Related Links
Day Science and Night Science
Of Flies, Mice and Men by Francois Jacob
Harvard University Press, 1999
By T. CORLEY
The biologist Francois Jacob is little known
among lay people, but it's not an exaggeration to say that he is one of
the fathers of modern genetics. With colleagues Jacques Monod and Andre
Lwoff, Jacob won the 1965 Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine for
discovering how cells' metabolism is regulated by their genes, and how
those genes become activated—are "switched on"—in the
presence of certain proteins. He has produced numerous important
scientific articles, has lectured extensively throughout over the years,
and is a household name among biologists.
So it's interesting to learn that, according to
Jacob, science journals have it all backwards. Peer-reviewed publications
present breakthroughs as the inevitable result of an impersonal,
machine-like process. But that's a far cry from what really goes on inside
a research laboratory. "[I]t's like describing a horse race from a
snapshot," he says, when in reality pathbreaking research emerges
from "a jumble of untidy efforts, of attempts born of a passion to
understand." These efforts are then written up in such way as to
depersonalize the achievement and "replace the real order of events
and discoveries by what would have been the logical order, the order that
should have been followed had the conclusion been known from the
start."
The distance between the reality of scientific research and its public presentation separates what Jacob calls "day science"—the official science of articles, seminars, press releases and symposiums—from "night science," the world of sweat and inspiration, of poring over problems at length before stumbling on a solution, sometimes from some unexpected quarter. This passionately elucidated distinction is made in Beauty and Truth, the last of the seven essays that comprise Jacob's latest book, Of Flies, Mice and Men, a concise volume that describes where microbiology has come from and where it is going. Taken together, these meditations on the processes, politics, and moral implications of research make plain why the public image of science as an endeavor devoid of human complications matters so much to Jacob: it is contrary to what he has witnessed and experienced in his long career.
In the space of only 152 pages he covers a lot of ground, providing a brief history of molecular biology, describing some of his experiences in the field, and offering his impression of where genetics is headed. His prose, as translated from French by Giselle Weiss, is intelligent and lucid. (Weiss also includes a few page notes that clear up the occasional tidbit the author left unexplained, such as the meaning of an enigmatic abbreviation, "PaJaMo". It turns out to be shorthand for Pardee, Jacob, and Monod, the team that collaborated on a series of important molecular biology experiments in the 1960s.)
The essays are, in order, The Importance of the Unpredictable, The Fly, The Mouse, The Erector Set, Self and Other, Good and Evil, and Beauty and Truth. As those titles imply, there is a gradual change of subject as Jacob goes along, from personal and scientific history to more philosophical discussions about the nature and future of science. Tales from classical mythology are interspersed throughout to illustrate his points; the saga of Daedalus, for instance, the brilliant craftsman and inventor noted for his lack of hubris, whose works became the tools of the powerful.
"[T]hough Daedalus never lost his head," Jacob instructs us, "though he respected the moral and religious dictates by which the gods ruled people's lives, he placed himself entirely at the disposal of others. His skill permitted his masters to abandon themselves to their hubris. Through Daedalus and his craft, Pasiphae, Minos, Theseus—even Icarus—were able to give themselves over to their reckless ambitions and to pursue their passions to the limit. In this sense, Daedalus symbolizes an evil of our age: the high-flying technician who uses his talent to serve any ideology without worrying about its content or worth. Daedalus was the epitome of 'science without conscience.'"
Jacob is concerned about the future of genetics and the possible applications of new discoveries. As biology enters an increasingly controversial future, he believes the truth is the only guiding star we have; the free flow of data and opinions between scientists is vital to their success and to their being able to help society. But society must also have access to, and develop the resources necessary to understand, what scientists know. "The whole truth needs to be told," Jacob pleads, "Nothing kept secret. This is where the responsibility of the scientist is greatest. He must not let anything of what he suspects about the possible applications or threats fall into the shadows." One such threat is the genetic engineering of people. Jacob tackles this, along with such topics as cloning and eugenics, in Good and Evil. He warns that diversity is the strength of life, that society cannot be helped by the cloning of "perfectly" engineered humans because the most valuable aspect of any living being is that it is different from any other living being.
Explanations of genetics to non-scientists are rarely more succinct and authoritative than they are here. Of Flies, Mice, and Men is written for the general public; my knowledge of biology and chemistry is limited, but I had no trouble following what Jacob was saying. Especially helpful to lay readers are his concise explanations of important principles. For instance, he lays out quite clearly the reasons that new combinations of existing sets of genes are more important than mutations in determining the path of evolution: "[T]he living world is… like an Erector set. It is the product of a vast combinatorial system in which more or less fixed elements… are arranged in various ways.... [T]he new forms often come out of new combinations of the same elements."
Jacob also describes some of the more important episodes in the story of early twentieth-century genetics. He tells of the influential "fly room" at Columbia University, in which Thomas Hunt Morgan and several graduate students analyzed fruit fly genes and their mutations. Noted for its free exchange of information, the fly room generated data that established fundamental principles essential to the study of genes. But the progress made there was contingent on many outside factors. It required not only the open exchange of ideas but freedom from political influences, and Jacob offers a cautionary note in its intellectual antithesis: Soviet-era genetics research.
In the 1930s, Russian biology came under the
dominance of Trofim Lysenko, an agronomist and paranoid opportunist who
managed to convince government officials that genetics research, which
until then had been proceeding successfully in the Soviet Union, was
invalid. His own nonsensical theories appeared to reify Soviet ideology,
and so, because they appealed to Stalin and the Party, Lysenko managed to
supplant legitimate research with absurd claims that legitimate scientists
throughout the Soviet bloc were subsequently forbidden to challenge. It
wasn’t until Russian physicists traveled abroad during the Cold War and
brought back some perspective from the West that Lysenko was shown to be a
charlatan. Jacob says the Lysenko affair so appalled him that it had the
effect of contributing to his choice of science in general, and genetics
in particular, for a career.
As reassuring a science ambassador as the author
is, his book’s most charming passages are the anecdotal ones: his
recounting of collaborations with Monod, his trying to decide whether to
study flies, mice, or nematodes, his passing conversation with a scientist
in a neighboring laboratory, which led to his solving a problem that had
been plaguing him. At one point, Jacob rhapsodizes about the efficiency and pleasure of working in pairs.
"Often during particularly lively discussions," he writes,
"when the dialogue bounces along like a Ping-Pong match, the
excitement can reach a level where each player responds before the other
has finished a sentence. So much so that any outsider present at the scene
very quickly loses track of the discussion." Day science awarded Francois Jacob the Nobel Prize. But the joy and satisfaction he
got from his work, and from the people he worked with, was the lifeblood
of a heart that belongs to night science.
T. Corley is publisher of The Sun's Eye.