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Girders in the Sand - References
Mendel
Bronowski, J. (1973) The Ascent of Man
Fisher, Richard B (1977) Joseph Lister 1827-1912
(p.132) Von Leibig - influential teacher of chemistry - taught that life arises spontaneously from the chemicals in ferments, rather than the reverse. Immensely influential - probably the theories Lister was taught in his chemistry lectures at UCH. (the arguments between Pasteur and followers of von Leibig approx 1860)
Orel, Vitezslav (1984) Mendel (Past Masters).
(p.19) Gregor Mendel - (b. 22 June 1866, d. 1884 aged 61). Mother = Rosine Mendel. Father = Anton Mendel (1789-1857). A peasant, bound by feudal law to work 3 days per week for his landlord.
(p.21) Anton was injured in 1838 while working in his landlord's forests, and had to give up farm work. Mendel (p.23) refused to return home to work the farm. He "felt compelled to enter a station in life which would free him from the bitter struggle of existence."
(p.9) Christian Carl Andre (1763-1831) Agricultural Society of Brno. "-encouraged members to carry out theoretical work in Natural Science, though the results of such work may not be apparent until many years later; only then perhaps would they win the admiration and gratitude of the civilisation they had benefited. - Even now, we may be laying the necessary foundation...without suspecting what success may be in store." (?1798 when Andre came to Brno)
(p.12) Success in breeding sheep, fruit trees and vines lead to the possibility of exploiting artificial fertilisation in plants for new, higher yielding crops of cereals. Hemple (writing in Andre's journal) predicted the sort of man needed to discover the law of plant hybridisation: "... someone with profound knowledge of botany, acute powers of observation, and limitless patience."
(p.45) Mendel's experiments with Pisum spanned the period 1854-1863, and must have included some 28,000 plants. He was a pioneer in applying statistics to biological research.
(p.59) "...no other naturalist in Brno had such a (large) garden and greenhouse at his disposal, or the free time to perform experiments on so large a scale." (Mendel's Brno lectures, 1865).
Darwin's book "On the Origin of Species" was known to Mendel; it gave naturalists a far broader picture of the development of nature; they now saw nature as a whole, and concentrated on exploring the evolution of living forms from the lowest organisms to the highest, up to man himself.
Revolutionary year of 1848 when the long era of feudalism under Habsburg Monarchy was ended, with convolved parliament.
Mechanistic view- living and inorganic matter are governed by the same laws.
- The role of chance was a further unknown.
Miescher
Portugal and Cohen, (1977) A Century of DNA
(p.6) Friedrich Miescher - b. Aug 3 1844, Basel.
(p.8) letter from Wilhelm His to Miescher (1868)
(p.10-12) Miescher initially chose to study the lymph cell.
(p.19) He later found a more pleasant source of nucleic acid when he examined salmon spermatozoa heads. Salmon come via Holland to the upper reaches of the Rhine to spawn; his house backed onto the Rhine, and they were readily available.
Bronowski, J. (1973) The Ascent of Man
(p.311) Louise Pasteur, (b.1823-) solved problem of fermentation of wine in 1865. Avery
Avery O, MacLeod C, and McCarty M. Induction of Transformation by a Desoxyribonucleic Acid Fraction Isolated from Pneumococcus Type III J. Exper. Med. (1944); 79:137-158. (Avery's classical paper describing the isolation of pure DNA from the pneumococcus, and his detailed proofs that this is the carrier of the genetic information.)
Dubos, Rene J. (1976) The Professor, The Institute and DNA (Biography of Avery, 1877-1955)
(p.8) Instructions to the architects [for Rockefeller Institute]: the buildings should be "as simple as consistent with present purpose".
(p.9) ...low profile and same uniformly prosaic institutional appeal. ...bricks that were neither red, nor white, nor yellow in color but nondescript. An austere functional simplicity that makes it remarkably inconspicuous. Visitors were impressed by the efficiency of the wards and diagnostic services, and diet kitchen, and especially by the importance of the laboratories, with space and equipment far in excess of the needs of mere routine examinations and tests. ...but...sturdy oak railings and broad marble steps.
(p.10) [Avery was] low key, like the buildings in which he worked...small, slender, slight, low voiced, mild mannered, shy, clothing impeccable but subdued. Charmingly courteous. [He was appointed] to study lobar pneumonia.
(p.11) ...for both Avery and the Institute, point of departure was awareness that the scientific basis of medicine was weak.
(p.17-18) ...with Pasteur, Koch and Lister,...proved that knowledge derived from laboratory results could be of practical usefulness. Scientific medicine was widely accepted by the general public as soon as it became prescriptive instead of descriptive.
