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·Magnus Pyke
NOTHING LIKE
SCIENCE
Ilustrated by
MICHAEL FFOLKES
JOHN MURRAY
FITTY ALBENARLI STREET LONDON

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·CONTENTS 1 ICILNA TO LIYI IY 1 2 HUNDUR IN EEN 13 3 TEI CONIC ILDIKT 14 4 LITE AUTOMATIO 35 S INDUSTUAL HUTUTIOX 6 ICU 57 7 LATINO INSLCTS AND OTHN HADITS 69 8 LEAD AND SCENCE 83 9 CHOCALS FOR ADU', GUDEN 95 IO WCOS CHITWISTRY 100 11 AR IIZ 12 THE DODICATID CELL 129 13 ILIA 141 14 TIELING FOR ICIRE 154

·Fort publikel 1957
Nekad mods Gorm Brion by
Butler & Tiana Lay Frams and London
and polished by Jobs dlarny (Awickers) Ltd

·SCIENCE TO LIVE BY burning glass on mercoric adds, leading to the release of what was later aled aygen. The apalment was in lo way ** ingendomly designed as the trick by which a pimed card is cured to rise maided from a wine glou Bot-tod thus is un important point-Priestley : aperiment produced a result that was quite new to knowledge. And much more fmportant with the new information coming out of the demonstration with the burning glows at once enabled the lively mind of Lavater In Paris to ree hor a whole sedo of other observations fitted together to make m latellectually satisfactory hypothes pot only to aphala combustion but to explain breathing as well. There are text boobs galore to teach schoolchildren about the burning glass and the mercuric oxide. The details of the wry the experiment was done ore all very well for people wbo kke arch things. What, to my mind, however, is really important mod exciting to that by the use of his hotellectthe scientist produces a logical md completely materbalistic explanation not only of fire but of the breath of life = well! I discuss this further lo Chapter 11 and 12 of this book The basic reason why what is described as science bolo comprehensible to the ordinary layma b that most of the cientists themselves, although they may understand the tech naal words of which their gospel is made up do not understand the implications of the text as a whole. They are, odo might Ruggest, in the same condition as educated chimpanzee who have been tght to hammer out English words on the type writer It would be nice to believe that the two of probability were such that if a whole thousand of them only played long cough on a thouand machines, they would eventually bo found to have typed out the complete vode of Shakespeare. But we abo know that even if they were spared officiently long to complete this considerable tak, none of them would have much idea what Shakespeare o aboat. Priestley great pedmenter though be ve, mbased the philosophical implication of his discoveries Of courts, others did too. Charles Darwin was a most conscientious adherent of 3 ·Up NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE the Church of England who had no intention whatever of setting the whole background of belief of his own and 211 subsequent generations. Yet his researches as a blologust published in The Onger of Sposes, appeared to many devout people to overthrow the teachings of the first chapters of the Book of Genetis. If these big men failed to appreciate to what enter the implications of their senufic observations were changing the whole completion of the thought of ther umes, may it not cause those of smaller stature for missing the meaning of what science is about Today there are large mumbers of toen and women who am their living at scientific punults. Many of these do research, make minor doxcoveries and publish their results in the mentfic literature. It is from the gradual accumulation of laborious detailed observations of new [acts that the fewer greater men may discern a new general pandple by which science may in truth make a tride forward. Most of the many dibgent people do their jobs os research workers as well as the rank and file of orbes professions. But this is not to say that they always appreciate what woence is Furthermore, as the mass of detailed information increases, it become more and more technical Technical words have consequently to be lovented to describe the increasingly detailed mechanismus with which professional scientists are dealing. Inevicably these technical words are incomprehensible to ordinary people. And once many of those who work in the labora tories do not really know why they are doing what they we and have never known that science o anybung more than the masung of more and more of this panicular kind of informou tion, it is hardly surpnsing that the whole thing becomes Impenetrably obscure to the lity The phlorophy of science by which we conduct the material affairs of our lives today ays three important thanga. Finally, it says that a scientist may enquire about anything. Its second atential feature is that ihe results of in enquiries mest be recorded and, as soon as a way has been found to do so, corded in quantitaire (cris 28 kughts, Measurements, 1717- 4 ·SCIENCE TO LIVE BY lengths, velocitles, temperatures, chemical composition, atomic configuration or what you will The third toet of science ba that, besing his conclusons on the recordod observations, the dientot cmn ret up a theory or hypothens to explain the facts be bas observed ad menfured. If he can devise o aperiment dependent on his hypothes and the results of this experiment come out 8 they should, then be can be more confident that the hypothesis is correct But this phllosophy boo one or two uncomfortable consequences for people who are prepared to face it squarely It is, of course, an ordectwal philosophy! We have gradually come to bccept scientific conclusion for certain spects of our lives. We expect logical and systematic researches to be arried out to develop new drugs and antiseptics. We accept radar mod poly these plantes ood we expect engineers to apply the sentific proaples of thermodynamo to the alculation of the stern requrement of a new factory design. But this logical, rational behaviour at Hmo comes into collision with flogiaal 'imman behaviour. Science, that is, with it conclusions based on facts mhux inevitably be affroated by traditions based on emodoo or perhaps on prejudice. We exhibit a split-perromahty whery na nation in iscientific age, wo build Dew wroplanes contain ing every technical refinement Boentific discovery aan ruggest md at the same time build new bouse with water-pipes rmning down tho outside walls where each winter they freeze up and bumt. Just u ndeace may nk questions about traditional house bullding, so also could It study the statement, democracy is the most atisfactory form of government This is for 131 tobal assumption at the prevent tune, but it is by no means impossible to publect it to scientific scrutiny Tho could be donc, for erampk, by comparing a series of factor selected to indicate happiness, propeaty, freedom from criminal actividas, educational kreb md so on in broadly comparable countries governed under democratic and under non-democrack system. Of course, we do not la practice do this sort of 5 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE thing with science. As I aid before, we apply the scientific philosophy only to the material things of life. By restricting it thus we sometimes get into trouble. Our electric bella dng very loudly and our jet planes travel very fast-but we are occasion ally at sotsething of a loss to know what to do with ourselves when the plane bave taken was to wherever it is they are going. Nevertheless, we are compelled most gratefully to admit that saence wonderful! We have restricted it to the materlal plane and on that plane it has given us some remarkable things And the number ud variety of these scientific products co- Stantly increases. For lostmce, there are bicycles, motor-cars, stear-engloes and scroplane. There are telephones, telegraphs, radio med television. There is gaslight or electric Hght. Castor ail is not a identific dnrg, but aspirin bh, and so are fulphanit amde and penicillin and insulin and cortisone. Then we have nylon and persper and bakelite and ball-point pens, all-to vurying degrees cientific products In the United States, they call the man who dnses a rallway engine an engineer In Great Batata we would only properly all him an anglacer if he could design a railway engine as well u drive it. There is some argument, even in Great Bricain, es to whether, even if he could design a rollway engine, the caglacer would be properly called a scientist. In canent language the engine driver is a techimeran and the engineer a technologist. The englocer can at least understand science even though few engiacers and no engine drven, anless they are quite exceptional, co do science that is, advance the boundaries of new knowledge. It has been mid that a practical man is a man who is ignorant of the prindples upon which hus practice is based The modern insistence on doinguosimg between a technolo gast (who does understand sciennfic prinaples) and a tech plaan (who doem 1) shows that we have today realised that a pracuital man bus hits limitation. After all, it does not take very long to teach a man born in the fungles of the Congo to handle a combine harvester or an anorganic pom-pom mu 6 ·ruft gut, SCIENCE TO LIVE BY both of which are compla products of sdentific technology Consequently we grade the technologhat ope stage higher than the tecmam. The technologist, Indeed, is a very important man. Even after be has completed his grammar school curriculom it will take him at least thuceyen of further education before he is fully trained Bat although be baimportant in our present scientific world, there are two kinds of people who are more important sull. The first to the person who cm make new te of pentific facts or wboom discover new fucts for himself. No we can deny that Thomas Edison, who loveared whole litt af practical things, including the electric bel od the telephone, has been useful to the world. The work of Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, has had a cosiderable impact Stephenson and Watt nd bort of others were heroes whose forventions fired the imaginations of our Victorun grandparents This is all very exciting, but is it science In the eyes of the world It foc, a legt, at its best to the application of the scientific roethod. What has happened, however to that by the very nicces of the experimental method, by the very proliferation of new facts, the discovery of new ways to make steel, the manufacture from wood shavings of artichal ollall this has obscured our mnds to the philosophy upon which the whole botines b based. We must not blame the scientist who lo fuort et up a factory to make coal-tar dyes for being confused as to what the poocplos behind Bence tre. Ho is altogether too buy trying to remember the chemical cofiguration of benredo and phenol mad mphthalene todo throcene and what effects temperature and acidity md a variety of catalytt will have. And if he is Alccesful, he will soon be daling with complex questions of packaging and marketing todales and profits a well as with all the problems of chemical technology He may not even remember why it is the people who buy his dye went to colour the things they make with the particular colour les make The inventons of mainless steel md nylon od let engine 7 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE and cathode tubes for television sets are the second most im portant people in our scientific world of today These dedicated men and women are the intellectual welier weights. To succeed they must devote themselves wholeheartedly to their scence Their training starts young and is prolonged. And they can Dever afford to break training Ito nid in the United States that unless a man applies himself with such unsitiving dil gence to hus sublea that he becomes a professor by the forty, he has had it and never ml become a professor Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that devotion to bariness prevent these people from thinking about principle. The most important people in our present aviation are few They are those who not only know some science but who also appreciate what elence involves. The jet plane is a fine way of travelling at 2,000 miles an hour and the family motor car that can actueve 70 is also to be commended. But why does the family want to travel so fast and what will nt do with itself when it gets to io destination. Rudyard Kipling once wrote a Hory about a man who was smitten by m insane desire to travel faster and later round the world and who spent his whole hfe in ships and trains feverishly studying oimetables to avoid a moments delay Eventually, a resourceful friend per anded him that if he put me chair anspended over a sbect of iron, the world would revolve free beneath him and be could cramnavigate the globe in a day without ever moving. There In a distinct danger that we modem urban dtizens, with technical resources now much greater than those of Kipling traveller may develop the same neurosen But the Imight of the important people about whom I am writng extends beyond an appreciation of the purpose that drives w to elaborate Ous mechanical gadgets and extend the numbers of our washing machines and ball-point pen ud portable aadros and automatic agarette ighters and patent breakfast foods und we are well-nigh muhed under the weight of thers. Thexs indighi can also comprehend the general caracter of scientific philosophy That is, that all matten 8 ·SCIENCE TO LIVE BY without aception can be abjected to pentlfic scrutiny so long as they can in some way be measured. Because we only ply scientific technique to certain material things, bike coaltur drugs or radio #ctivity, it does not mean that this fonction of scope necessary The top grade of scientist, about whom I have been waiting, extends his precation of the general philosophy of scence to the particular aspects of it with which he is concerned to his day-to-day hfe. The nin-of the-mal research worker is the backbench member of the parlament of scence. Ho recorded observations form the continuo debate that fill the Emm.com Hansard of the overwhelming scentlfic hterature with which investigators have to rtruggle today But here and there are the grade-one people who are capable of seeing the under lying relation between apparently disconnected Excta. There are the cabinet ministers who frame the bawa lam Newton put order into a mass of mascellaneous facts and produced the lows of motion. Dalton gave us law of chemical combination Porteur establiebed general principles that at one and the same time aplined the observed facts of fermentation and opened up a new cience of bacteriology that revolutionded the practice of mediane. In our own generation the protaples underlying the scattered facts of atomic physia and of much of biochemistry—to name but two toplo-have been cludd ated by men and women who e beyond the immediate a periment to the general relationship hnking the obocrvations of many experimenter. There is no eveo broader aspect of Hfe to which the phillo sophry of science can be applied But when this terdtory is reached the scentist mit recognise his limitation. It is the common talk of all Public Parcons that by selence, md by Idence alone, we can move our standard of living increase our prodoctivity and generally improve output, kecurity', amenity, and, of course, maine the apart datve Progress in science, however Belly wrimed to be restricted to the Widering of our knowledge of Nature and the pllation of ·NOTHING LIFE SCIENCE this knowledge to material thing. The purpose of our pursuit of science and the influence of scientific thinking on humao happiness is usually ignored. The scientific philosophy is a wry of atauning the truth about all sorts of things about the utom of matter, about human health or about the human mind. But It has bad nothing to say about the beauty of a rose and very little to say about right behaviour Yet, as the researches of Darvio in biology and ther relapon to the Old Tatament, or the studies of Margaret Mied in chnology and their bearing on the marriage customs of the West, show, the rational approach of science must be viewed in the content of the total philosophy by which we guide our actions. It is instructive to compare something of the philosophy of science in the West with that in China. Since the elghteenth century our practice bias been to apply scientific knowledge ** soon as we have discovered it-or, at least, us soon as we wake up to the fact that the knowledge has been discovered and can be applied. And the effect of this philosophical attitude of materblodic dynamism has been to give us our present astonishing world full of things. The Chinese, on the other band, have during their millenniuns of history made many discoveries. But for them, the knowledge Iself was the mportant thing, not los possible application to bota-drum affairs For example, they discovered the magnetic compass, but it wa Wertem mariners who used it for steering ship. They dos covered gun-powder and chibited it in fireworks for rejoidng. We employed it in was an instrument of palsua. Our philosophy of scientific materialen bin, however, been immenscły akcenful. And the speed of advance is acceleratin. New machines, new chemical, Dew sources of power and ther wplication are being developed more and more quickly The steam engine held its own for a hundred years, the motor-ar for fifty The propeller-doven aeroplane has been a efective means of transport for only twenty yem md is already being Riperreded. Mors production mereded the effectiveness of a angle mm i work many does, automaton L pow developing 10 ·SCIENCE TO LIVE BY the trend will further Obrowly, we are proceeding towards our goal at a very rapid pace But what is our goal What is the educated, Ane man doing In the world of scence Joseph Prestley was peculiarty gifted, not only with religious belief and scientific genion, but also because he enjoyed doing his writmg surrounded by bus young children, his wife and all the huriy-burly of nowy frmily life. In our own crowded century we too live muitounded by the noises of our generation-the underground trains, the beli coptent overhead, the voices from the television and from the Boxccentive stodent editions of the evening paper. There is Dothing, I suppose, to stop the sane man living 1 me human filfe for this sort of world, provided be has the strength of miod to do so. There are occasions when we fail to conduct ourselves ventbly in the midst of all our kvennfic and technological wuccenes. Sometimes we fail to remember that science, no matter how technical and obscurre los terminology may be, og after all only a logical balling of natural facts. It is un Csonable to a pect that a layman can know all the facts of 11 the sciences. We do not pretend to understand in detul bow. modern motor-car vorbs unless we are motor mechania, but at least we know that it cannot fly or answer the telephone. On the other hand intelligent lymer, un vare of the basis of science, tre prepared to believe that equally imposible thiog can be done if only they are vmpped up in preudo-dentific jargon. A few chapter of this book ate samples of this un fortunate credulity and of the paraphernalia that helps to make it acceptable. But having dealt with this, we should consider some of the few things that are bappening to justify our pride In the remachablo se achievements of science of this very moment. Beardos seven-agore strides in mechanlal sciences, equally important advice we taldng place to the biological clenco ud there 1o we shall consider In other chaptent something of the facts of thas Kience that affect our lives at every point must be reviewed to see how B 11 ·NOTHING LIFE SCIENCE they affect the philosophy by aluch we lise. Is somente materialism a good philosophy: Does our growing knoriet in of biological science throw any illumination on technologail materialism? When automation makes all the thogs at FZ and does al our drudgery as well, shall we change for the better or the worse Of course, we cannot hope to gve final ansats to these questions. But, the White hing so aptly aid, Theres nothing like canng hay when you re faint. He did not say there was nothing better, but that there was nothwag Ekett And we also can agree that there s nothing like scence. 11 ·2 HUMBUG IN SCIENCE SCIENC, with all its great nateral successes to Io credit, bus become today in important way of thought. It ta tndeed probably the most troportat intellectual influence in our modern philosophy There is a danger therefore, that it muy tend to be taken too solemnly, too onentially Science, u we have aid, b the precise mesment and collation of facts. Any concladons down from these facts must be verifiable by a periment. But one thing which has been unduly neglected by Kaentists is the old question as to whether a tree that fit in the desert makes my note when nobody a there to ber it And the s odd because it was Elostein, the greatest of them all, who pointed out that my particular scientia ra mbstaken in muning that two things bappened dmultaneously lo two different places when he could never be in two places at once to we both things lappening. Einstein, in fact, suggested in his pofito mabenta, whoch vere merafully incomprebensble not only to by people but to mort scientio well, that con fdat deotific tromptons such as there might be humbug. Quite recently, however, there is some evidence that the tide of scientific solerenity is turning. One or two papers have 13 ·by the NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE appeared in the literature in which humbug is senously dis cussed. And it may not be long before it is recogaused that hambug plays an important role in certain branches of science When a recarch worker sets out systemabcally to discover whether vitamin tablets-let us by-prevent your catching cold, it is so good his ginag them to a group of people throughout the winter ad asking them at the end whether they have had fewer colds than during the year before. Nather is it enough to give vioonims to half the people in a large group und cotnpare them with the other half who are given nothing The power of the mind over the body is such that some of the people receiving the pills will be affected one way or the other very fact that something is being done to them. This being ro, the competent experimenter is now trained to give vitamin tablets, or whatever it is be may be tesdne, to one group of people and duromy ablets to another outly compar able group The dummy pills are commonly temned, in the technical vernacular, placebon Until lately little attention has been paid to the nature of the pricebo ef. Provided thout it was toest, that was all that mattered. This is now changed. Although describing ** mumble bumbug', a writer in a recent number of the Trou actions of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia pointed out the necessity of close sentific study being made of the placebo, Dow dignified with the dile of a research tool' Another writer in the American Journal of Medictus goos into some detail on the matter Ho comiders that when bumbung is required for scientific purposes It sbould be efficient. A placebo Dedidac should, it now appears, be red, yellow of brown, nor blue or green, which the colono associated with iniment or poisons. The tante sbonld be better but not implement. Capsules or tables should be coloured and either very small-implying that they are accessively potent-or impressively large and they should not look like everyday things auch a spinn Just as Erstelo i events which happen in two places at once may be influenced by the person who observes therm, g, it b ·HUMBUG IN SCIENCE now ugled, a particular dng cannot, In a scientific sense, be wad to have a particular effect on my ory of the body with out taldng into account the personality of the man or womma to what the body belongs. The Journal of Pharmacology poblished lerned antide not long ago poloting out that when a drug te belog tested for its effect, let us #y, on the pain from wounds, s is only nght md proper, half of the group of patients ze infected with me inert placebo-mally elt and Water It is pexuly always found that some of these patients report that the placebo bus relleved their pan. A kientific study of these placebo reactors, as they wealed, show that, liko people who are acadent proco, they posters certain character Istica. There people who are particulady Fusceptible to bumbug, we must mure, or more grateful to the docton who are experimenting on them, more co-operadve with the nurses, ind more alkative than normal individual As soon one starts to investigate humbug in dence, it is Rurprising bow my scientist coe discover whose whole live tre devoted to the mbject. The meat andet of the vegetarian restaurmt, complete with its paper fil round it artificial bone of uncooked macarond, to achieved without the aid of scence, but the whole army of chemist busy fabolating ortifidal cream, or arddal coloun simulating og to ate or oak Atoke Lo Lippens, or artifical egg albanen for baking are all engaged in barnesting santific knowledge to the humbug btainen When we doors the shortage of scientific manpower which b hampering the full development of this country to a com peddlve world, it is altry to real that highly qualified colloid chemists are devoting their talents and the fruits of prolonged miolog md edacation to such problems as the best method to prevent the orange pulp in auge quuh setiling to the bottom of the bottle. In the field of brewing, 1 gratt torearch foundation has been establisbed one of whose major preoccupadors bo to prevent beer from becoming cloudy Not Long ago, when bect was confuned from pewter yeach, ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE science would have been relieved of the pucault of this piece of ariable humbug. The scientific problems which one in the study of the hum bug demanded by modern fancy are very rione. No one has ever been loown to contract a diserte from a loaf of bread which is handled with reasonable care. But today, just o our Victoria grandmothers used to trold the improper dght of uncovered legs-aty klad of legt-by affixing little aborts to the legs of dining room tables, so do me eschew the dght of uncovered food by Inosting that bread be wrapped. This lanocent desire sets the research Chernists kveral difficult conan drums. Microbiologists must be employed to study the types of mould which tend to develop inade the wrapping paper Organic chemists are required to investigate possible and mycodo agents which could prevent the moulds from growing. Cereal chembus must be engaged to research into the nature of crumb toughness To the scentist, the nature of the problem is everything. The purpose for which the work is done is very lute. He will work with us much devotion to perfect a colour of a vanish so that a dew model of a motor-car con claim to be the most bentful object on four wheels as be will to lovent 1 new anaesthetic. And this is right and proper, for who knows what may be the ultimate outcome of a scientific investigation Humbug, however, aun come into science lo a diferent and Icon attractive form. For example, a few years ago two young men who were engaged in m investiguion into the composition of wool discovered a new method of malytis. Such a discovery of odamental Importance to wcience fict progrew is often brought to a halt by the inability of classical malytical methods to reparate chemical substances of distinct bot dimibar nature. The technique invented by these two young men, Dos Martin and Synge, for which, very appropriately, they were awarded a Nobel Prize, was sublimely dmple as to many strokes of genius often wre. Its principle was as follow If you drop red ink on to blotong-paper the mized pigment la 16 ·HUBUG ISCTETCE Adip of perion Uterature is a written record o reer worth the Ink separate into their difat dicas the blor apards In the come way, if a malaure , fic different yers thin occur maturally in honey me above to sort duty dosta stolp of blotding-paper they also v spoparaent cue and the qumtitia of the indivdual sugebaan bus measured. There original form of the process contents of hononga krg met paper overnight in a complich For framme wphere moist. In the learned paper II the drace gery to a meeting of the Biochemical Society, the mivenica danas cribed bow they bed lengths of antener dans les bx tha purpose. Nowadays, althoogh lots of door het still the egitently Rmple apparatus for this work, there on fint market elaborate and expensive vessels fitted a finde de glyms for carrying out paper partition corrisphy In fwa these elegint pieces of apparatus, altrop marinat Birne convenient than the old-fashioned drencipes the string tot And there are research workers who after all, is only a man. He needs constanty or to time anaya to reality if he is not to forget that this type of fingre sterling with the chromium-plated taps you turn of WA TAI Reet, nity In fact bo nothing but bumbog, Another bit of humbug to scence is for sof the we of a special language. There is no berm in that of Stell, brindard, much of science is so comported that this entre pit of specialised purgon, the words of which poretes Freitas pacie pical meaning, ts of coavendence o species i empre Piese there are occasions when technical language the Wi make something that be, In fact, simple and comes the world in if it were important and leamed. For the tradinary saying, well wid. To a scientist, bowerer, et literature to maything at all, important of womportante, tar ise isprased na technical Journal about the mobject under samt And in this literature the dentist may map hitsill try od hide Houelf away from reality in the linergy of sal passive raice. Oddly cough, he is compelled matial 17 to be ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE form by the insistance of seentific editors. But if he were allowed to write straight down what he had done, without humbug, be might not publish any report wil he really hard made a discovery As it is, we get ih's sort of things The test was made immediately after the nadbjects bad conmuned meal, the sond portions of which vaned from 6 to 18 oz. From the resulbs u was found that the effect of size of meal on number of words typed was highly agruficou, the rypist worlding best after meals, the portions of which weighed 9 to 12 02 However, in further tests it us forord that the effect of size of meal zes rendered insignificant if motivation to do well were sufficiently great. In other words, the scentific nutrition of one s typist belps her with her work unless it docent. Throughout the whole period of his academic training the scientist is gradually condiooned by the language of his text books as well as by the kind of proxe favoured by the editonal boards of learned journals to use longo pompour, Laun words when he could use abort Anglo-Saxon ones. The phrases to be found in his illiterate 'literature are usually long and involved rather thin short and prehy Di Johnson hustrated the effect of this way of writing. In English, the sentence is: 'It has not wlt to keep It sweet. With the assistance of Latinised words this becomes. It has not vitafity to preserve it from putrefaction. Not long ago R Whitehead wouing in the Lance pointed out that scientht when they meant my would try to make their statements seem more Improve by using affirm, allege, Lesert, wer, claim contead, declare, intimate, maintain, of state instead. Surely, thus is bambug. Instead of much, they write a considerable amount of, a great deal of, a lage proportion of, or quite a large quantity of and ther proso be peppered with such prosa #drcular in outline, complex in character, bunge la stze, next in order, and most popular of all, red in colour 18 A ·HUMBUG IN SCIENCE This bring me to a difficult wd Important aspect of hum bug in science. The question whether a modem scientist is a educated man. For a long time it has been thought that only a liberal knowledge of the carda fuufied a man coosidering Inmaclf to be an educated person in the full sense. Sochi m education gave him an understanding of men mod fair, of Hterature and philosophy, and of the legingos md customs of countries other than his own In recent yean, Cabłoct Minister, senior Civil Servits mod other Powerful People have begun to realise that science could achieve material repulos mattuloable otherwis. The detonation of the first atomic bomb really brought home the fact that scientuts wers, at least on this noldng material plane, to be reckoned with Connequently, those in posidons of authority were not entirely unwilling to be convinced by the argument pat forward by scientists with tocreasing sunce that a scientific training was, in fact, a liberal educatrol It is difficult to sert, in the face of the grett md Increning om of technical publications prated ach ! year, that 1 centific education, as a present administered, conduces to much eleg mce in hiterary style. Once upon a time it was the custom for ciennfic works to move about and study in other coumtion. Most of the older generation of scientisos med to work for a period loe German laboratory A rendglal remnant of this internationalism remains to the Brittah practice of metlog chembts on animation In Germm translation. But this nov recognbed to be of do cultural ognificance od few Englishpeaking chemts an do better ton kamble through a Gerum technical paper with a dictionary s a crutch. We mu free the fact that in the practal world of affairs soterice is not accepted as a philosophy but o a way of dolog thing. A scientific alocation is designed to teach the audent the factural koowledge to enable him to handle cbemtal or dectrlal operatin or machinery in its vidious month. The illiterate acentiats, it must be admitted, one many the demific philorophen a fer Sometimes, in the bope that the sterton 19 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE is true and not humbug that scienufc education fitt a man for the affairs of the world, the research worker is brought from his back room and taken into the boardroom. There he dos ton barely concealed boredora while general matters are being discussed. Only wben his own items are reached in the agenda does he hold forth, er cathedra-and theo sops. The study of Latin verbs or Greet syntax annot of Itself be claimed to furnish the młod with much else than a set of more or less abltrary rules. But the Odyssey (s has been shown by the cormou als of the Penguin translation) by reporting the behaviour and feelings of men three thousand year ago gives us ideas to guide our own behaviour today The modem teaching of chemistry and physics and mechanics produces a competent technologist. Sometimes it produces a scientist. But If it produces a philosopher this is quite accidental. The con bution of science has been the thesis that logical study, perimentation and the acceptance of conclusions based on fact no teatter how merpected or un palatable are the way to truth. Scendfic education teaches its pupils to apply these principles only to material things Unul the philosophy with all is im plications is taught us applying also to government, sodal affairs, even region itself perhaps, there surely b n elegxent of humbug in cluming that the study of science as we under stand the word produces educated mer One more piece of humbug might be included here the bebef that the scientist, the dedicated research worker, doos ons job to benefit humanity This extraordinary delimion is held to upply mott directly to scientific persons involved in medical mitten. There are in hospital photo laboratorios full of scientifically trained men and women, all basily engaged in matching blood samples, malyzing what are cuphemistically called specimens , looking at slices of flesh under microscopes and carrying out the whole complet programme of the tests that prudent docton demand, not necessarily to help the patients, but to protect their attendants from subsequent legal uction is bound to occur eventually in this mortal sobre ·HUMBUG IN SCIENCE the parent does not recover These dentists do their jobs as well as anybody ebe, but the measure of service to humity in their vode to no greater than that of motor mechanic DL W Barten in the course of 1 lecture to the final yer medical student i St Bartholomewa Hospital, London, pointed out that, although modem med toe depends on clence and the continung work of scientists, the practice of meductoc is an art. He also poloted out that all arust work partly for money Shakespeare wrote his plays Bach composed hos Brandenburg concertos, Michelangelo got his David out of thar lump of marble partly for money although none of them got very ach. The popular impression of a doctor self larly serving affering humanity scaggerated. Good doctors, Ay Dr Batten, are weldom dedicated to the service of humanity Partly, like the rest of time, they work for money and partly they work for the praise of their peers. But though they do not ную, the best of them are dedicated to the practice of medicine. That is to ry, they are interested in their work. It is as unreasonable to dngle out the doctor and mine for special gratitude for scientific activity on behalf of suffering moldod, merely beanse we see them actually dealing with sofferens, o it is to dip the waiter but not the cook or the kichen mod when we go to a restorm Louis Pasteur wus applying his chemical women to preventing wine going tour when he developed the discovery that solved the problem of Infectious disease. Service to suffering bumundry did not come into it. The scient wbo did more to on the gratitude of Ruffering humanity than a complete Royal College-full of medical consultant pris the engineer who thought out the process for making iron pipes and thou embled 18 to keep the kwage separate from the donking water It was this cientific advance that rendered possible the great populous cities that we find necessary for our happloes today The popular imagination is strange md predictable. It is traditional folk fort of our time to think of a dull kavatsu dried-up sort of fellow with a rolled umbrella and i well 21 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE developed contempt for the ordinary ditizen, who arves ** hus office bate in the morning, conttauously dnnb cups of tea while be is there and enjoys six weeks holidays plus ex weeks dick leave every year Yet a civil servant is for more directly concerned with benefiting humanity than a scientist. He often hos to think about humanity-or at least about that section of it with which he is employed to deal. A scientist engaged, let us my, by a great cherical company may be for removed from any thoughts of hunamry, feang or otherarse. Yet, fustas it was sold of McCormack that his invention of the mechanical reaper straightened the bent backs of the peasants of the world, to equally could it be held that the wonymous inventor of nylon allowed the weary housewives of at least a substantial proportion of the world to put down their darning needles But it is deady bombug to believe that the research team that made the discovery, and the chemical engineers and administruton who made the nylon, and the investon and boards of directors and shareholders who made it possible for the manufacture to take place at all were impelled by altruistic notiom about the mofferings of momkind. Thus we see that although science is a potent means of making material things, of creating power and of controlling Nature and, most important of all, bs the dominant philosophy by which our Western technology is directed, nevertheless humbug enter into its operation in a number of ways. Hunburg b a necessary and useful feature in the controls used to measure the effectiveren of Dew drug od dew vitamins, the very centence of which it would sometimes be impossible to establish without it But humbug in science has only a limited function for good. Uurally it is bad because it is by its very naturo false, and the core of science is truth. Elaborate and unnecessarily complex apparatus designed to impress rather thm to calighten is a hlodrance to discovery There is the od story from the United States of a first rite scientist wbo vas studying the nature of the proteins in blood pbauma For part of his research be peeded to be a machine called an ulert 22 ·HUMBUG IN SCIENCE cenurlfuge This is a large, complicated and very apensive piece of equipment which separatas substicos expended in liquid by spinning a tort tabe fall of the misture at atretnety high speed. His studies ylelded Interesting result which were published. But instead of being able to proceed with the next logical rep la bus faracate research he found himself bombarded with amples of blood plasma from other doctors all over the pboce vbo had half-roderstood the significance of his published report. They had the idea that has had of studies mughs be teful for some of their patients. But above all, they were impressed by his expensive and unusual apparatus. When best heard of be was set up in a big office to an institute with four ultra-centnfuges, so boombarded with macellaneous blood wamples to have no time left to think or to carry out new remearch. The adaptability of the modern tizen to the grasses of the crowded world in which he brobjected to all sorts of eckentific marvelo is remarkable. He quickly tends to develop, to a greater or lesser degree, a protective Commons against a good deal of the humbug by which be to mailed. The retentix also mit in bile profesioml Hfe defend himself atost the same Influences Soroctimes be needs to use humbug part of his science Vanlly, however, he needs to be on the defemive zgring the special danger of pompow and obscure longings, of wooly, grandiote thoughts about the cultural significmce of his activities, of windy beliefs on bis mission in the world, ot, most dangerous of all, of coming to believe his own humbug. 