Re: Francis Crick

I am sorry if this appears twice and clutters up your mailbox. My email
postmaster is sending me notes about rejections of certain emails. I
have not figured out why yet.

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?

AK:

Unfortunately I think there is too great a tendency for the media to
promote controversy and exaggerate the differences between parties.
Part of the polarization among the populace we have today can be
attributed to the media trying to make a more interesting story and
emphasizing disagreements that are not as great as they make them out to
be. I think the reputation of Francis Crick suffers from some of this
media exploitation as well. One of the major stories about Crick and
Watson concerns Rosalind Franklin, the X-ray crystallographer who
gathered experimental data on the DNA molecule, and how she supposedly
was taken advantage of by Watson and Crick. Yesterday on Science
Fridays with Ira Flato a woman called in and ranted about this story for
a considerable time. Yet Leslie Orgel, Crick's friend who was on the
show, said he knew of no such bad blood. Nicholas Wade even writes in
his New York Times obit that Rosalind spent her last days as she was
dying of leukemia in the home of Francis and Odile Crick and that Watson
and Crick got the data legitimately from a seminar and a publicly
available paper. It sounds like the storytellers may have exaggerated
this to make a better story.

With regard to the religious views of Crick I think that there may also
be media exaggeration here. I suspect that the word "religious
explanations" as used by Nicholas Wade means "God of the Gaps
explanations" and that it is understood that way by most scientists and
most religious people as well. I am quite sure you can get a strong
read on Crick's views by reading his book, The Astonishing Hypothesis:
The Scientific Search for the Soul. His opening sentence is: "The
Astonishing Hypothesis is that "You", your joys and your sorrows, your
memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free
will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve
cells and their associated molecules". That pretty much summarizes the
book. As Crick points out virtually all neuroscientists share this
view, with the notable exception of the Nobel Laureate Sir John Eccles
who developed the dualism-interactionist theory of the mind with Karl
Popper. Likewise his Book, Life Itself (I think that is the name) is
an attempt to explain the origin of life without resorting to the
explanation "God Did It" So there is no doubt that Crick had little use
for God of the Gaps explanations, but I don't think that is unusual
among scientists in general, even applying to some Christians on this
list as well. Flato asked Orgel about Crick's religious proclivities as
well, and as, I recall Orgel, said that he certainly would agree that
Crick would not be considered a pro-church individual, but neither would
an anti-religious fervor seem to be quite the lifelong driving force
that Wade implies or at least in the way that some of you have
interpreted it.

I was at the Salk Institute from 1979-1987 and interacted with Crick to
some degree. I have had a few words with him about the origin of life
when were at dinner together when taking out a seminar speaker after his
talk. I also attended a graduate seminar in neurophilosophy that he ran
along with Patricia Smith Churchland at UCSD. The class had about 7
students and 30 people like me sitting in on it, although not very many
scientists. We met for 30 or 40 hours and I would not say that I
detected any strident anti-religious fervor. I also attended dozens of
seminars where Crick was also present. He may be the most brilliant
scientist I ever encountered. He could pick out the essential points in
any talk and then ask the pointed questions that drove to the heart of
the matter. He supposedly never read the paper or listened to the news,
saying that if anything important happened, someone would tell him . He
also was pretty arrogant and did not suffer fools gladly. I think you
should read his book, What Mad Pursuit, if you want some
autobiographical data. My book is buried in a book somewhere and as I
recall he tells of his upbringing and his interactions with the church
in his childhood in there.

Finally, I just don't think that scientists are all that anti-religious.
 I think that is something that religious people have trumped up and
seem almost paranoid about. I really get upset when pastors have
referred generically to the "atheistic scientists" (and this has
happened many times in my life). It seems that a lot of Christians I
know blithely think the term scientist is synonymous with atheist. I
have had many talks with many of them and find virtually none to be
antireligious. Most tend to be agnostic and not antagonistic at all
unless someone starts using the God of the Gaps explanations in
scientific discussions. Likewise, most scientists are also quite
unsophisticated about religious ideas and many also consider religion
synonymous with God of the Gaps. That accounts for much of the
antireligious rhetoric you see. At the Salk Institute the librarian
ordered a considerable number of philosophical and religious scientific
books. I think I was about the only person who ever checked them out.
It probably accounts for my mediocre scientific career. I spent too
much time reading about other things instead of devoting all my time to
the hardcore science like almost every other ambitious scientist did.
Received on Sat Jul 31 13:14:44 2004