In fact, there were two finalists for the Turner Prize who used scientific
techniques relabelled as art. Aside from the cow in formalin, there was the
endoscopy film. Butchers and doctors are perfectly justified in feeling bemused
at the sight of their daily experience laid out in galleries and presented as
worthy of contemplation by the art establishment.

But we shouldn鈥檛 sneer. Hirst may not be your idea of an artist, but at least
he knows how to impress and persuade an audience of judges鈥攏one of whom, I
wager, has ever been inside an abattoir or a university medical school
dissecting room. What is presented as original and exciting to them is the
nine-to-five reality of another subsection of the population.

There is nothing new in this. Art has been dependent upon scientific advance
for at least a century. The old masters were just that鈥攃raftsmen grinding
their own pigments largely confined to the studio and its array of powders and
potions. But the invention of the metal tube to hold factory-made oil paints
liberated artists and set the way for the rapid outdoor painting of the
impressionists.

Artists also benefited from the activity of the chemical dye industry. Not
only did this enlarge the range of colours available to them, it also allowed
the manufacture of silver emulsions sensitive to all visible wavelengths of
light, thus spawning black and white and then colour photography, and so the
modern art of cinematography.

Nor is the presentation of science as art an original idea of the 1995 Turner
Prize contestants. For example, during the past decade, scientists around the
world have added colour to electron microscope pictures. Pick up almost any copy
of New 杏吧原创 published since the late 1980s, and you will see the
results of their efforts, and even a few of my own. Not that these pictures
would be described as art by those who produced them. The point is, all it takes
to turn these things into art is the opinion of the right person. It鈥檚 already
happening in the case of electron microscope pictures depicting human body
parts. Thames & Hudson have just published a volume of these images with the
title Inside Information, by William Ewing. The pictures are now on
show at the Wellcome Trust鈥檚 gallery at 210 Euston Road, London鈥攋ust like
real art.

Convincing the art establishment to widen its horizons is the difficult bit
in my plan, but thanks to Hirst, Ewing and others, this donkey-work has already
been done. The rest of the plan is simple and I offer it on a royalty-free
basis. Look round your laboratory to see what you have lying about. Dismiss from
your mind any preconceptions about what constitutes art. Hirst remarked after
his award that his preserved cow was a message to the future. Others have
described it as an icon of our times.

Well, our modern research laboratories are jam-packed with icons of the
present that will be messages to the future. I offer a few suggestions. What
about a gel showing DNA fingerprinting? Or a few colourful Petri dishes
containing cultures that are resistant to antibiotics? Those with an engineering
bent might like to take a diamond saw to a large machine鈥攁 centrifuge or
even an electron microscope. If your own laboratory does not stimulate your
imagination, visit London鈥檚 Science Museum to see how many exhibits there would
go well in a glass case in an art gallery.

A word of warning. The idea has to be stimulating, but don鈥檛 overdo it.
Half-dissected human cadavers present a range of beautiful colours, for example,
but I advise against their use. Never forget that the art establishment is
conventional and easily offended. This is art we are talking about, not science.
You have to make allowances for the limited imagination of the audience.

Isn鈥檛 art meant to be permanent? Gels fade, agar dries up, exposed metal
surfaces rust. But don鈥檛 worry. Modern artists long ago abandoned the quaint
idea that their work should last. The important thing is to get it shown now,
get the publicity and bank the cheque.

Royalty-free, as I say, this idea. But do send me an invitation to the big
bash at the Tate next year, won鈥檛 you

For evolutionists, altruism is a difficult idea as it contradicts the competitive tone of natural selection. If you sacrifice yourself for others, then whatever predisposed you to make that sacrifice may be lost to future generations. Altruism should not therefore exist, since selection would be against it. The geneticist J. B. S. Haldane was the first to suggest that altruistic sacrifice would make sense if it ensured the survival of two of your offspring or, say, eight cousins, because your genes would survive in them. This is called kin selection. Sociobiologists also propose that individuals might behave altruistically to improve their group鈥檚 chances of survival. This idea, group selection, has been advocated by Edward O. Wilson, after studies of ant colonies.

Enter Azolla, a plant that is used as a source of nitrogen fertiliser in rice paddies. The fertiliser comes from the nitrogen-fixing activities of Anabaena azollae, a bacterium which grows as columns of single cells in air spaces inside the fern. Most Anabaena cells do not fix nitrogen. These 鈥渧egetative鈥� cells perform photosynthesis, and divide to produce more vegetative cells. Inside the fern some of them change into a type of cell called a heterocyst. This involves the removal of two sections of DNA from the Anabaena chromosome. Once this is done, the neighbouring and now contiguous sequences of DNA produce the complex mixture of enzymes required to convert the nitrogen into ammonia.