23 ·w THE COMIC ELEMENT In its earlier days, science was a constant butt for people ato wanted to make fun of it. Perhaps even the Hory of Icanas who tried to fly up to the sun umul his wax wings melted and he was dushed to the ground has an element of the comic about it. Nowadays, of course, aeronautics s a serious matter of woence. The shape of wings and the materials of the construction are matters for calculation and tralysts. We can today all talk rechnucally about the sound barner and Alacti sumberl. The thought that a man can stand up and about and then get into a machine and overtake his ovn volce dots sot mke wat Strange at all Preparations for the International Geopbysical Yet proceeded as unconcernedly and with as much dullness o preparations for an international trade fair am industrial town In the Midlands. But surely there is something of the comic in the fact that the ten ohibical moons, ordered by the United Srate Defence Department from a fira in Baltimore with us httle fum as if they had been railway locomotives, are being lunched from Banana River, Florida We all koow that the design of earth satellites is a great stride forward in technological schievement But ba there not 24 ·THE CONIC ELEMENT something comic or is it merely grotesque to the report of the US Air Force Aero-Medical Laboratory u Dayton, Ohio, on the physiological effects of space flight Moses, you will remember, when controlling the migndon of the Israelito through the wildemers, rent out sples into Con. The initial report of these men was m unfavourable one mod only one eventually survived to reach the Dew country Today, in our modern scientific context, He ako have kent off spres into the promised land of outer space. Five monkeys were despatched in an Aeroder rocket. This machine flew up seventy miles high but on returning to earth four of the monkeys were Willed when ther parchutes falled to open. The single prvivor of these smian bcaalds of humanity landed afety but died of beu od thinxt in the wilderness of New Mexico before help andved. The way dentists ratdict their thinking to material thing has for a long the been considered comic by non-cientific people. Swift, to Gulovers Travels, igloo scientists wander ing about with their thoughts on their apenments, eachi requiring the attendance of a vervaat to attract his attention to everyday affans by bitding him with a balloon. During the Victodian age it was still quite the fashion to crack fokos abou science and scientist. Mr Picknick is an obvious example, with his scientific study of titlebats in the ponds of Hampstead ood Highgate. But nowadays wcience, the vible dgn of our present greatness and the only hope of m antece to the future, b. Roletna subject. And yet there is a comic aspect of present-day edence md It s often provided by the scendet humself. For artmple, there is something just a trifle bome in the thought of three German sentia devoting themselves to Hudy, and publishing a report entitled, The nutrldve vilde of St John wort for rule, when their findings were that St John -wort has no mitritive value for swine. Rexerco oo The datering of fly-ah, or a study of twelve kinds of planter of Paris vatten by tro Japanex gentleman a Tobobu Unt verury, ure obviously weful contributions to knowledge Bat ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE parhaps, as be passes on his way through the quiet corndors of Toboku University, one of the old teachers may alor himself to traile Plaster of Paris seems puch an odd toptc to devote ones thoughts to a univeraty The abseni minded professor is a traditional figure of fan. Long may be remain so. The world is full of senous matters and among the most serlow are, unfortunately, many of the modem scicoint who have no time to recruber that science is a philosophy of roen seeking truth. In a more leipurely age, fashionable crowds used to flock to the Royal Institution to enjoy clegant demonstrations of sacace-of electricity, or Laughing goes, or astronomy Nowadays, rauch of wocace Hrictly wulitarian. Many sientists are perforce, employees For tbem, science to a means of making ungsplastian, chemicab, alloys, plaster of Pars, or explosives. Unfortunately, these are not for elegant entertainment bu for ale or for some utilltanan purpose. The Gods may justly laugh at the diligent, Identific blind men forever working away at their fly-ush (whatever that may be), too many times without thought of the structure of matter itself, or of syriems of behaviour for dvised men But apart from the wryly humorous aspects of the doings of the scientists, there is a cunocaly comic element in edence itselt. Let the give como comples from biocherabery Certain foods, mong which weerbreads are probably the most prominent, contain otrogenous components aled puricos These are degraded dunog the process of digestion Man and muhropoid apes excrete punde in the form of a well-known chemical substance, uric aad All other sparpmals with acc exceptionnerete tbern from the body in the form of 1 substance called albatoio. Blids behave differently from these lower mammals and entrete ther punna in the form of unc wed. There b a good blochemcal reason for the cbolce of urlo dd by birds. It wases from the fact that they live on appred able proportion of their live shut op in an egg-shell Blany of 26 ·THE COMIC ELEMENT the niorogenous excution products used by mammk are toxic und must be got dd of immediately If there were produced by the chicken in its thell they would posson it Uac old, however is well known by sufferers from gout, is highly Insoluble. It consequently crystallises out from the arculadng flunds of the chick and allows the young bird to dispose of its sorphuo nitrogenore breakdown-products without harm to loaf. Now, I have ald, other than man and the higher apes all mammals—with orse exceptioncrete the mtrogenous purinco allantoin, the exception is the Dalmatian coachbotund, it catetos oric acid like a bird. Surely there is something just slightly come in this animal, of all others, having been dogled out for such a curtow distuctos And the impersonal diligence of Kientific research bus further enriched the point. A detailed blocherical study was arried out in the United Smtes at the kemmels of a dog fancier who had devoted considerable effort to breeding thoroughbred Dalmatian coach hounda specially trained to nm under the back ola of buggler. During the course of this investigation It emerged that only cerata dogs could be taught to run propały under back plen. There were the pure bred Dalmatlans. If the line was sulled to the least degree the capacity was lost Patap mom remark able of all was the fact that the ability to leam was abo related to the capacity to perform the unique matumaliza biochemical mottaly momely, to occrete uric acid instead of allmcoin. The title of the paper enshrining this scientific fact is 'Biochemical factors related to the learning ablity of Dalmabra coachhounds One of the great comic conceptions of Literature that of Don Quixote rad ibe Dodon of someone contimnng to purrue fired idet foued sale of valueDo matter how in- Appropriate the time of circumstance has been accepted as comic for the last three hundred years. The fact that the idea in this story was a serious one has not detracted from the comic element of the partive. The belavioar of the Insect Rhodes prolixw might be accepted o equally comic in the scientific C 77 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE spbere. Rhodnos prodirus Ives by sucking blood It only earts Cronoly, but when It does it takes a full rocel. The effect of the distension of 13 stomach is to cause a gland in its bead to produce a cherakal bormone. The discharge of this hormone xeur in train a wenes of reactions which twenty-one dans later cause the insect to shed los skin. It has been shown by Dr Wigglesworth of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medidne that seven days are required for this sequence of events to be set m modon. He proved thus polot in the follow Ing somewhat betale manner After one of the insect had had its meal, he cut off its head. He kept the body ahve for the necessary twenty-ose days but the skin was not shed because the gland containing the necessary bormone had been taken away with the misung head. A second Insect was given its feed of blood and was left for seven day with its head on, after which time it was also decapitated, and within fourteen days the surviving body of this insect shed its skin. The querotic determinadon of Rioshow profits to adhere to fts scientific prinoplos no matter bow unpropitious the arcumstances is demonstrated in the ultimate ompelment. Two insects were takes. The first was fed, left seven days and then had its bead cut off Then the second received its merl, and was instantly executed. The two were then joined together The trun of biochemical event kt going in the first was to powerful that fourteen days later both shed their skins. To Quorote es pot condic. He certainly is not fimny There by Indeed, much of sobikrg ad virie la bb cumple. Perhap then the case of Rhodnos prolixou playing out los biological purpose regardless of interference by i humm operimenter ought to fill us with reverence rather than bughter But of course the basic principle of the comi gentus is that pride goes before a fol. Literature is full of examples Shake speares Mlalvotto made to go crostgurtered, Kipling a school master, Mr Prout, mistaken for a poacher, Anstey, Mr Buldtude mffering the bumiliation of being ourned into a schoolboy Ot, ut its lowest denomination, the pompow citizen many people Don 28 ·THE CONIC ELEMENT stepping on a bom skin. The merch of modern dance hins been wo more to consequentral, that no common mortal would be surprised If a qurt of dicampuce pricked one or two of the bubbles. And bere and there, the progres of science engineers something comic in thius vein, or so it seems to me. Mn Beeton advoked the mother who is mable to feed her own baby or to obtain a wet more to do it for her to use ma mk, But ever since the second decade of the present century the march of mutritional science bas been progressing #never-tocreasing peace Balanced diets, ppropriately charged with vitunim, mideal alts md proteto, enable childion to grow larger and larger quicker and quicker Let it not be thought that I would for a moment belate the misdre trophs of this newer knowledge of nutrition the virtual diappearance of ricket and of Infantile xuvy, for example but is there not a tiny ting to the wall now apparent—a delicate foke on the part of fater Dr Clive McCay of Corriell first showed that if you lavished on rats all the avmlable knowledge of nutridon, you could indeed anne them to grow o quickly and proportionally as hig and bealthy to modern children. But if, on the other hand, you fed them less well, if, indeed, you give them from time to time in early life too little to ext, they grew more slowly, it be true, bur they lived longer Nor children are not rats; nevertheless Professor McCance of Cambridge has recently polated out that by rabing the plane of natddon of underfed children, one could in one calendr your increase by two yoon the physiologlal age of their bones. It may be, therefore, that when with our scientific nutridon we induce the mcmm rate of growth in our children, at the ame time we shorten their Hve. Clive McCay points out that by a statistical study in Londoa in 1862 Edmunds arived at the conclusion that longevity was best sured by Jternative periods of potention and plenty in early ife and, what is morg, be published the fact in 1 monograph entitled 'Life Tables founded upon the Discovery of a Numerical Law regulating the Existence of Every Human ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE Being illustrated by a Na Theory of the Course produang Health and Longevity In this solemn twentieth century the purpose of women is to rabse industrial productivity A new Lyustrats, ahoring the sisterhood to strike, would find that she had brought to hell, brot hinbuds, but merely the Chief Condliadon Officer of the Minbtry of Labour Linle wonder that we canlly consider Balence to be something renous A hundred years ago, however, Professor De Morgan, the first professor of mathematics of the then new Voiversity of London, thought that there was a good deal of fun in it. In 1871 be published a book called A Budget of Paradores in wluch he expended a very sharp wilt on all sorts of scientific philosophers who were not necessarily wrong but whose ideas were different from the beliefs of orthodar people. A huodred yeon ago men were still prepared to apply scientific methods of thought to ideas in general. In our own age we consider it an orthodox sdentific procedure to use dience to develop a machine for communicating ideas from one person to another The telepborse was one of the first marvels of applied science. We brought the scored knowledge of electricity and magnetism to bear in order to develop the mechanism. But the scientific mail instantly drew in ia borns before the problem of applying logical cospenmental thought to what we were to sty 1010 the telephone. Alore recently the philosophy of science has given us even more potent machines to transmit our thoughts. We have radio to transmit speech and cathode-ray tubes to transmit optical If not intellectual valor The electronic computer is yet mother identific thing that the mutertalist philosophy of the age is providing This tool can be applied to the soechanical translation of languages In arlier times, before materialien came down like a ubutter to focus the light of scence lato a Angle channel of thought, people could be found who did consider how scient tific methodo might be applied to the transmission of Ideas One of these, selected by Professor De Blorgan is an impk of a paradoxer , was John Wildns 30 ·THE COMIC ELEMENT Wilkins was one of the men who contributed greatly towards founding the Royal Society of London. He afterwards becue Bihop of Chester Io 1668 be published a notion for transmitting thought by a logical method for fuperior to Esperanto 11 a universal scientific language. His idea was that things and their relations to each other should be devoted by dgre not word. This would allow my person, whatever his mother tongue, to read in huis own words. Profesor De Morgan commenting on the notion mys, This is an abylow possibility ood, I m afraid, m obvious impracticablity One man may comtrud ech a system indeed Bbhop Wilkins hus done it-but where the man who will lato it Anyone who has attended an internadonal conference today where even with the aid of moterpreters and microphones, progres la reduced to a mail o pace because trurolation bave to be made into half a dozen different hnguages, conld wish thu Bahop Willdins paradoxal idea of three hundred yeurs ago lad been put into effect. French logic at the end of the eighteenth century began to Introduce adentific philosophy into mundone affair. It to heartening to think of tbe diligent kacanfic men measuring a meddwn right Too France on the turmoil of revolution simply in order to establish the precise length of the stmchard klometre upon which all uma of length and mass were to be based. The English, however, with their peerla gift for keeping different topla to different closed compartments of their minds, had firmly decided to restoc adence solely to the manufacture of steel and sulphuoc aod and cotton spiming machunery On July rzth, 1855, the House of Commons was debadng the Introduction of dedroalcolage. Needles to my, this threatened intrusion of dentfic logic into the Batoh garden of Illogial unit, where stones and gill, furlong and proof gallons fostle otth bushes, several varieties of quarters, drachny, cains, mots, long tom, baskets and quires for the title of priocipal lord of confusion and error was conly repelled. A book alle Tu Deand Syrian as a hole as published 31 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE in the following year, 1836, by a Ms Starter, about which Professor De Morgan tote, 'Ebe proposition is to make everything dedmal. The day, now twenty four hours, is to be made ten bours. The year is to have ten months, Uraber, Duober, etc. Fortunately there we ten comunandments, so there will be rather addition to, nor deduction from the moral law But the twelve aporlast Even refccdag Judas, there is a whole apostle of difficulty These polozs the author does not touch. We laugh, perhaps a little sadly, at the avant described by Saki wbo mnounced his great discovery of having claborated a method of communicating buman speech to minuals, like the angel Gabriel announcing the Day of Judgment only to be told that it clished with Henley and would have to be in definitely postponed Poor Mr Satterl Poor al The three blind men describing the clephant-he at the trunk end, as a make, be handling the leg, as a tree, and he # the tal = a hoodful of wireshare a different form of comic Invention. They well represent very many of us scientist, however It is easy to wake up and find that one has spent a lifetime investigating some minor aspect of the chemical configuration of methyl-COT-narcotidc, or the club roosses of Kirkcudbright, zod be twarded a PhD for the work, withou the slightest appreciation of the significance of the study in the cooter of chemistry or botany or of lo application to human affair Expert Thomson Seton once wrote a panable about this blod of researcher in the deserts of Nevada he came upon a great rock in the shape of a hom toe. He stopped and set to work and scraped and polished and wrought until after many years the thing was perfect. He had engraved on it the grain of skin. He had even put a time of dirt under the nail. And when the thing was dons, be died mod we bined under the rock. While sbove him tovered the mountain bewn into the mighty bape of a rublume human form by nations long paste More on Stual to the deft of the root od covered by the hand of God was allowed to see God, binder parts & He 37 ·THE COVIC ELEMENT passed by Though he ex little, he knew that what he did see was part of God. The modem scienthat has wrys of looking into the working of Nature more powerful than anything concered of in the past, yet be often forgets that what he reason part of a greater whole The history of the advance of science is intentwłoed with the story of the increasing ringe od capability of the fastru Dents with which the solemufic woder red the fructure and mature of the materials with which he ha dealing. These instruments give aprendon to what is in the mod s eye. Galileo in 1609 Addenly opened the door to the song by vending the compound telescope Almout us m afterthought, he turned the whole thing upside down and invented the microscope o well Robert Hooke in England, who combined mechanical skill, inventive genius od scientific Insight to a remarkable degree, made and used the microscope and, in his Macrographea, brought to life z now od moupected unvento of the very all Io three hundred years the optical microscope has been im proved mod from it a tool of a hgher order of precion developed, manely, the electron microscope. This instrument la capable of mgnifications of the order, in map longuegs, of one iach to the mile, under which condidons 1 single padnt film becomes us thick as the span of a mans hand. With the electron microscope the burger molecules of matter can be seen Spectroxcoplc Instruments reveal the detailed structure of molecules Such instrument may use vible haght, ultra violet light, infra red, X rays or magnetic resonance. They all reveal to the mind of the scientist vibrations characteriadc of the parts of the molecules being inspected. Sometimes it is the carbon skeletor, sometimes the grouping of the atoms and sometimes the whole ructure. There is a further set of tools that enable us to see the very electrons that are the ultimate pentda of energy anding with In the tom. In fact, we do not matually see the electrons-only the place where they bave been. Alach of Lord Rutherfords 33 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE philosophy was based on the evidence provided by a trak of ligtet Kross a photographic plate the path of a perdcle. These refined tools and ite compla methods by which they are used are of great interest. They are the techncal machinery with which science is done. But they are not sacoce. Philosophically mo electron microscope or a 50,000 dollar ultracentrifuge of no more significance to a scenust than the clothes he wear. They enable him to get about along the molecules, bur fine feathers no more make fine birds in this business than in any other The ultimate foke is the sight of one of us diligent modern researchien malysing 716 simples of bath back and wning a report, with 1,102 references to the literature, entitled, A preliminary communication on the sesqui-ondes of silicon as determined by X ray crystallography with special reference to the Jurassic minerals of cennal Basingstoke, without a glimmening of any of the general Implications behind our immediate occupation Men like us and we do ex-tre indeed using a thousand million candlepower gus microscope of hextry power to see through two pair of sals and a deal door', but we sometimes overlook the fact that our wton Limited 34 ·oure fured. 1968 16: AMMY ART. 4 LIFE AUTOMATIC THI syttemario sacatfic stody of patural phenomen reading to dectnaty enabled Michael Faraday and Alexandro Volta and Ampere (who incidentally showed his intellectual ability early on by doing abstruse alculations with pebbles at the age of four) to cuddste priodples upon which the technologuos of a later day could base the inyendon of radio and television The philosophy of Bence thus led to the understanding of clectronics The effect of this inderstanding bry, however, affected drilised life in mmy unexpected ways as we have already discussed. Broadcasting, a child of science, affects la tellectual and cultural aspects of daily lfe. Scenafic develop meno m our control over mechanical inventions ere, however going to affect our lives in the material sphere funt & much. The combination of t number of the Dow lovendons und ideas in today being alled automation Just over a indred years ago in 1813, Charles Babbage, professor of mathematla u Cambodge, bent his mind to the problem of the nature of akubation. Almost every administrative job that an be bought of b a matter of calculation. The mmager of a factory has to calculate hor marty cardboard 35 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE astons he will need to cope with next Jane s output. He meest alculate whether if sales went up by 33 per cent he would need to put on a night shuft, und at every stage of his operations be needs to work out his costs. General know from bitter a perience that success in batule is a matter of the most careful alculation and in up-to-date want this important fact has been recognised by the establishment of a speaal section of the general staff devoted solely to 'logistics Babbage, then, considered the nature of alculation and that I fell into three parts. Firstly, there were the processes of muldplying and dividing, which in essentials are merely addmg and subtracting. The second part of a calculation is the moring of intermediate result that turn up during the process and thus remembenog tbem unul they are needed. And the final operation n a calculation of my complexity is the order in which a sequence of procedure u to be carried out Babbage, having considered the whole thing saentifically, carne to the conclusion that it did not necessarily require a human brain but could be done mechanically He then at down and designed a machine that would do what was required. He called it a difference Engine It has a mill capable of mulaplying twenty nine-figure murbere; a store for the intermediate totals; and a control unit that would tell the machine what to do, In actual fact the machine was never bult. And even if it had been, It could not possibly have been made to work. The reason for this was that it was perforce designed to be moved mechanically by trains of cog and its complexity və necessanly such that the conceptos, though sound, was beyond the reach of the mechanical possibilities of the times A somewhat more surprising thing was that Babbago Dever bothered to publish my daar sccount of how his computer was planned to work Part of it were capbined in certain chapters of diffuse wtobiographical work upon which be vengaged, entitled Postages from the Life of a Philosopher In 1824, be give up his cair e Cambridge ind uccepted on Invitation from some Italian admirers who had been impressed 36 ·LIFE AUTOMATIC by hus onglmality and mathematical scimen. While he was in Rome, notes were maken of hus lecturas mod these were abecquently published in the Italim imguage and then almost completely forgotten. By a somewhat unlikely chimce, bow ever, they later came into the hands of Lady Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron, who, by an even more improbable colnadence, was an excellent mathematian. She instantly recognbed their novelty and importance, translated them beck into English tod added notes of her own equal to twice the length of the original Italun text. It was from this account that Babbage a bon was able actually to make one part of the machine, the mill, that is now in the Science Moseum in London. More importot, however the report of Babbages work was the beans for the deugn of the modern electronic general-purpose computers that can today be made to work electronically, without the need for moving parts. Although to the world of science thought to very often the prehode to action, and although action based on thought is sometimes of great practical importance-for example, when Pasteur s recognition of the mature of Infection enabled us at one and the murde time to control Infectious diseases and run the anning Industry-nevertheless, the development of the new Idea loelf seems to me to be the significant intellectual ufumph. Calculating machines were not entirely new m Babbage. time, although he himself devised dgnificant advances in dedgn. It b, for instance, by no means coy to work out how the machine b to carry numbers forvard. But the linking of the mill which can alculate with the more which cou remember md the combining of both with a set of instructions, wo new And from the conception of combining the thite operations, I variety of important practical resolos los disen. Ve stall comine first the more, the so-alled memory of the machine. One of the simplest matematical fests as the cakalpon of a mans wagth. All that needs to be done is to coldply the mumber of houd he has worked at the standard rate of rigo 37 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE by the mic, add on the number of bours of overtins, calculate the locome bat, subtract lt, add on the shift bonus the appro priate rate, take off the trade-union dues, the bospital penoy + week contribution, add on the holiday payment and make an adjustment for under or over payment for the previous weet. Arthmetically the stole thing is simple. What makes it ponible for a computer however, ta los ability to hold to los memory the successive intertoedute results while the nort operation u being done on them. It can also more from the previous Veek all the information about wage rates and bonuses and what the man was paid before. The operation in compara ovely simple but the possible practical applications of the machine are many Just 4, in the field of mandal labour, the invention of the reaper and binder straightened the bent backs of men and women atooping over the sbeaves of gralo in the fields, so the electronic computer a straightening the round whoulders of the great battalions of accomo certo in the office buildings of towns. Computen can be more or less complicated to construction depending upon the work they are designed to do. A machine for dealing with wiges or stock records or for Integrating the flow of component on the conveyor belts to a factory Deed have hizke ability for mathematica but moa burve a long memory On the other baod, a computer intended for the control of a machloe tool most power considerable mathematical ability Although lo recent Ames we have become impressed with the deversen and importance of mass producing things in large number, there is in engineering Acceslotal oeed to make a small number of thing, but to make them very well indeed and with a high degree of precision. In mas production factories, the fly and tools needed in the process of tooling up of retooliog before the production of a new designs are Crampla of these. Io sircraft factories the metal meroplanes themselves aro made lo small numbers (lo comparison with the oomben of motor-cars, for comple, coming out of a motor ar factory), yet the sourcy with which bels composants 38 ·LIFE AUTOMATIC must be made is high and the shape of these components are often ytry difficult to machine. Up ill now these special oblects have required great bill in their construction and have, in consequence, been a penuve. This bus partly been due to the difficulty of training machinist capable of doing the work md partly due to the high capital cost of the complex milling machine with which the operation u anded out. Let us for a moment visalbe the scene. A complex ketofol shape is to be at from a piece of solid moetal composed of miminal alloy A creful and experienced operator fito it into the mactmc, bakos a good look at the bhicprint and start up. In a momeat or so he stops the machine refer back to the dawing, check the work with a calliper gruge and starts up again. After two or three goa like this he come to a ticky bit on the drawing. He cratches his head for a few minutes, readjusts the machine and starts off again doubt folly It can be seen that even if all goes well, the output of the extremely pendre tool L very greatly below its potential prodoctivity and entirely because the brun of the men cou trolling it is too slow By using on electroak computer and the necemury ancillary get this brain wack can be mechanbed. It is done liko this. A competent mathematician can apress my line or curve in the form of a algebraic pression. The aircraft designer therefore, after being at on the dawing of the part be wmo made, expresses the lines of the design to algebraic form crcles, elliptes, parabolas, hyperbobos or whatever they may be. The instructions given to the computer on punched type are therefore that it is to work out the curve of which It has been given the algebraic formulac. This Il com, of course, do a very high speed for each of the three dimensions of the solid object that it is desired to make, for that is what this pardcabar computer how been constructed to do. It give out the msrens to the akulations in the form of a #ream of pulsas on a magnetic tape. This type goes into the control of the miling machine. The movements of the cootro long gear that directs the 39 ·NOTIIING LIKE SCIENCE milling machine must, of course, be very accurately directed One ingenious solution to the problem has been to attach what is called an optical grating', that is a transparent sind ruled with great precision with lines autremely close together, to the fired part of the machine and another to the moving part. These gratings are at a slight angle to each other and as they Dove a pattern of light is set up. Thus pattern is converted into electrical puha by means of pboto-electric cells. It is these pulses that fit in with the pubo carrying the instructions from the computer that are sent out by the magnetic tape. So Prease us this grangement that in controlling the movements of the mitling machine It can take account of the thickness of an all film on the metal The new scene in the engineering works is now as follows. The designer at hus desk has translated his drawing into a list of Instructions about which curves and lina be withes the macinine to make. A girl type these instruction a code on of paper Hike a teleprinter message. This stop goes into the computer that does the sun and buses the answers as a length of magnetic tape. The tape goes into the milling machine control gear and the machine then gets to work and, without hesitation or delay, without baving to stop and Hatch ia bead produces the part It has been told to make. If a second part cactly the same as the first is required, all that is needed is to put the stagruetic tape through the automatic controller again. The apensive milling machine can be kept at full stretch the wbole time because the thinking required for it control is done automatically The expensive computer when It has finished working out the suns required to produce tape to tell one milling machins how to make one particular shape, can be set to work to calculate other tapos for the production of other shapes by a senos of other machines that may be either in the mume factory or in other factones that have sent in drawings The idea of mechanisation, of getting a steam engine to do the mechanical work of a thousand men all gathered together 1 strip ·LIFE AUTOMATIC in a factory rather than betving each tom do his own work separately in his own workshop by muscle pove, u 1 general Iden. It was, hadeed, the idea behind the Ladustatal Revolution. Although it depended on the steun-engine working with cool as the basic source of the power, very muy mallary iden later became poven into the fabric of Industrialisation, eventually to reach its final flower with Mr Charlie Chaplin madly Kacwing up auts at the travelling conveyor belt to the apotheools of all twentieth-century factories In just this poine wzy, although the new Industrul Revolution No au based on the general-parpose digital computer worked not by coal thits time but by dectronie, a number of oupplementary Ideas have been added, of which the most important as the linking device. The whole group of new notions bas powgiven us matomation Up all the present there have been a pumber of industrial operations that have been done mutomatically Tin cos lo iny well-conducted cannery can be seen being made ap artomnically from flat sheets mod then wtomatically filled with wtomadaally blanched (that is, scalded) pets, automatically sealed, automatically sterilised, labelled and packed mto cartona Things like milk bottles and electode lamp-balbs an only be produced on an economic male in very large factories in which most of the operations are automatic. The manufacture of motor-ema has perhaps represented the highest development and the best phose of Industrial Revolution No. 1 The two major allegros of operation la making a motor ar are toachining and resembly Albough both of these bave been highly mechanised, in each some element of human thinking has remained. The men working the dailling and milting machines have to think about putting the pieces in the right place before the machine ure permitted to start the actional work On the onsembly line, the men and women bave to think, even if by a minimal amount, about which Krew to turn od which bolt to ughter? The beginnings of Ladustrial Revolution No. a are the great transfer machines that wtomatically more the metal pieces from stadion to pution where a phole tenes 41 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE of operations are performed. And in assembly we now have the computer watching over the components coming along the several diverse conveyor lives, so that i complete finished article or at least a major section of one-can be put together without wryone having to think about it at all. Io industrul operations the margin between thinking and not thinking is a narrow one. This is why, if we accept that whered the fint Industrial Revolution was the mechantadon of muscle power and the second is the mechanization of brain power, it is not altogether easy to prove that there has been 1 second Industrial revolution at all. When the wise old man who has lovingly dog the garden, puidog forty years of a perience into every stroke of his spade, us doplaced by a motor culdvutor have we mechanised only muscle power? It is less chy still to know what we have mechanised when the titled toffee boiler of Swiss-roll maker s displaced by a thermoelectric cut-out or on putomatic travelling oven 150 yards long. But it is true to my that these people, however skilled and a perienced they might be, were workers The originality of the electromc computer, and of the ancillary devices It has brought with it, is in its ability to mechanise some of the managerul, or white collar' operations A computer with a long memory cm deal very efficiently with office accounting. In certain European banks all the operations surrounding the cahing of a cheque have been mechanwed by using a pultable computer A slight modifia tions necessary in the client cutomary babita. Instead of being imued with a cheque book, he boss to cope with a uniform punch-card cheque instead. Even thu minor inconvenience muy be overcome if American investigaton succeed in thelr prosent efforts to make original documents apable of being semed by automatic readers. Current reports ure that Bawah bankas, although willing to introduce individual pieces of mechanical equipment, such 8 calculating machines and television sets for verifying agnaturen, se proposing to defer any attempt to introduce outomation, and continue the present ·LIFE AUTOMATIC system, in which ench of the several milhon cheques passing each day is copied er of seven time by a different penon each time, for the somewhat bozure resson, it is sald, that they want to preserve the tradidonal banker-customer relationship. A computer cmnot think in the sense that it can indulge in Roy form of adginal cerebration It an Indeed, only do what too designer hos unanged for it to arry out and do more. But the range of activities to which it can be adapted is large. For comple, serious efforts have been made to design m electronk machine for trusbading languages from one tongue to another The implications of this aro somewhert remartable. The present international teleprinter code for transmitting individual letten by wtre is a mineraal onc. Instead of wing decimal numbers the brary sale wally amploped to give certain technical advantages but this makes no difference in principle. To comrruct a machine to trulate from one lam guage to another, it is not feasible to try to do it better by letter The words od syntax have to be broken up into setando units. In many languages, particularly German, there are angle words act of which includa within onef 1 qumber of separate pieces of meaning or semantic imits. On the other hand, there are often words that possets no meaning at all The definite article in English bs often vacuous as the techniciam put th And in French se pas bere only one semande unit between thero. Be that it may some fucce has already been achieved in designing a memory for a computer comprising the necessary minimum of English semmtic unit. There can be gored in a renes of tmpdly revolving magnetic drums. A Runin text an be fed toto the machines, ather by being typed in on an electric typewdier or, if this is not npid enough, by allowing a photoclectric sytter to co the passage It is desired to translate. La the most dementary trangement, the translation of the Roman into English was almost devoid of syntax or Hterry grace. But it soms now to be merely a matter of making the Decentry trouble md spending enough money on the machine to obtain a rendering as elegmt 8 passege of Mocambary D 43 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE An electronic computer can be set up to deal with my situation for which there are rules For cumple, Professor Wiener of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hus worked out the requirement of a computer apable of dealing with every cventuality in tbe of chess up to two moves abed The muchloe appears to coy humer opponent to play rather slowly but it is in fact playing over every eventuality in its head before it moounces ia more. It an, in fact, on its own play up to a good first-class standard but it draws too often to be accounted a master A more elaborare model cm, horever, be made to sore away in its electronic memory every game it has ever played. Eventually, therefore, this machine will become a very good player indeed. The ability to construct a machine apable of dealing with the conungencies of a game of chen opens up some remarkable posiblities. The rules of war are not quite so defirute # those of chem but nevertbeless logrulcs be now recognised to be a syatematic study bit Chaude Shannon of the Bell Telephone Laboratones bas auggested that on electronic computer might be usefully employed to evaluate a military situaton und determine, just as in chess, the best move at any time in a campaign The last word, however, must be attributed to the logical mind of a Frenchman Pere Dabarte has pointed out than a perienced politicians are well wware that the reactrons of population groups to my particular political move art predict able and follow certain rules. These, again, may not be quite to regular the rules of chou or the relations that link a word of phrase in Ruwan to los corresponding equivalent in English Closer study of the behaviour of the electorate would, how cver, make the rules govermag the behaviour officiently precise to allow an astite politico to base his policy on the advice of a curtably equipped electronic computer, Pelaps these contiderations may seem somewhat specula ove in a decision of the present state of the actuevements of Identific thinking. If so, we om love them ande, for the 47 ·LIFE AUTOMATIC implications of what we can all see happening this moment before us are stilling enough. The mathematkal md sentific Kder than have led to the