"Cold and austere, proposing no explanation but imposing an ascetic
renunciation of all other spiritual fare, this idea was not of a kind
to allay anxiety, but aggravated it instead. By a single stroke it
claimed to sweep away the tradition of a hundred thousand years, which
had become one with human nature itself. It wrote an end to the ancient
animist covenant between man and nature, leaving nothing in place of that
precious bond but an anxious quest in a frozen universe of solitude.
With nothing to recommend it but a certain puritan arrogance, how
could such an idea win acceptance? It did not; it still has not. It
has however commanded recognition; but this is because, solely because,
of its prodigious power of performance."
"But there is this too; just as an initial "choice" in the biological
evolution of a species can be binding upon its entire nature, so the
choice of a scientific practice, an unconscious choice in the beginning,
has launched the evolution of culture on a one-way path; onto a track
which nineteenth century scientism saw leading infallibly upward to an
empyrean noon hour for mankind, whereas what we see opening before
us today is an ABYSS OF DARKNESS." [emphasis mine]
Thus he feels that the great optimism of the scientific accomplishments
were at first a cause for the celebration of the triumph of human reason
in conquering the secrets of the universe. Later, however, the developments
turned more negative as these new discoveries displaced the older notions
that we are the end product of intelligent design and we exist for a purpose
to the austere doctrine that we are the end result of mindless natural
trial-and-error process and we are here as a by-product, a cosmic accident
of a purely materialistic universe. Jacques Monods was clearly influenced
by his contemporary French colleague Albert Camus as is evidenced by his
citaion of him in the preface.
Later in the book as he discusses the origin of life we read:
"The third step, according to our hypothesis, was the gradual emergence
of teleonomic systems which, around replicative structures, were to
construct an organism, a primative cell. It is here that one reaches the
real "sound wall," for we have no idea what the structure of a primitive
cell might have been.... the simplest cells available to us for study
have nothing "primitive" about them.... The development of the
metabolic system, which, as the primordial soup thinned, must have
"learned" to mobilize chemical potential and to synthesize the cellular
components, poses Herculean problems. So also does the emergence of
the selectively permeable membrane without which there can be no viable
cell. But the major problem is the origin of the genetic code and its
translation mechanism. Indeed, instead of a problem it ought rather
to be called a riddle.
The code is meaniningless unless translated. The modern cell's
translating machinery consists of at least fifty macromolecular components
WHICH ARE THEMSELVES CODED IN DNA: THE CODE CANNOT BE TRANSLATED
OTHERWISE THAN BY PRODUCTS OF TRANSLATION [emphasis original]. It is
the modern expression of omne vivum ex ovo [all life from eggs, or
idiomatically, what came first, the chicken or the egg?]. When
and how did this circle become closed? It is exceedingly difficult
to imagine."
Incidentally, the first two steps Jaques Monods mentioned were the
Miller-Urey experiments that explain how amino acids can form
from simple compounds through natural processes and how proteins
can form from these amino through natural processes. However, this
theory has also fallen on hard times as of late.
[See, for example, Time Oct. 11 1993 pg. 73 - "Stanley Miller's glass-jar
experiment 40 years ago suggested that the components of life were easily
manufactured from gases in the atmosphere... It was, says Chyba,
'a beautiful picture.' Unfortunately, he adds, it was probably wrong."]
Is this Jaques Monods' concept of a theory's prodigious power of performance?
-jpt
--John P. Turnbull (jpt@ccfadm.eeg.ccf.org)Cleveland Clinic FoundationDept. of Neurology, Section of Neurological ComputingM52-119500 Euclid Ave.Cleveland Ohio 44195Telephone (216) 444-8041; FAX (216) 444-9401