Re: Francis Crick

Randy Isaac quoted Nicholas Wade:

"...the desire to replace religious with rational explanations of life was a principal motivation of Dr. Crick's career...."

Is this surprising? Much scientific endeavor has been motivated at least in part by efforts to come up with material cause-effect relationships to explain phenomena that at one time had been attributed to spiritual entities, and those endeavors have often met with success. Where they so far have failed is in the realm of mental phenomena such as consciousness and perception. Crick's "Astonishing Hypothesis" was that all such mental phenomena had strictly physical explanations. He failed to make headway here, but given the state of existing scientific data, should he be faulted for trying?

I once heard him lecture on the meaning of dreams. Unconventional, but why not be unconventional on topics that no one understands?

His anti-religious bias was unfortunate, but unfortunately such bias is not at all rare among contemporary scientists.

Don

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Randy Isaac<mailto:rmisaac@bellatlantic.net>
  To: asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
  Sent: Friday, July 30, 2004 7:30 PM
  Subject: Francis Crick

  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?

  Randy Isaac
Received on Sat Jul 31 05:11:52 2004