dovelopment of a general-purpose computer with the mallery development in Entung machine md feed-back systems tut correct their own erron, combered walk the social ideas that recognise the fortice of paying high Wages, make it contain that surtomation vil quickly and radi cally reduce the amount of time that men md women are reqided to good at their pald employment We already have industnes in which the four-day weck us tocepted. Next will comc, one cmnot doubt, the three-day week. And there is no redom wlry this should not be turned into the six-month year Or perhaps people may prefer to work the twenty three-andhalf year lifetime and retire on full pay & forty-one There b no reason why they should not md till draw their pendong texty-five out present. Whatever they choose to do, there seems laike doubt that the scientifoc thinking we have been talking about, wbether we attribute it to a few odglmal people Ike Charles Babbage or to the trend of philosophial materialman whole, ls going to allow us for the fine ime in history to free ourselves from much of the burden of economic Deed. And when we do not have to work, then we shall como face to face with the more Interesting question what is the purpose of a dyilled, scientific, twentieth-century mana 45 ·INDUSTRIAL NUTRITION ROSENT Lousa STEVENSON in bis parable of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde illustrated mom antwo-sided creature in whora the good l oppoved by the bad We have already referred to art other cause of lopsided human development, with scientific philosophy applied only to material objects when it could equally well be used to reach decisions on other topics as well But where we modern people abow our doven personalda most strikingly is when we try to grasp the underlable con chuulots of science about food and mutridon while at the sampe time preſudice, custom, folk lore od all the dark motives of illogic pull us way from what we do not want to understood How painful is the sght of the learned man, morenent of his Collegs clerk in boly orden pertraps, bolson what evidence who can telli-convinced that white bread is polson and brown bread with flakes of bran in it the only way to dietetic alvation. Then there are the otberwise intelligent people who tvold potatoes for fear of getting fut, and those who claim that the only sounshment resides in food ferulised with animal ordere. Unscrupulon nd cymcal men dograce the bande of dence by preying on this weakness of hum itason 46 ·INDUSTRIAL NUTRITION po that eccellently well-fed ladies aball spend money on un necersary vitum in health fooda Every nation and every group within each nadon u convlaced that it alone know what is good to eat. The py-pin od the fish puce, or the routed pig and dee, or the pic that mother used to make-we know by dlvloe Inspiration that they at the little of what you fancy that does you goodcven If the infunt morally to coating, the teeth of most of the middle-aged people in the community dectyed and the children afilicted with skin disease od pot bellies. We abo know by the ame procent of unthink that horse flesh i dio gunting and fermented beverage barmful to the Indigenous African population In view of this hervy premure of emotion that ben upon each one of us when the nature of our om food u considered, the scientific achievement in elucidating the facts of nutrition during the last fifty yean or po becomes even more significmt. And the besc facts that we need to any about with us as a part of a ordimarlly good education are these. All food, to ranko Roch ut all, must be capable of being digerted, absorbed into the drculadon md there combosted for easy The mount of energy available from any odde, be it aabbegs, bred, meat or fut, can be metsured la unit alodes; In tike muner, the bodily axpenditure of energy, recorded in the ome unloor my other appropriate unit-an be usessed. Next, the useful constituent of all foodstuffs, whatever their taste, whether we eat them for breakfast or on toothpicks ua cocktail party, are, besides those employed solely as fuel, proteins, mineral al ara groap of complex chemical composent Generally know a nitamins This informadon, In the considerable detail in which it is now bouws, bas led to remarkable achteremtetta in public balth. The conquest of ockets-the English disease of Hatory the end of scurry that once exterminated ships crew and mary campaigns md brought about the filhune of Scott s expedition to the South Pole and the death of id lender, ·Swed 5 INDUSTRIAL NUTRITION ROBERT Lovis STEVENSON in hila parable of Dr Jekyl mod Mr Hyde Thestrated mano a two-sided creature in whom the good b opposed by the bad. We have already referred to - other chose of lopsided froman development, with scientific philosophy applied only to material objects when it could equally well be used to resch decisions on other topfo vel But where we modern people abot Our cloven personalities mbrott strikingly is when we try to grasp the undeniable con dulons of science about food and Drition while at the time prejudice, anton, folk lore od all the dark motives of Llogka pull us xwry from what we do not want to understand. How padaful ls the style of the learned man, an ornament of locs College, a denk la holy orders perlaps, who is on what evidence bo can telli-convinced that white brod b potson and brown bread with ftalas of bram in it the only way to duetette mixtion. Then there are the otherwise intelligensi people who avoid potatoes for fear of getting fut, and boxe who claim that the only sourishment resides in food feruited with minal ordure. Unstopulous and cynical Den digrace the maste of scence by preying on this wellness of human reason ·INDUSTRIAL NUTRITION degree to the welfare of the people who use them. The key point, however, is that the significant contribution that Industrual nutrition makes In 1957 ks to the welfare of people who work In factories rather than to their health. On some occasion there are contobutions to be made to the physiological requtremeat for calories or protein, for mineral components or vitamins, but no one under Wantem conditons today ever reas the disease, imger oedema, due to logiffident calona, or beri-ben due to inadequate supplies of vitamin B, Scurvy ba rare medical curioary in industrialised countdo od the only nutritional discox ever likely to be encountered as obeutyl lo medieval zod mdlent times, the children of utisans were moght to work with their hands from the age of four or five yaan upwards and the apprenticeship system meant that by the time a boy bad reached his teens he was already experienced In his craft A few years later, ** young man, be was a master craftsman with all the mathsfaction to be gained from acknowledged skill and creative ability All this become chianged in the nineteenth century with the invention of mechnical power and the rise of the industrial town. The employment of children under shocking condidons In factories took the place of their me os mbstants, often to their fathers, In a workshop that was in some instance in mate to a dwelling boume. Because of the band conditions in factories of the Industrial Revolution my of these unfortunate little w2b never reached adult life. Those who did remained the Alaves of the machines md were dered the opportunity of enfoying the surfaction of becoming craftsmen. It was pointed out in a recent article by Dr Lale Banks, Professor of Human Ecology in the University of Cambodge, that to the workers of the eady yeon of the last century con ditions in Batam today would appear Utoptan Houm of work He Dow less than half, wage tre high, health and welfure service are secure, housing is rewombly good, od there are morc facilides for the use of leisurt. Nevertheless, there to something mining. The satisfaction of doing creative work ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE has been withdrawn. The secure feeling of belonging to a fully group all engaged in a common eodeavour, of cooperating with a mister and his men in a clearly discerned porpose, no longer odets. The swing of the pendulum has arried chose wbo work la industry loto luge tod impersonal underulings, their homes are often la dormitory tras remote from the life of my aty or coberent community centre mod much of thar lensure spent in varching football matches or the trivial shadows on a dnema or television screen, pardrely, receptively and without the coloymoent of creation with ther av bands or mind. Today we are just beginning to realise that people cannot for long do good work in industry if they are merely spending ther time to a factory in order to be able to spend what temama of the week doing something that tbey rally want to do all the time. Professor Banko quotes Benjamin Franklin - saying Dost thou love fife? Then do not guider time, for that s the stuff life is made of. Those who work mordy co eam enough money to live while they are not at work are, in fact, wasting half their lives The new thinking about industry, all the trodern talk about incentives, is a re-appraisal of the genuine motives that keep a man souve xod content. And in this modern industmal envirooment, in which wtomatic equipment b gradinly raking over both the heavy muscular woct of the past and the tedious repetition jobs well, the canteen osten bly dalgned to ensure adequate nabrition has a new role to fill los purpose is not paminly to provide the physiological needs of work people wbore health and mutridonal status require suppleasentation, although hungry people will still come to be served. But it is to be a place where part of a meningful working day an be spent, where drilled men and women com meer, where it ba reasonable to eat and be refreshed. In ume, the canteen may ever become a place where people an mik and think as well as where they eat. Just in cadier days a master and his apprentices at down together for the m the middle of a day spent la common purpose, it is, mab

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·INDUSTRIAL NUTRITION of power for the invement of the supplementary calones they would need to eat over and above what they were caung myway A bad shortage in an industool country is power A high-standard country like the United States is able to supply more mechanical power for the sustance of ach work ing individual than one like Portugal, where it is a commodplace to see a woman of sixty crying on her head a load of fsb up a bill Coal has been a source of wealth to my country aporting it, æ lex within the last generation, which is, of counk, merely a further reflection of the valuable mure of power The ingenious muggestion of the Economist article was that cyclo-locomotves be constructed, each capable of seating forty or more people whose combined thigh-muscle power would be pufficient to day trainBy this means the coul otherwise required for the ruilway would become available us a valuablo natiocal carport Although the physiological and mechanical calculations involved in this propoal have not been nomly challenged, its perhaps doubtful wbether social considerations would allow the employment of even bored long-stay member of refugee settlements in this manner. With tho onset of the mitomatic ags, one of the few increus ing nutritional disabilities is obesty There is a direct statutaal relationship between abeuty and cany death, mod consequently considerablo scientific thought bus been given to the problem of how to become more prosperous without getting futter The progress of knowledge in this field has in some small degree demonstrated to the sensitive scientific philosopher the droger of wrogmcc. Basically, the question of obestry to one of alorie balance. The calorific value of foodstuffs can be measured with some accuracy, the apooditure of calories in different type of bodily activity em albo be measured, it therefore follow, in the syle of Mr Miawber that if a man doos more work than his diet cum apport, he will become thinne from the need to combust hus own time. On the contrary if he out more than be requires for his daily energy apenditure, he will get fatter The Don-scennic implication of this logis, ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE be it accepted era to little, A that fat people are greedy And Ho we have bad the unseenly spectacle of the self-autfied lan man dining with a stout friend who is achieving prodigios of self-denial for which he mapest no prouse or recognition Recent observation of fact, supported fint by Infance mod then by experiment, show that the principle of alorle balance to lodced true, and that in most people morgin called the hypothalamus at the base of the brain enables there to minuin this balance. When the bypothalamus is deranged, appetites no longer a measure of phynological need and one grows fat. There is no virtue in remaining, as most of us do, of normal girth throughout our adult life, It us a matter only of good fortune The principles of science are easy to underttand, but to be a great scientist three things are necessary The first is know Ledge. That may be acquired by diligence. The second blatuuon. This canot be cotammanded. Poet all on the Muses to ist them. Not all contists do. The third attribute for which a scientist must bope is negative; the ability to avand the same fequber that is obvioun to everyone else During the 1914-18 war Embden, a distinguished German physiologist, noted the recently discovered fact that phos phorus plays an essential part in the release of energy La muscl From this be resoned that it was self-evident that wpplementary phosphorus muut mus muscular performance, Consequently, be used his considerable anthority to petande the German authodties to provide a phosphate drink for large Qumbers of soldiers and worlomen. He overlooked the tact that almost all normal diets provide ample pbosphorus, so his efforts were waited A dmilar lesson, it seems, constantly seeds re-larming Pamate dietics of our ovo day have been known to press raw cabbages, ubada, Graham brezd, arrou and a variety of other commodities upon workmen without first seriously it vestigating whether their pormal dlet is detective. Multvounin pills bave been given to lacreate vigour, to ward off 54 ·INDUSTRIAL NUTRITION colds, to reduce absenteeism and to prevent scadent. On every occasion when tak bave been planned with adequate control and on a statistically valid basis It has been found that under the ordmry condidoos of Bdtah incintill life today no benefit has been obtained. That is to say when I man s obtain ing adequate mutation from ordinary food be get no nipple mentry advantage from eating vitamin pulla Truth indeed lives at the bottom of a vel. Remarkable things have been done with the methods nd tools of science, nevertheless, it is all difficult for a parentest to be wise. For exemple, there are papens to be foond to respectable parts of the scientific literature of the West that purport to show the the roultonal status ad phylologlal efficiency of man, 33 a biological species, is improved If bo at a bot breakfasl Who among the clect at the United Nations will be first to lead tho Dcw crude moog the cold-breakfast ad no-breakfurt ating infidels in the outer darknen of CITON An elaborato scientific aperiment was reported in 1940 under the title of The Hawthorn Experiment A group of wockers membimg telephones in a factory to the United States wat wudred in great detail When they were given additional macks od cup of tea ther output of wembled telepbones increused. But the number of telephood they put together becamo greater still when they were next given a short rett vithout any food, ood it rose agata wben the lighting was improved, or when the ventilation was choged. In subsequent asperiment all the changes previomly made-ho acts, tho fresh ate, the light, the rest penisest ood by one udmade but, to the surprite of the scientific observers, the manufacture of telephone got faster and faster. Finally, the coocupon was reached that the true factor stimulating the woders was not nutrition or physiology but the knowledge that they were important od of interest to someone. We are living in the age of the scientific specialia Every spect of health is dealt with by 1 different apert. The oto dinolaryngologist copes with a mans er nose and throat, 55 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE the psychologist with his mind and the cardhologist with his heart. The works ogucer is an expert on machwery and the ventilating consultant is n aperton draught. The nutritionat may low all there b to know about calorio ad vitamine And the firtt proaple feeding the people who work in the modern loduttnal world us to me that they have the nutnents they require for their ags, terdegree of activity and Individual ideosyncrasie There is growing concern over the amount of food available In the world, panlaularly when the vast increases in population are taken into comederation Technologists have audied this problem in great detail and the following chapter describe only one of the bllod alley which await the unwary in the pursuit of thas churive hare.

·6 SCUM IN July 1993, a book was published with the forbidding title of Allgal Culture. On glancing through lt, ono might have thought that it wo fest oC more technical monograph, of interest only to specialists in one of the restricted fields of Dodamn science. It baro all the normal baumarks of waentific respectability Ios pages were sprinkled here and there with mathematical formule and diagrams and the fiyleaf bore the imprint of the Caregio Institution of Wohington. But although the text was couched generally in a studiously even tons, there was in it an underlymg element of catement Ever since Malthus wrote bila suy on popobation in 1785, we have had available the arithmetic peeded to alaulue how much food supply and population must deviate before sturva tion become a senous public health problem. Some people ke Malthus : wiring more seriously than others. But more of us, whether we re the matter us one of urgency or not, have been struct at one time or mother with the vastefulness of nature which, in order to produce 1 single ear of cor, 2 substantial proportion of which is liself mentable, has to go to all the trouble of growing leaves, a long soft mod a whole paraphernalia of supporting and protective strukture. Why us 57 ·21 NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE thus secessary, we may at The volume to which I have referred above aun marises a large amount of modern sciendfic Information about the culdyztion of unicellular green crops When these re grovo it ts not necessary to throw away the major part and only at a specialised orys, such as the fruit, or the map (as in sugar-cane, or a special lof bad (v in the brussels sprout). There w a botanical family which producer only one cell. oo leaves, stalls, flowers or gralo-pothing to be thrown away fut itself. This basic prototype groen thing can be caten, it appears In general the plants now laten very tudied sciendifically have been quite well known to the layman in connection with ducks, although completely ignored food for human beings. They are, lodeod, algrethe green sam od ponde Human beings eat all sorts of things a food, wimals of many different kioda, animal secretions such an milk, birda ood their fish and thar ego (cavur), crustace, molhusca, lo come countrla msects, and in many countries insect secte tona, potably honey Lo the plant Idngdom, very niny botan haal famillos even including certain varieties of serweed com tribute to the sustenance of man. But from whatever source it may come, bumm food, if it is to be defined scientifically food at all, must be composed of constituents which can be pued as fuel by a blunan body or which can be bunlt into the structure of a moun or in some way regulate his buloglal muachinery All of these condments, the so-called mutrients, pour previously have been elaborated by living cells and the basic process by which these nutrients are elaborated ts, of cours, photosynthests, when the green chemical In plants converti carbon dioxide gas from the atmosphere lato plant substance. The energy for this process u produced by a hght. To revent to Algal Culars the remarcable feature about the ppetrace of thus dryly written technical boot, edited by Dx Jobin S. Burlew and produced by a beard headed scientiếc body auch in the Camogle Institution of Washington, DC, os that 58 ·SCUM today in the age of confident scientific claims to undenstand almost everything, the subject with which it deabs seems to poesen a certain dreum-like changer For osimpl, Dr Buk starts by descablog apparatus in which Chlorella, the type of uga bext alted to domestay has already been grown. If this Apparatus were apanded to cover n ata of an is, be alculates that 171 tons of material could be produced in it in 1 yet, md if I were then agais expanded to the improbable extent of a million wres It could prochxe half of all the protein required to feed the present population of the wodd. A further muggestions made by Dr Burkey is that we may be able to use Chlorella, oot only for food, but to make our own coal without waldng for the pasang of tedious geological epocha. Or, at least, it ba rendanly suggested that beride grov ing algo to aut ft would be conceivable, provided the right kind of culture vessel mod equipment were designed, to grow enough to burn as well Although the large-scale production of algae demands energy for pumping witer and other peceteary engineering activities and for drying the matedal grown, there is, of the Carnegle calculation are correct, more energy to be got back than is put In. And this book now solemnly suggests that an algal culture anit, aitoalled, combined with a stem geber ading plant using the algae u fuel could one day be expected to provide us with our clectric power. It is all wocked out that by tho yeu 2059, when all oor coal, oil and frselonablo materials may have been tied up, we can get the mergy we require if We devote one more per bead of the world s population, amount fog to clever millor qumre miles in all, for the erection of power stadions run on algael This indeed to mentine planning on the grand scale After this it is quite a contrast to read a chapter in the book contbuted by a group of Dutch sentur worlang at the Agraultural Unverity at Wageningen in Holland. In 1945 Hey grew their Chlorella in pint bottes, but by 1951 they had changed over to vessel with a surface area of one squaro yud. 59 1 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE In the bottles they achieved an efficiency of conversion of Hgbt wergy into plant substance of 24 per cent, but on the larger kle they were only able to convert about 3 per cent of the energy in the sunlight falling on to the tank Very honestly they pointed out that this was no better than the efficiency obtained by growing grass in a field. They conduded, part doncally, that the efficiency of energy conversion would be greater if simhino wete dot so bnght. British asperiments carried out abco 1949 are reported in thu ame book by Dr M. J Geoghegan. Again, the work sooms to bave been done on a modest scale and the biggest venel used was a tank 4 feet 6 inches high, 1 foot 6 lochas long and 4 incha broad. All sorts of difficulties had to be overcome ranging from ways to prevent the algue from seuiling on the bottom to complicated tests to find out what mineral alo bad to be added to fertilde them while growing. The food value of the final dood product was examined by feeding it to rath. Although it was only 65 per cent as nutritious a source of protein a dried skim mill It was 35 per cent more putrinous than groundnuta. After considering the science of Holland and England, Dr Burlew turns to Japan and his book contains two chapters contributed by investigaton at the Tolmgiwa Institute for Biological Research in Tokyo. There are photographs of the paratus yang a background of Japanese garden scenery The Chlorella is shown growing in a concrete trench 45 feet long and paauing through a tower 12 feet high where it is regenerated with carbon dioxide, the whole worngement being controlled from a los building housing the pumps and filter These chapters are set out with all the reademic punctilio of Western science, chemical formulac, dlagrams, footnoto and the use of the paniye voice. But just occasionally a phrase or mtoontlon discloses that this research has been done in Tokyo and not South Kensington The cover of plastic abeeting', vite Da Mimys Nyunoya and Tomlys, describing their outdoor trough, abo chied some trouble. It was found to ·SCUV be rakstot to beaps of mov, a leat up to 30 cm. thicknen, but you couly broken by mucho mechanical strains # those comed by dogs walking or running on it, often occurred during our apartmenth. The meer pufice of the abecting was often covered with condensing water droplets, which approcably reduce the rvailable hght totensity Improvement are necesary to eliminato these shortcominge The tenor of the chapter from the Hebrew Volversity at Jerusalem bring back again to the prevailing mood of cametnes. The great posibilidos of trapping muhim an food and energy for me witbout the necessity for walung for the slow processes of mature have not yet been realised. Nevertheless, the Lunel dentists started work in 1991 with the concous idea in mind to grow alone to overcome ther lack of urable land end of water to feed their thrusting population The orginality of the ides and its apparent scientific lossle fit bo well with thetr urgent Deeds mod wah the principal natural resources of their madon energy brains ad above all sure light. They akulate that a plant with an area of about two and a half square molar would provide 39,000 toms of mukell a year But so far the algue bave only been produced in a labor atory although a pilot plant rank of nine oqaro fect is planned As and read their chapter, however in spite of the disparity between actievement and deurs, the unreality of the whole business seems somehow bad it ought to be possible wypow algne like this Theoretically it can be done perhage illero people will do It. After all, it's not so long since penicítin was only produced in vence the dee of milk boula, Lo the long section of the book contributed by United Stues vientos vorong at Carabodge, Mandaram, the growth of Chlorella begins to seems a matter-of-laa tair after all The apparatus finally designed constared of sco-luot lengths of flexible plastic tubing measuring 4 focs across The liquid culture of Chlorella was pumped through this tubing round a flat roof. All the dificultio mentioned by when who bad steropted the same task were encountered (with the 61 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE exception of the Japanese dogs) Wind blev grave on to the roof and made punctures to the plastic pips, ropfers, that is microscopic animalules with rotatory swimming organs, got in ind ate up the algas; the temperature of the brey got too hot, or alternatively, too cold, one complete unit wu bailt but refused to work at a Throughout the chapter, however, us tablas successively appear showing growth per day related to light Intensity, of rate of flow and turbulence compared with the concentration of Chlorella cells per cubic centimetre, the impression strengthens that the technical problems can be made to resolve through Hillgence and perseverance. It be believed, write the unthon, that although several problema remain to be solved commercial operation with tubes of this type is feasible. Needless to say, in this age of scieatific feeding, a large number of laboratory analyses have been made of the stunttional composition of the dded alga produced by means of thu Arrangement of popes. Besides the protein they contain, they have more vitamin A activity than carrots and are achly endowed with a series of B vitamins-fron vitamin B, all the way to vitamin B, Ao fateresting section of Dr Budews book reviews all the available references to the use of algao us human food. The seaweed, Irush moss, in a member of the algul famlly which has been exten for a great mmy year. In Japan, other seaweeds are also considered to be delicacion Microscopic algue, bowever, have apparently not been eaten before mod the American investigatori consequently set out to cumine thele taste with the wooul rystematic md unemotocal thoroughness. They described it as foodtike but with some unpleantly strong notes A funher entifically defined attribute which they called the gag factor was a nightening of the back of the throat and a lingering mildly onpleant after taste. So it seems us of mealtime in the year 2000 will take a little getting used tol Other asperiments aboved that when mited to the extent of 15 per cent with what wo described as chicken base coup, the disagreeable strong potes and the 848 factor were less evident 62 ·SCUN The alge produced caperimentally at Cambridge, Maset chmetus, in 1991 were not actually used a home food. But what is in many ways the most rematable chapter in the whole book is the description of a scheme to produce algae speelfically for human consumption. The feeling of unreality which tho matter-of fuct scientific jargon from Combodge, Must chusetts, only partly digelled comes back with viewed strength as ove reads further and further lato this chapter. It seems that in 1932, a certain Jorge Jorgensen learnt of the demand m Scandinavn for vitamin A for addition to margmine, to replace the butter so largely imported from Denmark. During his travels in South Amedea be had obkerved that on certain regions of Lake Maracaibo there occurred patches of agwo espe, which mean literally thick water When this water was scooped up with a cabbah dipper md filtered through a couple of old felt boros' a material was ab tmned which was very rich in carotene, the yellow pigment which giva Cannot their vitamin A xctivity This material wa algae. The followmg year, therefore, Jorgensen obtained a concenlon from the Venomelan Government for the recovery of algue from the lake and in 1938 the National Congress of Venezuela rified mexchave twenty year agreement for the Industrial use of the phyto-plankton, a it was deugnated. Tas was to be paid only on the weight of material first harvested but not on any subsequent increase by cultivation After the agreement was omfied all the difficulties which might have been muapated in Boating rommtlc a project uose. At first the wholo ida w received with ndiculo fa Europe md the United States. A pharmaceutical mimifacturer wbo had encouraged the idea in 1934 was keptical by 1940 when practial support was needed. A major food fimm a pressed the view that the project was scientifically sound but would not take any commercial mtaat nt. And so it went on unul la 1941 tbe Venezuelan Goremment, paplored at the reluctance of foreign and domestic capitale to loves in the DCW odustry, cancelled the concession 63 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE Bur Jorgensen was not defeated. This time he persuaded the Vervenclo Ministry of Health and Social Welfare to finisce a schene for preparing cultivated algal moup u en udison to the dier of the leper colony u the Cabo Blanco Leprosurium. The algte wete cultured in two hundred large bowls of noglazed baked red cay endte set on top of a cement pillar three feet higt. The bowls were filled with three or four gallong of water to which was added the xed culture of algae obtaped either from a special rank or from local mudholes A Bule charnical fertibisc was put to as well. After from sure to fifteen days the algse were ready for harvesting Early in the morning before the scum ffanted up forwards the light, most of the water was cyphoned off and in this way about two and a half pints of thick soup remaining was obtained. Curtain bowb were kept for reed to be used later on and it va found that the best growth was obtained in these of the water which evaporated was replaced by ordinary soda water, but not fresh soda water It was speafically tried that the best stimulant for algal tepron duction was stale koda water From 1942 to 1946, leproks patients of all ages from eight to keventy received algal soup. It was borked for twenty munala und a little alt added to improve the flavour Chikiren were given three quarters of a pint daily and adults about a pint. Owing to the fuquations in their disease it was difficult to tell whether it did them any good but, as the uthon report, og ill effect multed from it For a long period u the history of human taught men reached conclusions on the band of many different kinds of phalosophical considerations. It is only during the compara Hvey recent period of todem science that we have udived at most of our matenal views on Nature on the birds of verifiable experimenral observation. The method a emple. Let us on more repeat it. A series of facts us recorted, a bypothet depending on these facto a drawn up, a speculative forecast bused on the hypotha's is thought out, and an experiment designed to prove or disprove ibo bypother. The monograph 64 ·SCUN under review 3 1 che in point. The facto recorded in it are incontrovertible. Chlorella does make me of smhght to convert aubon diorade from the atmosphere into carbohydrate apable of being used us food by animals and man. The process u more economical them growing, sy, wbett, most of which inedible stalk of root or buat. Chlorella dous abo contin protein and vitamins. Since its growth does not require the e of soil it ought to be of value to a country like land which A short of band. For all these reason there ought not to be my thing strmge about thus 357-page volume of Impeccable modern scientific resoning. But there is Let us remember again the people who lived to the flying island of Laputa, almar so wrapped in abstruse cakubnons that it was necessary for a servant to attend them at all time to prevent their tumbling over ordinary objects in thelr path The deadpoon of Laputa ww fire pubbuhed in 1726. Now In 1953, Dr Burlew in all cometness writer of the artical mtellite of the futare. A great deal of machinery will be needed in the space station, be says to maintain a pseudo-terrestrial environment suitable for me. The addison of an algal culture unit for production of food for the mhabitant would not seem to increase in very barge proportion the complety of the structure. Besides which it vould, in bus opinion, avoid the necessity for apenaive youmeys down to earth. Algul alture is in any ways in attractive idea, and from what I have nid of the great computation published by the Camego Institution of Washington los study can be seen to agender enthostam Umong those vocking on it. It is, bow over only one phase of a general scientific problem. how to obrain supplementary sources of food to addition to the artico of dlet to which wo wo already waistomed. The miveral nav material from which all food is derived samlight. It is, therefore, resonable to base a scientific menment of the enthmdards advocacy for Chlorella upon the degree of efficiency with which it transfoara sanHghu mato food. NW Plake, wading in the oldest saendfic research station for 65 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE agriculture in the wodd at Rothamsted, bas reviewed the matter and his calculations como as a rather cold douche after the cating witings of Dr Burlew and some of his colleagues Froon auch evidence as bas been collected seems that algre are no more efficient than the higher plants to which we are accustomed. The arrangements of shallow womed tanks mod plastic pipes and the ocrmodal pumped supplies of carbon dlorddo gw are every bit as a pensive to run as the more conventional greenhouse. And to addition to the technical complications involved in most of the suggested methods of culming algas, there is a danger of Infection by micro-organums. Although normal crop planos do soffer from dimension, two thousand million years of the catch-watch-cm of evolution bus rendered them remarkably sosistant to most of the microbe floating about in the atmosphere or native in the soil There u only one point which algre might be expected to score: there o nothing to wate—if you eat it. There is no question of stripping off the leaves and eating only the gran on the cob (as with maize), or cutting off the leaves and caring the bulbous root (ws with turnips) or perhaps extracting only the wge from the root (a with mugar beet). Faced with the Large amount of waste in our normal foods and the dimdimtages of trying to produce algus, which even after they were produced might contain so high a concentration of gug factor that they were practically unable, Prie hos mig gested two quite different, bogical, and eminently sciennfic Hines of investigation The fire objective to to use punlight more efficiently For altogether too long the people of Brtain beve wasted their aigos supply of sunlight. About half of the total anmual supply of Batuh amlight to received by Midsommes Day Yet scarcely my of it to wed by many highly productive crops mich us potatoes, became the air # too cold Little photosynthen u xhieved by grad dung tho fint half of tha year because the ground is too cold. Later in the year, ·SCUN ammshine that might be working at photosynthesis ba guin wated, the time because formen we waiting for gruns to riped and during this time little new food is crated. In addtion, the most efficient plant for catching and wong sunlight for food manufacture would be one with its leaves growing all the way along a rxcculent item, eguring that tindle light reached the ground, where obviously it would be wasted. There is no reason why more efficient ploo should not bo found. The present plants we use as food were selected by primtiye man in a very hapboard manner of the half milkon or to known green plants, only a few hundred are used on any agnificant scale md a number of these we enjoy vicariouły by feeding them fint to animals. But many of the othen grow hourlantly, and if we all them weeda todry that i only because we have not yet made use of their The second line of profitable research would be to be the active protein-dicha pont orgren, namely the leaf, a pource of huron food, rather than the miscellany of roots, graing, flowers md funces that are today w ostefully coorumed It dot suggested that, like Nebuchadocar, we should at gras or smlar wbole lerves. They are altogether too fibrou for human stomacha. But then wo are whale oats or wheat. Already, conuidenble study has been devoted to techmal methods for extracting palatable protein from leaf. The standard three-roll Lugar cane mill was tho result of five hundred yewo of mechan ical tral and error, ad tho Kiev oil apeller is abo a tradibonal machine. Both these machines can be used to extract leaf protein but they work inefficiently for this purpose. An cartier Instrument, but onc deugned for a dmilar we, has given more promiang results. This is the woad prema This time of scientific thinking leads us to a ruber different conclusion than that of the algae en hare located officiency in using light to create food is to be achieved by thing the wrongest growing, leaties pleat This may be what we now consideron veed. The least of a plant is unlogous to the fiver of a roumal La It takes place the synthesis of whatever 67

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·0 7 EATING INSECTS AND OTHER HABITS This b 1 scientific age. Science, however, develops unevenly * its different points. Just now it is comic physics which is daving forward. In a little while this drive will slow and stop, md, perlaps a period of consolidation will take place. In the course of the last two chapters, I have been discussing cermin aspects of food scence. In this spect of scientific thought a whole there is some reason to believe that a pune for shought and reflection o ocung fust Dow to allow, perhaps, for the new blochemical knowledge of what is going on in the unimal machine to be related to the more mundane problems of bow to advise people to choose proper mailom During the 1930 1 and 1930 s the mechanlas of rutrition were being worked out. Fiot come the turn of calodes and proteins and then came the era of vitamins which, lodeed, b not yet over For chupk, the current day-to-day discovers of the scien afic pedodical literature are concerned with the abdivisions of viamin But But important though the facts of mutridonul scence are for Leeping human groups a I Hate of health cod 69 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE nutrients may later be sent to the roots or the fruits or the reed. So rather than waiting for the transfer to take place and thereby having to put up with a period of delay during which the conversion of soluble substances to fibre takes place, or maturity and dpening is carried out for the benefit of the plot rather than the advantage of man (when the fields of green com tum golden, photosyathesis virtually comes to a stand soll), the milling of edible substances will be done at the leaf stage. The exact method of milling has yet to be invented a an economic process but, with the example of woad mama facture before him, the modem dentist ought not to take long In a work entitled Microcosmographie Academica published in Cambodge in 1908, F M. Comford wrote: Nothing abould ever be done for the first time. It is easy to lavoke the ne attitude to projects for the direct use of leaf protein The Industrial production of leaf protein on a substandal calon human food has not yet been achieved and por la culture of the Falkleur, binkles, prpless md rootless algre. But the economic advantages of at least the former s a way of Ircreasing the yield of food have been worked out. Malthus may Cven now be proved to have been wrong for not having taken account of the fact that before they reach starvation potret growing populations might develop scientific forcaght.