The change from a vegetative cell to a heterocyst is irreversible; the heterocyst will not divide further. Therefore cells that become heterocysts have sacrificed themselves for the good of their neighbours, who benefit 鈥� as does the Azolla and the rice crop 鈥� from their nitrogen-fixing.

Is this altruism? Clearly not, you may say. To call it altruism is like saying that a cell in a human embryo that turns into a piece of bone is altruistic. However, this all depends upon where you draw the line between individuals. My bones are part of me. I鈥檓 even sure that my skin is part of me, despite the fact that a lot of it falls off each day. But where is the individual in a column of Anabaena cells? Is it each cell, or the entire column? Or the entire colony?

So, there appear to be two extremes. Either each Anabaena cell is an individual, and those that form heterocysts are altruistic. Or altruism does not exist because the heterocysts are part of a larger individual ensuring its survival in the usual selfish Darwinian manner. The choice between these two positions is not easy to make.

Suppose that the entire genomes of the vegetative Anabaena cells were analysed. They would differ slightly due to random genetic events: it would involve an arbitrary decision to say how many DNA base changes constitute individuality. The large excision of 66 kilobases involved in the production of heterocysts might well qualify.

DNA technology is increasingly used to define individuality in humans -think of DNA fingerprinting, for example. This is nothing new. Our individuality has always rested partly on our unique combination of genes. Humanity itself can now be looked upon as a genetic attribute. We share 98 per cent of our genes with chimpanzees, so our humanity must rest in the other 2 per cent.

These two perspectives point to contrary conclusions about altruism. Although I share the vast majority of my genes with my parents, and even more with my sister, I have no doubt that each of us is an individual. If I jumped into a lake to save my drowning sister and her two daughters, I would be behaving in a Darwinian manner 鈥� I would also be behaving foolishly, since I can鈥檛 swim.

But what if I dived in to save my neighbour who is no relation? Would I be acting altruistically as an individual, or selfishly as a unit of humanity? The media would be in no doubt that I was a hero, an altruist. Here evolutionists grow impatient. The individual is the unit of natural selection, not the species, they splutter. But apply this to Anabaena. The unit of selection 鈥� the individual 鈥� is the single cell. It follows that heterocysts are altruistic. Apply this principle to humans, and we will only save ourselves, or our relations. It contradicts the evidence of human behaviour.

This is a dilemma. Evolutionary theory seems to credit a primitive bacterial cell with higher ideals than humanity. There is no easy way out of this. Humans are altruistic, which surely means that this behaviour has precious little to do with genes 鈥� which should please moral philosophers. The alternative is that we have acquired an inflated idea of our individuality, and altruism is just selfishness after all 鈥� which should please no one.

One thing that is often held against scientists is that they are indifferent to the past. This objection can be expressed in various ways, depending on the critic. An idea commonly expressed by historians of science and also levelled by those on the perhaps envious fringes of science 鈥� you know, social scientists 鈥� is that scientists are ignorant of the past. As though today鈥檚 geneticists should give up out of shame about the earlier eugenics movement.

The indifference is also sometimes called an ignorance of philosophy. This perspective comes from a wide range of people, many of whom are journalists, but some of whom are philosophers. The message here is, don鈥檛 be so arrogantly sure about what you are doing because throughout history greater minds than yours have argued about the very nature of reality. Both these criticisms are true, as far as they go. There is a tendency for scientists to regard the results they obtained yesterday, or the research paper they read yesterday, as somehow intrinsically more valuable than the musings of someone else, possibly more talented, from twenty or a hundred years back. Thomas Kuhn, author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, regards this 鈥渄epreciation of historical fact鈥� as being 鈥渄eeply and probably functionally, ingrained in the ideology of the scientific profession鈥�.

There is also a general failure among practising scientists, of my acquaintance at least, even to grasp what the philosophical criticism is saying. 杏吧原创s tend to grow impatient with doubts about the validity of sense data, or the meaning of knowledge, unless of course they are trying to fathom out how the brain works. Mention in a mild tone of voice how Plato鈥檚 concept of 鈥渋deal forms鈥� seems to have re-emerged under the name of 鈥済enetic programmes鈥�, and you may well get a blank look. And you were only talking about the science of shape.

I must admit that I find myself tempted (only that) to sympathise with such views of the narrow focus of scientists. Both are implicit criticisms of specialisation. It is certainly true that one can find huge amounts of even specialist ignorance without travelling very far. A trivial example from my own career was the fact that several people working on the molecular biology of a particular plant grown as a tissue culture 鈥� Haplopappus, I think it was 鈥� had so little grasp even of botany that they didn鈥檛 know what the plant itself looked like, or whether it was a sort of daisy or a sort of turnip.