(p.20) Frederick Taylor Gates, a Baptist minister, was advisor to Mr John D. Rockefeller in matters of philanthropy. He had read Osler's "Principles and Practice of Medicine", and wrote: "...each chapter on any particular disease would begin with a profound and learned discussion of the definition of the disease, of its extension throughout the world, of the history of discovery about it, of the revelations of innumerable postmortems, of the symptoms, cause and probable results of the disease, and the permanent complications and consequences likely to follow,...but when he comes to the vital part, namely treatment, ...invariably [unknown cause and no treatment.] All that could be done was nurse the patient and alleviate the suffering. [Only nature cured.] ...large number of infectious diseases caused by [microorganisms] - very few identified or isolated".
(p.42) [of Loeb] "not only is the mechanistic concept of life compatible with ethics, it seems the only conception of life which can lead us to an understanding of the source of ethics".
"...the only approach to medicine is through chemistry/physics".
"Medical science? Dat iss a contradiction in terms. Der iss no such thing. You should begin with chemistry of proteins, as I do".
(p.47) Claude Bernard: "A great man is not great when he goes to bed, gets up, sneezes,... but only when he writes, thinks... and even then it is only those special occasions. It is in these moments that man is truly great, and that we can reach him through his work. We had better ignore the rest; it does not add anything to the man."
(p.70) not falsely efficient - never seen at his desk piled high with Petri dishes and bristling with test tubes like a forest where the trail ends and the searcher becomes lost in thicket of confined thought.
(p.71) whatever the importance or urgency of a problem, he never hurried, because he believed that worthwhile answers would come only from orderly thought. Old black patient: "What's your hurry, doc? ... You're passing more than you catch up with."
(p.78) Avery's lab was the smallest, neat and clean, as empty as possible, without photos, pictures, momentos, unused books etc. ...he had given up all aspects of his life for the sake of utter concentration on a few chosen goals. Before starting an experiment, he sat for days mulling it over with friends or alone. Among all that could be done, he was very anxious to determine by thought the one that appeared worth doing.
(p.79) He developed an uncanny sense for recognising what was truly important. Thinking was never an end in itself - he had no taste for concepts which did not lead to experimentation. "Ideas are wonderful things, but they don't work unless you work for them". He worked with enormous intensity. His obsession was to satisfy the most exacting experimental criteria. The work was not complete until all results could be brought together into a perfect 'protocol experiment'. The demonstration had to be so obvious that there was no need for statistical analysis. Then... visitors and colleagues were invited to admire the simplicity of the experimental set-up and the clarity of its results. It was high class showmanship, and had the quality of an artistic performance.
(p.80) Failure: "whenever you fall, pick up something". "Blowing bubbles is alright if you prick them yourself". [Wordsworth: Wisdom is often nearer when we stoop than when we soar]
(p.159) During the 1930s, Avery had been nominated for the Nobel Prize in recognition of his immunochemical studies. After the 1944 paper, the Nobel committee was immediately alerted to the fact that he had once more made a fundamental contribution to biological science... The Nobel committee, probably not accustomed to such self restraint and self-criticism, "found it desirable to wait until more became known about the mechanism involved..."
Judson, Horace Freeland (1978) The Eighth Day of Creation
(p.41) Avery was sixty-seven when the paper appeared; it was, Chargaff wrote in tribute, "the ever rarer instance of an old man making a great scientific discovery. It had not been his first. He was a quiet man; and it would have honoured the world more, had it honoured him more".
(p.626) Arne Tiselius, of the Nobel Foundation, was quoted as saying, "That Avery never received the prize is lamentable".
Nobel
Evans, I.O. (1969) Benefactors of the World
(p.54) Awards for Eminence - life of Alfred Bernhard Nobel. Darwin
Bible (Psalm 104:25-26)
"Yonder is the sea, great and wide, which teems with things innumerable, living things both small and great. There go the ships, and Leviathan which thou didst form to sport in it". (A.V.)
Cook, Captain James
"I didn't just want to go further than anybody else had been, I wanted to go as far as I could go".
Darwin, Charles (1859) The Origin of Species
Darwin, Charles (1979) The Illustrated Origin of Species (Edited Richard E Leakey)
Darwin, Charles Autobiography (OUP, 1974)
(p.31) ...from what little I had heard and thought on the subject I had scruples about declaring my belief in all the dogmas of the Church of England; though otherwise I liked the thought of being a country clergyman.
(p.32) As it was decided that I should be a clergyman, it was necessary that I should go to one of the English Universities and take a degree; I attempted mathematicks(Sic)...the work was repugnant to me.
With respect to the classics I did nothing except attend a few compulsory college lectures.
(p.33) ...my time was sadly wasted [at Cambridge]...from my passion for shooting and for hunting and...for riding across country I got into a sporting set, including some dissipated, low-minded young men.
(p.35) ...one day I saw two rare beetles and seized one in each hand; then I saw a third and new kind, which I could not bear to lose, so that I popped the one which I held in my right hand into my mouth...it ejected some intensely acrid fluid, which burnt my tongue so that I was forced to spit the beetle out, which was lost, as well as the third one.