·90 va 7 EATING INSECTS AND OTHER HABITS This is a scientific age. Sdence, bowover develops unevenly #its different poant. Just now it 3 stoomic phytka which is driving forward. In a ligle while tho dave will slow and stop, and perhaps, a pedod of consoldation will take place. la the couple of the box two chapter, I have been dbcutog certain aspects of food science. In thus aspect of deodfic thought as a whole there is some reason to bebeve that a puse for thought and reflection u ocaumng furt nov to allow, perhaps, for the new blochemical knowledgo of what is going on in the mimal machine to be related to the more mundane problems of bow to advise people to choose proper meals During the 1920 s and 1930 1 the mechanics of mutaton vero beng worked out Flest come tho tom of alorios md proteins and then came the crn of vitamins which, indeed, is not yet over For example, the current day-to-day discovers of the scien Hilie periodical Hterature are concerned with the subdividon of vitamon ByBut important though the facts of nutriticoul science are for keeping himn group in a state of health and ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE cfiaency, the parallel importance of food and meals as a part of a harmonious and civilised Hfe in the fullest kerse is also being recognised. The food science of today has grown up in two mon direc tions. The first has been based on the observations of Lavoisier at the end of the eighteenth century These imphed that fire and fame and combustion did not represent the release of the cool of matter, the phlogiston, u had long been tbought but suggested instead that whatever fuel was being burned was combining with oxygen, and they also demonstrated that when Rich fud is a food like sager or flour or oil and a similable by the human body, it gives up in that human body the identical amount of heat and combines in that human body with the Identical amoumt of orygen u it does when bumed outude the body Thu conception wu the beginning of the mechanistic tradition of doindon which holda svay today, a trading which is correct so far as it goes and has been enortpousty biseful. The engineer in charge of a power station knows the alor ific value of his fuel sd can calaulate the amount of electriaty his machinery will generate from it. Similarly, a Ministry of Food knows the calorific value of its stocks of whale-meat, wheat and sugar and can calculate how much physucal effort can be developed by a known population enting there applich The ide u pot new Indeed the philosophers of classical time discussed the paradox of the dicta man whose becca for bodily labour were alight but whore table wu amply covered with vaned dlabes, while the poor man who had to work all day possessed insufficient to wage his hanger But the predeon ind detail of the modem nutritional Laence Dew md it be this command of detailed knowledge which bus caprured the imagination of the scientist of today, even to the extent of soboetimes blinding him to larger wie The details of modern science ore Infinitely numerous but the capacity of the modern scientist miod Le Dot Infinitely lank. Thu it has bappened that the expert on mutrition have on paion been so fully occupied with the detail of nutridon po ·EATING INSECTS AND OTHER HABITS dint they have had to dime to modo reduce cote Eccd technologies Food technology the second anderers food science. I noge all the way from the Edge of the husbandman, who breeds a sextally sorzi step forwesing a conveniently small leg to provide a presente tar for a modern small family, to lactade the age or ato can convert a Dondes.cnp, bony, soll find a bus gescuca! odgin into a ordine possessing an agreable barcar unknown to the triumpbs of full frudt standard fans, Havetalt dried At ooc time the numbool soudu vas corant of the to Namire. Scientific food technologies Lane ato marched on milk, and the Spam and deep-frozen' fencindern civilised dangs of the technological food sont end, when recognir- Ing his adstence at al, us contemporais chem. For drople, coomderable scientific effort wapended by the technologie in producing a mubled faunt of first quality teef while, at the the boucles culonfic penny has far better spent on suet me time, the stradd textbook of randa alculated that and mince than on the paine joul. A further emple of the curlow intellectual effect replting from an excitive preoccupation with the details of motional wence b the way to which cooldog trented in most second treatise on Durbon The losses of vitamin C and a watania B, uro al ray folly discussed to dead and excetopics the denatura tion of protein and the leading my oneral als tako * prominent place. It might be suppored from all that that the deplorable. And this conclusion ww reached by the more enthusiastic programadhanfic on ing who adopted died of a Carta ad frumenty Patups the posso far thought to reflection to baca 1 buvo referred now allows it to be respectable to discuss ta vientific drcles the boufical effects of cooking a welu i legally harufu The 1939-45 war give the nutritionat de life. effects of cooking are . 71 opportunity ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE testing his theones in practice. Thess, based on a mess of observation and aperience collected over a period of one hundred and fifty years were found to be sound but inadeqnte. That is to ay, although man s mutational well-being can be rapported on a hads of calodes, proteins, fats, mlaen's and vitamin, he does not live on these things alone. The life of the wbolo man includes matters dealt with by the mothropologust, the paychologist, the economist, the aestheto and the philosopher as well as by the nutritionist and the physiologia And within the realm of nutritional science, orber factors thm nutrition must be considered. There is little food value la plakla bat demand for them is longtent in every war in which Great Britain is involved. In fact, If one can believe the highly experienced atering officers in the We Office, British armia cannot fight without them. Thus it bas come about that science has begun to take an interest in the acceptability of foods as well as their chemical composition. Ther mutritional value is important but such importance ceases if peoplo refuse to eat them. Some condiderate tions son being given to new source of food, auch a food yeast made from sawdust ot, w we have already seen, to protein derived from gram. And a few, a very few, glance we being spared for foodstuffs eaten by other races outside the orthodox circle of Western dulisation. Of these cases of potential edible commodities, one of the most interesting is the insects Ma wes food most of the important familla of living creatures on this globe. Mammab of all sorts are readily comnimed, vertebrate fishes, and in octop and the oyster But dvilised man has in recent year neglected irisects. This is peculiar in view of the currency of the biblical chiché synonymous with plenty, flowing with milk and hoocy, to which bracketed together are the secretions of a manual ind of n insect Recently the Kicapfic neglect of the insect species as food has been remedied by the publication of a scholarly book outled Insetos Hunar Food, weiten in English by F S ·EATING INSECTS AND OTHER HABITS Bodenheimer, the Professor of Zoology at the Hebrew Univer sity in Jerusalem, and published by Dr W Junk at The Hague. As a galeral rule, dieticians and outational scientists rattakt ther reading to a farly marrow range of text-bool md to the penodical scientific literature in which are pubhabed the reports of venous researcher These tend to deal with such topics as the love of vitamin Cocamang during the steaming of aabbages in industrial canteeth ar, altermedvely, with the inddence of folicular keruodis (which can loosely be interpreted a goosepimples) among the middle age groups at a univer ury bousing development site to the United States. Thus the ipporance of Professor Bodenbeinket a book was calculated to broaden the minds mod & the ame time develop the hutollity of profendonal nutddoniss If they could be persuaded to read it. An increase in humility to manential feature of the penod of consolidadon and thought to which I have previouly referred. Not long ago a dietary survey was made among the Otomi Indians in the Maquital Valley to Mexico. The invexogaton were borrified to discover that these people ate Done of the food famillar to dieticams, neither spinach, brown bread, orange juice, cartou por cod-Liver oll appeared on their menu. Later it was discovered, however, that the mixture of pigweed, cow-thistles, cactus fruit and modcartog palque made from the force of the century plant and the other ingredient of which their diet was composed possessed a higher mutritional content than the diet of a group of United States tow-dwellens prveyed at the ume time. Professor Boder heimer now point out that tho purczling roulis obudned by a number of pbymologists who have studied the diet of tropical raco md found them to be apperendy deficient in animal protela od fuos, although at the pime time the people were fit and obviouly well fed, may well be aplained by the fact that these people vet meritone to termites, caterpillar, Loctite and other insects in substantial quandos # well mord convedonal arddos of diet. Either insects were not included 73 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE in the questondaires used by the Western scientists or their compumption was ignored. Yet Professor Bodenbemers boak very clearly shows that, where no preconceived prejudice alsts, men show no averdan to entomophagy We ourselves congime both milk and the cow that gives it, com we therefore object to principle to eating bees as well as boocy? John the Baptist lived in the desert on misectr loans and wild hooey Professor Bodenhermer points out that many people at locuit. In the palace of the great King Arubanipal near Nineveh in the eighth century Bc. locusts arranged an Hack, we today mght eut prawns or chipolata murga, were served at the royal banquets. Today in Tanganyika locusts are still widely eaten. With wings and hindleg removed they are roasted or fried in butter, when their flavour u reminiscent of shrimps. Flylog locusts and hoppers uc ddled in the ann ad eaten us a flavouring for poorldge. To the west and south of Lake Victoria, green grasshoppen ere eaten in large numbers either fresh or dried and a grant calcket is dug out of the ground, roasted and caten i relish Professor Bodenheimer wote that many observers have found that la the Sudan and elsewhere in Afde when the locusts anve the people eat them in axh quantities that they grow fat within a few days. Dr Livingstone reported that roasted locost possessed & vegetable flavour, and considered that, on the whok, be preferred them to abrimpe M. le Vaillant, woning of South Afaa lo 1782, described the foy of the local inhabl tants at the appearance of locate Their flavour, be ald, was like that of the yolk of a boiled egg. Another French writer, Daginn, compared the taste of locind to that of arm! M. Deary, in two recent paper, one publshed in 1937 and one 10 1959, describes bow locists are caught in Madagascar where, together with other gramhoppers, they fom an inportant local food. The French railway authoddos apply the Ame transport charges to dried bocints as they do to gume und fish Decory compare their favour to that of hazel mite. Father Camboue in 1886 told bow Queen Ranavalona Il employed a ·EATING INSECTS AND OTHER HABITS band of women whose dubes were to scour the fields for louso so that the royal table at Tananin might always be well supplied It seems that locusts, with or without wild honey, may be mundo into an attractive and nounblog dah. A traveller la North Afaca declared that locust soup reminded him of nothing so much w czyfiah btque and add that he would gladly see it on bus table every day Ho prepared the soup by bouling the bound bookly harmg previously restoned them with alt, pepper and grated nutmeg. When cold, they were pounded with bread foed brown or with a purte of Hoe. They were then replaced on the sucepan and thickened to broth on the stove but not allowed to boil. Finally, the broth was strained and a few croutons added. A further recommendation for the use of locausto an article of duet b that they are us acceptable and nournhing for camels as they are for mer. Termites are also widely eaten in the countries in which they are found. They are insects wluch organise themselves in claborite colonias and which often bulld mi-hilt' of considerable dze. In May one cm find at the market a Leopoldville in the Belgian Congo basket fall of fided termites which, to Profesor Bodenbemer tells us, are sold for fifty four cedtimes a small handful. They are also used as a coarce of al, which is stated to be of good quality od excellent for frylog. He quotes Sir SW Baker who, wuting in 1881 reported that in Central Afna teamitan fried in butter are considered a very delicato meal Ho himself found that they had a light flavour of burned plucas At certain tsons of the year the winged termites warm. Great actement ensures among the local inhabland and all sorts of methods are used to auch them. A gentlema called Henry Smeahman described what happens to the Philosophical Traserowns of the Royal Soccy in 1781 Lo the part of Afria whare be ves the people dood the liserta lo in por over a gentle firs, stirring them about bually done when resting coffee. In that sate, be wrote, without staccaranyother addidon, they serve them a debdows 75 F ·NOTHING LILE SCIENCE food. And they put them into their mouta as we do comfith I burye ato bene dressed this several mas and that them both delicate, noumbing and wholesome, they are something sweeter but not to fut und doying as the maggot of the Rynckopkoru palmarion, which is served up at all the luxurious tabla of War India A species of mt which has its attractions as human food is the pulled pagar eat of Central Australia There 200 select from wong the workens of the colony certain mdividuals wbora they proceed to stuff with food undi mbeir abdomers swell to the size of marbles. The it in this condidon, mys Professor Bodenheimer, u saturally unable to move from the spot It appears that the inflated mu in this extraordmary way provide for the needs of the colony dunog the barren sendoa of the year, acting as living barrels which can be tapped us requred. The honey with which the creatures are filled orig Inates from sweet caudations of certain plant galls and from the honey-dew of other insects. The local Australians eagerly consume these mos by gapping them by the band, plicng the mflated abdomen between their lips and squeenng the contents into the months. As regards taste, the first reaction the palate receives is a distinct prick of the formic add with which the wat hopes to protect itself. But this is both shght and momentary, and the instant the membrane burst, it is followed by a deliciou od rich flavour of pure honey A simbraat is also found and eaten in Marico. Another insect delicacy of which the Western table has been too long deprived is the palo m. As with so many dishar, it to a Frenchman that we ove one of the callest descope tions, for Pere Labat, wbo vidited the West Indies at the begloning of the aghteenth century, appean to have been the first European to try it. This insect live in the heart of palm trees and is obtained when they are felled. The palorworm, so be reports, w a thick a 2 finger mod about two inches long 'It may be compared', be says, to a lump of fat from a capon wrapped in a very tender and transparent pellick. They are 70 ·EATING INSECTS AND OTHER HABITS placed in a row on a piece of wood tod turned over a fire. When they begło to get hot, they are covered with bread crumbs, pepper and muscat. They may also be boiled, when they are served with a few drops of lemon or orange juce. They are good to eat and very deliate. A modern French urthor, M. Ghesquers, writing m 1947, mys that the common paluworm of the Dutch East Indies is recognised as a most fortfying, endily digested food which is given for preference to wear and consumptive person. Malayans to Europo often order them to be sent to their home. In Madagascar, the pulmo vorm is coraimed ny or fded. In the Belgen Congo it i greatly prized. The collecton search for them by putting ther er to the trumbs of the palm-trech An osperienced operator can recognise the right moment for cutting down the treo and obtining the latnue in the best condition for ating by the Dobso the insects make la nibbling at the fibras of the wood. Throughout the market of Afna the phimp larvac may be found other allve or fred in oil. Bot imects are not only cmight wild a food. They are abo farmed - domestic mimale In Mexico, there is a variety of waterbug which u kom locally as alwadle or Hado Wagne. These small loseco provide food for man by the prodigious quantity of therapes, which are collected as if they were a regular crop. A four is made frora them and used in baking cakes, which we vinouly described - of proporced fuby to and Hightly acid Alavoured like fish too and a detlicacy Tho bugs abound in freah-water lato. Collecton place a puber of bundle of a certain species of rush in the water Tho bugs by their eggs on the rushes, which are then taken out of the lake and beaten on gren abeet of doth to detada tho mydads of cos with which they are covered. There are then coursed, sifted and put into baskets, while the nues to replaced in the water to guber mother crop. There ban losert which, like the sheep, has been for many centurlas formed both for the textile fibro ut supplies and for the meat as rell, this is the sill worm. In the process of reeling ·NOTHING LIFE SCIENCE the ult, the cocoons containing the pupe are dropped maso very kot water and the reeling gulates have a plenoful supply of freshly cooked food before them all day long One gets, quotes Professor Bodenheimer the pleasant odour of food being cooked, wboa panding through a reeling factory It is deady apparent from this review that in different parts of the world Insects of Jends are used as human food and are found to be edible and palatable. Professor Bodenheimer passes indefatigably through one country after mother listing mo, beetle, butterflies, moths, dragoo-lues, Caterpillars and spiders, ach of which possesses its individual dietetic excellence Besides the fasech which are themselves eaten, there are the beos ad pigsent which are ako prized for the honey they produce, and the aplod. He quotes voluminous evidence to show tha aphide wipplied timely manna for the Children of Israel and continue to do so for the people who live within the limits reported in the Bible, namely Elim, song called Wudi Glaruoda, and Replndim, which is today the names of Teiran. Finally, w is Incvitabls in the mid-twentuh century, Professor Bodenbaumct quotes his scotific authorities who have analyzed insecta L. Tihon, wtb in 1945 detentamed the dry matter, aab, fast and nitrogen content of temutes, and proved that 100 grams of frsed testines supplied sót calories, Japanese authorities, who established the protein, cartohy drate and phosphorus content of wilkworm pupas, and the BLICTO tuboats who have liged the chemical composed doo of loads and grasshoppen of different varietieth But it is not for this type of informatios, vahablo though it may be ibat the thoughuful mutridonist will shank Professor Bodenkamer most. It is probably from the reference to the mere book by Mr V M. Holt, published in London in 1885 and Bow auly ivalable in the University Library at Oxford, that the philosophical reader will obtain greuat stimuloh Chen mate, mys Holt, are freely eaten by many pontons a part of the chese. In the fine way cabbage votre are only part of 78 ·EATING INSECTS AND OTHER HABITS the cabbage and then be continues by describing bor delicow we growshoppers, cockchafen und vor grubu Fmally, he gives tvo menins for the gentlema s dining table, of which this booc Soul SOUP Fried soles with woodloupe suce Curtled cockchafen France of chicken with chrysalids Balled rock of martton with wireworm co Duckling with green peas Caulflowess garnished with caterpillar Moths on toot. Built-Savina szyn, Anyone mventing a new dish doar more for the happmers of his fellow men than all the philosophens, woters, sciential and politicians together If wardines were us expensive us oysters, the scientists whoxe akill and knowledge couble them to be prepared md preserved and anned to bong a novel lavoor and nutritional value as well into the would would have been acclaimed a highly as the discoverer of a new vitamin. Perhaps the learning now given to the wodd by Professor Bodenheimer will open a new door through which science will contribute to the happiness a well a to the mutrition of moldind. But bere once more to find the possibility of a clash between the philosophy of scientific materialim od other philosophies of life in which sosthetics, reverence for tadidoo, even religion Itwell, que el The scientific literature has a lot to my about the blochemical power of selection possessed by all coro of unboals including man bimet. There was a famous aspect ment in which a group of no vere presented with a long row pots and tubes containing materials they could ever por bly have encountered before in the normal wild life. Theo receptacle contained punfed cubobydrates, fars, proteins, and 79 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE they could see the chocolate, the taste of the white and was dexarbed us Fatty' or allowy and It was classed us genxezally inferior. Science can provide precise Information about nutritional requirements and their effect on phytological processes, but it 18 leu more in dedding between good food md bad food.

·8 BREAD AND SCIENCES IT v Monslan Jourdata, in Malldros Le Bourgeau Geral horuth, who riddenly discovered towards the end of his career that he had been talking prose all his life. A smllar discovery hos recently been made by the scientific nutddonis of today, that in spite of the essential need for calories, protein and virumos, we have beca endog food all tho ume-even in periods of disaster und abortage. It L unireally accepted that the scientific principles of numtion enabled the people who administered the food app pho in Batan diming the 1939-45 wu to provide a remarkably found det even during a period of great scaraty It is loos vel kovn that this was duc, & least in part, to a recognition that In order to be nourished one must eat, but that in order to vart to at one must enjoy at least some measure of con tent. There was, for erample, the remarkable incident of the dogs At one ame a keen young Scienfic Officer suddenly got tho da that it was very wasteful of food, to a country populary considered to be fighting with us back to the wall, to mupport so many pet dogu. This young scientist caused a survoy to bo made in order to food out (a) how many dogs there were altogether (1) what was the average ragbit per dog-humping pogether, for the purposes of alculason, big dog and Bolo 83 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE oos indiscuminately, and (c) the average mumber of alone eaten per dog per year With this information at hos depoul he was able to calculate that if the food being fed to the dog were given to hers instead a significant increase in the basic gration would be porrble. Some of the best brains in the country were put to work on the implications of this calcu. bution. After a somewhat gooidng praisal they reached the conclusion that national well-being wo best served by leanng the dogs alone. Natrition, s a branch of biochemistry, which is itself an offiboot of physiology, can be descobed as an act science. That is to Ay, the necessary fuel for the efficient functioning of the human body can be onctly worked out provided that the body is that of an unconscious patient or, that mathematical abstraction, a statistically significant ample of an average population Nutridonal principles bold good for an lodividual, fust as tho moral law or the Highway Code holds good, but the individual may dot choose to comply Even imder conditions of impending disastes, the chosce of what to ext may be m Auenced to a remarkable way by considerations other than thome of nutritional orthodory In 1945, I had some responsibility for advising the military tuthorities on the feeding of the aty of Vienna. My French, Amedem and Roman colleagues and I et round a table and, after reviewing the supplies available to 233, worked out a diet guaranteed to apply the population with all the notdrical oced. There was no meat, but we lied beans Instead to in mount calculated to provide the cract proteio equivalent. But there and then in the face of diuster, the inhabitants of the ary objected to the beant. Why, they obed, wbenever there ba watod at no other time-do we get beans Thero Beems huile doubt that our attitude to diaster i changing. Joseph, when he was appointed Minister of Food to Pharaoh, erabbabed in Egypt a syhem of bulk buyłog for a single commodity only com. In 1938, when Sir Henry Freach 84 ·stow, hmcncos weat, tuz, ctacten, auced ham or baked BREAD AND SCIENCES he tab of laying in stores Gece Bacoor three commodities, sbo, syed card a war came, the populapon Tochabsored by sample samples. The plan for vegetabio to Say sous Stamins, postos, ad cabbage fee C, ad for vitamin A, bad to be woended to de cores bakas for the manufacture of potlas (of see somal value) withour which the immed forces and cos take to face a kige t this b Laking back. What of the presen? conic or hydrogen bomb attack, trys an official problem ordght mean that in a Glost zoo 1 fumily mught to Sired to say under cover for ss bog os a week Sucha g mught mem isoladon a carplete as that of the locely ou clasing', to quote the official phrase. There would be electricity confundated wher sporters, coppled commu- Bons, and radiation danger beyood the doorstep. To meet he conditions, the United States Federal Civil Defence Simonstration is recommending that 'bomenutens shall non in what is called a seven-day emergency pantry' The grated list of items with which the modern bundan family advised to provide itself to face the nation to dester of up Judaic, full-feale scanic war be a remarkable intention of the butent attimide towards outer. The fist part of the le composta sanood jutes, front and vegetables Altogether, seventeen issus de recorrendocks will be geamfied to see heading the bort of dents, comed beef, the trusted hardby for emergency But it is of course, Door above. The American survivor, ses aboo but back on beef orange ruke, grapefruit juice, tornato Joks grapefruit soctions, padhe, pear pinapok, pluors, chendas, lotes, per bcar mnd spargul Nou, the oth mroapel la the radio-active solitude must have soup-that, tuusbroom, ber, vegetable to cream of chicken The British abserver beint and for spice and variety, pica, tutup of chil modt, $$ ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE mayonnaiss, molasses, cookies and spaghetti with tomato sauce have not been forgotten. The het of bevega u also of interest Baldes daed milk, powdered to and coffee, and chocolate syrup, canned cream is also to be stored awry For the staff of hfs, only canned date-and-aut bread, cractes ad packaged cereals are recommended. And finally, bringing op the rear of the column of miscellaneous items u the first assential for nurvival in a scientific world, a can opener When food is so scarce that there really us too bitle to eat, and when the shortage is to prolonged that the state of affin is that of famine, people will eat almost anything. But ut levels of depavation only lust removed from fumine the nato complexity and rationality of human behaviour partier larly on matters of eating and drinking-quickly become apparent. People cast away in lifeboat is, perhaps understandably, prone to peaumlam. Nevertheless, it is in some ways a strange thing that, lo thu age of high technical efficiency, of rando, and aircraft, and rapid movement about the globe, they are > pessimistic = they are. After all, thu is a bastoncal penod when it is the general rule that we are surrounded by social organuations designed to help and protect each other. Yet in this environment, people in ships' lifeboats tend to behave as if no one were ever likely to come to their rescue The bitter parador soften seen after the loss of a ship, when men are rescued from boats muffering from scute back of water and yet with most of the boats water supply til intact. In peacetime, hips m distres are orally located before they mk and survivons are not likely to be addft for very long. In the last par some men were, it is true, left floating for three weeks or more but the great malooty were picked up within a few days Ya victims of shipwreck to commutently tended to antidpate the worst, that instructions had to be besoed telling them to dank reasonable amount of their boat s emergency water ripply esch day and not to mbject themselves to acute thirst until circumstance made it inevitable. 86 ·BREAD AND SCIENCES At a ather different level of disaster, there come to mind an ibadent in the last war when people under stress deprived themselves of food for reasons that the scientific obecrver might at fint ught take to be illogical. In this is since, however, they were not refusang it became they thought there wa will worse deparation to counc, but because they thought it woald not give the comfort they wanted. During a bad period of bombing mode sympathetic and sentific people in the United States decided to send a noortahing soup to the underfed Bntoh Tho mixture provided was a balanced comportion of vitamins and proteins, it alodific content was all that could be desired. It was, indeed, nutritionally impeecable. Two intelligent dieticians were sent out with a mobllo cmteen to give it to people sleeping in the underground rail way u Shepherds Bush. Unfortunately, when mixed with the appropriato quandry of hot water, the vitamin soup, though mething every physiological requirement of the human mett bollen, was a white paste. And the inhabitants of Shepherds Both refused to cat it. The dieticuns in charge of the conteen, bendes betag Ighly qualified in science, were also remoble. They went away and added a pinch of gravy browning, of no nutritional value at all, to the mixture. When they retumed, their customers eagerly concimed the soup At one time, this sort of thing wed to worry the scentific nutritionist, but recently bo bees begun to appreciate that children at school is not altogether wise when they do English In on class and bestory to another and, perhaps geography in a thirds tf they were, as the school timo table implies, separate subjects. Sciendfic nutridon is growing up mod b I have and before becoming part of a wbole liar of other secer phynology, psychology, sociology Indeed, If the dentists are not careful, it may become part of one of the houpamtia gan Pertips the modem prescription for mutntion in the fullout zone puggets which way teatrific viens are moving. It poems to be becoming recognised in the study of sciconfc ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE mirison that almost up to the best extremiry of famme and disaster ordmary people go on exhibiting the familiar caracter istia of personal idiosyncrusy and burman peculiarity that they show so clearly in ordinary life. The scientut pov koows that a ration, be it ever to perfect in chemical composition, cannot contribute to well-being if it is not eaten. In one respect, perhaps this modem enlightenment to be regretted. By adopting a little cardboard box full of good thing to eat -- the clergency antion for battling soldlen cut off from the rupplla, the British have sacrificed the admiration of foreigners that they enjoyed up to the 1914 wr ther, their fighting mee aurled to their havernda as protection from disaster a lump of mutritional chocolate na ruled metal canister beanng on its rurface In embossed letters the legend only to be opened by express permbosloo of an officer I was once involved by somewhat pecubar arcumstances lo a redes of religion broadcasts. The purpose of the series was to aplain how a mmber of vadows philosophies of livlog fitted into the profession of religious dogma. It might, for Couple, bo thought somewhat paradoxical for an individual wbo coordered a life exceed to be employed us a butcher Or for someone whose permidon forbade the holding of popo dons to be a banker But in fact this is not so. People are uanlly able to Hvide their activitios lato completely separato compartments. There are mmetom vergowaccount of men crying brokeo-heartedly over a scatimental piece of musx or a dead kitten who were capable 1 mondent bater of buckling on ther revolved zod marching into the street to perpetrate monstron coelia nd injustices. There are large number of people who feel docere grief and remoto u bonging about the death of a rabbit by means of a vins, myxomatosts, and yet who cult without tremot of quali e Willing rate with Liverpool Viru But no 20 abo Codicarury md make arcellent and intelligent motben Similarly, scientists whose professional work b a model of sypten and logic may be found to deal with any other topic ·BREAD AND SCIENCES than the object of their work with unthinking emotion Yet tience is not of itself a topic of a subject, it is a way of thinking. It strated o if it were indeed an occupation or profondion. This popular bebaviour anves from the very fact that only certain kinds of things are treated micatifically and abo because only certain molected, professional peoplo treat thex selected thlags in this scientific way Ya cven so it is not always easy to departmentalise affinis foto those that are and those that we got to be considered with scientific logic During the course of the Lost three of four capters, it will have been noticed that food b a topic the fron time to time embarrotes scientists by eging itself into the field where Identific and non-tentific ways of thinking come into contact with ach other in the redes of broadcasts to which I have referred one of the speaken od that the fact that he was I scientia haematologuet, no less-tod peut ad his dime counting stained blood cells under a microcops, had no bear ing at all on his religious view. I myself bad been afficiently nalye to admit that if, - a scientific person, one spent ooc s bfe trening evidence and collecting facts, one s belief la a Devil with horns and a tal and a Hel udoling with brimstone, which is the archal term for the element ralphie, unquestion ably tended to be weakened. I muy by that the apparently innocuous recoude brought down on my bead quote a batch of mdignant letten There i, however, no real cause for perpetue at a hecto- Logout wbore profession bas no beanng on his views of life Even the great Professor Soddy discoverer of isotopes, had several hobby hories that in a leser om might have been conodered to vergo on the ridiculous. Tbe food man, bowever, how much more difficulty in keeping adenosic philosophy separate from all the other influences and pressures that itect people in the ordinary course of 000-scientific lille. Le u cake bread a on cample that has caused a remarkable amount of heat. Bread is studied by a number of blods of scientius, ezek of ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE whom would be quite content to devote himself to his own particular and Interesting research. But he never seems to be left alone to do so Take the theologists, for example. Ther interest is in the firmness and ebastiary of the dough and the brud derived from it. To them, I loaf of bread is smlar to a plece of spooge rubber It comise of a network of protein fibras with starch granulos m the mterstice between them od endosing a regular syutem of bubbles. The propose of deco Logical research is to achieve the maumum aporeon of the ebaxde protela balloons so that the membrane of each abal, when finally fired by the best of the oven, be thin and delete in structure. Ono of the difficulties of actueving this finepers of texture, which u the interest and pleasure of the saennusty that when the protein fibres arc stretched by the kneading of the dough md the capansion of the gas from the yeast they may become, as it were, tangled again before the bread textura o assured. To the wcients, the protein of dough and the protelp of balr possent certato simlandies. For omple, ach contains what are called in chemical largon cros-linkages. It u posolble to bend beur, let us say, and then atablish its structure in the best form by joining together opposite members of the molecular cross-links The us done by the chemistry muketed today in 'home peom sets. The same chemistry an be used to stabills the stretched dough proteins, only in this case, the reagents employed are called maproved But just as soon a the chemiet w in this way brought a very difficult and conplex research to i satefactory conduxon and elaborated 1 highly effective improver, a distinguished physiologut arrivo on the scene and publishes kus elaborate and detailed research to show that bread treated with this particular mprover is capable of giving dog fits Then the whole research into the physical structure of clustic dough fibres bus to start agun, only this time the rbcologist whose interest, I repeat, u in the stretching of the protein 20d the getting of it to stay stretched, has to work in collabort tion with mother kind of scientist altogether This is the 20 ·BREAD AND SCIENCES pharmacologiu. Tho pbermacologie a interested as a general rule in the mean lethal dose of some drug or otha. The mean lethal dose is the predre mount that will kill creatly so per cent of a group of apoimental mice. The problem of bread improvers, bowever, is not so easy To start with, the cbemal improve tuself may not be touc. It was a part of the wholesome bread-protein itself that, after being acted upon by one improver, 1 gus amed Agene, was converted into a different substance that give Sir Edwud Mellanbys dogs fite. The toricalogat is therefore set the job of deteorining raentif cally bow much of the stuff wil bo harmful to people. Ho task is indeed a difficult one. Although comparatively berok quantities of bread treated with Agene have been eaten by human volunteen, so dens endence has come to light that they puffer any harm at all. On the other hand, cabbrt, ferrets, mice, rat and monkeys proved to be much mord utisfactory apenmental apurab ud a vabro for the toxte proportion of the active improved-four substance as establebed for each. The dogs convinced the American, wbo grve up Agene almost immedutely after 118 connection with fine wa tab- Hshed. The Boush were made of stronger stuff and not until the full list of zoological asceptibility had been drawn up did they, after ten years of doubts, change from Agene to chlodze doodde s the pancipal improver But now the scientist is being put to still more advow trial. He can apply bis scientific methods and his abfective thinking, and he has done so. The effects of chloride diaride on dough durdty od viscosity bave been established-chemially physcally rheologically The tondcologist has done his best too. No animal species, it appear, barned in any way by bread treated with chlorine diodde. What more could the Layman Bak of the scent And yet the layman-Ereymag, the onghaal Adom, all him what you will not sadisfied. His philosophy includes bread a part of hfe He refuses to lervo alone the bread-taentist whe, of cours, deals with bread > his saentific subject and D0on anything to do with home life. 91 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE You will remember my bacmatologist wbo stated in his rell glow broadcast that his scientific pursuits had so bearing on his general view of life outnde the blood cells. And now, even after the talents have done all that was akad of them by way of demonstrating the InDocumen of chlorine dicaide, the French--that is, the whole nation of Frankdecree that they will use no improver whatever! Nether chlodne darddo nor anything else. They just do not like the idea of them. Thus attitude puns a disaple of science into a fake portion It is, of course, impossible to prove a negative. For example, in spite of what the Ingoldaby Legends may uy, spontaneous combustion does not occur That is to Ay, a man annot take a deep breath, buræ lato flames and disappear It is impossible. But suppose someone wntos to The Time and says if people cat broad containing chlorine diodde dey may develop symptoms of spontaneous combustion, ut is quite imposible to prove that this cannot, ut some omo or another, occur All that the samtidic inverdgator can do is to my, I have amined a group of seven bundred eod fourteen people of whom three hundred and twelve were men, four bundred and one were women and one a baby of ten weelus old. These expenmental subjects were fed treated bread at a rate equivalent to surya two per cent of their total alone intake over a period of reventeen months. During that time none of them was obkerved to carch fire nor was there any marked increase in body temperature. Back comes the mewer from Domkientific Everyman, 'Your aperiment did not go on boog enough You did not design it aght. Do it again and some of the people will at the very least start to smoke. Talsu indood vut occurs. Chlorine diaride has to be tested on all sort of mimals, by all sort of method. No harm hos been discovered to come from its use. 