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THE ORIGINS OF SCIENCE
MOMENTS OF
EDITED BY
George Schwartz
AND
Philip W. Bishop
WITH A FOREWORD BY
Linus Pauling
DISCOVERY
VOLUME ONE
THE
Origins
Science
BASIC BOOKS, INC., NEW YORK
Copyright © 1958, by Basic Books, Inc.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 58-13155
Manufactured in the United States of America
Fourth Printing
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The editors wish to thank the following publishers, individuals, and organizations for
permission to use materials from the publications indicated:
Bulletin of The Johns Hopkins Hospital: (from Vries, The Mutation Theory, Vol. I, 1909-
Vol. 39, 1926), A. R. Rich, "The Place of Philosophical Library, Inc.: Max Planck, Sci¬
R. J. H. Dutrochet in the Development of entific Autobiography and Other Papers,
Cell Theory.” 1949.
Cambridge University Press: Sir James Jeans, Ray Society: A. Hort, Linnaeus, Critica Botanica,
The New Background of Science, 1934. 1938.
Columbia University Press: S. W. Lambert, Pro¬ The Royal Horticultural Society of London:
ceedings of the Charaka Club, Vol. 3, 1935. Gregor Mendel, Experiments in Plant-Hy¬
E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.: William Harvey, bridization.
Anatomical Disquisition On the Motion of The Royal Society of Edinburgh: Amedeo Avo-
the Heart and Blood, 1906.
gadro, Essay on a Manner of Determining
Ross G. Harrison and the Society for Experi¬ the Relative Masses of the Elementary Mole¬
mental Biology and Medicine: "Observations cules of Bodies, and the Properties in Which
on the Living Developing Nerve Fiber,” Pro¬
They Enter into These Compounds," Alembic
ceedings of the Society for Experimental Bi¬
Club Reprint, No. 4; Joseph Gay-Lussac,
ology and Medicine, Vol. 4, 1907.
"Memoir on the Combination of Gaseous
Harvard University Press: M. R. Cohen and I.
Substances with Each Other,” Alembic Club
Drabkin, Source Book in Greek Science, 1948; Reprint, No. 4.
H. M. Leicester and H. S. Klickstein, Source
The Royal Society of Medicine: B. Farrington,
Book in Chemistry, 1952; W. F. Magie,
"Translation of Preface to 'De Humani Cor¬
Source Book in Physics, 1935; H. Shapley and
poris Fabrica' of A. Vesalius,” Proceedings of
H. E. Howarth, Source Book in Astronomy,
the Royal Society of Medicine, July 1932;
1929.
James Young, Letter II, "Malpighi, About the
Macmillan and Company Ltd. of London: J. B.
Lungs," Proceedings of the Royal Society of
Lamarck, Zoological Philosophy, St. Martin's Medicine, October 1929.
Press Incorporated, 1912.
Simon and Schuster, Inc.: J. Robert Oppen-
National Tuberculosis Association: Robert
heimer, The Open Mind (copyright ©, 1955,
Koch, The Etiology of Tuberculosis (Dr. and
by J. Robert Oppenheimer).
Mrs. Max Pinner, trans.), 1932.
University of Chicago Press: Selected Readings
Open Court Publishing Company: Hugo De¬
in Natural Science I.
ONULP
FOREWORD
By Linus Pauling
The nature of the world of today has been greatly changed
during recent centuries as a result of scientific discoveries. Every
aspect of our lives—the food we eat, the clothes we wear, our
methods of communication and transportation, the ways of wag¬
ing war, the conduct of relations between nations—each of these
has been revolutionized by the discoveries made by scientists.
Even our philosophical attitude toward the world as a whole
has been changed, in ways of fundamental significance to the
understanding of the nature of man in relation to his environ¬
ment. Hence everyone who lives in the world needs to have
some understanding of the nature and effects of science.
The creative scientist lives in order to enrich our world by
increasing our understanding of it. Many scientific discoveries,
perhaps most of the significant ones, represent feats of imagina¬
tion, insight, and originality closely similar to those involved
in creative work in such fields as art and music. I recently read
a statement, made by a worker in the humanities, that Clearly
the humanities deal with the creative and imaginative aspects
of man’s personality.” I myself, as a scientist, might, because of
my familiarity with the moments of discovery in science, be
tempted to say that it is science that deals with the creative and
imaginative aspects of man’s personality, but of course this state¬
ment, like the preceding one, is too restrictive—there are many
ways in which the creative and imaginative aspects of man’s
personality find expression.
It is for the moments of discovery that a creative scientist
lives. When the idea of the theory of relativity appeared in Ein¬
stein’s mind, the discovery was made—he had then only to work
v
VI Foreword
out the details of the theory. Another great moment of discovery
came recently, when the physicists Lee and Yang had the idea,
and entertained it seriously, that the world might in fact distin¬
guish between right-handedness and left-handedness in an abso¬
lute way, which physicists had thought impossible before—and
that the tiny' constituents of the world called neutrinos could
have the properties of right-handed propellers, with antineutrinos
having the properties of left-handed propellers. Within a few
months a dozen experiments had been carried out attesting to
the correctness of this brilliant inspiration.
I do not know how Einstein felt when the idea of the theory
of relativity came to him, or how Lee and Yang felt when they
thought about the possibility of nonconservation of parity; but
I remember very clearly some occasions when I have seen a new
way of looking at a part of the world. One evening, early in 1945,
I was having dinner in New York with a small group of men
associated with the medical schools of the country. We were
members of a Medical Advisory Committee appointed by Dr.
Vannevar Bush to help him prepare replies to a series of ques¬
tions posed in a letter sent to him by President Roosevelt. That
evening one of the members of the committee, Dr. William B.
Castle, of the Harvard University School of Medicine, began, in
the course of the dinner conversation, to talk about the disease
sickle cell anemia. This seemed to be a disease of the red corpus¬
cles of the blood, which were twisted out of their normal shape
in the blood of the patient. The disease seemed to involve a path¬
ological state of the red corpuscle, but the red corpuscle is so large
compared with molecules, and it contains so many hundreds of
kinds of molecules, that there seemed to me to be little possibility
that an understanding of the disease could be obtained in terms
of molecules. However, when Dr. Castle said that the red cells
of the blood are twisted out of shape in the venous blood of the
patient and resume their normal shape when the blood passes
through the lungs and enters the arterial circulation, the idea
burst upon me that the molecules of hemoglobin in the red cells
might be responsible for the disease—that the disease might be
a molecular disease involving an abnormal sort of hemoglobin,
