Re: Francis Crick

At 10:30 PM 7/30/2004, Randy Isaac wrote:
>Most of us have read articles or obituaries of Francis Crick this
>week. Nicholas Wade penned a front-page article in the NYTimes on
>Thursday. His fourth paragraph reads:
>
>
>"The discovery of the structure of DNA resolved longstanding questions
>about the nature of the hereditary material and the manner in which it is
>copied as one generation succeeds another. Their proposal for the
>structure, almost immediately accepted, was electrifying to scientists not
>only because of its inherent elegance but also because it showed how
>biology, evolution and the nature of life itself could fundamentally be
>explained in terms of physics and chemistry. Indeed, the desire to replace
>religious with rational explanations of life was a principal motivation of
>Dr. Crick's career."
>
>If I recall correctly, Crick was not satisfied with any of the theories of
>origin of life and strove hard to find evidence of non-traditional,
>non-religious explanations.
>
>How sad to see a life of such talent dedicated to replacing religion. In
>ASA we strive to complement and integrate, not to replace. Does anyone on
>this list have a good biographical source of Crick or some background
>information that would help us understand what influenced him and why he
>was so focused on replacing religious explanations?
I don't, but I would toss in the observation re Crick that in the recent
PBS series where they tooled around with him, I have to say that I found
some of the statements Crick making rather idiosyncratic to put it
mildly. I remember thinking that he seemed to have a couple of
"interesting" axes to grind that seemed to be pretty important for him to
grind.

It seemed from the bit I saw that his child's disability had a significant
impact upon him in many ways. Alas, I don't know much about his
autobiography other than the bits that turned up there. I don't know if it
was the editing, but he came off as "odd" in many respects. I won't
speculate further on the nature of the oddity and his motivations. I was
surprised by how idiosyncratic he seemed to be.
Received on Sat Jul 31 02:05:20 2004