'But, hy the French authoddes, it might be bad for you. So it night. When we were children we were told that one cannot do two things at oncc. Even in the nursery we realised that this 2xertion was false. For example, it can readily be proved ibat 02 ·BREAD AND SCIENCES ancan at a bareng, read a book and whistle (after a fubion). And in later life there are plenty of ladies who are convinced that they an init effectively and listen to the wireless u the une ome. What our mentos ought to have told us in our youth was that effective corab Ectivity must always be restricted to ope topuc at a time. The scientists who are devot ing themselves to the daugn of a jet droneft to travel forter thao ever before cannot concem themselves profesionally with what they will do with themselves when they get back round the world the day before they started! The Intellectual confixion into which dentists get there metro when they do ty to think about two laods of things u once can be demonstrated by reference to vitamin BThe edstence of this material was ficut demonstrated in 1898 by a doctor in the Dutch East Indies. He showed that when this Fomething was lacking from their diet, hems developed polyneudou. And be, that u Dr Eytoom, also abowed that the lack of this ame substance was the cause of the widespread und wasow Aduic disease, bed-bert Starting from these brilliant scientific discoveries, a generation of the consistent, logical and highly technical research for which our age u famow led to the elucidation of the chemical nature of vitamin B, is fimcdon in the biological chemistry of hyrag cells od los Rubsequent manufacture by synthesis. Thu is riendfic philosophy achlerng what it is supremely well fitted to do when fint-den minds are available to apply themselves to its problema But at this point scientific philosophy bamped up gunst social pbilosophy and unless steps and taken to make them do my, all and water do not mi. At the time these researches were belog brought to their trumphant cooctudion, the white bread eaten in Britain by most people contained about a tenth of a milligram of vitamin B, in 100 grams Brown bread.com tatoed about a quarter of a milligram, or two and a half times struct. There vere a whole series of other differencer more good thing in brown bread, other B-vimmins, 1700 ad 93 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE protein, and also more 'bad things, fibre, phytic acid (an anu-calciam factor) md a tendency to becamo rancid. But the public debate started with vitamin B. It was never aggested that bert-bed bred ever been seen in Batin or wo likely to carr Bat would not more of this new vlamin be good for people? What about the poor should not bread, of all foods, be made into a complete food, a comperdium of all nourishment. It was not ruggested that in the new welfare world of resence zayone would be oked to live on bread and water alone. But if they were should it not be the very but bread that sovence could devoted The debate has swayed to and fro. Scientific evidence of all sorts has been collected. Chemical analysis of different kinds of bread us cary mod figura have been collected. But, as with the concevable harmfulden of chloroe dioride, the nutritional vitaes of different breads annot be determined in an absoluto anse. They are locvitably dependent on the kind of trial wed, the penmental animal wed--whether rat, hamster, chicken or man. But bread and water tem maxtusfactory diet, s any impoverished student can confirm. And, us has been shown also, in an embarrassing opperiment of the Medical Research Commal, if breadcven un vitaminised white bread-u used # part of a good mirture, it is an excellent food. The purport of the last few chapten surely is that science con achieve useful and Important things when used to study material food. Solence, as a way of thinking, = a kod of phllosophy, ha been most effective when its beam has been focused on a small are, that is, when it has been used to think about only one thing at a time. Perhaps its process of collecting facts, constructing hypotheses and verifying there hypotheses by xperiment can only be bixed arcessfully on material things. It results certainly have a vaxt Influence on all other parts of life, but we have yet to make general rise of centfic methods of thinking and acting in the wider contest. 94 ·9 CHEMICALS FOR ADAM'S GARDEN Thu Reverend Thor Malthus made a good deal of wir at the time his Escy on the principle of populatron os esfraces che future improve out of society was published. Yet the on forekeen supplies of imported grain and meat from the Amed cu pourposed the clear demonstration of his theory that if populations Increase sufficiently eventimlly there is not enough to eat. Otherwise he might have got more credit for mccanto prophecy bo bu own lifetime. And the contimous and acceler wing increase in the number of people in the wodd would again have nn up against an Inadeqmto food supply beforo DOW, in spite of the opening up of now lands, had it not been for a son of major scientific Accent It is one of the pandoros of human behaviour that mechani cal devices like steam-engines and tin-plate sodp mills, rotary printing prenses or automatic weaving loons should bo wcdamed a major scientific achievements, whereas advances in the scientific undermoding of blology that t, knowledge of the working of life itself-are less appreciated. Yet they repro kat some of the major triumphs of human thooght, and have had great practical wgmficance for mankind a rel. 95 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE Adun was told to till the earth by the sweat of bas brow At fint, if hu wheat cop were poor duse to disease, be would need to till more ground cod sow more wheat or go hungry Unul the day came when bo could treat his seed chemically und so destroy on it the micro-organism caimning the disease And within our own generation there has been sudden great flowening of chemical products for Adam a garden. He need no longer use simple and obvious things like copper or ansonic on his food. For instance, teta-methylthuram thiram , for short-can be used in dny amounts (2 to 4 tb per acre) to destroy fungus in the soul and thus increase the yteld of sugar beat Peas, beum, CAITOD and spinach seeds can be treated with It, md after we on flux seed bigger crops obtmoed. Το prevent scab disease on the apples in his garden, Adam need no longer spray the trees with largo qumtities of sulphur In America they e feroc dimethyl-duho-carbamato ferbam, for short Ferbam, unluckily, makes a black spray and consequently makes black marts on the upples. In Britun, therefore, we are trying snc dimethyl-dthio-carbamate turum , for short, of course to that we need not see it on the frut. There are many substances with long unpronounceable namos (some with abbrevixion ud some without) of varying degree of tonaty, which are being designed for application to seeds or lerves to cope with the diseases which allhact crop plants. Other cyen newer chemical have been invented which the plant draw up through their roots, they are then immune to diseases that they might contract in later life. Tomatoch und camations have been thus reddered rewrtant to wilt, und strtwberries to 1 dpcase called red core The magnitude of this aspect only of the chemical revolu tion which is increadog the world s supply of food and at the no time relieving man bboun to the fields is nok dramat ally-tod in some ways most une pectedly-abown by the fact that the country in which the use of rynthetic fungiada seems to have made greatest beadway so furo Japm. Most of ·CHEMICALS FOR ADAMS GARDEN the Japmese dice cop 's grown in Hooded fields under conditions ideally favourable to fingus-born duene. The degree of loss from this course we not appreciated unal tals of the new funglades were started. The young dee plants were dipped in dithio-carbonate solution before being transplanted. lo some instances, the yield of Hoe was increased by 3o per ceatToday, the chemicals and imported by the hundreds of tons and the average amount of extra dice resped has increased by more than 10 per cent, equivalent to half the country's desperate need for imported rice. The introduction of new, spuafic chemicals that a chemical designed to cope with one special infection to prevent plant disease is only part of the scientific revolution we are discusing. There are also dev organic chemicals to destroy in viding Insects. The crude, If roomtically mmed, mixture of copper ind rrenic known - Peau Green and Bordeau Mixture held the field from 1870 and 1885 respectively Then, in our own time, aume D.DT, daaring not only man of bus vermir, but cabbages, tomatoes, raspberdies and gooseberdos of their caterpillars, mothe, beetles and wittes. D.DT now has a number of effective relatives, the so-called chlorinated hydrocubons. And, as we done to combat plant diseases, there has also been a fortha, scientifically-elegant development of a group of chemicals which do not have to be sprayed or por dered on to crops in order to kill the insects. A recies of arguaic phoxphorus compoanda has been invented which the plans abrod through their rood md which render all their times toric to imects. The insecto leave then clone md we eat them, forufied in our mind by the warance of a monograph of infor mation collected by ibo World Health Organisation of the United Nations that they are not toxic to u In one of GP G Wodehouse fablos about the idle nch, a ventile character, whose promuodon of m masccesful hair rektorer os proving a financial failure, marketed it with resounding succes si depibtory A third important scientific advance, which caning a major influence on our world 97 ·way trose NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE today, womt must in embarrassed humility be admitted launched in just this manner In 1953 a report was published in a Berlin Journal that certain synthetic organic abstuces postcored the power of sunulatorg the growth of plant cells. Before very long, however, these substances and others like them these botamal hair restoren were being bed as weed Liller. The powibility of using them in this from the fact that they affect only certain vanetia of plant, Including many to which common weeds belong, but do not affect the boramal varieties of which the crops themselves are members. And their killing effect is due to their siraulating the growth only of certain types of cells in the plants that are sensitive to them. Consequently, the orderly growth of these plant is dusrupted and they die. If ever a man looking for a needle in a baystuck discovered a crock of gold, it was the biochemist investigating plant growth stimulants who found that he had weed killers instead. By 1947, the area of crops in Great Britain alone treated with these chemicals could be measured in the hundreds of thoot unds of mich By 1952 more than two million acres were covered and in Canada one substance alone, 2 4-dichlorophenoxyacetic sad, ww reported us being used to keep tho Weeds off five to ten millon acres of grain! All Wods of weeds cm be eradicated chemically without the need for human swert charlock, poppy rzywort, horretail, butteraupo, nahas. And many types of crop can be efly protected, not only com but tomatoes, cotton, rice and sugar beet u well. Weeding by chemistry, although a remarkable way of in creadng yields of food mod vlog work, is not being achieved entirely without difficulty To start with, you need to be careful what you do with these new and powerful scentfic tools la the United States there have been omgonal aondent when Weed-willer sprayed on to dice has drifted on to paghbouring fields and senoinly damaged the cotton crops growing there, Then again, just as the Americm bouse-dly bas today managed es ·CHEMICALS FOR ADAMS GARDEN to adapt self to a whole battery of the never insecticides, so ho ngwort in oude places apparently been able to find a meant of defending itself against chlorophenaxyacetic acid herbicida and, after recovering from its inſoul setback, once gain come to grow, as they sy, like a weed Another odd trouble bee been the obscrvation that bera which roam about where these woed-Hallens have been used sometimes full to lay o many go before and the eggs they do bay do not hatch to wel Most aubtle of all, of course, for the thoughtful scentie 19 the philosophical question of defining what a weed is. It is all vay well to HY that its a plant out of place. But, tben, are the wild Bowers of the hedgerow out of place there? Lo Gloucester andre and some other countios they have been studying the effectiveness (from the point of view of a county parveyor, of course) of controlling the vegetation in ditches and on rond Aldo verges by these new techniques. And a spay of selective chemiaal weed Life will aterminate the wild flower # well is tho orber plants you compot at This olent chemical revolution in food production and to Avlog old Adom from the Labous of the field has remarkablo posibilities. Syttemat berbicides can be dengned not only to will come plantı od letve other alors, but also to affect only certain parts of a particular plant. For instance, one bas been used with some piccer to cause the leaves of the cotton plant to fall off so that the cotton can be barvested more effec tively by machinery The ane panciple t belog studled lo Koya where a 4-5 trichlorophenoxyacetickadu being poya from scroplanes to choose the leaves of a whole range of trees and abruba to full off so that the betro fly aball be prevented from sheltering under them. The most remotable feature of this whole busines, this scientific advice, is its speed and its slepce. Ve seem to bave looked roond od found it suddenly upon us with all its extraordinary implications the fungicides, the Insectades and plani-growth-souluing chemicals tumed veed-biller ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE It is a happy event that the great practici ugnificance of what has been achieved is, on this occasion, coupled with the congderable pbilosophical ugnificance of the discoveria pe have been describing. The invention of a semn-engine of 10 acroplane bad an immense practical effect but nelther machine represented much in the way of m advance in buman thought. One could imagine that if a Chinese philosopher had bmppened to design aber machine he might have constructed it for the amusement of his friends but would hardly have used it as a means of revolutonlang dipilised Hfe. The scientific development that we have been discumlog in this chapter represent a remarkable degree of blologlal control, that is, the control of certain chosen living cells in the presence of other whose normal life remuns unaffected. It is alutary once again to recall that the potent effect cserted by micro-organisms on larger living creatures, whether they be animals or planta, was first recognised only eighty odd years 280 by Louis Pasteur And yet today, starting from Pasteurs ongimal shaft of Intellectual brillim.ce we are able not only to idendfy the micro-organisms coming the amu dienes of wheat or the cab on apples of the fingis diseases of dee but abno to kill the living disease cells without barming the testies of the grain or fruit to which she specially dezigned chemical antiseptic is applied. Development of the power to kill has been a content feature in the history of man. To the natural philosopher the attention given by men to killing other men is a dull subject Few people can verlowly interest themselves in the qualid seventeenth-century quarters of insignificant Scottish cans, and the same type of activity multiplied to the larger scale of recent wen is equally uninteresting. The blological struggle between the human spead and the inserta be, however, a topic worthy of lotelligent thought. H. G Well once wrote a vivid mod frightening Hory The Kingdom of the Art A broken down gunbout commended by un incompetent middle-aged captain with a Scottish engineer عالم TOO ·CHEMICALS FOR ADANS GARDEN ind a acw of South America militia was sent i ten-day joumey up the Amazon. There they found a township on the verge of the fuoglo forest deserted of all human life. It wa, however inhabited by unts of a new vanety allied to the loaf artten. Their bebavlour wa commanded by soldier mt of high Intelligence and equipped with pouton canned by certain of their mmbers. Their advance through the jungle showed every sign of being a planned migration. They showed them selves capable of tonnelling under overs of considerable dze and they openenced no difficulty in despatching the chief mato of the gun bout who was sent by the commander to reconnoltre the situation. The guilant commander then fired the brangim with which his vessel was equipped and, after this ineffectural demonstration, withdrew down river But it is not necesary to call upon Mr Wells o imagination to appreciate the crennens of the struggle between these two powerful groups of creatures, men and insects. Part of the history has been told by Zinsser in has alcal book Rass, Lut and History In it bo recomes some of the great plagues that hrve avaged humanity a mere addents to the efforts of the diminutive loure to find space to live a lovely life. Manidad now appears to bave achloved vatory in this battle by invent ing D.DT Another contest against an insect bonus not yet been determined, there are still teontoda where on cannot Live master because of the blesse fly The biblical plagues of locum art aloo will to be reckoned with Mankind has the sciendfic koowledge to settle this bartle, was demonstrated by the entomologats of the Middle East Supply Centre danng World Væ IL Unfortunately the polidal common sense to agree to do xo appears to be backing. Agudat thus background, the new kicauic loowledge of how to bill insects that would other Nike cut the plants we need for food ourselves to a worthy achievement These scientific advances are only a part of a larger under unding of tifc. Biologist, and philosophers for that matter, have for long been interested in the respective influences of 101 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE beredity and cavironment on living creatures and on the cells of which they are composed. The fungicida that attack the plant disease organisms, the insecticide that destroy the parasites and the chemical Weed-Ellers that cut down the competi tors of the growing crops all bring their influence to bear or environment. The single biggest influence we wield on the cavronment of growing things, whether they be babies plg or fields of com, is that of nutrition So for a man is concerned, the most inportant contribution that natural philosophy, u appressed through chemistry has made to numuon has been to increase total food production. The fundamental nutadora deficiency In the world today , * it has always been, a deficlency of calories, that is to say, too lule to eat. In 1946 a Cambridge scientist wrote as a preface to one of bis papers a review of the history of human hunger He started mornly with a report by Halod of a famine in 700 BC, continued with a comutantial account from the Second Book of Kings and, after sodang 586 other reference to the scientific literature, ended with the medical account of the famine in north Holland in 1945 Living plant cell, like the Hving cells of animal, must be nourabed. Plants create alories from am and tir and consequently do not need to be applied with them, but they posteus other wint Truc, science his systematsed the know ledge of plant notation cod attended 10 bounds, but we must always avoid the danger of belleving that we moderns have done it 11. Perhout our fathers fools, so we the grow, Our arser soms no doubt will thank us so Reference to manung accur in Chinese and Egyptian literature as well as in that of Greece and Rome, Liming b ako of some adquiry and ground bones and guano bave been used at laut since the beginning of the nineteenth century Since the urse of the field expedments of John Beopett Live a Rothornsted ad his patent for saperphosphate taken out in 10 ·CHEMICALS FOR ADANS GARDEN 1843, the line of artificiab has become one of the great crimples of the application of scientific thought to the practical improvement of moldador If not the improvement at least the preservation of mankind from banger Sir William Crookes, in his predential address to the Botlah Apociation in 1898, calculated that if the supply of wheat was to keep pace with the growth of the world population, it would be necessary to increase the yield of grua from the then level of 12-7 bushela per are up to zo bushels per ure by 1928. To do this, od Sir William, would require a tonal drending of twelve millbon tons of nitrate of soda, a fantastic quantity in the entific of 1898. Today, of course, more than twice # much can be mado ench year in factones that fe nitrogen from the dr, and the total manufacture of chemical fertilisers in 1950 was about forty million tous. In addition to this, nitrate ba mined in Chile, while whole Pacific Islands composed of the accumulated droppings of myriads of prehistorc seagulla are Carted away to keep up the productivity of Australim forma Bat blood will out, as they wed to write in the romantic novel of a hundred years ago. In these stories, cavironment was nothing. Tbo bere, stolen from has cot # 20 Infant, spent two or three bwodied pages under conditions of poverty, hardship and squalor. This unfavourable environment, how cver, did him do harm When in the last chapter be wa recognbed by a caracteristic birthmuk # being the long-Host won of the earl, bo instantly renowned his clghuful sados, demonstrated by his beading and manner that bo vus indeed a gemleman of refined taste and sensibility and showed no tince of having picked up bad habits of a cochoney accent during the lang years spent o a kitchen porter la Stoke Newington. Parndorically cough, although tho environmental - fluences brought to bear on plants by the genius of science have had important retalu, o we have already decibed, iba greatest increase to food supply has been achieved by la fuencing hereditary mother than cavironmental factors. The yield of wheat hat, it is true, been substantally increased by 103 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE the understanding of the requement of plano for plerogen, pborphono uod potash and the invention of means to supply those needs o artificial feruliser. Nevertheless, the major increase in the world s food supply has been due to the scienco of genedlas. By the direct application of genetical poinciple it has been found possible to breed vriedas of wheat that are capable of growing in parts of the world where conditions are too dry and the season too sbort for normal yurities to thave. In Canada, for example, cormoun areas of what were banen plains in the west and north of the country can now be used to produce these new venetias of wheat. It is the 'blood linas of these strains that is, their bereditary background, that has been the dominant feature in the practical success of this application of scientific philosophy to practical affairs. Bet the chosen strans do not possew their noble blood by accident. It is put into them by the logical application of genetical science. And not only can breeding give Marquis wheat the ability to grow in countries where no wheat grow before. It can do mote. Between 1925 and 1933, the annual loss of wheat from a discos, nust, in Manitoba and Saskatchewm was thirty five million basbela Chemical fungicidas to remove rust disease from the environment were ineffective. A cross-bred grun from the irregular union of two sepanto Marquis matings was made. The offspring of this wmion vw alled Thatcher and it is resistant to the toort damaglog of the fungus disema aflicting wbeat. Plant breeding an belp to increase food supplies in other way. Whent, for comple, can be modified to grow with a short wall, long enough to allow it to be gumered with a combine harvester but not to loog that it would be betten down by wind or rain That the scence of genetics could, by increasing the world's wheat apply, have this so dgnificantly contulbuted to huma mutndon would have come as a surprise to Thoma Malthus meg, the clergy tend to be most bomocentric Living creatures to them are people only, not lice or plante. To the natural philosopher, be he a biologia a largs, a genetlagt or 104 Of all ·CHEMICALS FOR ADAMS GARDEN a chemes, the mechanism of plant genetia is a worthy of tovertigioon 33 are the genetics of a winning Derby borse or a man. And genetic to being increasingly recognised us a field for charnical study A genes part of a chromosome which behave us 1 polt in the physiology of a cell lo certain types of chromosoma that have been very closely studied there appear to be about 30,000 gena in each. And each gene is approximately the same time a chemical molecule of protein. Furthermore, it is now clear that the way genes affect the appearance and character of the Living creatures whose desting they control is through the exercise of chortal function. In 1936, Rose Scott-Moocdeff in Cambridge was lnvendi gring the facton controlling the anthocyanin pigments in plaatsood what better pumut could be conceved for a mural philosopher than to study the coloun of flowers' As 1 result of this work it wou soon posible to give an account of thirty-five different genas concemed in the vanabod to calous between different kinds of flowers Exch of these genes wu found to control a preciso chemical difference between the pigment producing the vaned coloun. For comple, one gede caused the anthocyanta molecule to be addised at one partie cular place and the flower coloor to be affected accordingly Another gene added a CH, groaping ut another part of the molecule. And so on The Abbé Model founded the sense of genetla by study. ing the coloun of sweet pex. The principles by which coloured Sweet pea parents Influence the colours of their offspring are Dow known to be the pune as those by which wimal pares transmit ther Inheritme to thar progeny Now it appear that the Mendetian which are the active gent carrying the deniedetias we inhent, win their realus by a spedfic chemical effect-ind this produce improved whent, or per haps wo improved man. Of all the chemicals in Adams garden, the one most worthy of the attention of the philosophical scientist b Adam himself 105 ·IO MICROBE CHEMISTRY SCIENCE hazu been used very effectively to do practical, in dustrial things, to make steam-origines od motor-cam and clecinc bacop bulbr. We have also seen how scufic rinking co be applied to problems of human nutrison and food producuor. These are, of cours, aspects of appled bratogy But having discovered box living cello wock zod bow they facture for themselves the ribstances they need for their own well-bang, it has not take long to bend the biology of other creatura to our benefit There u a well-known story of a man who furuhed a room with all the luxuries of evilised living. There were amants on the mantelprece, carpets, curtains and furtuture of all sorts; the able was laid with the finest cutlery and glass and covered with a demak cloth. There was a prabo od 2 gramophones bookcases filled with bound voluta lued the walls and a bright fire burned ua dhe grate. Into the room the man intra duced a clumpanzee. Then he locked the door tod wat ry After a while be crept back to observe what eixe monkey ra doing. With the greatest caution he applied bass eye to the late bole, And be ww wwother cyt. la 1865 a chairty year old Englibman, Robert Hooks, arbo ·MICROBE CHEMISTRY combined mechanical skill, inventive genius and attraorduury laenafic insight to a high degree, published a book, Micrograpka. Just Galileo s pubbcations of 1600 had, by the old of the newly invented telescops, opened men s cyes to new and very large worlds in the heavens, so Hooke brought to life a new and unsuspected universe of the very mall. One of the fiort drawings be made of this fatry world that he bow aw cxisting in the very amo living #pace a hiba own was of the compound cyes of dragonfly Eyes which, like those of the dog on the falry-story, went a large a cartwheels, although they had been looking at us for ages they were being seen by for the first time. The first men to fly did so partly for fun a matter of spirit—and partly to see whether flying could be done whether, that s, it wo sentifically ferible. Soon, however, avotion became a matter of everyday commerce. Space travel loob fit may never emoy even a boef interval as to achievement of buurman thought and fire but will start nght off us a businerlike affatr of economics and politcs. The Httle wodd of microorganlarnu has been explosted out soon u it be been discovered. Nevertheless, its discovery and use B 1 ruutuable ample of scientific achievement which has not received the general recognidon it deserves The inltul qark of modtoa that started the whole trulo of discovery must be attribated to Louds Pasteur, then engaged 23 chemist in the humdrum task of Investigating the reason why we went sour. From bos omgmal notion that the fiot seen by Antoni van Leeuwenboek in 1680 o rounded -ułaped bodies, and only recogaused as being a living thing by Cagatard de La Tour in France and Schwann in Germany in 1835, was the active creamre that was changing mgu into abobol la beer rort came the whole sence of microbiology a we know it today It is interesting to remember that the inhabitans of the invuble underworld that enjoy the earth with ward o vaded In atze one with another 3 we w in comparison with the 107 H ·philosophlaal ducovery of biological science in the troulette NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE animals of our visable world. For example, a yeast cel is om of the elephants of the microscopical undervold, if it wets bug w a fer, a man would have to be so feet tall to miocais hu quting advantage. Beside it, there are bacteria caustig gangrene. They are as big as borses. The pritsissis Organisa apable of trummitting parrot diseases the size of a guin pig. A scale smaller are another whole group of living things, the viruseh The Lafuenza viru # a big ass bunung berd or a small more compared with ous lumbering clephantine yeast cell, but the foot and south disease organism, poveful and destructive though it it would only seen as large at : grat. A philosopher, it is said, w a ran mi amour He can defend himself against the trouble that beret an individual because his philosophy teachea bura to expect the sort of things that hfe can bring. The socatnt, the natural philosopher of today, carnes equipment more up-to-date than armour Galilea, Hooke and van Leeuwenboek in the seventeenth century taught her to study the nature of miniature life with an opixa! Inicroscope and the great Nevron showed hur wts kind of things light rays were that were focussed through she cocapound laser of his instrument. But bght rays are too coarte to Allow u to kee the detailed structure of living master of to Identify the steallest living beings there are. So, in our owadors, pre needed to invenc the electron microscope. This is worlar 1o prinaple to the opucal microscope except that it was beaten of electrons instead of beanu of light Aed the beasts of focused by sutably arranged magnetic systems in place of the lenses that control the optical ryttem of a convencional pristrament As clectron microscope allow otse, if not to me a viria and is organs of locomotion, at least to see a phase graph of it. The moral law says that all men are born free and opel only some are more equal than others Perhaps the greater century is that what constitutes life on earth, whether it be to 109 ·VICROBE CHEMISTRY a King Solomon, a fruit fly or a micro-organism, is chemicaly the same thing, although in some bacteria Its a little chifferent. In the words of Szent-Györgyi quoted in the next chapter, the energy for living is obtatoed either by combusting some fuel material in coc i cell with the oxygen in air, or by the splitting of the maternal into parth. And in both proceses, a remadably dmilar set of blochemical tools is used by all sorts of creatures, large or wall, warm or cold, microscopic or microscopic. When a man bs in a great huury to get mergy and ho no time, or for some other reason, is unable to me the more efficient process of combining his bloods sugar with orygen for comple, if he is trying to run a hundred yurds in mine recoodt-stead of combusting mgr he merely splio it and Lactic acid accumulates in bus blood. Yeast, which after all ho been seen down a microscope unce the seventeenth century although it was only recognised in the nineteenth, cm rospire lko we do. But, o has also been noticed since the days of Noah, when it splius its fuel instead of fully burning it, it produce, not lete add like a mom, brat alcohol For quito a subtrottal period of historiaal time, yeasts were among the comparatively few members of the microbiological world that we bimoran being made use of We collected alcobol, ther wuto product, and drink it for it toxac properties - wine. The other by-product, carbon diorido go, has been employed to leaven bread. But the use of yeast in this way denver from the time before micro-organisms were domesticated. Now days, we do not get eget from a jungle fowl capable of laying two or three catches a year. We make them from 1 Crefully bred bird that will produce threo hmdred of a yound these will be larger and more regular md, turprkingly enough, more nutritious than those from the jungle fowl In fure the mande way yeasts have been domestated, although it taka ten million of these elephants of the microbe world all standag shoulder to shoulda (a truly Kiplingeque conception) to be sust visible to suspect on the back of our thumbnail. Yeast, this oldest of man s micro-Iriends, leavene hos dough 109 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE Heute its encralon, alcohol, to ddot; a, s industrial alcohol, for a motor fuel, as a solvent or sa mw material for a host of manufactured chemal products. Nowadays even its breath, carbon-dionde ges, is compressed loto a sold and used for malang re-cream, or cooling machine tools But we are not satisfied to stop a uning the natural hfcchemicals of the yeat the carbon dioride and the alcobot # major industrial commodities Scientific knowledge of the mechanism of life now enables us to interfere with it to our own advantaged the interference about which I woh to wato now had that most potent of hom motives, war The chemical reactivity of sodium pulphite is sach that it could be deduced that it would poison yesst in a particular wty And in fact when the operiment wu toe it was found that it did no. Now, if one goes into the nght chemical factodes and looks in the right place, there can be seen great vats in which yeast Intoncated with rodium culpbite is struggling to 'breabe It cannot grow in the presence of the sulphite but it does not dic. Instead of producing alcohol, in major by product become glycerol A harmlen, sweet tasting, sticky baud, it might be md, sometimo called glycerine md med in cough lozenges And why be sentimental about umg our knowledge of the chemistry of hfe in this way since yeats cannot feel? Is it not a talumph for the scientist that the glycerol is converted to explosives of wada In studying the basic blochemistry by wluch living cells live, it is legitimate to argue from what happens to white rus and guinea pigs to what is likely to happen to men. And with only a comparatively few reservations, it can be assumed that, by and largs, what goes on in the cells of microbes will also be occur ring in our own celle Ye there are certain differences which, although they may be accounted of minor importance la biochemistry, often bave an important practical significace. For mstance, one strade of bacterium mry produce a wall amount of a special mod peculiar chemical substance. Clostridian baru Exxon lives in foil and so far undomesticated but it is well I10 ·MICROBE CHEMISTRY known for tho special compound it produces. There is a report in a scientific text-book of a womm who opened a counter of bouled strong beams that abe was going to cook for the funily s dinner Notdog a funny smell about them, ahe took a plece of new bean and pat it in ber mouth. It trusted a bit off, to sbc threw the rest of the bottle away But the plece she had trusted had contained the chemical town produced by Clos tridon boulintoti, oot of the most poisonous