Darwin, Charles The Voyage of Charles Darwin (Journal and Diary)
Autobiographical writings, arr. Ralling, Christopher (1978)
(p.33) ...everything is so new and different to what one has ever seen: the Coxswain's piping, the manning the yards, the men working at the hawsers to the sound of a fife...the rapidity and decision of the orders...
(p.37) ...a ship is a true pandemonium, and the cawkers(sic) who are hammering away above my head veritable devils...
(p.38-39) Ceremonies of crossing the line. (32 'griffins')
(p.41-42) Account of the Diodon antennatus- found floating alive in the stomach of a shark, and capable of eating its way through the stomach walls and out through the sides, destroying the shark.
(p.42) Rio de Janeiro, 3 April 1832: in the evening we drew near to the harbour of Rio. ...the captain has put the ship's head to the wind and we shall cruise about for the night.
(p.58)...a deadly contest between a pepsis and a large spider...the wasp soon returned and...commenced a regular hunt...inflicted two stings...it proceeded to drag away the body.
(p.93) the Fuegians on board...[Captain FitzRoy] took to England, determining to educate them at his own expense. To settle these natives in their own country was one chief inducement for him to undertake the voyage, and he had generously charted a vessel before the Admiralty had resolved to send out this expedition.
(p.97) ...when pressed in winter by hunger, they kill and devour their old women. The boy described the manner in which they are killed by being held over smoke and choked. He imitated their screams as a joke, and described the parts of their bodies which are considered best to eat...
(p.98) a wretched mother picked up her bleeding, dying infant-boy whom her husband had mercilessly dashed on the stones for dropping a basket of sea-eggs.
(p.120) Chile: This day has been memorable for the most severe earthquake experienced by the oldest inhabitant. I happened to be on shore...[it] at once destroys our oldest associations: the earth, the very emblem of solidity, has moved beneath our feet...One second of time has created in the mind a strange idea of insecurity...
(p.158) [FitzRoy] defended and praised slavery, which I abominated, ...many slaves, asked if they wished to be free, all answered "No". I asked him with a sneer whether he thought the answers of slaves in the presence of their master was worth anything. He was angry that I doubted his word...but after a few hours showed his usual magnanimity.
(p.160) he was very indignant with me for having published so unorthodox a book as the Origin of Species. His end was a melancholy one, namely suicide, exactly like that of his uncle Lord Castlereagh. His character was in several respects one of the most noble which I have ever known...
Dawkins, Richard (1976) The Selfish Gene
(p.11) Stotting in Thomson's gazelles- leaping high in front of a predator, analogous to bird alarm calls, to warn companions of danger- "altruism".
(p.15-17) Primaeval soup.
(p.158) Kittiwakes- monogamous pair birds of exemplary fidelity.
(p.197-201) -good example of "grudgers", "suckers" and "cheats", using grooming birds as examples. Suggests "suckers" are disadvantageous, and may end up with runaway population of "cheats" which then goes extinct. However, "grudgers" are stable, if there are not too few initially.
(p.206) Description of "meme"- a new genetic entity, mimicry: songs to fashion (eg shoes) propagating ideas - disseminating ideas, eg arches- spreading from brain to brain.
(p.207) Memes parasitise the brain- turning it into a vehicle for the meme's propagation.
(p.209) Refers explicitly to the style of women's shoes, and sales statistics from shoe shops (24.6.88)
Ladybird, (1970) Birds of Prey
(p.24) The Kite, common in the streets of London a century ago.
Moorehead, Alan (1969) Darwin and the Beagle
(p.57) Fight to death between Pepsis wasp and Lycosa (a large spider). The spider was wounded and dragged itself off- the wasp came in for the kill with wonderful precision.
March of the army ants- lizards, cockroaches, spiders thrown into panic; cut off by a fast encircling movement, and then the ravening mass fell upon its prey.
(p.193) Giant tortoises toppling over a cliff. Buzzards lifting the young tortoises as they hatched.
(p.262) Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy attended the Oxford meeting by coincidence to read a paper: "British Storms".
(p.266) He stood and denounced Darwin at the Oxford meeting, waving his Bible aloft, and crying: "here is the truth!" like an avenging prophet. Five years later (1865) he committed suicide by cutting his throat.
(p.38) The Ships Company on the Beagle: 74 persons.
FitzRoy
FitzRoy, Vice-Admiral Robert (1805-1865)
Oxford Dictionary of English Literature
Governor of New Zealand 1843-5. Chief of new meteorological department of Board of Trade 1854. Suggested plan of the FitzRoy barometer. Instituted a system of storm warnings - the first British weather forecasts. Commanded Beagle in surveying expedition to Patagonia and Straits of Magellon 1823-36, having Darwin on board for the last 5 years. Like Darwin, he wrote a narrative of the voyage.
Moorehead, Alan (1969) Darwin and the Beagle
(p.262) Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy attended the Oxford meeting by coincidence to read a paper: "British Storms".