Critics of science should not be dismissed out of hand. It is after all possible to be an intelligent thinker without knowing much science, or even while being rather hostile to it. Lewis Wolpert expressed this view in a slightly begrudging way last year (Review, 4 June 1994) when he wrote 鈥測ou can live your life 鈥� quite satisfactorily without knowing any science at all鈥� (my italics). To that I would add: 鈥渙r without having much respect for science at all鈥�; like the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein for instance.

But the critics of science, or the never-practising students and historians of science miss something. It is this. True, scientists don鈥檛 tend to look back very far. True, they do not question on a daily basis the deepest assumptions of their methods. They may not always be objective or strictly logical in their thought processes, or rational in their conclusions. The point is, they are actually doing the thing. And the thing is too engaging to allow too much introspection, perhaps.

If you are genuinely fascinated by something 鈥� evolution by natural selection for instance 鈥� it is perfectly understandable that you are not going to spend very much of your time, if any, pondering the social status of Charles Darwin, his relationships and family background, or the cultural history of his time. You feel quite happy to leave that to others. The edifice he began to build has so many more bricks in it these days, and you are anxious to add a few of your own. The current marathon task by Cambridge University Press to publish thirty or so volumes of Darwin鈥檚 letters, worthy as it is, will probably be wasted on scientists.

The other day, I was reading an article in the sort of newspaper few practising scientists would make time for, a literary review. A phrase jumped out at me in a piece about copyright. 鈥淭here is a crying need for new Wells texts鈥�, it said, referring to H. G. Wells, the author of such works as The Time Machine. I wondered 鈥� How long will it be before someone writes, also entirely without irony, 鈥渢here is a crying need for new Darwin texts鈥�? Whoever does so will not be a practising scientist, for sure. It will be someone working in a history of science department who is running out of ideas for his or her PhD students to work on.

Take heart. The critics have a point, but they are looking in the wrong direction. Their study must necessarily be of the fossil record, whether Wells, Darwin, Immanuel Kant, or whoever takes your fancy. 杏吧原创s other than palaeontologists will continue to feel that it is much more fascinating to know what happened only yesterday, and especially, what will happen, tomorrow. And they are right.

I am not concerned here with the technology of all this information business, but rather with the attitudes that underlie it. Basically, it seems to make us nervous. We are told we need information. If we don鈥檛 have access to it, we feel somehow diminished. Information is the communication of knowledge; those who know inform those who are ignorant. Nervous of the idea of information, we grow suspicious of knowledge itself. We say 鈥渄o you know something that I don鈥檛?鈥� in a worried tone. We use the word 鈥渃lever鈥� as an insult. Knowledge, we say, is power. 鈥淭heir鈥� power over us. But does the knowledge on the cereal package give me any power? It doesn鈥檛 seem likely. Perhaps if I appeared on a quiz programme, and the tiebreaker was about tourism, I should be grateful for it.

Attitudes to knowledge are especially relevant to science. Scientific knowledge is specifically presented as being value-free. Which means that just because you know how to split the atom, it doesn鈥檛 necessarily follow that you must kill people with an atom bomb. Or, to take a current example, that if you are working in a laboratory on the genetics of dwarfism, it doesn鈥檛 mean that you intend to engineer human beings of a standard height.

It seems to me that science has a big problem here. The distinction between knowledge and its uses is justifiable and correct, but the history of science is littered with the touching naiveties of scientists as they made their discoveries. Both Faraday and Rutherford grossly misjudged the practical importance of their research. Most of us would regard a world without electricity as being a ghastly prospect. On the other hand, many would regard a world without nuclear weapons 鈥� even nuclear power stations 鈥� to be highly desirable.

The problem is that scientists are never quite willing enough to emphasise that they don鈥檛 seek knowledge in a willy-nilly way, as though from the back of cereal packets. They stick too closely to their own myth of value-free objective knowledge. We all know that research is just not like that. A research project, if it is to be funded, will conform to what Thomas Kuhn called the current 鈥減aradigm鈥�. In biology for example, this has for a century been evolution by natural selection, recently involving genetics. In mainstream cosmology it is the big bang hypothesis.

This method of working has much to commend it. It concentrates the minds of those proposing to carry out research, and means that expensive resources are targeted on problems that a majority of people within a particular discipline agree to be the most important. If you intend to send a space probe to Saturn, it鈥檚 as well to know in advance what you want it to find out.

It is, however, a gift to critics of science. It鈥檚 tempting to say that science is intolerant of the eccentric, and easy to find examples of such intolerance, whether in the fields of morphic resonance or cold fusion or extrasensory perception. Some of this criticism is valid; it is difficult for eccentrics to get a hearing these days. But this is not an intrinsic characteristic of science. The difficulty arises largely from the way research is funded. With limited resources, it is perhaps inevitable that review committees feel constrained to be a bit conservative. They tend to support proposals that will have wide acceptance; that is, those that fit the current paradigms.