tubetanca knowl, md in five boun she was dead Clostridium acutobusy cum u a member of the name family u Clostridimens bonuscom bat merdifully is not endowed with its peculiar chemaal habits. This orginum has been donesticated because it was observed that instead of getting energy by breaking up agar molecules into abobol (that is, ethyl alcohol), 1 two-carbon pubstance, it varied the process and produced butanol (a four-cubos substance) plus soetooo and a miscellancow collection of other material. Thu peculianty in behaviour vous fiost observed in 1861 by Pugeur but it was only 10 1910 that the idea occurred to ane or two reflective sciends that Clostridium cowbatyficum might be tamed and put to work to produce bunnal commercially Lo fact, It needed once again the spur of war before the blocherual philosophers uchdeved an industrial process out of a biological mechanlam. And the operation we put into action not primarily for the butanol but to help relieve the shortage of stone that was bampang the manufacture of cordite used to propel ofle bulled! Today there are large factories in Great Britain, the United States, Canada and bearbers in which thouands of tons of acetone pod of betazol (often used to make spothetic rubber, produced madentally by Clostridin ocenobryficum in lo struggle to live without air, are collected by mankind and pato all part of induial purposes and just with other domestic animals the milk cow the bacon pig or the champion here have employed scientific speciales to breed and train the orgamiens They have now speat years huoting the lovisible world or perhaps it would be better to call it the 111 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE subviable world for Clostridium in such apparently improbable places on the roou of French beans, in stored grain, even on the skin of goosebernes, in search of strains that will produce more acetone and butanol when brought into a factory and fed sugar in the form of my, molasses. Of all the drugs manufactured by the manufacturing drug guts of the Water world today, penicillin is the one of greatest commercial Importance. It even out trips uspion. And yet the fact that it was being produced by a mould floating lavisibly in the atmosphere was only discovered thinty-odd yean ago by Fleming in his laboratory & St Mary's Hospital, London, W.2 The story of the discovery that this particular and rather unimual microbe, Parillaum notation, was muldng this peculiar and most complicated chemical has been told many times. But it is nevertheless worth repeating again When a microbiologist us studying microbes be usually gets them to grow in a shallow layer of gelatin, or simular material, in a glase dlah. Each single microbe grow on the gelatin until, where one microbe wu before-only visible under a microscope-2 colony develops that can be seen with the naked eye. If the microbiologut then picks off this colony with a needle and grow u in a flank of sugar or gelada or broth of como kod, instead of having a mixture of different microbes be bas only one bort. Now in 1929, Professor Fleraing was doing this very thing. He was growing a mixture of bacteda lo one of the aballow dtabes that bactenologists cal 'Petrie plates By accident, however, a mould was flying about in the air of bis laboratory and happened to settle on the dish. And there, like 1 cuckoo segg in a nest of sparrow, it 'hatched and grew into a colony along with the colonies of the microbes Profesor Fleming wanted to grow This sort of thing is a common Laboratory accident And Professor Flemming's ficut rexton ya to do what my normal research worker would have done under the circonstances that put the Petrio dieb into the unk, wash it up and start again. But then be stopped and did what normal rekearch workers often do not do-be looked at the spolled 112 ·MICROBE CHEMISTRY puto and he began so that about what be us and the contudoa he reached was that the mould that had accidentally got in, Powalium notation, vis preventing any other microbe growing Dear it. This meant, so ho itwoned, that it must be producing a chemical of some sort that mopped other microba growing near it. This imknown chemlal he called pemallin Of course, the discovery that penicilan edited was not the cod of the story A great deal of hard work was done by a number of people, just to show that it was difficult rabstance to panfy and wolate for me. Indeed, it wu difficult to deal with and to easily destroyed in the laboratory that for dght yours the ide of malang ise of it at all ww abandoned. Then the we began in 1939. Among a number of others Professor Florey and Dr Chain In Ouford, realtung bow very important it could be in prevendng infection in we wounds began to undertake a serious attempt to get Powaliam notaton to grow to auch a way that reasonable amount of the remarkable chemical it produced could be obtained IA 1944, the fiat commercial applio of pendafilin became available. By 1951 the value of the penicillin produced in the United States alons, which is still the biggest manufactuong country, w 137 million dollars. Today It is wed for all sorts of medical purposes, in some of which it has changed the capire character of a previaaly killing dients, pocumonia for campk, in other of which it does so good at an and is toused in by the physiden for luck (sometimes good luck, sometimes DOL). It is employed in stare quantitio u an addition to ping food or poultry ration to exert w effect, wometimes beful, sometimes doubtful, on the micro-orgaokoms in the digestive tracts of form livestock. And once the discovery of anti biotic rubrance produced by a mould had been made by one of those bo of intuition upon which the progress of conce depends, the swarts of w laser philosophers descended on all the likely and unlikely moulds and micro-organisms to set whether they also make something of use to ourselves. And 113 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE some of them do, as is witnessed by the streptomyain and turcomyains and chloramphenicols and many more. A rather different emple of the domestication of a wild microbe and it hameasing to the industrial chariot of mo contained in the modern history of Ercolecun autta. In 1918 a French botanist was studying a disease affecting the cotton plants in Fresch Equatorial Africa. He discovered that thu discaso was due to a merobe parasite, Erano katon alla. The object of the exercise was to get od of the mcrabe and grow bealthy cotton. Other French botmid got down into the research and in 1935 they noticed that onder som arcum- Aancos the microbe contained quite berge crystals of a yellow substance. They were conas about these crystals and set out purely in the mierests of scientific enquiryanto discover what they were made o£ What was ther surprise ud, I may my, that of the rest of the scientific wood, when it was discovered that they were nuggeth, as it wert, of a pure vitamin This vitamin, now called obodavın, was at one time knowo 13 vitam By. At once, researchers in Japan, m Switzestood and to the United States set to work to see how Eremos hectome ostla could be tumed. It was taken away from its natural babatut on cotton plans in Afria md, just like a wild animal brought into a 200, it was fed on a videty of artificul dless 10 m atempt to discover what it would grow on in captivity Many kinds of regimen were used, raging from ougar with mixture of pure chemical substances added, all the way to a thin broth made of lentils. But today this micro-orgmism shares the fate of the persalin microbe and w grown in grcat venele in large factories. And when it has been grown the vitamin is attracted from it and can be sold by the pound. In 1948, more than 139,000 lb went mufactured in the Umted States alone and used either to improve human diets, 3 2 mediane for people soffering frown vitamun deficiency, or in inimal and poultry-feeding rations We are generally aware that the whole of biological creation bin a state of dynamic equihbrium. If tbe Red Indims are given 114 ·MICHOBE CHEMISTRY niles and with then exterimate the buffalo the equlfibnum between buffalo and Red Indians is opeet. If the European rabbit u introduced into the Australasian continent, its numbers will increase until a biological balance s once more struch And man too is in balance with the microbes. They brak down bis sevge and fax nitrogen for his crops. Some sewage organlama tven do work for him. Melanobacter ondansku can split the molecular substance of wet dead leva on mahes md produce the inflammable methado o coc of the by products of the reaction. Sounctimes the ignited gus altering to the twilight will give a will-o the wisp or 'jack o lantern The idea of wing the gw to do work was first brought to practical fraction, wo for I am were, in 1897 when the gas coming off xwage tanks in the somewhunt unexpected environment of a leper colony la Matunga in Bombay vu collected sad used to deve a gre engine. At about the ame time the municipal authoddies in Exeter in Devonshire bed this one microbe chemistry for heuting nd lighting. In 1927, the engine wed to work the bewage duposal plant la Birmingham were nm on the methane produced in the plant itself while in Essen the gus was piped into the town mados for cooking and lighting All this butaess we have been documing to the few pages of this chapter arrely represent a rubanitial achievement la thinking. Although Antoni van Learvenboek fiot uw the yout mucrobo m 1080 ft və only a hundred years ago (wbien railways had already been uvented and the modern industrial go was getting into full swing) that Low Puteur realised that there was a world of invisbly small creature all tround uAnd not only dad bo predate-gunst strongly en trenched contrary opinion, be it widthat there creators could barn us unles recither tamed, confined or exterminated thoma; u as we have tamed, confined or terminated the European lion, the wild boar und the wolf of the larger visible world, but he also had the intuibon to see that the Invisible creatures might be dowentheted and be made to yield where 115 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE mlik or other appropriate secretion. Now, dotted about all over the country we can see the guunt walls and towang chimney stacks of industrial alcobol plants, penicilin factores, manufacture of industrial solvents, or sewage worloom and remember that they are all corded on the toiling shoulders of the lule micrabe people who bye in the intentices of the word in which we live and think 116 ·II AIR NOWADAYS, In this age of science, we expect the food we eat to be processed. Indeed, without the modern developments in artifdal fertilizens to increux crop yields, without the dem coveries of plant geneties to create varieties of wheat capablo af growing in northern latitude of Canada where no wheat ever grow before, without chemical actidda mod systematic Weed-killers to prevent loves there would not be enough food to go round. And without the techniques of amning refrigeration, dehydration and preservadon by various menu it would not be posuble to distnbute accenfully the food we have to the crowded populations of our present mban civilisation Similarly, with dothing, none of the natural fibres which ve me in tanula are left in their native state. Wool o defutted, bleached, dyed and blended. The production of cotton is even more technical Tho baaedology of the vietting is a mbject for a PhD them. And beyond all these, of course, we DOW have so-called man made, or artificial, fibres. Artificial al or it's por politely termed, myon made from sudu bas been with us for a congderable time, aylan b gradually 117 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE becoming a familiar watedal, urdll from peanuts will soon fulfil some of the functions of wool, od terylene and parlos, to can only two are knocking at she door All are products of modern sicrct. Three of the primary objects of ma i mndezvour on this carth are the province of food, dothing and shelter Shelter could be defined as the creato zround oneself of 10 artificial environment more suited to opes comfort than that of the Furrounding out-of-doon. The fire in the centre of the bar mbal ball soon gave place to the more avitused fireplace. But * We who live in northern lantudes know very well, this is not a completely soufactory answer to the problem of providmg comfortable surroundings. It is interesting to recall that turing the agreetub and nineteenth centuries a great deal of Identific effort wa devoted to the improvement of fireplace Many of the carles parenus deal with improved chimay por and other devices to prevent fires from smoking Today, it u reasonable to believe that even the long muffering Bruuuh are becoming dinantisfied with a systems of waoining the environment that, while miagating tiso mort excreux rigours of the cunate, fails to svod a large semure of cold and draughty discomfort and is accompanied each year by « wholesale destnikaon of water-pipes by frost wd a fervoro contaminaton of the outdoor atmosphere. Just as we apply science and technology to our food and to our clothing so can we with equal logic apply the same kind of modern koowledge to the air we consume. Cvilised man considen that almost all of his food needs to be processed and cookedhe Will be not to the future refuse to take his air ? Before the 1939-45 war about 200 million dollar worth of machinery for ar conditioning was sold u the United Sater cach year Most of this, however wus for factories and 20414 merdal buildings By 1933, eke magninde of the business land mapanded to 1,700 taillion dollatspore than esght time : ALLAH ad about a quditor of this was for domestic inc. The duaracteristic protuberance of a packaged air cooler sticking 138 ·AIR out from the window all in a block of fats bas become in Amenica s important a social symbol and carentul a feature of the good life as has a televsion sedal for the Baush semidetached home. There are vtnow types of domestic air-conditioning plants on the market in Amenca. A mall, two-borsepower mit- the so-caled 'window-box-cost about £100 and deals with the aur in a ringle room. A bigger one of aboat fifteen hostepower, looking like a giant refdgerator will cope wlth a small hotel And then there are several types of central ar-conditionmg syente which will cool the whole atmosphere of a private houc m summer and warm it in wloter It is estimated that, justo all good boues in the Unsted States tre now equipped with central heating, within five you at least half the new holdes bullt will have air condidoning as well It is only within the bort bandred years that we have sedously begun to apply science to our lives and cow that, at lat, after dealing with food and clothing We aro beglamng to cope with the drcumambient atmosphere which is our sbelter things are bound to go with a nat. A beste premtee of science to that sothing is ever lost. For emple, If one warms a room with a radiator, the heat guned by the room is merely troferred from the water in the papes Controvic, when the air in a refrigerator la cooled, the warmth from the ar a derely takon up by the colla in the refrigerator The basic ad simple patoaple having been recognned, it was merely a matter of Identific thinking for there to be invented a new device about which we are certain to bear a great deal more before long. Thub the so-called 'heat pump One of the first of those to be installed was in the Festival Hall in London. When the hall gets too hoy, the machinery is put to rock and the heat is, as it were, pumped out Becane wicace decreas that nothing can do appear mio notung, the hou baas to go pomewhere-md it goes to winto the diver Thane Should the Hall be too cold, the pump can warm It by going into reverse and extracting some bent from the river. For a 119 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE private boute, a maching of the wine bort 11 now available capable of pumping best out of the refrigerator to the butchern and knoc keepung the food coldand delivering it into the deaming room which is by this tocans kept arm. Unfortisim ately, up to the present, beat pumps are still somewhat ox pensive to run in the domestic home. Nevertheless, when, We woon must, we overcome the iniman ucrtia which we have inherited from our presentific ancestors, the equipment for procesung the au around u u ar kind. The educated man o view #to whether aru or is ssot good for him bave fixtuated quite widely during recent times la the early tuneteenth century, Emma e father Mr Woodhoun was kortified that anyone should be morah - to open window whereas in the following century members of the same clam of English society canned consterrution throughout Europe and beyond by using in the teeth of local oppod dior that malway carriage wiadows should never be closed cxccps, of course, when passing through a tunnel. Sesentific oprnion but also shows the vapabiliry Barcly a generation ago there were seriou decussions as to whether a place was relaxing or 'bracing Assd many a Kaside resort made great play with the bealthful smell of ozone on it beach unit gradually became apparent that it was not oronc but docuyo Kaweed. The Batah, belatedly followmg in the wake of all other dvilued counties of dmlar baditude, have a lot reached the conclusog that ft u reasonable to make the air in which they Live comfortable. It has been estimated that, fucking from the present tale of progress, Anacricas bom in 1950 may apect to spend their entire lives in an au-conditioned armosphere 2 bome, at school, at work and in all places of micrtainment at every reason of the yeus The Anglo-Saxonis do not crport to strieve so complete a degree of testurcal control o 100 nos muy they wab to do so. There is cause, borever, to take the matter beroruly Disagreeable features of untreated ar arise from auks 110 ·AIR other than the weather The Boosh damexic hearth, with its allegedly cheerful coal-fors, rowded though it may be for pourtahrog solid vimies, consumo a great deal of solid fod and contributes some gog,000 tonsaboat half the total to the noual output of Batish smoke. The smokeles dones estab- Hibed by the dry fathers of Manchester, Coventry and other places only apply to focostry and commerce and have little concen with home fires As a general rule the tobabitants of great town rest manage to chablish a worlable modus verandi with their orban atmosphere. In the London ares, for example, the normal concentra tion of poke between Westminster und Beckton in December may reach eventy milligrams of smoke per cubic metre and twenty parts of sulphur diodde per 100 million without cause ing comment. But in December 1953, a scdes of meteorological coincidence cubed the upoke and sulphur dlande to increase five-fold and 4,000 people were billed. Although some of these were old people who, a va pointed out by certain commentton who wiabad to avoid causing alon, belonged to the category of those who were going to due to my event - oten were infant or merely sufferers from bronchita It was recorded by Jobs Evelyn some time ago that the Bddich wrap ther atos in a hellish md digna dloud of se coale In spite of a wenlos of ineffective legislative gesturo voce Evelyn « dmc, culminattog in the Beave report of 1954 which confirm the fact that air pollution is an evil which should Do longer be tolerated' it is probable that the degree of conmination has grown beavier through the centuries. The blackness of the building md tho state of the atmosphere would have shocked our pre-medustrial forefuben very much It a fortunate that the twentieth-century duzemu can at least will be abocked at their predecesson drains Artificial media created by sarence 200 here to stay to rupplement the rool and cotton, fex md leather of artculture In certain respects, nylon mad the rest are an improve meat on nature. Processed foods are afer, more stable and 121 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE ofteo more nourishing than the natural article. The taste of tioned pineapple o not quite cke same that of the raw frint bat mommy people consider it ua ricer With malogies such as these ready to hand, we surely cannot avoid the conclusion that processed air is safer, more agreeable, more sweet smehng and in every way better than the medium to be found in the twendeth-century out-of-doon. The domestic air-condhationer is obviowly going to take its place with the refrigerator, the washing machine, the infra red cooker and the television : ewential to divilised hfe. All the evidence shows that in the new technological age the widespread suspicion of fresh air is justified. Science has been applied to the study of air in many other ways than fwt to consider its qualities as a comfortable menm for human enesteocc. Air has been lquefied udised » a refrigerant for nibetroces that require to be cooled to low temperatures. It u now being used as a fuel for rockets. The separate components of air bave been bouled off one by ooe in just the one way that the brzody is borted off wine when it is dustilled. And so the oxygen, the nitrogen, the argon, the belrum and other rare gres, only discovered to cost on earth after they had already been identified by their spectra o editing in the fun and other ears, burve been reparated. It is a very characteristic feature of scientific thinking, u I have mentioned once or twice before, to condder facts and observations in the absolute, as it were. We ordinary mortab are always modifying the wry we recognise facto by a whole series of atruneous condderations that really have no bearing on the matter in hand. My dear says the grand lady refeonng ber perty of the night before, there was nobody there at all. But nobody! She does not mem, of course, that the room was empty but maely that there was nabody present whom she considered to be important for a very long time the back maker and the concrete manufactures, like the pociety leader ber party would have ignored glass os being merely some thung to look through or make bottles out of. To the scenda, to 122 ·AIR ito tensile strength, comprensibility, la vaght mod hen rozstant qualitas can be asuessed along with the quarties of other substance to see whether it fitted to bo med as a building material. Nowadays, the physical properties of air have been mened in a like manner td it b being med us rast one more raw matemal on the basis of its mechanlal strength. At one time the ponubility of constructing a hetver-than-ar machine capable of flying was con dered to be a remote as the idea of an iron ship. But the maccessful experiment baving been came out, the scientists have now collected a large amount of data on the precare properties of air us a supporting medium Alr, like concrete, does not poster much tensile strength bur is valuable an account of its remince to compresion. Modern automatic processes in Industry require vudety of mechanical devices to which power ba transmitted in such a ny that they can pick up, put down, turn over und generally move about the components that are undergoing the process of manufacture. There tongi aod graba md pubers and pallens can be powered by means of rods of wires. But in matry arcumstances it b found more convenient to move them aboat by roda (or colomus, if you prefer to think of them Auch) of ar. At one time the braka of malwry traina md berry commendal vehida were worked by mers of metal rods or wiro cable Nowadays the amo vock to more conveniently chkeved by using or as the material transmitting power to the braket Professor A. M. Richardson of the University of Illmous bas recently in a soking manner taken advmage of the mechanical properties of ar to me it a structural material When the Affocus of or was considered to a socadfic manner od compared with that of other mbstances, it was found that it could be employed as a filling for poreumatic balco The brico are tomgular about three feet on each ade and four faches that. The air is packed in at a pretsure of two pounds per square ince and is kept la pbce by an outer skin of a 113 1 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE platte sich Mylas, polyethylene of San Needless to say, the poemade bricks, though found to be strong, ao very mauch Eguces than Woventional bocks and can be used, for rampk, to contract very brge dotes Entrety ssew postin bilities in houses, shools, fore and commercial and factory bulldings may be provided by the bricks, water the techniscal jlowal teporting Professor Richardson e profette It wo macls of rar dextect, Asanty pleasure above muk cores of the Barthe scientific achievements in the use of air as a sinctural material, whether for building purposes, for the working of machinery for pupporting zooplasses or collecting the dust off carpets, are not by any means of equal interest to those that have taken place in our understanding of the fuoction of air for breathing. The active constituent of ur is the oxygen in it. Almor * woon as oxygen wat ducovered to exun at all a major advance in scientific philosophy occurred with the repompon that the wapping together of carbon and oryges was one of the basic chemical source of all energy on earth. Every schoolboy now know that when you warm up a thub Hick of wood botter and hottes, suddenly a point u reached when the carbon of the wood and the orygea of the ait begin voriously to combine together and go on doing so with great an evolution of hede energy that we see a flame. In 2780, Larouler, the first than to apply the balance and the thermometer to the laveugiat t100 of the phenomenon of kfe, opened the modern art of the wence of biological rengetic La vie est une foncton chimique be said. And he meatured the stmount of sygea consumed by a man excha hour and related to the food cont amod, the work done and the temperature and from thu ho that hfe was indeed a fame in which cabon b burned in oxyger. The carbon come from food, the arygen from as and the bounts of each can be mcapired Lavoisier's flash of inught was to understand that life wa a ·AIR burning, but slow and controlled burning compared with the abrupt and catastrophic chemistry of fire at 70o C. Food is only the half of tife Without ar, with its active filling of ouygen the combustion of the carbon in food cannot proceed. Twenty youn or so zgo a number of those who had worked with Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins at Cambridge combined together to celebrate ho seventy-fifth birthday Each of them wrote an entry touching on some aspect of the new ideas on life that this one man sidens bad in whole or in part Imbuated. One of bu disciples, Albert von Szent-Györgyi, by then pro fessor in the Univeraty of Szeged in Hungary wrote about the glimmedings of a fresh conception of bow ur und 10 orygen words in our tiesuesWhat Szent-Györgyi wrote aboat a new in the fourth decade of the century can now be seen in the Aah to be only part of m degint untry of blologlal mechanbeen attending from the times of me to the lerves of the pink flovering glaucus stone-crop Szent-Györgyi wrote that whatever a cell does bas to be paid for in the currency of energy If there is no free energy available there ta po life. The mimal cell docs not generate its own energy It obtains energy ready-mado from outside in wall parcel which are the molecules of foodstuffs. The cell knows two methods of getting the energy out of these moleculex it ather fragments them or bums them. The fint mebod is fromcamation. Lt be much the simpler of the two processes but at the ame time it is very uneconomical enco tho gretter part of the energy still remains undistributed. In the fermentation carried out by living yeast cello not very active creatores the residual energy is left unused (by tho yoo) la the alcohol remaining. Similarly, the white who runs a bundred yards without drawing breath-1 all good sprinters do-goes into crygen debt and leaves most of his fuel unburnt la the form of batc sad. The way fermentuion works is pretty well known. Tho pitting of the food molecules to place lo a member of Magan The energy is released bit by bul Phosphate in the 125 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE Hving cells us intimately concerned in the procen mod worto like the twiting ad untvirting of rubber bands to transmit the energy as it is therated. The process of fermentation doo not require alr aod the axygen it comes. There is little doubt that it is one of the older processes of life capable of matotaining only the emplest kinds of orginum. The develop ment of more completed md pretentious forms of life became possible only after Nature discovered ondation by molecube orygen, brought to the living cells by the air that bo the topic of discussion in the chapter The course of event is still reflected in our own cells, lo which we find ouidation and fermentation intimately mired and woven into one combined energy-producing system. About thirty times as much energy is released by oddation. It has been found that in order to coable us to make use of orygen in our times we possess a whole group of peculiady reactive substances in our cells cach of which forms i connected seach. And these enzymes, as they are temed, tre brought to bear on a sense of substances that form and re-form as a kind of cyclical conveyor syutem. The nature of these compounds only differs in a subtle way the clegmace of the chemistry can be appreciated by a chemist with the same tball of delight felt by a sensitive reader who fint reads a new poem- from the simpler substances lo the fer mentation system. But these differences allow the wo of air, that u of its oryger, to unlock energy for life. This simple condusion wrote Szent-Györgys gave me the greatest mental atisfaction which I have operienced in my life # 1 xdentific worker. That is why I per offer it to Sir F G Hopkins. I would like to end by giving pression to my mout docere desire that ouddation and fermentation alike may long continue to interact harmoniously in the cells of our beloved Since 1937, when this was written, the philosophy of bilo chemical science has undergone yet another trasformarlo. The respiration cycle by which weergy is released bad been known to include a round dozen of separate pubstances cach 126 ·AIR differing by coc chemical stage from the best. Each of these had been Identified and its place in the proces Bured. Then, within the best five you or so it seemed as if too muy sub- Stamces were to be found. The mechanion that made biological Ilfe dick in air had been taken apart and pint together wgnio, but now there were several little wheeks left over Gradually, from * dumber of confusing observation of different types of living celle, olmalı, yeasts, plants, in reports coming from different unvendte it beym to be apparent that a new system of energy release existed, supplementary to that glimpsed by Szent Gyorgyl and his contempor inch Among the unwited substances identified wo a peculiar compound called redo-beptulose This had been first discovered by a botanist and wus isolated from the leaves of the pink flowering glance stone-crop Sedo-bcpoulose collects m the larves when the gun shinar on there but disappemos a night. Here there was a clue. Our own colls, those of an insect, a yeast cell or of a leaf all share much of the ame mechanism In the leven, Nature bos branged a mno of enzyme that build up the umple sugars synthebed by the am and form them eventually into the complex materiab we wo thought Learly eat. Sedo-bepmlow is one of the intermediate substances m the chemical chain by which plants manufacture Angar from cubon dioodde gm. The hying leaf cell powestes among all in enaymes one that give rise to sedo-heptulose and one that nkes this further into the post ange of sugar synthetaThus the living pbat arutes sugar But when we eat it wo break it down again, first by the simple systems of fermentation and then udlag air and the first type of respiration cycle. Latest stage of all in our cvolutory development, we we in our own bodies some of the same enzymes possessed by the plant. But whereas the green leaf ma a cena of linked reactions to build up Riger, with the energy of the sun to make the process go md the strange subesincs, sedo-heptuloss, un intermediate #gs, -t now appearmte use of some of the one 127 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE strzym and bave in our issue the same intamediary when more break down sugar and merry out of it again. A wise man once said that all thought and philocophy was foloed together in onze lang strand like a ball of wool, that one hand only to pall steaduly ze ooke end and all den and know ledge would eventually be drawn oul. If thus be so, we caught do Wone for the philosophical scientist thas give him air ·I2 THE DEDICATED CELL WHEN I was a child, forty or to year ago, and used to ask the sort of questions children do for comple, 'When a pommes art in half, bow do the separated parta bow whether to grow a new head of a new tall people used to tell me, That as one of the raysteries we are not intended to understood. Nowadayı we all know that science wonderful and can answer every question. Or to put it more roomly, the philosophy that we of the automatic age belleve te that there is no subject that coot bo examined by the sciennfic method with the hope that--even if some time momst elapse ve may cventually apect to reach an answer But it is not so very long ance 1905 It was in that year that Emstein come to the conclusion, solely based on charte, chat mass and energy might be interchangeable. This process of thought could be folloved by my apable matbemand with 1 sump of pencil and a piece of paper Ios perhaps unnecessaoly dramatic confirmation ras demonstrated to the world & Hiroshion. Today we know so much about the phyacal structure of matter that we can either tate it apart--od set 129 ·NOTHING LIFE SCIENCE op a Calder Hall-or put it together, ung, ay, hydrogen a Bikini or in the north west of Australia. Nature and Natore s low , wrote Alemnder Pope, bay hid m night; God nid, La Never bel und all was hght. That is to wy, three hundred year ago or so, Isac Newton fitted together the mass of unco-ordinated information then edisting about phyna lato a lovial system. Ever since, pbyna bers been to a large degree a tidy und logically atiefying brioch of science. By the end of the eighteenth century, chemistry a well va macred to that territory of scientific knowledge over which the tidy minded human tntellect could, without cices stve concet, daim dominion. It is mteresting (and perhaps encouraging * well) to notice bow there were amoog the mioda that bave cried w forward into the present state of scientific enlightenment, those who were devout and religioul Einstexo vas, as we know, a fervent believer in peace. And in chemostry, Joseph Priestley, whose contribution to the doscovery of orygea was of major importance in the history of wcientific thinkdng, made Birmingham too hot to hold him by reason of his perfervid Low Church view us a clergymn. John Dalton who, so to speak, invented chemical formulae and thus rendered the manipulation of chemical idese rational and manageable was a linker The latest branch of chemistry to achieve the status of a more or less completed set of dogma, capable of bang tugtu to undergraduates on the accepted Truth, with a capital T, blochemistry This advance on the baci ground of knowledge wluch for the intellectual environment of the scientist today I now and like Darwin : Ongoa of Spectu in its dayworth constring for the ordinary non-scientist Benidos which, it forns the spongboard for a discussion of celle It b difficult for scienfic people of the 1950's to put themselves into the powtion of ther equals of the 1850 But it is highly plutary for thera to do so from time to time. About a hundred year ago there was so understanding of the nature of disease. All the knowledge about infection that 13р ·THE DEDICATED CELL rt ake in our stride today only began to be discovered in 1860 or thereabouts by Lous Postar. And anol about the sue date it was generally believed that living bodies were not componed of the same structural staff as the other things In the world, but were compounded of a qecial vital force But when donists constructed in their laboratono whan bad butharto been considered to be strictly animal substances it could be aid that blochemistry had been botn. This new branch of clence started in a quiet way Chemical substances m Tying taua were identified one by ope. The pancipal components of womab md plans were gradually isolated in more and more detail protein, the structural sub- Rance of muscular toe, was studied and found to be composed of a momic of nitrogen-containing amioo acids, fat-coatin ing tiponda were favestigated, mod the nature and ridery of carbohydrates Ilsted mod docketed. More and more substuces became available for mclusion in the appropriate chapters of text-bools to be learnt by succendive generation of student. Strabo, comopla componend of certum fats, como into the pictures boomond and entrymes secreted by spectalised glands such as the thyrord, the liver, the suprarenale, the pancreas the duodemim and other parts of the digestive mouachinery were caracterired one by one. Then came tho vitamin As the cleotific tool because sharper and better analytical techniques became available the understanding of what all these things were doing to living uroe began by fits and starts to eroorge. Then, foot u Newton became able to digest the facts of physics, and Davia to unify the ridety of zoology so, in the more specialised field of blochemistry is become porble to glimpso the ordered chemical movement that was keeping blological Lfo going. Now that we live in a historical period when we aspect a Dew scientific discovery to be announced every year or to it la cay to lose our sense of wonder. But it would be unimaginaive in the cutremne if vc failed to recognise that this new bochortical revoluson is an important milestone un buman thought! 