(p.266) He stood and denounced Darwin at the Oxford meeting, waving his Bible aloft, and crying: "here is the truth!" like an avenging prophet. 5 years later (1865) he committed suicide by cutting his throat.
(p.38) The Ships Company on the Beagle: 74 persons.
Pitman, Michael (1984) Adam and Evolution
This work typifies the strong feelings still present among many people who cannot bring themselves to accept evolutionary concepts with their full implications. To my mind they bear all the hallmarks of the flat-earthists of old, (though this work is written by an M.A. in classics at Oxford):
eg. (p.253) "The creationist thesis is clear. No son of ape rose into Tarzan. Man is a distinct type". (p.255) "...there has been neither chemical evolution nor macro-evolution".
Rosalind Franklin
BBC-RADIO (1987) The Dark Lady of DNA
The discovery of DNA by Crick and Watson is a story of collaboration, opportunity and bad luck.
Crick: "She was a much better experimentalist than either Jim or I would ever have been, and she was thorough and painstaking, she knew what she was doing, and she didn't suffer fools gladly. If she thought they were making a mess of things she didn't say so, she looked as if she was going to say so".
"...No, I don't think we could [have built the model without her data]".
Klug: (based on a detailed analysis of her notebooks) "[her scientific ability was] first class - she certainly ranks with people who've made great discoveries, and she would have made it too. I've no doubt that if Watson and Crick hadn't intervened, she would have got out the structure".
Gosling [paraphrasing Randall from memory]: "You will solve the structure of DNA from these spotty photographs".
"Maurice [Wilkins] was in the States when she came- they might have got off to a better start if he'd been present".
Wilkins: "I was on a holiday with my German girlfriend in Wales". - he goes on to blame Randall for sowing the seeds of discontent in his letter of appointment to Franklin, which Wilkins did not know of until he read it in Olby's book (q.v.)
"Franklin had got her micro-camera, and using the micro-focus generator they immediately got vastly improved results and they showed that the DNA molecule makes a transition...Franklin established that there were two forms of DNA which she christened 'A' and 'B'".
Klug: "There was no doubt that the 'B' form was helical. She discovered the 'B' form by doing carefully controlled experiments; she was a professional and knew what to do".
Crick: "She was very brusque and thought that we were a couple of amateurs who didn't know what we were talking about. We saw Maurice, and he would tell us things..."
Gosling (referring to the black edged card she sent announcing the death of DNA-helix): "she enjoyed the cut and thrust of debate, and would play the devil's advocate. Maurice wanted to talk to people and had his old friend Crick sitting in the lab at the Cavendish, and trying to solve large-molecule structures".
"...she didn't resign. She was asked to leave King's by Professor Randall".
Interviewer: "Because of your close friendship with Crick, you could be perceived as passing information from Franklin to Crick".
Wilkins: "Oh yes - they got lots of hints and bits of information. There was certainly a feeling in our laboratory that I was foolish, that I was going up there and talking with them a lot...it was quite unbusiness-like really for me to go up there and talk with them about interesting new results, stimulate their interest, and then feel irritated that they were spurred on to build more models. I was causing confusion, and I think that I was at fault there; on the other hand it was very understandable that I would want to go and talk with them because I was isolated in our laboratory... I didn't know anyone else to talk to - certainly not of the calibre of Watson and Crick -and I enjoyed going up there and having stimulating discussions with them".
The MRC visited King's on 1st December 1952, and were given copies containing details of Franklin's data. Max Perutz of Crick and Watson's laboratory was a member of that committee.
On 26th January 1953, Franklin handed over to Wilkins her superb plate of the 'B' form, photo 51. On 30th January, Watson visited King's; Wilkins showed him Franklin's photo of the 'B' form.
Wilkins: "He said this was like a bombshell to him. I don't think I would have shown it to him if I'd known it was going to be a bombshell!"
The photograph's impact on Watson was monumental. He now knew DNA was helical; he returned to Cambridge with Franklin's data, and they returned to model making. They asked for and got Perutz's report, with her detailed summery.
Crick: "Of course she recognised immediately that it fitted in with all her data, so her response was that this was probably the correct model. All the information we had was in the public domain, except that one photograph; all the rest of it was in her MRC report".
Wilkins: "I think you're a couple of rogues..."
Exchange of ideas is common as science progresses. In the case of Rosalind Franklin, it was always her information that helped others, never the other way round. Klug, quoting Franklin: "They expected me to take the pictures, and them to take the credit".
By March 1953, she had already prepared a manuscript on the 'B' form showing it was helical, 2-chains running in different directions (from the 'A' form analysis), with all the dimensions, and phosphate groups on the outside. It still remains a puzzle why her work, which was so important, has received so little recognition and reward.
Wilkins: "she had a very hard and difficult time in our laboratory".