By not spelling out this distressing fact, scientists miss out on several public relations points. The most obvious is that they are not accumulating knowledge for the sake of obtaining power over the rest of the population. They are not trying to breed a super-race of scientists, despite what quite a few authors of popular futuristic books seem to be saying. Neither are they planning the next ecological disaster in order to give themselves future employment in discovering the technological fix for it.

Less obvious, but a bigger loss, I think, is the unchallenged misconception that scientific knowledge is the result of a sort of random, if careful, casting about for facts. This inevitably produces a reaction in the minds of nonscientists along the lines of 鈥渨hat the devil is the point of knowing that?鈥� Think of the comet fragments crashing onto Jupiter, for instance. Who but an astronomer regarded that piece of observation as much more than a sort of video game? Or, as another example, why work on the sexual peculiarities of scale insects?

The truth is that each piece of scientific knowledge is part of a vast construction; one brick, if you like. Within evolutionary theory, scale insects are fascinating. And the point is, the shape of the construction really does prove that the building can be brought into existence. Most important of all, the design blueprint was someone鈥檚 idea 鈥� a Darwin or an Einstein.

And if that could be emphasised, it would be obvious to everyone that science 鈥� the pursuit of the blueprints of the few most able thinkers 鈥� is the study of nothing less than the most compelling of current human ideas. This would surely take the sting out of scientific knowledge. It might even appear as interesting as listening to the ideas of historians, philosophers, biographers, literary critics and all those other intellectuals who hog the column inches and imply that science is dull and obscure.

It鈥檚 Utopian. Information is the communication of knowledge, not knowledge itself. The uninformed are out there and a little learning is a dangerous thing. But what about a lot? More dangerous, or less?

It cannot have escaped anyone鈥檚 notice that the word 鈥渟cientific鈥� is widely used to mean 鈥渢ruthful鈥� or 鈥済ood鈥�. The yogic-flying Natural Law Party describes itself as based on scientific principles. Cosmetics are marketed as having been produced in laboratories by scientific methods.

But 鈥渟cientific鈥�, in my own view, has a very specific meaning, encompassing something quite different from truth or goodness. Judgments of goodness in particular are subject to changes in fashion over time, and hence not part of the business at all. The scientific method consists of approaching a problem with as open a mind as possible, and subjecting hypotheses to examination by experiment. Both of these are essential ideals for reliable science. One or both are usually absent in either poor science, or in its imitations.

A further extremely important test of science is its ability to predict future events. This is a consequence of experimental method. If an experiment has been carefully performed many times and given consistent results, it is reasonable to assume that the same conditions will lead to the same outcome in the future. Scientific laws are obeyed, more or less. A Moon landing craft may not arrive spot-on to the nearest centimetre, but it will land on the Moon. Yogic flyers won鈥檛.

The reason that other disciplines and political parties wish to be considered scientific is that science is, however reluctantly, perceived to be very powerful. It has given us a large degree of control over nature. This is often decried, sometimes correctly. It has given us the power to destroy ourselves and the environment, for example, and it may have contributed to a certain arrogance and aggressiveness toward nature that is one characteristic of the Western mind.

On the other hand, it has also given us the power to destroy many disease organisms. It has given us the power to manufacture and build. It has given us building materials and tools, safe food and, in an historical perspective at least, clean water. It has given writers word processors and artists permanent colours in convenient tubes. No wonder then that many wish to be associated with it.

Who are they? Well, there are economists, with their scientific approach, so-called, to the commercial conduct of populations of individuals. (Not many controlled experiments or open minds there, although plenty of preconceived ideas). There are Marxists, with their so-called scientific study of history. There are Freudians, with their so-called scientific study of the mind. And there are structuralists, with their so-called scientific study of language and literary criticism.

The last group, centred in France, has achieved a certain fame by coining the term 鈥減ostmodernism鈥�. This includes among its tenets the concept that anyone鈥檚 ideas are as interesting as anyone else鈥檚 (apologies to William Shakespeare), and that words have a kind of magical quality of reality aside from their use by writers. Iris Murdoch calls this an 鈥渁larming mystification鈥�. Should the next scare over Streptococcus have gardeners watching for malevolent changes in their Streptocarpus plants? One can only hope that postmodern Streptomyces remain willing to produce antibiotics.

There is a danger of smugness here, though. The open mind, after all, is as essential as the controlled experiment. How many grant applications these days would succeed if they emphasised that? Not all questionable imitations of science are 鈥�-isms鈥� as opposed to 鈥�-ologies鈥�, because a scale of verifiability may be imposed by circumstances. A chemist can attempt to control every aspect of an experiment. An ecologist cannot. How good is ecology at predicting things? Sometimes many desirable experiments are simply out of the question. How empirical is the concept of a singularity in cosmology?

