My first reading with Mr. Cohen of
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was his essays (lots of two word titles beginning
with “Of,” like “Of Friendship.” I
thought his essays were dry and not as illuminating as Montaigne’s. I then read his “Novum Organon” a fragment
from an incomplete book on the acquisition of knowledge. In it Bacon rejects the logical method of
making deductions, which are almost like syllogisms. He felt not much science came from that. Instead he argued, the scientist depends on
the “slow and faithful toil gathering information and brings it into
understanding.” This process he called
induction. He felt the ideas from such
an approach could be put to test and he is credited with defining and
introducing the scientific method. I also read excerpts of his New Atlantis, a Utopian novel in which
he describes the formation of a scientific society with funding for research
and research is applied for human use, especially to provide inventions, solving
social problems, extending life, and making humanity unlimited benefits limited
only by our capacity for
imagination. The problem with
induction is we are not told how it works in our minds. We are instead assured by Bacon that
“faithful toil” of gathering information will bring it about.
At first I was skeptical that this
was how science works. Later, when I did science with Muller, I realized he was
right. I still remember the night in
Muller’s laboratory about 1957 when I was trying to add a gene mutation to the
left and to the right of a stock that I wanted to use in an experiment on gene
structure for the dumpy family of alleles.
I was looking for the recombined fly I desired and suddenly saw a fly
that was unexpected. It was almost like
a flash of recognition that I realized it was not a contaminant and had to be
recombination of a different sort. It
had occurred within the gene and not between the gene and the marker I was
looking for. I then realized with a
second flash, that if this was indeed a recombinant within the gene there was
no limit to recombining all the member mutations of that gene I had in my stock
collection. I was jumping with excitement and wanted to tell everyone I could
find but at 2 AM there was no one else in the laboratory I could share my
delight that evening. Every since, I put
the emphasis on that phrase “faithful toil” as the basis for gaining insights
into knowledge. I applied it to my
books. I don’t write an outline for a
book. I submerge myself in the topic I
want to write and let the connections emerge.
The more my heap of 5 x 8 cards mounts up the more likely they will
reveal a number of themes which become the chapters in my book. That is how I
wrote The Gene: A Critical History,
or The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea,
or The 7 Sexes. Why extend what is already known when the
past is waiting there for the scholar to exert “faithful toil” and make it come
alive? Is this not true for the
germination of a poem, a musical composition, or a painting? We can’t poke our minds and make them
construct the pieces from some picture of the entirety we eventually
produce. It emerges in pieces and in
connections. The best we can do is tell ourselves, that’s right, or that
doesn’t work. Unlike art, however,
science has reality as a backup and experimentation is relentless in confirming
or shattering our initial insights. For
this I give thanks and it is to Francis Bacon that I say, “Thank you”.
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