Rosalind Franklin never showed any bitterness and was openly delighted that the structure had been discovered. She died of cancer in 1958 at the age of 37. In 1962, Watson, Crick and Wilkins received the Nobel Prize for their discovery of the structure of DNA.
Carlisle, C.H. Serving My Time In Crystallography: 1938-1978
(Unpublished MSS of Carlisle's 40 years in crystallography, including the time he worked with R. Franklin.) [Birkbeck College]
(p.35-42) "I would like to make a comment or two about Rosalind, for whom I had a great respect. I already had some ideas about her capabilities before she joined us. I first saw her in action at a crystallography meeting at the Royal Institution just after the war, where in a very adept and peremptory manner she pointed out the errors in someone's working with the intensity measurements of X-ray powder diagrams. There was no answer to her comments. Rosalind had the characteristic of being forthright when she knew she was on firm ground, and this sometimes gained her enemies.
"With her past experience, can one blame Rosalind for wanting to interpret her own X-ray data? Of course, the situation was not made any easier by Watson who, himself not a crystallographer, could not appreciate the workings of a disciplined mind like Rosalind's trying to interpret physical results in an objective manner.
"I am convinced from Rosalind's excellent X-ray studies on both the A and B forms of DNA that she was not in the least 'anti-helical' at that time as suggested by Watson in "The Double Helix". Rosalind was more concerned with extracting positive arguments from her X-ray data. This has been excellently confirmed by Aaron Klug [Nature].
"...the draft of a letter which Rosalind was preparing to send to Nature describing what she knew about the B-form of DNA ... contains all the essentials that appeared in her letter accompanying the other two. Doubtless, she was slowly but steadily, through her own efforts, approaching a complete solution which was to include model-building.
"I can only describe the work carried out [on TMV and the spherical plant viruses] by Rosalind...as nothing less than brilliant.
Crick, Francis (1981) Life Itself
He describes the idea that there might have been time for life to evolve twice in the history of the universe - therefore 'directed panspermia' is a possibility. I am convinced this is nonsense.
a) The times scales are too uncertain to make more than wild guesses about the time for evolution to occur, even on the known earth.
b) The most favourable timescale proposed by Crick suggests that two evolutionary periods are a possibility; but clearly one is more likely, as one is known to have occurred and fits more comfortably into the known time span.
c) Again, if the the time for evolution (ie from primaeval soup to intelligent life forms = tEV) was much less than the age of the universe (tEV << tU) then evolution might have occurred independently many times, and 'directed panspermia' could be considered. But it seems more likely that tEV tU, and this suggests that on any planetary system, evolution could occur only once, and probably has occurred only once (though possibly on many planets simultaneously) in the lifetime of any individual solar system.
d) To suggest 'directed panspermia' as a mechanism for life on earth is merely to redirect the problem of the origin of life to somewhere else.
e) The power of evolution, and the progressive increase in complexity of the controlling DNA that is seen in evolving and more complex life forms is sufficient in my view to allow a backward extrapolation beyond the earliest and most primitive cell types to account for the emergence of life from a primitive chemical broth in its own right, and within the time-scale of the earth.
f) As an extension to this, and considering it from the other side so to speak, we know that increasingly complex organic molecules including amino acids do form from mixtures of simpler organic molecules subject to UV light and electrical discharges. Formaldehyde and other organic molecules have even been detected in interstellar space from their emission spectra.
In conclusion, I believe that the balance of probability is such that life did arise spontaneously on earth just once, from primitive organic precursors, and has continued to gain in complexity in the millennia over which evolution has operated. Life has probably arisen simultaneously and independently, and with a comparable time scale, on other planets throughout the galaxy many times.
Franklin, Muriel Rosalind - A privately printed memorial to Rosalind by her mother.
Glynn, Mrs Jennifer. Personal Interview, Cambridge, 14 October 1988
Rosalind Franklin's sister: photographs of Rosalind climbing in the alps, and roped climbers ascending a technically difficult overhang. She grew up in the shadow of Rosalind, following her through St Paul's Girls School, and Cambridge (where she read history.)
Judson, Horace Freeland (1978) The Eighth Day of Creation
(p.70) Linus Pauling was born to exemplify the advice of Sir Peter Medawar: "Humility is not a state of mind conductive to the advancement of learning." Pauling is one of three people who have received two Nobel Prizes (Marie Curie and John Bardeen are the other two): for chemistry in 1954 and the prize for peace in 1962.
(p.94) Chargaff wrote: "Avery gave us the first text of a new language. I resolved to search for this text".
(p.96) - his dissatisfaction for the Watson and Crick style of science: "that such pygmies threw such giant shadows only shows how late in the day it has become".
(p.97) Kierkegaard: "Knowledge is a passion, for the compulsion to know is a mania: it produces a character out of balance. It is not true that the scientist goes after truth. It goes after him."
(p.101) The conflict between Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin ranks as one of the great personal quarrels in the history of science. Wilkins: "Basically, I don't think the problem of DNA was so difficult...it really was easy to solve. Rosalind Franklin was wrong headed."