Clearly, some of these weaknesses are more important than others. It is disquieting to hear ecologists making dire predictions, because if they were right, or even listened to, the consequences for all of us would be enormous. The predictions of economists already blight all our lives daily. On the other hand, those of cosmologists are sometimes no more significant than the wildest science fiction, simply because of the huge timescales involved. Science is at its most valuable when it predicts. And what happens in the next few minutes or weeks will always affect mortals more than what might happen in the next one hundred or one billion years.

The scientist, inventor and creator of the Gaia hypothesis, James Lovelock, recently made a wise remark in this area. He said that problems such as how the Universe began, or how life arose on Earth, were to him uninteresting, and in any case, ineffable 鈥� that is, inexpressible, or, if you like, untestable by experiment, and therefore not scientific.

Equally unscientific, it seems to me, is the notion that the behaviour of millions of consumers can be predicted, or that history has a structure, or that words have a meaning beyond that which most of us agree to give them.

The disadvantage to science in all this is what follows from the claims of its unreliable imitators. All my life there has been an economic crisis in Britain, for instance. If I believed economics to be a science, this would imply that science was ineffective. When a predicted ecological disaster does not happen, science鈥檚 reputation takes the rap, not ecology or environmentalism. The public does not notice that it wasn鈥檛 science that made the prediction.

So however tempted you are the next time you speak to an economist, a Freudian, or a postmodernist, and hear the word scientific 鈥� don鈥檛 reach for your gun. Just smile, and remember the old clich茅.

It might be said, for example, that because of its long history, Britain
is a monolithic culture. This culture would include Shakespeare and Darwin,
together with myths about tolerance and kindness to animals, imperial memories
and a certain feeling of superiority to those unfortunate enough not to
be British. . . Equally it could be said that Britain is multicultural:
a diversity of regional varieties in modes of living and speech, enlivened
still further by ethnic imports from the aforesaid former empire, and so
on.

Nonetheless, the two cultures argument will not go away, and indeed
was recently tackled head-on by BBC Radio 4鈥檚 Feedback programme, which
airs listeners鈥� views on the network鈥檚 output. Naturally the sampling method
of such programmes leaves much to be desired; only those with strong views
bother to write or phone in. However, there was almost total unanimity of
response. Correspondents wanted more science, if necessary at the expense
of Kaleidoscope, a daily programme which nowadays deals exclusively with
the arts. The new director of BBC Radio astounded listeners, including this
one, by admitting without any argument that the BBC has been biased in favour
of the arts.

Before we all start to rejoice, however, it鈥檚 as well to consider the
nature of the problem, and the likelihood of solving it. The problem seems
to be that the public, and especially the British public, simply doesn鈥檛
show enough interest in science. Supporters of science may react in various
ways to this perception. A student mathematician said to me, for example,
that people 鈥榦ught to be grateful鈥� for what science has achieved on their
behalf. Those in rather better paid scientific employment tend to reflect
that the low standing given to science is detrimental to the funding of
their own department.

I suspect the most widespread view, held by practising scientists as
well as by the minority of enthusiasts among the public, is that science
is the engine of progress within society and as such ought to be accorded
more respect than it usually is. Adherents of this view will often cite
the economic success of Japan to support it.

But is the public鈥檚 apathy the root of the problem, or is it just a
symptom? And if so, of what? I think more analysis is required.

Science and art are commonly regarded as opposites, but they do have
common features. They both represent a sustained intellectual effort by
an individual or a team of individuals to produce an original piece of work.
It took James Joyce seven years to write Ulysses, and this time span is
not unusual for a scientific research project. Granting agencies might wish
otherwise.

At the end of the time, the work is published. In scientific practice,
of course, it may be published in pieces in order to ensure renewal of the
grant or gain promotion for those involved; equally, many novelists, painters
and musicians, churn out work more frequently than once every seven years
in order to pay the rent.

What happens after publication points up the difference between art
and science. The work of art, be it a book, a painting, or an opera, becomes
part of public property. By paying the cover price or the entrance fee,
anyone can experience it in its entirety. More important, everyone is allowed
to behave as though qualified to judge it. If I don鈥檛 like a book, no one
can tell me I鈥檓 wrong. It鈥檚 my opinion, and that鈥檚 the end of it. I may
consult so-called experts 鈥� literary critics 鈥� to help me decide whether
to part with my money in the first place. But if the product is, in my judgment,
execrable, then that鈥檚 it. I don鈥檛 feel daunted by my disagreement with
the experts.

