Notes
- . Indeed, Gunther S. Stent argues that this Platonistic doctrine of a unifying monistic pattern accessible to reason is the equivalent of the concept of God for science (“Molecular Biology and Metaphysics,” Nature 248 [1974]: 779–81). It is questionable, however, whether the idea of a rational order conveys the image of a personal, concerned Being that God possesses in the Judaeo‐Christian tradition.
- . Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).
- . Karl R. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), chap. 1.
- . See, e.g., H. F. Roberts, Plant Hybridization before Mendel (Princeton, N.J.: Prince ton University Press, 1929), and R. C. Olby, Origins of Mendelism (New York: Schocken Books, 1966).
- . U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1951), p. 69, table 74.
- . I am indebted to Stuart D. Elliott, who was a colleague of the late Griffith, for the explanation of what led Griffith to do his famous experiments on pneumococcal virulence. I am further obliged to Rene Dubos, who is writing a biography of Oswald Avery, for the information about the reception of Griffith's work in Avery's laboratory.
- . The surprise undoubtedly caused Avery to proceed most carefully if he was to convince his scientific colleagues, and it forced him to put off his well‐planned retirement, as described in a letter dated May 17, 1943, to his brother Roy, quoted by L. C. Dunn, “Genetics in Historical Perspective,” in Genetic Organization, ed. E. W. Caspari and Arnold W. Ravin (New York: Academic Press, 1969).
- . An informative and generally accessible account of these experiments is contained inS. N.Cohen, “The Manipulation of Genes,” Scientific American (July 1975), pp. 24–33.
- . Thus the molecular geneticist S. Spiegelman remarks: “Science involves discovering a truth that already exists. If you don't find it someone else will. It is not the job of scientists to create a universe. It is simply their job to describe it” (as quoted by J. S. Farer, “I Would Rather Have Been Born a Bach than a Spiegelman,” Columbia Today [September 1975], p. 9). This view, of course, derives from the ultimate belief in the existence of a rational order in nature knowable to but independent of man. See above.
- . C. H. Waddington, The Ethical Animal (London: Allen & Unwin, 1960).
- . For a full philosophical critique see Antony Flew, Evolutionary Ethics (London: Macmillan Co., 1967).
- . It is difficult to resist quoting B. A. W. Russell in this regard: “If evolutionary ethics were sound, we ought to be entirely indifferent as to what the course of evolution may be, since whatever it is is thereby proved to be the best” (Philosophical Essays, rev. ed. [London: Allen & Unwin, 19661, p. 24).
- . Arnold W. Ravin, “An Evolutionist's Ethics” (review of Lewis Thomas's The Lives (f a Cell and of New Theology No. 10 edited by Martin E. Marty and Dean G. Peerman), Zygon 10 (1975): 431–38.
- . ClydeKluckhohn, “Ethical Relativity: Sic et Non,” Journal of Philosophy 52 (1955): 663–77.
- . J. Bronowski, Science and Human Value., (London: Hutchinson, 1961).
- . See Cohen.