131 ·NOTRING LIKE SCIENCE But there have been one or two pecilias serbicia in thos triumphant march of remurgent biodermtry For instance, there was the peculiar cose of the cholesterol to the bele of the buppopotamus. During the descriptive plase of biochemistry the substance chalanol was discovered in bik, the digestive juice produced by the liver And it was granfying to early invention gaton to observe that into whichever animal they looked cholesterol was to be found mits bile. But then came the check! A great hand-book of physiological chemistry, # it was called, carne out in which the chanical composition of the bile of a long serve of beasts wita reported. In all of them but 00€, cholesterol was duly listed. Only in the bed of the hippo potamı ww it stated to be absent. For votac year, camination candidater, dredging the shal low of miscellaneous information for mark produang pearha of wisdom, wed to treasure this extraordinary arabestia ca the part of Creation. Until upon the timely death of a hippan potamus in the London Zoo, the matter what reinvestigueda Then, u might have been prognosticared, the coolesterol panty fiz venty, discovered in is buit. Apparently, she first trit book writer had, in all diligente, lasted cvery simal about whose bile information was available and found the moforma don mif oor the cholesterol lacking for the hippopotamus. It only required a subsequent scientific author to mixplirase * single sentence for the rumous about so prominent a animal to be tarted oo its courses But this was just a dople on the citing ade of biochemistry Seventy years of topo Darwin and the great baturalists of the sunseteenth ceomry told us how we got here on earth We xe Duox, they said, angels, but musely members of the mimal kingdom wbo owe our special powers to the process of evolution. Todry blachonigry, with equal murasse, tells us bow we work. The animation of lying is not a special We forer It is an explicable set of chemical reactions requiring a recognisable fudd for its operation. And, butent discovery of all, 132 ·home THE DEDICATED CELL biochemitry is now proposting to expbm how it ba we are like Present in the nucleus of all Aving cell is a special compound called deoxyribomcek acid'-DNA for abort. (Once upon a time, chemical compounds were given uitval names, like hependine, ionope or obturatic acid. Now that scientific logic dermods that we give them systematic names, there is a gun In meaning but, onfortunately, a loss to cophony) Thu goff ponend 20 tramente molecule, the atomic structure of which bs in the form of two cocktiews twined together Experi mental evidence is grachnlly accruing that it is this DNA that trantoio bereditary characteristics from one generation to another At the Royal Society • Cooremaone, held in London to 1954, there was a mode of a molecule of DNA. It portrayed the hellcal coll, eich consisting of at least a thousind twitts md made up of finks of phosphate, a rather womal agar, Abone, and a group of nitrogen-coonining boxes uranged and Tounged in a sequence of code words, as it were. Thb code, Te are now to suppoee, spela out what kind of cell oar cells are to be. It b interesting to see the odd parallelion between the way biochemimo ze beginning to viurlike this loog, varied mod twisted tape of DNA and the way in which, in quite a different field of thought, physices are todayvery much in the public eye-cong a not widely dissimilar urmgement. The modern electronic computer is capable of doing a long senio of quite complicated thingu It th, within the limit to which it Is daugned, capable of meeting a variety of external challenges And it u prepared to correct its own mooker in within the fimdos ofis berilt-in capabilide The memory wout of this may be a magnetic tape or drum. Such a drum , tike the DNA moleculs in the living gens, a belle containing a vaded pattern in code that tells a whole factory it may be, what to do. The pattern on the memory' dnom i laid on by disturbing the molecular angement magneocally The partem of a DNA moloculo In a Livmg cell, consisdag of the 133 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE Order 10 which the molecular groups are strong together, it derived from the came pattern in the mother cell from which it was derived. We might argue that of a man-made macune aan already work out P.AY.. od pay the wages, play a game of chen, mod make motor-cars, there u no reason why such a machine should not be made able to reproduce itself. If a Autably patterned magnetic tape can enable it to do this, a sulrably composed DNA molecule can make another cell like itself The electronic computer that is set up to do accounts, or to control the mammfacture of motor-cart-or of other electronic computer programmed by a man who has denigred It to perform its purpose. But who has designed the DNA molecules, in all it clegant complexity, for its puspored Sciendat can give some sort of an aswer to this question. The DNA molecule is produced by the parent call from which u came. And this parent was in its tum the child of the evolutionary proces by which living thing of increasing complodty bave been de veloped through the ages. Puranng the matter still further, the scientit now has a hypothesis to explain the origre of bilan logical life. The hypothesis is sopported on quite reasonable evidence and some experimental observadons as well. In 1952 Miller in the University of Chicago succeeded to demonstrat ing the synthesis of amino acids, the basic constituents of proteit, from water, hydrogen, ammonia and methane on the presence of ultra-violet light. These goas and this fight could be found in un uninhabited plmet. Biology, a 1 science, o in the middle of a vista to which the cvolutionary process, which can perhaps be defined in bref us fitness for purpose, show inorganic goa progressdng forward to the most complex forms of life. In the other direction, back wards that a, the astronomers see the blology of stars bydra gets atoms constantly being created in the apanding miverks, stans being bom, living out their lives in the correously slower ame-scale of this astro-biology and finally, it appears, dymoto become the days, cold, dark bodies now known to be ·THE DEDICATED CELL Hanglog mest m space Bat with all this knowledge at hand prudent centrare not so odve a to believe that they done in sight of the mawer to the question of bow the DNA molecule became what it is Today the biologists Low a great deal about what happens when cells become fertilised, about bow they begm to develop in thor euly wages, and about what can bo donc to interfere with their development by opennental means x each stage of the growth of the creature that is developing. There is no ahortage of theories aber The genes' to the audiews of the cells here power to influence bor those cells divide and what they become. And the chemical nature of the rest of the colla od the kind of environment in wbach the whole system is livlag ecert, for thelr port, a reciprocal influence on what the nuclen does. Biologuts knot quite a lot about the geography of the single fertibbed cell The part of the cross they ao ay s going to min into a foot ood this part into a bead. And then they can add some foreign watedal ac ant the egg about and make two legs or two heads for that matter grow where Nature intended there to be only one. They can define m tadtvidaution field in an embryo, which is the area capable of turning into a forelimb, Let u uy and nothing coe Or they com Identify an organisation centre which make other thenes grafted near it turn into whatever kind of those the particular bullt-in arginint may be argenting, perhaps neste colle But to spot of all this knowledge, blology us a science that ball to the descriptive phone. There are some btologlas obo think that it always will be. But this is perhaps moduly pesa mit Be that as it may la spite of what seems to be very probe and definite biochemical Information, in spite of detuled knowledge of the function of phosphate in the cell as the basis of vital chargy, and even cow that the enormot, complex make-up of the nucleic acids that shape the chemial pattern of Üning has been etuddard yet the vague blologal concepts of gooes, orgzaben und sopbons may aplon what the buologa ces jus curately or fue bazily if ve see it 135 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE better that ways the superficially more precise terms of biochemistry Newton sin of motion, briled so cothusiastically by Pops, were in fact 1 dmphfication of the truth About this simpliaty J C. Squire wrote, 'It did not last, the Devil, bowling Hal Let Einster bed restored the status quo. The establlahment of biochemistry as a science on its own right has been a remark ablo development in intellectual thought. The understandmg of the chemistry of bow hfe works is a major achievement of the human mind. And the elucidation of the structure and probably the function as well of DNA preages great thing to come. But, before we becomo too bogat in our scientific fuccessen, we fall have with us some few remaining students of what used to be called natural history to tell us that biology 1 a scence as well as chemistry And even if we know all about one, we certainly bave not begin to know all about the other Here for us to wonder over, in a single cell irrevocably dedicated to in future. A rogls, fertile call only property viable under the microscope. It divides, and dividers und grow organs, and specialised tisses, and geta larger 11 by itself in a pood, or an egyrhell, or a wombind becomes whatt A frutt ftyr An elephant A man' And the 64,000-dollar question remains to be answered. once it has started, bow does it know what to do next Now we have travelled a very long way towards being able to answer this question. The mswer is certainly going to be a great deal more comparted than we at one time supposed The immense ero of such substances o deoxyribonucleic acid and their posibility of ovlading in uw many pennotations and combinations u a football-pool coupon makes the chance of being able to solve an individual problem som ubat remote Nevertheless, the purpose of this chapter u to show how very far in this fundamental field of biology the scientific unda tanding of the face of ble has progressed. Indeed, we cantato pride in the abstantial advance of scientific knowledge that has been actieved. To my mind, however, the solution of 136 ·THE DEDICATED CELL material problems, even much complex ana o the nature of the built-in gundence that directs the ultimato development of a grovmg cl, 3 not the most important challenge to dece. In my view, the top problem u how to bring the truly immenso depth of scientific knowledge about Nature that our new tools and increasing perlence ore adding to every day into homony with the other philosophies by which we live Let De give me example. La parald with the studies of the embryological development of creatures from their original cells that wo have been diectondng in the last few pages, there has also been a lot of work on the factoas affecting growth in animals and those that imfference the ultimate ageing of the creature and it length of le. I will take coe aspect of this In 1955 a long seros of brilliant rexcarchas reached a triumpbaat conclusion Lo a crowded lecture room in Brussel separate romanches of three groups of Batish chemists, of a chemical team in the United States, and of a new type of X may crystallography done at Oxford were seen each to support the manne coochinion about the chemical configuration of vitamin B Tho romantic chain of events had been us follows, Tho dieze penidous anaemia was first shown in 1926 10 be due to the back of active factor obtainable from llver Hence, to keep alive, a woffezer from pernidous enacrnla needed to eat causeatingly large moms of live every day Efforts were made to concentrate the active pubstanco froin Iver and gradually more mond more potent preparalons vero prepared. At but in 1948, after twenty-two yen work, tho pure substance, sot called vlomin B was obtained. Me gifted chemist who first obtained a few milligrams of it from Focne tons of liver succeeded where lemer men had failed becalisa he had the simple yet commonerse sumca to norko tlur active preparations rere always red. Consequently in carrying out wuccessive process of purlication bo always collected the red fractions, and by systemadolly puoadng ebe red colour be va finally rewarded 137 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE The purpose of the work on vitamin Bs was the treatment of perniaou wema, and this purpose wa safely achieved. Bat within a year of the discovery it was shown that when page or chickens were fed on wholly vegetable diets with vitamin Bus added their rate of growth was markedly accelerated Non speed of growth is obviously a good thing for a furmer who, m the twentieth century, is occupied in applying the most upto-date sentific methods to the manufacture of meat. So, spurred on by the hope of glittering economic prizes, pharmaceutical manufacturers and universty research director * well-tet ther scentists to work to find the most economic Rources of vitamin By It was soon found that a cheaper and more convenient source of the vitamin than liver was the by product left over from the manufacture of the mtibiodc drugs, streptomyan and wurcomycio. But whilo vitamin B, concert traites prepared from these residues were being tested, It was quite unexpectedly discovered that the antibiotias themselves abo possessed a stimabring affect on growth. Now, berddos baving vitamin Bu to feed to pugo and chickens to couke them grow fouter, the up-to-date agoculturale can also add pentcillin, aureomycin, terramyan or bacitracin, and it can be fed pot only to chickens, but to nokeys pign, or su for that matter a well Scence is an excellent and effective philosophy us long = 1 dar purpose, prefembly some obvious material objective, la to be almad at. As I have just said, the farmers purpose is to manufacture bacon, porck and poulty u economically o be can Provided, therefore, that the continuow addition of antiblotia to their food is not going to encourage the emergence of struts of pathological bacteria resistant to antibiotics that will then infect the pig med poultry and perhaps the people who later on eat them, it is obviously to overyone s advantage to encourage their maro apid growth in this way But being seen the effect of vitamin B, uod antibiotic drugs on the mato of growth of mumais, the scienttfic pbydologbt next extended his scope to study their effect on children. It has already been 138 ·old was THE DEDICATED CELL reported from the United States that the addition of vitamin Bit to the diet of children makes them grow more quickly Tobaba have been made in Great Britain and, it seems, abandoned not because the Batuh kentists do not want the Halldren to grow quicker but because they did not find that the Vitamin Bu had my effect on making them do so According to the late Mr Stephen Lancock, a average English womun i s feet at ioches tall, weighs 8 stone 6 pounds, has ope and three-quarten children and lives in the middle of the Bostol Channel Be that u it may, the average Glasgow schoolgld of ning yeads in 1955, 4 feet 3 incha tall od weighed 4 Hone 6 pounds. In 1913 when the Corporation of Glogow first began to mentre children, the Motle glit's average mother a nine year old was only 4 feet tall and weighed 3 stone 124 pounds Now a great deal of scientific thought has been given to the problem of how to make the Gbagow schoolchidren bigger and much of the increase in the stze of the little average nine-year-old glo o utributed to scientific natrioon. But although every one in the 1950: bas no doubos that to be kepper is to be better, very httle thought or no thought ut all has been given to the reason for this belle As I have said before, science, a currently concerved, can only deal with ooc thing < 1 time. Of course, the child is not really bon What has happened us that she has got bigger quicker In fact, a nie years old sbe to physically, and probably mentally as well, Identical with her grandmother of Ir yena old. And now there is the new scentific information about vitamin By and animate that enables in to che ber to grow even Erstes But for once mother outcrop of new scientific knowledge has appeared that may throw an unexpected doubt into the miod of the orthodox one-problemuturime scientific philosopher. If you keep water-flers und by restricting their food apply cause them to grow more slowly thom they otherwise would they live about p per cent longer. Similarly if you feed the larvae of the caterpillan of Lymestra dispu only every other 139 ·NOTHING UKE SCIENCE day, they also bve longer One can QIRI tu pandple into various parts of the zoological jungle. For example, teks, Domaceitor vanabis, wil live for two years or more provided that they do not get any sackfuctory feeding Ono let them attach theolves to an adequate beast, borreve, ud they will Over-eat and die within a few week I referred earlier to the classical periment of Dr Clive McCay at Cornell Unverdry He showed that if the young sts were given a balesced diet with the total amount restricted, thar length of life tu very greatly increased. There seems to be httle doubt that the general biological evident all leads to the conclusion that a 'high plane of nutntion m early Hfe merely accelerates the passing of youth and xhortens the toul Lific span. Professor McCance of Cambridge beats pointed curbat mother who have been living on a bow plane of aurrnon have babies that both anatomically and physiologically poakes a biological age younger than thar anleder agen. He said, # We my that the phrynological age of the bones of European children in 1946 could be increased in one calendar year by the equivalent of two years ageing when they were given a changed dies providing valimised calories. He carte Dented and the sentific evidence from many directions con firms the deduction that the modern desire to attain the most rapid growth in children u likely to shorten eteer eventua! pan of life. Serenafic philosophry must be considered in relaton to pur posc. What is the purpose of acquiring knowledge of the biochainiary of the lifc procet What the purpose of studying the mechaninis comtraling the development of the cell? Why are we interested in researches about the rate of growth and the contribution thereto of vimmin Bin Are we to apply our undern standing of the chemistry of growth rate in order to get children to grow faster and faster even at the cost of making life tharte Moden orthodox scenec bus nothing to say about purpose and x, in fact, why and embarrassed at the very weggestion that, 140 ·THE DEDICATED CELL # 10 important phllosophy mfluencing twentieth-century affun, it shoukl. Gerlatacs, the study of long life, bs Dow * rapectable banch of modem biological science. Not loog go I attended a rolemn scientific conference on going at which an important research woder was reporting the scien tific evidence dowlog the circumstances in which the physical efficiency of industrial workers could be prolonged by post poatog their retirement os, If they had already retired, sending them back (purely for their own good, mark you!) to their factory or minc. The swoning and the stadstics were un willable. Their date of bioal was lodubitably postponed. But when the mggestion ww made that perlupa Man bad not been placed by God on this glabe to spend bis days digging in a coal mine or screwing up muts ut a travelling belt, the creanfic conference mok the question lod ito implication an urant piece of bad taste. The prolongation of Hfe is a matter oficience. The purpose of the extended life boas nothing to do with the core.

·13 SLEEP SCIENCE in today applied to almost every aspect of civilised life. The effort to manufacture and export more goods, whildi us the principal activity of industrial civilisation, la apported by scientific endeavour applied not only to the mechanical techniques employed bit abo to the people using them. The art of management is nowadays a science. The bealth of the workers is intemuvely studied in relation to their productivity The science of nutridon is bemessed to the output of Industrial operatives. Horming the provision of ardches, physical recrettion, right motivational are co-ordinated according to the conclusion of tacntific discovery At every point, kaence can cun riccersch. But there are fields on wtuch scientific endeavour, in spite of the collection of a condenable man of information, hus failed to achieve 10y advance x al As un ortople, let us take sleep. Thirty years ago and more, the Industrial Fatigue Research Board studied the marrimum number of hour of vock which would give the modmum output of work by an Industrial operative. Clearly if too many boun of overtime are worked the law of diminishing retums will begin to operate and effec ·SLEEP tive productivity vill fall The Industrial Fatigur Research Board has now become the Locustoul Healuk Research Board but the single most important factor restricting industrial out pat still remmine the necerdry for men and women to spend praaimutely one third of their time to sleep. There are numerous theorio about the course of sleep. The frost is generally studbuted to Alarcon who was a contempory of Pythagoras in the sixth century BC According to bim, sleep was due to the retreat of the blood into the veins. Arbatode, on the other hand, condered it to be due to what he termed corporation attendant upon the proces of natation - hence the drowsinan occurang after malo. Some thousands of yeuns after these views were espressed, a gentleman alled Money, in 1889, considered that there was carperimental evadence to show that sleep was due to memia of the brain Oo the other hand, by about 194 other investigators came to quite the oppoute view md concluded that it was due to a plethora rauber than a shortage of blood to the brain. In 1935, however, a report vos publiebed to abow that there was no difference in the blood flow to the bead in sleep and to wakefulneu. We may, therefore, start to think again. Pavlov, the greu Russian physiologist, whose words are today taken a holy wdt over the enter half of the globe, considered sleep to be the result of a type of condidoned refa Pavlov of cows, himxef developed much of our views on conditioned rolera and it is therefore not unnatural that ho should have vered sleep from this spect. The type of conditioned reflexes which made Pavlov most widely famos vere based on apenment with dogs. The dogs were trained tp sodate the round of the singing of a bell in one corner of the room with the appearance of their dinner A gong Younded in the other corner of the room on the other hand condoted Do puch attractive carpedience. When the mimaks had beated their lenton, that s to say, when they had acquired a conditioned redlo n which the ball, even without the dinner, caused their guid juices to flow, the aperment was changed. Now, the 143 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE gong meant food and the bell disappointment In due COUNK, however, thu second conditioned idler' was acquired and the dogy were trained aitonatimally to go for the dinner to the comer where the gang wis. Finally, however, boch bell and gong were founded together The dogs becarno tom with indeckion, developed neurose and evennually altered servous breakdowo Be that a it may, Pavlor considered that sloop wa due to what he called internal inhibition which is widely irradiated, extending over the whole mass of the cerebral hemisphere and mvolvlag the lower centre of the brun as well As this sample of proxe suggests, Pavlov's experiments are rather dificult to caterpret. They were based on the fact that dogs put on a stand and subjected to monolooow sound, ar, alternatively kept in a roundproof room, Rally fall asleep These experimenta, frequently repeated, were considered by Pavlov and his school to k* up a condirioned rele' in which akcep va a closent A theory of loep, Advanced by Clapandde in 1905, us that it o an insona 'We sleep, be sold, sot because we are lotad cated or axhausted, but in order to prevent our becoming uroricated or artimusted. According to thus thetus, akcep resulos from a loss of interest in one i civiconment, and so wake up because we become aired of sleeping A further postulase which bus from ume to deste received mimuốc support u that sleep is due to the scumalation of some sort of tann la the system. No rescarca vodker, bowcret, has yet be able to give any idea of the nature of this hypom therical substance. One of the priadpal argumenu against thiba theory to char Siamese rwins, who share the mode blood apply and who could therefore be aspected to be affected equally by thus alleged toxin, do not necessarily sleep the wo time, This was observed, both with the rolos extrdited by Barnum aod Bailey at the beginning of this century and in 1938 by Professor Sporasty is a pair wbom bo studied in Moscow Another reason for doubting the tonia theory u the poor ·SLEEP performance of mmy people immediately after getting up in the coming, when it might be axpected that act a tort would be at its lowest concentration. Hiving dealt with memia, condidoned reflexes, instioct md tarins, let us now tum our attention to an Americm Investi gator, Profesor Kleitman. He developed m dlaborate theory of sleep in an mportant monograph published in 1939. He suggested that it is not slags that needs to be aplained but wakafubor. And be apbined wakefulness on the baw of what be called mn evoludoorry theory The theory of biological evolution is Dowlays a part of the general Intellectual content to which wollte At the bottom of the evolutionary tree we have single-celled orgzolamne sich a amoebus, then come the sort of creatured one wees through 2 microscope in a drop of pood water, and so we go on via fishes and frogs until we reach the anthropold spes and, at law, the finest flower on tho topmou boogh, we find our telven, Homo sapras. Side by side with the theory of evolution, there is the theory of recapitulation. This is sowadays some whert dbcredited by modern blologists but it nevertheless ponosas certain poto of Interest. It implies that each indi vidmal man himself undergoes the entire system of evolution. When a mm in conceived be exdat fiat a single-celled Organiom. This organism multiplias md develops until it partes through tho accessive stages of fish, frog ud ape before being born as an infant man. Kldtmn la hio theory of sleep implies that the great fruction of boological creation which includes what we all the lower organisms cannot be aid to be awake at all. Even rondvanced a creature a baby which, if we accept the theory of recapitulation, ve could comeder to be near, Dot I, the apex of the evolutionary tree, spends most of fa As with all theories of sleep, that of Kleltman is not cost pletely convincing. For example, whether or not wo agree with Swift as to the relative positions of bosses and men la blo- Logical advancement, the amount of sleep whey each take bardly 145 dme sleep ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE supports Klammen s hypothesis If men were higher up the biological treo then borsa they ought to sleep loss, but they do not. There 14, boweves, 1 mnous phenomenon which does mpport Kleitmans evolutionary theory of sleep and wakefulnes If you scratch the sale of the foot of a bealthy, sleeping on he will bend his big toe back. This is called a positive Babinski sign. If you scratch the sole of the foot of an orng-outang, he will bend hos big toe down, which # called a negadve Babinsa sign. Now if you deal amilarly with a sleeping Infmt, when he la very young he will give a negative Babłoski like an mthropoid ape but us be grow older, and presumably passes from a lower to a higher evolutionary level, hos Babmald sign becomes poddve. Side by ndo with this evidence of advancing status there is the diminution of the need for sleep and an increused capacity for wakefulness The dewre for a hypothesis to umfy the groups of observar tions which he make on the world a happenings 1 a umiveral craving af man. And scientists, who attempt to deal objectively with the fact which they abserve, have a special Intellectual need for working hypotheses. Nevertheless, although correct hypotheses are more valable than mistaken ones, the history of science to littered with incorrect theoria some of which have been found useful. For example, thirty years ago the empty spaces of the universe were filled with a hypothetical ebotic fuid alled sether which has since diappeared from the tout-books of phydo without leaving a trace. Neverthele, ia it dme naher vas a useful intellectual lubricant which guided the direction of a lot of profitable experimentation. It is there fore, worth cooddering what constructive experimental obrer vations have been made ao sleep, even though twenty-ds centunes of postulated hypotheses have failed to produce Atnfactory scientific explanation for lo curtence. Some fucinating investigations have been carried out into the minder to which people move about when they are sleep Omutting certain clanical studies which could burdly 146 1 ·SLEEP bio to borre been dons for picotific porposes, we come to be obrations of the Americh terearch rodent who in =977 re-designed a technique for studying sleeper ptevioly ked out in Germany In princple, scientific methods are aren defightfully emple, od the way the measuremenu of peoples activity while sleeping were done was a follow. A Aung vos attached to the bedspring od vas connected to a dodirok Instrument similar to the seiunograph used for recording carthquakes. This aparata baving been set up the xem got to work Flot of all, 15,000 records were made of the sleeping behaviour of clever people who were sufficiently public pilted to mbmit themsetra to commation from all thos, the brewigutor cloulated that the average length of me during which a sleeping person remained webout moving was only 115 mlmunten when they had, by this thorough of babadoo meint, obtained this fact for the record they pro coded to the next stzego of the cereach. For thus they collected a group of niety people whom they described as representathre grampe of healthy steepers And from the party of value from they come to the following conclusion Middle-aged Dors, they focord, lept will while uskeep for m average minutes de vives of muddle-aged men for 10-s mutass and Dadlocted college med for 12 8 minutes. That is to ry, the middle-aged Dot bad s3 periods of movement dunng, a nights sleep of aght houd duration, the wives 46 and the Blestman, the dirtinguished American Investigator whose Date I breve dccandy mendoned, designed a most complicated od ronditive apparatus for recording mtomatically the movetents of sleeper. By means of the be deduced that, although people dove about a good deal when they are vloep, and move marcastaghy as the might protes, Deverthelea they only pead 3 to 5 minutes in making theep or go nighaty movemet Another Amern scientia, Giddings, invented a diferent type of instrument which he alled a 'bypnographe 9 andets 3& 1.47 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE This was med to itczure the scrivite of reary-eght sleepw tog chnldren. His discovery was that the amount of morenent oceaed during each osive bour of sleep. He also found that gids slept sounder thao boys. One fimal American research worker, with a taste for mixed clical comenclature, lavented yet another sabatific imtrument vizich on this occasion alled a xunobunetograph With this machine he discovered twt the verige kleeping person move from 10 to 12 times an bour He also found that people move in their sleep more and saare often as the night goud on. To this phesomenen he give che tectuadcal name of accendo sleep It is not esough for one scientist to find out that people move when they are sleeping, and another to count how often they move. Thu merely szimulates other researchers to go snore deeply into the business and try to find out whar Hod of movements alexpert make and some of the facton which in Jense or decrease the activity of the movement they undern take. In 1932, a group of scientia catac out with the discovery that certain types of moving pictures led to disturbed nierep and increased motility in children. They alo discovered that other moving pictures bad what they described as a sodaniya effect Titus effect u occasionally aburved by Immo-saentific people who have aspored themselves unwittingly to the wrong type of film. Apart from studies of the ordinary words of movernants that wt all appareduly perform while saleep a number of special kads of maryemont kave been instrugated during the cours of sleep research. An Italian lovesagator called Mad published a learned paper about a young man wbo rolled his bed from side to nde 73 times a tinute while he was askept A Franco savany, Bertoys also observed this passion which bo dignified as jactano gauns nocturna in a child. In both care tik kenties were unabk to stop the head-rolling it should pertapa be sad that the victims slept perfectly vel in spite of ther activities I should like to turn Bow from discussing all these deligeant 148 ·SLEEP Kokentific studies that have been made into how people move about while they are asleep to be equally seniowe researches that have been made into how soundly people sleep. The first of the modem investigaton was probably Kohlschmiter wbo, in 1863, determined how hard be needed to hit a zlate slab with a hammer in order to wake a sleeper a different times of the mght. The results obtained by this somewhat primitive tech nique are today considered to be aspect. What we met, I Ruppose, consider to be a more refined and wentific method was bored in 1970 by two other German workers, Endres and Von Frey, who calculated the depth of sleep by michalong the force required to wake a person by prodding hlon with a bil. Kldman and his colleagues in America, on the other hand, measured the voltage required to produce suficent noure from a loud-speaker to wake the sleepen they were Radying And what was the result of all this? It was found that when a person was movlog in bed he wa very easily wakened. During a period of stillocss, the depth of sleep tocreased continuously up to a potot shortly before the Dext movement was due to occur, and then I fell to a low valve when the person was actinlly moving. Stace people move low frequenty at the beginning of a night o sleep, they akto tend to sleep most deeply eady in the night. As a general ruke, we sleep less deeply as the night panes and wo move about more and more frequently Sometimes, contrary to the general trend, ooc, or perhaps ivo, portods of comparatively deeper sleep may occur during the latter half of the nigbt. Scientific research, no matter toverdo what object it us amed, always follows the same general Aidtegy First, * general view of what is to be studied. In the case of sleep, soare approadmato observations on the CONCLOUSTEN occur ring dunng sleep, the time occupied in sleep and the look of people aleep. Then come the construction of a hypotheses, anaemia of the brain, lat w ay It be then cumined and found to be wrong. What of the other hypotheses, that sleep is a 149 ·0 NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE babu A refled Evolutionarys To check cach, more facts are required and must be collected. But while this us being dong, there is no reason why we should not use that one of the aplamations for aleep may not be right. If it, we can look 4 the way sleep fita into the rhythm of daily Hfe and then wc Our discoveries about sleep and its chix to change this daily roythm that is, if our conclusions on the subject are night. It has been known for at least a hundred years that there ba more or less regular day and night vacation in a person s body temperature. Ones temperature to low first thing is the morning sites to a murimum during the day and sinks down towards bed-time, reaching a minimum at three or four in the morning This is why lifo sociis as its lower at this time. The rhythm is closely related to sleep. When a mans body temperature falls below a certain point in the evening he goes to sleep, when it exceeds a certain point in the morning be wakes up Kleitman and one of his collaborators, however, carried the matter to a much more subde couchation. They perunded or people to undergo a mries of texte. They had to deal three pacius of ands foto four hands, copy fondeter Izoolase word, multiply two 8-digit numbers, and stand with ther closed on an trostrument which recorded every time they wobbled. Kleirtan md bis sesistant pensuaded their etamirce to do there to five times a dayumimmediately they got up in the morning, one hour lates, immediately before fuck, fast before their evening meel, and ze bed area. When the results of the tests wat anumined It found that the freedom from mirakes tod the speed with which the test were dooe were closely proportional to the ike aod fall in temportar pure. The importance of skin abservation is shat temperature lrythins vary from one individual to mother Some people ama thous bigboost body temperatura mid their greatest efficiency carly in the waking period of the day, others are at skes peak late. The fact that some people do their best barel lectual work in the moming asd others in the chening is that fore, it would seem, based on this physiological Idoymasy 10 ·SLEEP Nowadays when the whole future career of a child may be decided a deven year old by his performance at an latet Bilgence test come out on a single day, it would be reasonable to minge also to take hus temperature three or four times beforehand in order to give him the tent who ha temperature is highest and avoid providing ufau advantage to the child whose phyddological rythun happens to coincide with the enfocation nuhonty'. dme-table The esistence of this twenty-four hour storythm of high and bow temperziure can be seen to imply that seven times a week, and Dozabły when one is pleep, one s effectiveness as a social tirat is reduced. Profesor Kleitman and his colleagues took up post sorrething capable of esperimental study They therefore designed a series of tubada to see whether the normal phythm of high and low temperature could be changed and the Loddence of trough periods reduced. The nvertigurion was done m Mummoth Cave, Kentucky where it is always completely dacks, completely qinet and where the temperature never rada. In this eartronment Professor Klatman and one come pansion began to live a life to which each oo aled day' con sitted of twenty-eight boar. To the vadd outside their meal ma and word things and bed tuda rere four boun late each day To them, however, all that had happened was that they had reduced the number of day in a week froga teron to de Under this regions, the companion found that his physiological phythm of body temperature, mental efficiency and sleep soon changed and fitted into the new draumstances Profesor Kleuman, on the other hand, wo phydologically unable to conform and in cookequence lived a very uncomfortable life duong thon times when bis shythm w out of Hep with the Ihrerted part of one of the theory eght-bour days. He still had neven periods of recuced temperature a weet where his fellow crve-cato now only had All sort of other researches have been caled out an sleep beddo those that we have touched on in the chapter. Even so the scientific apert is not yet portened of sufficient 151 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE knowledge to enable bim to make my practical recommenda 1100 to hov the time now spent unproductively in sleep can be reduced. Almost the only practical step which wcience could immediately propose would be to sort out those individuals whose chythms are the more readily capable of being changed and to use only these for night-thift work or watch-keeping to ships. The rest of us can take comfort from