Equally, few artists seek to define the reaction to their work, or to
explain it. A work of art is offered, and the artist accepts that the audience
can take it or leave it. He or she may well hope for approval, but that
is not the essence of the thing.

How different is the fate of the product of scientific research. Admittedly,
scientific research is never finished, in the sense that a symphony or a
painting is finished. But ignoring that, the public does not experience
a piece of scientific work. It is not led through the details of the experiments,
note by note, as it were, or page by page. It cannot study the brush work
in a leisurely manner. The public is deemed too ignorant to be able to follow
the intricacies of the work itself. This is often a fair judgment: I can
follow the reasoning and know the methods used in most biological work,
but anything with mathematics in it leaves me breathless at my own ignorance.

So instead of being presented with a piece of work, the public gets
a summary. 鈥楪ay gene discovered鈥� for example, or 鈥楿niverse began with a
big bang鈥�. It cannot form its own opinion of such statements; it relies
on the probity of the journalists who make its judgment for it. As a result,
the work is demeaned. How much respect would Joyce enjoy if all we knew
of Ulysses was 鈥楧ublin man鈥檚 account of Ascot Gold Cup Day鈥�, followed by
couple of paragraphs in a newspaper?

This is a complex and highly unsatisfactory situation. It is the source
of the problem of the public鈥檚 indifference, I feel sure. There鈥檚 a paradox
here, of course. How can something as fascinating as the idea that human
behaviour is determined by a sequence of molecules, or the question of
how the Universe began, induce a generic indifference? The answer may be
that while we are all free to discuss the implications of these claims,
we equally all know that there is one thing we can鈥檛 say. We can鈥檛 say,
I don鈥檛 like it, this work is rubbish.

The reason we can鈥檛 say it is that we are not experts, we haven鈥檛 read
the original papers, and probably wouldn鈥檛 understand them if we did. We
are lazily willing to believe scientists鈥� explanations of their own work,
or interpretations of it by others. The work does not become our property.
In short, we may feel disqualified, slightly patronised and perhaps also
suspicious; remembering, as for instance we might, promises of free electricity
from sea water. We certainly won鈥檛 feel grateful.

Despite this, I am curiously optimistic for once. It鈥檚 going to take
a long time, and a few new programmes on the radio won鈥檛 make any direct
difference. But when 鈥� or if 鈥� they arrive, they just might represent a
hopeful trend. The hope being, that the generation now being educated is
going to be better qualified to judge scientific work note by note or page
by page.

What has to be remembered is that art has a very long history. Its products
are often old friends we first met at school, whether called Macbeth, Mozart
or Bob Marley. Science, and in particular socially stimulating parts of
it such as human genetics, is by comparison a newcomer, still a stranger
and perhaps appears to be rather bossy. Maybe we should all have just a
bit more patience.

One of the correspondents to the BBC鈥檚 Feedback was against more science.
He wrote that listening to the radio is a leisure activity, and for leisure
people read books and listen to music; they don鈥檛 spend their weekends splitting
the atom at the bottom of the garden. This is undoubtedly correct. However,
it may be Utopian of me to say so, but learning is a pleasure, and can be
a leisure activity, given a good educational start. Nature, New 杏吧原创
and Science ousting Cosmopolitan and Hello? Unlikely, but you never know

Jeremy Burgess writes from Wymondham, Norfolk.

Darwin鈥檚 ideas coincided, of course, with the growth of industrial society
in Western Europe and its philosophy of the free market, competition and
the survival of the most efficient producers of manufactured goods. As everyone
who listens to the news will know, this rhetoric of competition is still
being refined. Just as a rare plant may survive by occupying a niche not
available to other species, so too we now speak of niche marketing. A sundew
scratching a living from a nitrogen-deficient bog has as its business equivalent
the small shop at the railway station selling socks or ties.

Within this overall pattern a place for cooperation has long been recognised.
In biology it is known as symbiosis and is defined as an association of
two organisms for the benefit of both. It probably arose from parasitism,
and therefore could be described as mutual exploitation. Possibly the most
familiar example is provided by lichens 鈥� in which an algal species grows
in intimate proximity to a fungus. The alga, being photosynthetic, can use
the energy of sunlight to synthesise complex organic molecules. The fungus
can extract minerals and small molecules from a variety of unpromising substrates,
such as bare rock, the slates on the roof of your house, or the bark of
trees. Neither partner can grow very well, if at all, without the other.

Mutually beneficial relationships are widespread in nature and are not
restricted to simple organisms. Their basis is often more complex than just
a biochemical exchange. Take the Egyptian plover (Pluvianus aegypticus)
and the Nile crocodile (Crocodile niloticus). The plover is just the right
size to be a tasty snack for the crocodile, yet it spends much of its time
in the reptile鈥檚 gaping mouth. It feeds on the leeches that infest the soft
tissues there, and any food remnants that it finds stuck to the crocodile鈥檚
teeth. This is a symbiotic relationship: the bird gets a supply of food,
while the crocodile gets its teeth cleaned.

