to the titles may require some explanation . For Amphisbaena I quote Webster's Third New International Dictionary: "a serpent in classical mythology having a head at each end and being capable of moving in either direction." As regards Ouroboros, I must go to more recondite sources. The serpent devouring its own tail, forming a circle around the words "hen to pan—One Is AU," is depicted in one of the earliest alchemical writings extant, one of the magical papyri of Leiden, around a.d. 250. It was a symbol of eternity. Chimaera is more of a hybrid: a monster with a lion's head, a goat's body and a serpent's tail. That I, as a devotee of molecular hermetism, recognize certain similarities between these ancient phantoms and those of my own cult —the various forms of the nucleic acids—is of no importance. AMPHISBAENA ... et tu in te manes, nos autem in experimentis volvimur?— Augustinus Confessiones 4. 5 'Tis all in peeces, all cohaerance gone; All just supply, and all Relation. Donne, An Anatomie of the World; The First Anniversary, lines 213-214 *Professor emeritus of biochemistry, Columbia University. Address: 350 Central Park West, New York, New York 10025. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine · Winter 1975 | 251 Nay, so devoted are we to this principle, and at the same time so curiously mechanical, that a new trade, specially grounded on it, has arisen among us, under the name of "Codification", or codemaking in the abstract; whereby any people, for a reasonable consideration , may be accommodated with a patent code;—more easily than curious individuals with patent breeches, for the people does not need to be measured first.—Carlyle, Signs of the Times (1829) [Two men sit on a bench in August 1961: and Old Chemist (O) and a Young Molecular Biologist (Y).] O: Now that I have you here for a few minutes of quiet talk, I shall start by saying: The cell is not a machine. Y: But what kind of a start would that be? Do you want me to agree? This would be surely stupid, for there are all sorts of machines, and you have probably never heard of the theory of automata. I should much rather turn your saying around and offer: A machine is a cell. O: We are then already in the middle of model building, the favorite occupation of modern biophysics. It is all done in front of mirrors, with wire and plastic, glue and papier-mâché; the knowledge of a child combined with the naivete of the grown-up. Y: But really, why are you so much against machines? O: Of course, I am not; some of my best friends are machines. But I am very much against a strictly mechanomorphic view of living nature. A machine is a deterministic construction; someone—an intelligence —has had to make it; and even if it could be "programmed" to make itself, who did the programming? A self-reproducing machine that was not built by a primordial engineer is an abomination thrown up by turbulent and sick times which, in chiliastic dreams mixing superpower and impotence, have created a mythology of a most maculate conception . I shall not formulate...