the conditiva mmmon which contona to fold md unfold io lerves by night and day long after it has been removed from the sunshine lato a greenhouse where the artificial light is on all the time This then is an accoumt, albeit a brief and superficial one, of a long-continued research in progress. Perhaps from time to time it is abatry to recall that occasionally scientists turn on ther battery of toob, apply their methods of systemade soudy md experimentation and, after all, do not succeed in malang progress. We are nowadays so surrounded with the ostentato triumphs of clenco that the posibility of mything lest than fuccess is almost forgotten. The plastic motor-can, the colour television seth, the garage doors that open by them selves, the croplanes that fly faster than sound and the poliomyelitis vaccines appear to shickly one after the other that it sometimos sems that anythlog we want can be got merely by telling the scientist to produce it. In truth, bowever, dus covery os not to be bad for the ubog. It be Dot very difficult to find out how many times an average forty-two-year-old bachelor mova lo bus sleep, por u it a matter of lectural shill to measure the exact degree of riperess at which a field of bay supplies the maximum yield of digestible fodder when given to milldag cow, but it is very difficult 10 solve the problem of what sleep in 1984 as it is to elucidate the denufic causes of ageing, whether of a palk of grass or of a human bran cel. There are two kinds of scentific achievement. There is hooest donkey work by which thousands of sciento en their living for comple, the carrying on of statistically deigned trials to determine the appropriate temperature se 192 great intel ·SLEEP quared to obtain the marimum yield of peruallin in the fermentation verse of a pentailhn factory And then there 18 the flash of Intmtion by which science is df is advanced the ooginal madden conception that a Pentclllium mould mght produce a drug capable of controlling infection la human ISAC Science be one of our modern religioon It o by defmidon Good. It o capable of achieving all things. It is only necetrary to train more solenou to obtain mora Good. Once upon a umo I proposed to the broadouting mubondia a mena of talks entitled The Foihines of Science The idea was bostantly turned down and aghtly so. It was heresy ·FKnows KIT 14 FEELING FOR SCIENCE One of the most remarkable characteristics of the age in which we live in 10 daite and tendency to connect itself organically with preceding age to excertain bow the state of things that now is came to be what it th And the more camely and profomdly thib problem is studied, the more dearly comes into view tbc vast ood varied debt which the world of today owes to that foreworld, in which may by whill, valour and welldirected strength first replesushed and mubdued tbe carte. Our preluistons fathers Dury have been avages, but they were dever and obvervant ones. They founded agnculture by the discovery and development of seeds whose ongin b Dow un know. They tuned and hardessed their animal antagonists and sent tben down to us 24 ministers instead of thrab in the fight for life. Later on, when the claims of luxury added ebemselves to those of necessity, ve food the same spirit of Invention at work There are persons born with the power of incopredes natural fact, u there we arbets smitten with everlasting in competence in regard to such interpretation Ve have been wooarged by invisible thongs (the reference is to bacterial infection), attacked frora Impenetrable ambun- ·FEELING FOR SCIENCE cades, and it b only today that the light of science is being het upon the murderous dominion of oar focs, Facts like these acite in me the thought that the rule and governance of this anivene are different from what we in our youth opposed them to be that the incrutable Power, at once teouhle md beneficent, in whom we Hve and move and have our being and our cod, u to be propitiated by means different from those Dinally reported to. The first requiste towards soch proputut tron ba bowladys the second action, shaped and illuimmated by that knowledge. Of knowledge we already see the down, which will open out by-and-by to perfect day while the action which is to follow has its waiting warce ad simulin in the moral and emotional nature of man 10 bis desire for personal well-being, in his sense of cury, in his compardonate sympathy with the puffenngs of his fellow men To my mind the three pango above say some important things about science. Throughout this book I have been trying to grapple with some of the things which modern science how achieved. Here and there, I have pointed out some things in which it has failed. And from time to time I have attempted to describe how the materialistic philosophy science has come to be fitu lo with other philosophies that are of importace in anibed life. The sentences I have quoted went watten fust over eighty years ago by n English physicist, John Tyndall, who himxdf mado important contributions to tho study of the rolo of microorganisms in dbear. They are taken from a lecture hilch be reviewed the wgnificance of the then new conclusions of the French chemiet, Louis Pasteur. This discourse va delivered before the Glasgow Science Lecturas Awodalon on October 19th, 1876. The lapus of due give somewhat piquant potri to the thooghts then expressed. The firu of these that is, the dependence of present dbcoveries on pou knowledge is today, as it ros lo 1875 m esential forture of cococe. It is ladeed one of the besec feature of the modem nye of discovery What is known can be ined as a basis for what pent bocomo ISS L ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE known. Trade secrets handed down by word of mouth are unlikely to lead to my improvement la cresting observation made by one aafuman will be forgotten if they are not 12- mediately anted to cure circumstances and will need to be rediscovered all over again a generation hater when didu stances are mlo winch they would have fitted. Even today that are industries bedevilled by experts, who come and looks consider and give sadvice. This adoice may be sound or it may 120t, but so long as the evidence upon what it snade is not disclosed it is so far as programave usefulness e concernede sterile. More important sally the watten and meetable record of the past bine a ferahsing influence on the many diverse minds of the present. Men wo are working oa the kmc proako loth from different wardpoints may get from the scientific #terature the one illuminarng fact that will spark off that Albath of Intation that u the essential feature of the act of discovery There is urgent paming with for twenance-century rovence. Trade secrets when they became known are almost always seem to have been bot worth knowing Unally they have stultified the kern traders more than thor Ripposedly kept in the dark. It autres from this that constant vigilance must be maintained in the case of the memand freedom of the mand in every country where knowledge of the aroma geography of the structure of water is considered to be of military significance Sclerce ba dynamic philosophy Jus2 me the product of all that has gone before in the past, so we waentific people build the discoveries of the future on the owledge of in prokee But to make progress in xw building we seed memure of Intelkcrual brilliance. Nowadays in the mid twensch century Tyrdal's trescunt comment about those people strutten with everlasting incompetence -bowever the It my bebas a remarkably rumbator sad usdiplomade We now kson that the man in the street, and cve more 156 ·FEELING FOR SCIENCE particularly the politician in the House, not interested in cience for what it ta few people cren among those who consider themselves to be educated care for dence B a pret of the truth about Nature. To the ordinary strzen, it ha merely 1 way of doing practical things or of makmg economically important goods aritable to be export for hard cash. The urgent and clamorows xarch for more and more scientiso by the industrialists of Europe, America and Ruanda is not a search for people who com consider mod think, but for those who manu facture. This is perhaps a fortunate thing because the problem of training this letad of dentist is pretadly one of administration. Dunng & war, governments find bittle difficulsy to trutning barge numbes of men and women to vos artillery predictors, or to plot the course of seroplanes, to correct all the fifty-seven Ewlos likely to me in fuing the Breo gim, or to lestum tbo practical elemenu of navigation Thero soplas can be mught to almost myone, whether be bas previously been employed a a literary mus, a bus conductor or a professor of Old Testament history There ought, therefore, to be equally huule difficulty in teaching the name diveraty of people to carry out roubne chemical malyas, operate quadrupleeffect evapornton or make replicate ulabs to test the toughincas of a new plastic floor covering. There are, hovever, three kinds of deficiency in a community arch that in Barin straining towards cendoc' progress they are not capable of being solved by administrave action. The first u onderstand og by those who control industry md national administration of what clendfic methodechochdeve. The second iawhaguess by these people to abeadon tried and ambomary ways and readiness to adopt the conclusionserberging from soentific Study The third deficiency is by far the most revers, altalay, has been. It is, of course, a deficiency of an adequate supply of those persons born with the power of interpreting natural fact, to be the words of Tyodall. The Late Str Edward Mellaby, sometime Secretary of the Medical Research Council, was an angry person. He pontened IS7 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE the grex distinction of being the rudest man in the public service, when he felt like it. But even though burdened by the administrative cares of a great Department be managed to schuleve some distinguished scientific discoverich And he also ald some true and treachant things. One of these is that Dew rdientific discovena were not made because some Gover ment committee decided that they sbould be, and voted funde The big new discoveria are made by this mysterious pack of inuntion given to the few prepared md dedicated intellect. For imtance, we should like to find a cure for cancer, and many worthy people have giveo money for that purpose. We should 10cc also to bo able to prevent catchung cold, and at Sabsbury devoted volunteers have spent an aggregate of thousands of fortnights isolated la pains so that various vaches and extracts could be tried on them. And progrew up to now has been restricted to finding a way to give a cold to a raw eggi The discovena bave not been made, because the insight has not been vouchared to those working on the problemi. But Tyndall's third paenge of egbry yean ago is of greatest importance to us today It is right and proper that scientist, immersed in the intellectual intricacies of their immediate problems, abould think of nothing else. The X ray aynalo grapher, varavelling the compla kructure of the carbon atoms arranged in porphyr con guradon around a single atom of cobalt in the molecule of vitamin By, mux concentrate all the force of her mind (the research in question was, in fact, led by a brillant woman, Mos Dorothy Hodgkin, FR.S.) on the problema in band And mwy a lesker worker must argue and struggle with details of chemical double bonds and solubilitues id mdong points. But nevertheless something for purely wrong with soentific profesionalism if its activities are untrabalatable into the plain speech comprehensible by the now-ucientific shxcated man. And worst of all, If any mention of Diviac per pose lo a scientific meeting us consudered in bad toto Today, so one of Tyndalls scientific stature would refer to a modern discovery x having modified his vient of the 158 ·FEELING FOR SCIENCE me and governance of the inscrutable Power, at once tarmblo and beneficent, in whom we live and move and have our being and our end It un cordow paradox that although science in the tirentieth century in its practical manifestations effect our live with imique directness-here domestic deep-freeze, there a 1 hydrogen bocabbare became capable of stisning our feeling. Weview science B a tool. A spade or a typewnter or an aeroplane is merely a day We neglect the fact that science itselfs a way to the truth. Not long ago, Mr Eric Denchan wrote a letter to Tw Tomas In which he deplored the action of a school headmaster, a scientist, on restricting the teaching of English and history to datb-fonun boy. The scientist, he wrote, needs precision md ctadty for commimicuring his objective bowledge of truth about the phyical world, bat perhaps more than ordinary men he needs to understood what artists mod pbilosopbon are trying to communicate about their search for truth in language which, being objective and poetse will afron require abil md aperience for i undanuding In 1951, a meeting of a leaned scientific rodety took place at Aberdeen University A rede of papers was discuined cover og such toptar o The mfluence of ammoniacal nitrogen op the protela content of gran land bertege The relative body dimensions of Cheviot cwe raised under range coodidoos and by indoor feeding methods, md The incidence of symptoms or central nervou-syntem dysfimctwo i busaran abjects subsisting on a Vegan diet The Vegin it should be a plained, umettreme vegetarian sees, wboso members refuse to eat malik od eggs well as meat. The general title of the meetiog-womewhat Fanciful in comparison vith customary clandic wzgo- All Aash » gran At the end of the official proceedings 1 reception bad been wranged for the ambled chemolets, phyuologet ud blochems more of the melent halls of the University There, one of the Fallon of the College, a pon-scientix, banded to be Secretary of the meeting, 3 a matter of general interest to the company un 159 ·NOTHING LICE SCIENCE boolest Bible and begged hund to read from it. The passage was of course from Imah The voice said, Cry And he said, What abal} I cryr Al flesh is grass and all the goodness Hicreof 1 at the flower of the field. The greates withereth, be tower fadeth; because the spirit of the Lord blowerb upon it, strely the people to gras The grass witbereik, the flower Eadeth, beut tbe word of our God shall stand for ever Having got so fx, the Secretary was overcome enh onbarrament. His voice dropped and be refused to proceed fazrtbey The scientists, after a slight hesitant paux, ichimed ther laternupoed conversationth No one could bear to cart tinue reading to the absequent verse where the poet bud naid 'Who hath measured the waien to the hallow of his land, and metad our heaven with the span, wd comprebended cho dut of the earth to a mezure, and weighed the mountaina la youlas, add the hills to a balance Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being his counsellor bath raght him? Have yt not known' Have ye sot bard? Hath it sot been told you from the beginning. Have yo not understood from the fousdatory of the earth In 1876, Jotun Tyndall, reviewing Pasteur > studies of fermentation and their pzbocquent application to medicine and surgery, could apprehend their dedific and latellectual olan gance and at the one time feel that facta like these showed that che inscrumble Power governing the universe was to be propitiated by knowledge and by action illuminated by the bov- Ledge. The way John Tyndall felt in 1870 laghry years or more post. His blod of reaction to wcientific discovery bonis evaporated from the mid twentah-century preama. Much of scientific thtabdag and almost all of scientific doing art per formed in a philosophical vxuws today Weannot expect that to the future we shall cvez con un to seduce the ancestanding of the workings of Nature a man realed by soennfic discovery to the purpose of the universe in exactly the came way that Joha Tyndall did. Nevertheless, bet ne some good augucer for more are pliksophy in 16 ·FEELING FOR SCIENCE the future than the sterile scientific materialism of the present. The fine optimustic sign m my opiolas, is the spread of derniery, up to now one of the most materialistic of the seaca, into the rate of biology to the strialy chemical fields of chemistry, the centit might be decaved into think ing that there are no limits to the poolbilita of discovery The scope of chemical tynthese continually extends. A new substance ban only to be isolated for it to be merely a matter of time and diligence before it is made atificially in the labor atory The speafication for a solvent or a tenile fibre neede only to be drawn up for the chemin to be able to set to work to meet it. New palad and plastics, weed killen and wonders drugs follow each other in constant fuccession. But in the kalence of brology there is no room for wasten lacking in the bealthy bumility that is the beginning of wisdom The funher scientific blology dwenes and the more blochemistry become used to interpreting the phenomena of Living call, the more closely will the topics audied progret away from the investigation of individual details of the mechanfan of cells and towards a consideration of the actividos of the whole animal And oibe Kondfic biologilet advances along this pathi, to will be progren step by step upwards frota box sorchin op and his frog, and bbs albino rat mol be la able to backle the reaction of man And when bs, and the chemat and phylate who Dow work with him, comme to man a serious topic for Audy, tbets sciences will evolvo into humanutie If this poulbility of succes in dendfic progtone bone of the great bopes for scence becoming a un factory philosophy for the future, another of loa powerful attractions for the butoan mlad be the depth and compledry of the ulumate problems it set. For instance, no matter how muatturul the practition of caveatific medicine nd surgery the picologists, the endoanologue, the bactenologies, the bacalatologuts, the oto- Hulaa laryngologies, che pordlandare and she gerontologie may be, in the end people are bound to dle of skyl A 161 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE hundred years ago, the birth of bacterlology as the conquest of infectious diseno begin. Fifty years ago, the newer know ledge of mutation heralded the end of deficiency discesetor,ut ket, it provided the mformation that made them preventable. The advent of the rulpha-druga duplaced pneumoma 3 * willog disease. The production of antibiotia radically changed the lethal nature of a dozen more of the scourge of mankind. It is only a matter of time before the vious diseases are brought under control like the bacterial mfections before them. And yet people will die. Not long ago, Dr Alas Comfort, of the Department of Zoology of Univerary College, London, delivered a learned lecture to the Royal losstation in which be reviewed tho saendbc knowledge about ageing The cumulative impact of all the information had a salutary lesson for those people who teod to waume that conce can do anybing. Like the remarches on sleep duam sed earlier, those on ageing represent one more In the falura of science serves. For intance longevity, it appears, tends to am la familles. But science can bardly take any credit for this. Or again, somllish parts of mammal or a mon can bo cut off wben be to young, hored carefully under refrigerated conditions or preserved as a tete culture and later grafted back on to the same man or animal when he is old. He would then be an old man with certain young parts There beting, however, to be no potxibility = yet of ever restoring to him enough of his lost youth to make much real difference to his old age. At present, there 4 do graft, hormone or preparation known which is capable of produang more than a limited reveral of a very few senile changes in hunn beings. The only way in which brologists have been able to postpone death by scientific means has been by slowlog down the rate of development in youh. I have already referred to the acceler amg effect of the present high phoe of nutrition which we adopt to eihastcally for children today and by which we shorten their life span. Dr Comfort pour out that berdas 16 ·FEELING FOR SCIENCE waung limitation of diet in youth oi menns of prolonging life it might be theoretically possible judging by regula on mimabs-to prolong life also by cold song. He counidents, however, that though this badow within the bounds of por whiling and might be important for stronaut or pertrips politicians, It would be unlikely to be generally popolar. It was once widely believed that with the removal of patho. logical chuse of death that is to say when medical science had at last been completely fuccessful in all in endeavour, the life span would rise very rapidly in man and prouch more and more closely the recorded mamum of about one hundred and twenty yan. But it now seems more likely that eves with increased control over malignant tumours, harden ing of the etterla ind high blood pressure, the age of death may caly come to be more and more narmally distributed about seventy-five or eghry year. Nowadays, in spite of all the new soendfic knowledge than I valable to docton to paolong life, it is common to find that the disease that actually hills on aged patient is only one of several, tod if the patient had purvived the fint, one or other of the rest would soon bave proved fatal The medial sciences have achieved great things How often, ayı Dr William Budd in his celebrated wod on typbold fever, --how often have I seen in past days in the single naston chamber of the day-babourer i cottage the father in his coffin, the mother in the sickbed in muttering delirium, and Dothng to relieve the desolation of the children but the devodon of some poor noghbour who in too moyo pald the penalty of bor kindness in becoming herself the victim of the une disorder The saentific philosophy that we have been discussing in the book, the logical collection of facts, the deduction of hypothesa from those facts, the design of apaments ndoh Joy and delight for the scientist the triumphanteldon when the aperiments come out nght and demonstrate the correct nen of the bypochests, is indeed a phllosophy that a civilised L® 163 ·poverty Prionty obviously goes to fighting the old frbuono NOTHING LIFE SCIENCE truth, but for the rest of us it is simply the source of our material supplies and comforts. The errordinary enthusiasm for tranquilliuag drugs zbown by tbe inhabitants of New York City and Holywood, where sciennfic living has probably reached a mgher level than mywhere else in the world, makes one stop for a moment to think about where ow science u kading us. I ain't make up my mind whether to take a benzerine table and go to a party or take a sleeping pill and go to bed, is what the bright young thing in the New Yorker wat sying a year or two ago Now It w reported that a synthetic martini composed of gu cod axeprobamate is all the rage. This beverage by designed to stimulate and to tranquillise at one ad the same time. Why do people take these droge? You would imagine that as the scientific amenities of civilization continuously increased and we all presumably become happier--We should be content to see life with our wided senser. But we know that dvilised liec, as it insidiously mounts up around us o no pleogether exsy to live. So it u interesting to thaton to what is Lau Mudos Marin, the Governor of tbe new commonwealth of Porto Rico, had to say about science and tranquility when be received an honorary degree from Harvard Univerury pompe The first duty of any modern State is what Mr Mada caled Operation Bootetrap Thu is to pull the country up by to own abocluces; to develop new Industries, produce millions of wowatt-houn of new electric pover, build efficient airports good roads and harbours, and develop better systems of market ing. Io fact, Operation Bootstrap is the unlimation of applied science in just the way we are going about it in Bata By salience we on rate our standards of living, and as the stron dards rise and we become ncher, the fight atost portering approaches closer to id ultragte succes. But Sir Alaria Los another target in view It is a basic duty', said hs, to figli poverty that consists of the mouses of people being il-fach months ago 166 ·FEELING FOR SCIENCE In our bodem world today, scence to the scientific philosophy une applied to almost every aspect of hfe Chemical knowledge us tored in the production and harvexing of food. The application of Wificial fertilizer Increases Crop yield, selective weed bullers keep the fields free from unwanted plant species, and new chemlal fungiada med nosectades destroy disease and 10 sect peste Scientific methods are applied to food storage and processing. Even the choice of the diet We eventually eat as based on alaulations of vlonins protein and calorific content. Wool, cotton and flax are no longer sufficient for our clothing and so we go to science for nylon stockings, terylene shirts and plastic machintosbon The motive force that keeps our whole modern society going is a product of science. The word "horsepower is just a romantic anachromon to remind us of past hlatory The powe we tss, dependent on the knowledge of slectrlaty acquired during the best dghty years, s not ever any longer derived from coal Today, we are getting it from our new scientific understanding of the basic structure of the tom strell. Even the control of our camples identific cconomy, it memes, & to be done in the perc futart without the need for much buman effort Automation the management of quite complea factory operation by electronic computers and other scientific devices, is already being applied on an increasing tale. This is scientific progress. This kiod of thing in the source of our economic wealth. Without a adequate supply of scentists and techniczns we cannot enjoy a standard of living capable of giving us televizion kts 200 bleydes, ball-pornt pens, motor-cars fitted with stormate gear-change, jet plana and atomic power stations We have become so custodied to living in a predomiomiy xiantific environment that we tend to forget that for most of wa science boniya mcam to an end The comparedvely few research worken vbo make the basic discoveries of the facts and workings of Nature follow science 3 a pursuit of 165 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE truth, but for the rest of us it is simply the source of our material supplies and comforts The extrzordinary enthusiasm for tranquillesing drugs abown by the inhabitants of New York City and Hollywood, where scientific living has probably reached a higher level than anywhere else in the world, maka one stop for a moment to think about where our kience is leading os. 'I can t make up my mind whether to take a benzedane tablet and go to a party or take a sleeping pill and go to bed, is what the 'boght young thing in the New Yorker was saying a year or two ago. Now it is reported that a synthetic matnl composed of gin and Deprobandate is all the rage. This beverage is deelgoed to stmalato and to tranquillise at one and the pume time. Why do people take these drugw You would imagine that the scentific amenities of arvilisation continuously increased and we all presumably become happier we should be con tent to see Hfe with our insided senses. But we know that civilised life, a it neidiourly mounts up around us, is not altogether easy to live. So it is interesting to listen to what Mr Lu Munos Mann, the Governor of the new commonwealth of Porto Rico, had to say about science and tranquillity when be received an honorery degree from Harvard University some months ago The fiost duty of any modern State is what di Marin alled Operation Boodtrap This is to pall the country up by its own shoelaces, to develop new Industries, produce millions of kilowatt boun of new electnc power build efficient airports, good roads and barbours and develop better systems of market ing. In fact, Operation Bootstrap is the uuliption of applied science in just the way we are going about it in Britain. By Lovence we can raise our standards of lying, and as the stan dards rite and we become ncher, the fight gunst poverty approaches closer to its ultimate rxccete But Me Marin boas another turget in view It bs a basic duty, mad he, to fight poverty Pnority obviouly goes to fighting the old-fasbroned poverty that consists of vast master of people being ill-fed 166 ·ald age FEELING FOR SCIENCE w-housed, ill-cad, Ignorat, Insecinte in illoeng, orphanbood and There is room alo, he went on, for a wwareness of a new fangled poverty, that of the feverish desires out #dipping the fevenuh production and of the feverbah production Inventing Dew dealios that must go for many mfulfilled. He alled the campaign against this sort of poverty Operation Serenity Mr Morin • approach to serenity us different from anything requiring the time of tranquillidog droga. He looks forward, as we do, to the highest development of modem sciennfic machunery, but from Porto Rico his prospect seems nomehow different We Westerneo tend to pursue happiness by increanng poseniom, be mid to bot American modience at Harvard University An unending way If It is viewed as a progression from the co-howe family to the three-car family and beyond. Clearly, the road to the three-car millennium md beyond leada abo to the tranquilhty of the new tranquilliten It is therefore, interesting to look a Hetle more closely at what they do. Ther primary use is, of course, for the treatment of prychotic patients in mental hospltak. Clearly if, under proper medical control, they can relieve wifferent from some of the more gooring aspects of mental disease, they are to be welcomed. And good results have been reported with them. On the other hond there are some people, it seems for whom these drug are ather too good or too bad. For example, out of 8,000 odd padent given tranquillisen at the University Oregon s Medical School, so became so depressed that they attempted to commit suicide, while another 126 became so happy that they neglected to make proper care of the diseases from which they were offering and consequently became Fonke. Thoxe acceptional mes at both ends of the scale demonstrate, not only bow difficult it is to relate a particular chemical mole cule in the form of a drug to people a mental state, but they also demonstrate the differences in behaviour occurring among 167 ·NOTHING LIKE SCIENCE different individuak An extreme crample of this is shown by the scienafic assessment of the effect produced on certain people by dummy tablets not containing ary dmg at all. This is called the morale factor The public interest in the Bew tranquillisers a good in so fx a ir bus directed attendon to the relationship between chunustry and the behaviour of the mind. The Ford Founda tion in the United States, to mme one agency only, is already sportoning an investigation into the possible biochemical basis of mental and emotional disease and there are a number of research workent studying the suggestion thar a twisted thought may be due to a twisted molecule The fimt approach of the cold clear logic of the research identat u always starting to the ordinary laytaan. For imple, people are sometima sbocked to overlicar the professional gusto with which one clinician will talk to another about a really lovely muse of stiropompboly, or idiopathic bypockuma, or whatever it may be My dear old boy, a absolutely typical casel Every symptoma as dear * a belli And then there are the experts rudying the influenza virus, whose greatest success to date is to give iniuon to a ferret. The name thing has happened in die researches ou transquillion Meprobamare has been tried on Siamake fighting fish. Rould have been highly graofying When these fish are given a dose of the tranquilliser they hop fighting and start wimming backwards The effect on guppies, bareva, no! vo calming. These fish can be made to #4700 backward when they are given LSD, but when they receive a dose of rekerpune as well they stop swimmiog backwards. Research worker who have used duckingi their laboratory animale have also made some peculiar observations. Under normal circumstances, mallard ducklmgr leam to follow ther mothers when they are twelve bours old. If they are given a dose of the tranquilliser Bokeprobimate, bortver, this admirable other fixation fails to develop The use of sodal dngs by avlised societies is of long 168 ·FEELING FOR SCIENCE standing. Te, from which we obtain our daily dose off affeine, dates back at least to the first century LD Alcohol has been in vogue enxe the time of Faber Noah Nicotine has been med in European countno since the unteenth century Aod in our own time aspirin and the barbiturate sleeping drugs have become commonplace. But there t, perhaps something up proaching the sombre prophecies of Aldous Huxley s Browe Now Porld in the thought of large number of people having to Heel themselves to face the tension of the modern busy scientific age by taking tranqullsing droga Our efforts to develop new applications of science and technology are obviously umed to increase our happines. High productivity based on science can contribute much to our maternal welfare. But perhaps we ought at the same time to Iembenber the good advice we used to get when we were children about high thinking and low living In Mr Marins words, it is beyond the imagination what freedom and happines great science can produce for a avilization of fine modest vintu. Perhaps the formula for sereally that he is advocating for the new commonwealth of Porto Rico may be of more general efficiency than any of the laboratory formalac for tranquillisena The study of mankind his bebaviour his troubles, his achievements and bla veaknemo, bo traditionally accepted as bang at least a part of a humans and Hberal education. Tha wo can wert in spite of the pessimistic dictum that all we leam from history - that we lean nothing from bostory—that history in the words of Gibbon, which is indeed, Eittle mort than the register of the couns, follies and mkfortunes of mankind' The blological sciences have some way yet to go before their technical studio bring them fully into the field in which the motives of humanity are studied as well as the physiological reflexos. The geneticio vbo are beginning to Identify the chemical composition of the genes that decade whether we shall be tart a fair, choleck or phlegmads, intellectually inclined or addiced to golf, we have already 169 ·NOTHING LILE SCIENCE discussed. The narrologists who are investigating the mechaskus of the brain and the nervous syutem by which we perceive the existence of the outside world bare equally for to go, but they abo are advzoong along the road by which science can develop from being an advanced acrase in mechanics or the tolving of an intriate cross-Bord puzzle and become a worth wbilo bumarse study Most of twentieth-century science, borever, deals with thing. And the danger of this kind of satesce and the Kazentists who work it is thar it is treated w an activity of a morally Deutral colour like cleaning one s teeth. It la customary for a motor-car manufacturer to describe hus product us the most elegant and emotionally manufying experience open to man on this planet, but in fact, a we all realiso 10 or more adult moments, it is merely a device for moving about. The scientific philosophy w morally seural wben it is used to make things. By systematic experimentation, the study of metallurgy, a knowledge of the chemistry of combustion, the theology of rubber and the mechanics of moving bodies, the motar-car manufacturer ao product on that are capable of going Exter and faster year by year By applying scientác thinking to the manufacturing process as a whole, the men wbo rin undustry cu make it more and more into a completely automatic prom come. The biologists and the pure chemists and physicos ao lay the calm to be purring a philosophical occupation; they at unloctang the secrets of Nature. The applied scientit, whom we so urgently seek to produce our cosomic wealth for us and wbo, with their zutomatic factories, whest cartirmoving equpment and their combine harvesters, provide wa with mechanical elave batoar, have to their work no weful philosophy to live by Their contribution is that they give us Leikure; the freedom from the need to pay vay our live m hired bbourers. The purpose to which we devote our spare that is the time when we are free people is our own affair It be very different from the purruit of truth as the Kcientist tee it. 170 ·FEELING FOR SCIENCE The Devil u alleged to have descobed the Ten Commnd ments when be fiat heard of then a a remarkably mbred bag Many of the prosperous twentieth-century citizens of today whether consciously or unconscandy, conduct themselva to avoid if they can the seven dadly dims of the clodal sya pods, wrath, aivy, lust, gluttony radice and aloth Pelaps it is simpler to make a working philosophy the other wry round with good humour, Liodunens od bemty set up a wmable object for the purudt of a civilised man. Science, the mode of behavlour that gives us our material comforts, has not in the Kerko mwhich it is interpreted bylo more orthodos oponents, much to ay about any of these. On the other hand, if we can allow the scientist rust a little room for manoeuvre, * I bave tored to show to this book, there is perhaps something of each in bus philosophy We an aidbinte good humour to the diligent parveyon of chlorophyll socks and tbe disciples of science who believe in there. The Dalmatum couch-hound, the hrppopotamu with allegedly deficient bile and the coloured dummy medicins, all to the favolows mind have something of the untably coolc about them If we are intellectually honest we cannot claim for salontists a group, that thar prime und bensic motive us to benefit their fellow men And yet this wamoove of some force, and science ha contributed many benefits. It is therefore, Dot unfair to claim for it a measure of the virtue of kindtinen So far as beauty b cancaned, science as a philosophy home Hatle to hry That is when we mam beauty as apprehended by cyc or car. But for beauty u measured by the intelless, science andam iu major share. Trath is beautiful When the mathemnican describes the solution of a problem s elegant, it is to bim as lovely as a lovely room. The disperal of error and the frost glimpse of a new barmony m Natura burve for the scientist a thrill equal to that of a piece of music or a antet This book maka co claim to be a deep philosophical treatise. I have merely tried in it to abow that scence is something more 171 ·NOTHING LINE SCIENCE than a process for saventing useful things that it is indood, one way of fitading out the truth. And boldos yung to sbow some thing of what I believe science is I bave, I bope, been able to demonstrate that some of the things that we attributed to it are often sorlung Hkc science 171

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