The oldest example of symbiosis know to humanity is that of the bacterial
genus Rhizobium with leguminous plants. As early as the 5th century BC,
the Chinese recorded the use of lu tou, which we know as Phaseolus mungo,
as a green manure for improving pastures. The scientific explanation for
this early observation is now understood in considerable detail.

Rhizobium species are widespread in fertile soils. Individual bacteria
are attracted to the fine root hairs of host species in a specific way.
The bacterium induces an ingrowth of the cell wall of the hair, and by
this means gains access to the interior of the root. Once inside, the bacterium
divides repeatedly, then changes its form to produce cells called bacteroids.
With the help of the plant, these equip themselves with a form of haemoglobin,
and are then capable of converting atmospheric nitrogen into ammonium ions,
a vital process known as nitrogen fixation.

All this occurs within small but visible outgrowths of the root, called
nodules. Functioning nodules are pink due to the presence of the haemoglobin.
They occur on a wide variety of familiar plants, such as peas, beans, clover,
lupins and lucerne. As the ancient Chinese knew, plants that are capable
of nitrogen fixation are an asset to farmers. Even in modern industrial
agriculture, their use in rotation can reduce the need for added nitrogen
fertilisers.

The biochemical, genetic and structural details of nodule formation
have been studied extensively. But one problem has always eluded convincing
explanation. It is obvious what the plant gains from its association with
the bacterium: a substantial dose of an essential element, nitrogen, in
a form that it can use. Atmospheric nitrogen cannot be metabolised by higher
plants. But what鈥檚 in it for the bacterium? Various rather simplistic stories
could be told, most of them along the lines of superior plant growth being
a jolly good thing for anything that lives in the soil. Roots exude various
carbohydrates, for example; or the plant, when it eventually dies, leaves
remains that become available for soil organisms. This type of explanation
is all right, as far as it goes. It does, however, lack the element of selfishness
that is a characteristic of the evolutionary paradigm. There is almost a
whiff of altruism about it; surely rhizobia would not bother to help the
plant if the effect was general amelioration of life for any old soil organism
in the vicinity.

Now those who find altruistic motives unconvincing 鈥� or even offensive
鈥� can breathe easier. A new class of energy-rich organic molecules, discovered
by researchers at the University of Adelaide, has come to the rescue. Called
rhizopines, they are synthesised by the bacteroids within the nodules, using
bacterial genes, and they are a store of food for cells that can use them.
This allows evolutionary theory to be maintained as the only cells that
can use the rhizopine turn out to be the very strains of Rhizobium that
have the genes that encoded their production in the first place.

Thus, when the plant dies, it releases into the surrounding soil a complex
food substrate, the rhizopine, that is useful only to related Rhizobium
cells that happen to be in the vicinity. Far from being altruistic, the
Rhizobium turns out to have been fulfilling its half of the selfish symbiotic
arrangement after all. Related cells that happened not to find a root hair
are sustained by the product of those that did.

This research was not designed to settle a philosophical point, of course.
It has implications that may prove to be of great value to agriculture.
杏吧原创s in laboratories have long been able to produce strains of Rhizobium
that are particularly efficient at nitrogen fixation. The trouble is that
they often compete poorly with natural strains, and may die out after a
season or two. But incorporating the genes for rhizopine metabolism into
such strains may give them just the competitive edge they require to survive
indefinitely. Which might even be an illustration of the symbiosis between
basic research and food production.

Jeremy Burgess is a cell biologist and writes from Ketteringham in Norfolk.

Since childhood, I have been fascinated by the theory of evolution.
It was so simple, a child could understand it. The concept 鈥� the survival
of the fittest 鈥� was self- explanatory. Something that easy to understand
just had to be true. It was only common sense. It was also logical. Offspring
were produced in huge numbers, with small variations. With not enough resources
to go round, competition and natural selection led to the survival of the
fittest. Why had it been thought of only during the 19th century?

As a schoolboy I knew what fit meant; it meant the way I felt after
I had trained every night of the week for a cross-country race. It meant
I would win easily and I wouldn鈥檛 feel exhausted afterwards. It was this
sort of fitness that I imagined Charles Darwin had in mind. He was no athlete,
but he was writing at a time of social revolution. The influence of the
Church was declining in places such as the University of Cambridge, and
Thomas Malthus was hard-heartedly pointing out that the suffering of the
poor was a sort of natural process of competition due to population growth
鈥� best they were sent out to the colonies.