(p.120) Franklin's colloquium notes, Nov 1951: "The results suggest a helical structure...and having the phosphate groups near the outside." She added that the unit cell could be indexed as monoclinic, face-centred. She added measurements- three dimensions and an angle- to support the description. (p.138) Rosalind Franklin was the only person in the world, that spring (1952), working steadily at the problem of DNA.
(p.166) Crick's insight began with an extraordinary coincidence. Crystallographers distinguish 230 different space groups. The principle experimental subject of Crick's dissertation (X-ray diffraction of oxygenated haemoglobin) was of exactly the same space group as DNA.
(p.170) When Watson showed Donohue the hydrogen bonds he had worked out, Donohue said, "But those are the wrong forms." Watson was astonished, but he listened, because he knew that Donohue was a physical chemist and crystallographer who had worked for years with Pauling on the structure of small molecules. They now had everything in mind that they needed for the structure.
That morning, Watson and Crick knew the entire structure: it had emerged from the shadow of billions of years, absolute and simple, and was seen and understood for the first time.
Pauling, L. Vitamin C, the Common Cold and the Flu.
Sayre, Anne (1975) Rosalind Franklin and DNA [Norton, New York]
(p.43) Her father suggested voluntary work (as suitable for a woman). Rosalind resisted strongly, with defiance. She was 'unencouraged' which called for considerable will and stubbornness. She set out to prove herself, and when this is allied to great sincerity, ability and inflexible will, the combination can be formidable.
(p.47) She had the innocence of rationality - an unconquorable conviction that reason dominates; that sane people preferred to act [by] logic. Science is a rational business; sound arguments prevail, and the reasonableness of it suited Rosalind perfectly. She had a natural affinity for objective proof and evidence. The slow process of leading recalcitrant thinkers to better thoughts by artful persuasion seemed to her a waste of time. ...most people, even a little experience invites cynicism...Rosalind never lost it [her youthful innocent belief].
(p.52) ...the splitting of women's thoughts by the confusion of roles- 'woman' or 'intellectual' - but not both. [Rosalind] refused to let the woman through.
(p.95) In those days King's was not distinguished for the welcome that it offered to women... King's was founded as a theological school... as the Church of England does not admit women to its ministry, it was naturally a male institution.
Watson, James D. (1981) The Double Helix - Ed. Gunther Stent
(p.14-15) Maurice [Wilkins], a beginner in X-ray diffraction work, wanted some professional help and hoped that Rosy, a trained crystallographer, could speed up his research. Rosy, however, did not see the situation this way. She claimed that she had been given DNA for her own problem and would not think of herself as Maurice's assistant...there was no denying she had a good brain...The thought could not be avoided that the best home for a feminist was in another person's lab.
Sooner or later Linus [Pauling] was bound to try for the most important of all scientific prizes. Our first principles told us that Pauling could not be the greatest of all chemists without realizing that DNA was the most golden of all molecules.
(p.56) [on the first model] after tea, a shape began to emerge... three chains twisted about each other... The next step would be to check it with Rosy's quantitative measurements.
(p.59) As Francis prattled on, she displayed increasing irritation. Inspection of the model itself increased her disdain. Rosy curtly pointed out that magnesium ions would be surrounded by tight shells of water molecules and so were unlikely to be the kingpins of a tight structure. Most annoyingly, her objections were not mere perversity: at this stage the embarrassing fact came out that my recollection of the water content of Rosy's DNA samples could not be right. The awkward truth became apparent that the correct DNA model must contain at least ten times more water than was found in our model... her future course of action would be unaffected by a fifty mile excursion into adolescent blather...Rosy's triumph all too soon filtered up the stairs to Bragg.
(p.78)...Chargaff himself would soon be in Cambridge for an evening...Chargaff, as one of the world's experts on DNA, was at first not amused by dark horses trying to win the race...but regardless of what went through his sarcastic mind, someone had to explain his results.
(p.86)...her X-ray pictures were getting prettier and prettier...she thought there was evidence that the sugar-phosphate backbone was on the outside of the molecule.
(p.91)...we were sharing an office with Peter Pauling...a letter [from his father] was the long-feared news that Linus now had a structure for DNA....the possibility of Linus being wrong - he had never seen Rosy's pictures.
(p.96) I was more aware of her data than she realised.
(p.98) since the middle of the summer Rosy had had evidence for a new three-dimensional form of DNA. It occurred when the DNA molecules were surrounded by a large amount of water. When I asked what the pattern was like, Maurice went into the adjacent room to pick up a print of the new form she called the 'B' structure. The instant I saw the picture my mouth fell open...the pattern was unbelievably simpler than those obtained previously. Moreover, the black cross of reflections which dominated the picture could arise only from a helical structure. Mere inspection of its picture gave several of the vital helical parameters....this presumed that Rosy had hit it right in wanting the bases in the centre and the backbone outside...Maurice told me he was now quite convinced she was correct.
(p.105) there was no longer any fear that it would be incompatable with the experimental data. By then it had been checked out with Rosy's precise measurements. Rosy, of course, did not directly give us her data. For that matter, no one at King's realised they were in our hands. We came upon them because of Max's membership on a committee appointed to look into the research activities of Randall's lab. The report was not confidential.
(p.112) for six months Jerry Donohue occupied a desk in our office. Next to Linus himself, Jerry knew more about hydrogen bonds than anyone else in the world. For many years he had worked at Cal Tech [with Linus Pauling] on the crystal structure of small molecules. He protested that the tautomeric forms I had copied were incorrectly assigned.
Epilogue.
(p.132) The X-ray work [Rosalind Franklin] did at King's is increasingly regarded as superb. The sorting out of the A and B forms, by itself, would have made her reputation; even better was her 1952 demonstration, using Patterson superposition methods, that the phosphate groups must be on the outside of the DNA molecule. We both came to appreciate her personal honesty and generosity, realising years too late the struggles that the intelligent woman faces to be accepted by a scientific world which often regards women as mere diversions. Rosalind's exemplary courage and integrity were apparent to all when, knowing she was mortally ill, she did not complain but continued working on a high level until a few weeks before her death.
Pythagoras
Russell, Bertrand (1961) History of Western Philosophy
(p.49) Pythagoras was intellectually one of the most important men that ever lived, both when he was wise and when he was unwise. Mathematics begins with him, and in him is intimately connected with mysticism. The influence of mathematics on philosophy has ever since been both profound and unfortunate.
Native of the island of Samos, flourished about 532 BC. Polycrates became tyrant of Samos c. 535 BC. Pythagoras visited Egypt and learnt much wisdom there. Ultimately established himself at Croton in southern Italy.
(p.50) He may be described as a combination of Einstein and Mrs Eddy. He founded a religion of which the main tenets were the transmigration of souls and the sinfulness of eating beans.
(p.52) For Pythagoras, the passionate sympathetic contemplation was intellectual, and issued in mathematical knowledge. In this way, 'theory' gradually acquired its modern meaning; but for all who were inspired by Pythagoras, it retained an element of ecstatic revelation.
(p.53) Modern definitions of truth, such as those of pragmatism and instrumentalism, which are practical rather than contemplative, are inspired by industrialism as opposed to aristocracy. [but]...it is to gentlemen that we owe pure mathematics. The contemplative ideal, since it lead to the creation of pure mathematics, was the source of a useful activity; this increased its prestige, and gave it a success ...it might not otherwise have enjoyed.
(p.53) Most sciences at their inception have been connected with some form of false belief, which gave them a fictitious value. Astronomy was connected with astrology, chemistry with alchemy. Mathematics was associated with a more refined type of error. ...it appeared certain, exact, and applicable to the real world; moreover it was obtained by mere thinking, without the need of observation. Consequently, it was thought to supply an ideal, from which every-day empirical knowledge fell short. It was supposed, on the basis of mathematics, that thought is superior to sense, intuition to observation. If the world of sense does not fit the world of mathematics, so much the worse for the world of sense.
(p.216) (Aristotle, 'On The Heavens'): Things below the moon are subject to generation and decay: from the moon upwards, everything is ungenerated and indestructible. The earth, which is spherical, is at the centre of the universe...The heavens are perfectly spherical, and the upper regions are more divine than the lower. The stars and planets...motion is due to that of spheres to which they are attached.
This theory provided many difficulties for later ages. Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo had to combat Aristotle as well as the Bible in establishing the view that the earth is not the centre of the universe, but rotates once a day and goes round the sun once a year. The Aristotelian belief, though accepted my medieval Christians, is a product of the pagan worship of sun and moon and planets.
(p.224) Archimedes, a younger contemporary of Aristarchus, says that Aristarchus brought out a book consisting of certain hypotheses... 'that the fixed stars and the sun remain unmoved, that the earth revolves about the sun in the circumference of a circle, the sun lying in the middle of the orbit'. Cleanthes thought it was the duty of the Greeks to indict Aristarchus of Samos on the charge of impiety for putting in motion the Hearth of the Universe (i.e. the earth).
(p.225) Copernicus perhaps came to know something, though not much, of the almost forgotten hypothesis of Aristarchus, and was encouraged by finding ancient authority for his innovation. Otherwise, the effect of this hypothesis on subsequent astronomy was practically nil.
Copernicus
Koestler, Arthur (1959) The Sleepwalkers
(p.76) They knew that the sun governed the motions of the planets, but at the same time closed their eyes to the fact...it is in the nature of the unconscious that it may simultaneously affirm and deny. This controlled schizophrenia continued throughout the Dark and Middle Ages, until it came to be almost taken for granted as the normal condition of man.
(p.77) Their main concern was 'to save the appearances'...The astronomer 'saved' the phenomena if he succeeded in inventing a hypothesis which resolved the irregular motions of the planets along irregularly shaped orbits into regular motions along circular orbits - regardless whether the hypothesis was true or not, i.e. whether it was physically possible or not. It serves a practical purpose as a method for computing tables of the motions of the sun, moon, and planets; but as to the real nature of the universe, it has nothing to say. Ptolemy himself is quite explicit about this: "We believe that the object which the astronomer must strive to achieve is this: to demonstrate that all the phenomena in the sky are produced by uniform and circular motions...because only such motions are appropriate to their divine nature..."
(p. 219) Medieval universe had firm limits in space, time, knowledge:
a) In time: a beginning- the Creation, 3 or 4 hundred generations ago; an end- the second coming of Christ, in the foreseeable future.
b) In space: Bounded by the ninth sphere beyond which lay Heaven.
c) In knowledge: equally firm limits to progress of knowledge, technology, science, social organisation, all completed long ago. There was a final truth regarding every subject, as finite and bounded as the universe itself. Truth about religion in scripture; geometry in Euclid; physics in Aristotle- because they had come first and discovered everything there is to know. Since there is only one answer to every question, the ancients had filled in all the answers.
(p. 220) Copernicus- the "little Mathematician"- undermined the edifice of the medieval structure of the universe more effectively than Luther... He let in the destructive notion of infinity and eternal change which dissolved the familiar world like an acid. While the earth was still, the stars rotated on a fixed sphere every 24 hours. But once the earth moved, the stars could recede to any distance. There was no longer a limit to the sky- infinity had opened its blackness, (allowing us to peer into the eternal silence.)
Ptolomy
Copernicus On The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
New Translation by A.M.Duncan (1976)
Tycho Brahe
Gade John (1947) The Life and Times of Tycho Brahe
Galileo
St Lucy (luce, light) of Syracuse, 3rd century martyr, in The Inferno was Dante's patron saint, saint of enlightenment, helpful to one troubled with his eyes.
Galileo went to Jesuit school, and was set to enter holy orders until removed by his father to help with the family business.
Galileo's father was musician, in Tuscan court.
Poxy sun: Galileo's account of sun spots, which so disturbed the Aristotelians and their view of the perfection of the heavens.
The sixth circle of Dante's Inferno, for the heretics and disobedient.
Milton visited Galileo in Florence in 1638, aged 30, on his way to Rome. He wrote Paradise Lost in 1665 when blind himself.
Milton, John Areopagitica.
(p31, lines 8-19) A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, was written in 1644 and refers to Galileo: "...themselves did nothing but bemoan the servile condition into which learning amongst them was brought .... There it was that I found and visited the famous Galileo grown old, a prisoner to the Inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licencers thought. And though I knew that England then was groaning loudest under the prelatical yoke, nevertheless I took it as a pledge of future happiness, that other nations were so persuaded of her liberty."
Newton
White, Michael (1997) Isaac Newton The Last Sorcerer.
Einstein
Reston, James Jr. (1994) Galileo A Life.
Conciousness
Gregory, Richard L. Consciousness
(p.274) The nature of consciousness- in ourselves, in others, in animals, insects, computers. The "unbridgeable gap between the brain as a physical object, and mental consciousness".
(p.278) Can machines be conscious? The paradox of consciousness having, or not having, causal effect. (ie if it has no causal effect, there is no reason why machines should not be as perceptually sophisticated as ourselves. If consciousness is causally effective we might need to put consciousness into machines.)
(p.280) Why, of all physical objects, are only brains states conscious? (The Encyclopaedia of Ignorance ed. Duncan and Weston-Smith) (1977)
Sperry, Roger W. Problems Outstanding in the Evolution of Brain Function
(The Encyclopaedia of Ignorance ed. Duncan and Weston-Smith) (1977)
(p.431) Work on epileptics with surgically divided brains: under careful controlled conditions, each half seems to function as an independent decision making entity, with separate memories and will. "As far as we can see, about the only avenue remaining for direct communication between mind-right and mind-left is that of extrasensory perception. If any two minds should be able to tune in on each other, one might expect these two to be able to do so, but thus far no evidence of such effects is apparent in the test performances".
(p.432) "Every advance in the science of behaviour, whether it has come from the psychiatrist's couch, from microelectrode recording, from brain-splitting, or from the running of cannibalistic flatworms, seems only to reinforce that old suspicion that free will is just an illusion. The more we learn about the brain and behaviour, the more deterministic, lawful and causal it appears".
(p.433) "There might be worse fates than causal determinism. Maybe, after all, it is better to be embedded firmly in the causal flow of cosmic forces, as an integral part thereof, than to be on the loose and out of contact with these forces, 'free-floating' as it were and with behavioural possibilities that have no antecedent cause and hence no reason, nor any reliability when it comes to future plans, predictions, or promises".
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