Privileged after marrying into the Wedgwood fortune, Darwin moved in
a social circle deeply alarmed by the demands of the common people for
emancipation. The savage crowds on the streets, socialists, Chartists and
the like, were a godless lot, threatening both the power of the Church
and the property of the rich.

Darwin鈥檚 travels on the Beagle brought him into contact with other 鈥榮avages鈥�.
On board were three Fuegians. The skipper, Robert Fitzroy, had brought them
to England to be 鈥榗ivilised鈥� and was now, one year later, returning them
to their homeland as missionaries. Darwin was at first appalled when he
saw the native condition of their compatriots. They were naked, undignified
and definitely unfit for English society. He noted in passing that they
were 鈥榤ore amusing than any monkeys鈥�.

The missionaries were dropped off and revisited a year later. They had
reverted to savagery. But Darwin鈥檚 idea of fitness had changed. Writing
of Jemmy Button, one of the original three, he admitted that 鈥業 hope and
have little doubt that he will be as happy as if he had never left his country,
which is more than I formerly thought.鈥� This is not the fitness of competitive
struggle within society, it is the fitness of suitability, or the fit of
a glove.

Visiting Australia, he experienced another short-lived initial reaction.
Sydney was 鈥榓 most magnificent testimony to the power of the British nation鈥�,
but within weeks he could write that 鈥榥othing but severe necessity would
compel me to emigrate鈥�. The fitness of competitors resurfaced. At that time
鈥� 1836 鈥� there were only 210 Tasmanian aborigines left. He concluded that
when two human races meet, 鈥榯hey act precisely like two species of animals
鈥� they fight, eat each other etc鈥� and whichever has the 鈥榖est fitted organisation,
or instincts (ie intellect in man)鈥� gains the day. Darwin鈥檚 observations
during the voyage of the Beagle, his later study of barnacles and of domesticated
animals and birds, all convinced him that species were mutable. The fittest
variants survived, in the same way as English colonists survived and overcame
indigenous peoples in places such as Australia. The novel part of Darwin鈥檚
thought was not evolution, which was in vogue, both in science and on the
streets. It was the idea that new species arose by natural selection. He
knew that this would horrify his social peers, because it pensioned off
the Creator.

Times change as do fashions. Modern science doesn鈥檛 really like a vague
concept such as fitness. It smacks too much of common sense. Nowadays science
is supposed to be so difficult that mere common sense won鈥檛 suffice. These
days, the fashion goes, if something is easy to understand, it is probably
not true. Unfortunately, science is not brave enough to tinker with the
words used by one of its heroes. So instead, it changes the meaning.

There is another fashionable reason for change. Common-sense fitness
applies to athletes and English colonists. But it carries a burden of the
other meaning 鈥� suitable, fit for a purpose; the Fuegian savage. In these
ecological times, we are not supposed to think that evolution has a purpose,
because if we do, the purpose is us. This sounds a little too much like
religion, or perhaps a licence to exploit the planet.

鈥楻eal鈥� science 鈥� especially genetics 鈥� thinks in value-free terms of
individuals, species and, the latest fashion, even sequences of DNA. So
it defines fitness as a measure of the ability to survive and reproduce.
A high level of fitness means greater reproductive success. Species can
be fit, so can genes. If you are fit, you win life鈥檚 race. You and your
like survive to the next generation. By this definition, a Fuegian savage
is fit, but the Tasmanian aboriginal, now extinct, was not.

It seems plausible enough. But what about that slogan, survival of the
fittest? Hasn鈥檛 that, in the name of fashion 鈥� or is it science 鈥� been exposed
as the meaningless tautology it always was? Survival of those most liable
to survive? Is that going to inspire today鈥檚 schoolchildren?

Perhaps Darwin saw this danger. Survival of the fittest was not his
choice of a slogan. It was coined by Herbert Spencer in his Principles of
Biology. Darwin preferred the term natural selection, because it pointed
to the analogy between the workings of nature and the process of human selective
breeding of domesticated livestock and crops. Darwin鈥檚 term dismayed his
supporters, especially Thomas Huxley, since it implied a selector, and domestication
produced varieties, not species.

Natural, as in natural selection, is a bit of a common-sense word too.
Any attempt to redefine it in the age of antifit is fraught with danger.
Fashions change. In 1838, Darwin drew up a list of the possible benefits
of marriage. They included 鈥楥harms of female chit-chat鈥� and 鈥極bject to be
beloved and played with 鈥� better than a dog anyhow鈥�. Scarcely the attitude
for the 1990s.

Nature has been Mother Nature since we were speaking Middle English
鈥� say for seven centuries. But today, God is also a woman, isn鈥檛 She? One
slip with any new definition of natural and poor old Darwin needn鈥檛 have
bothered; the Creator will get Her old job back.

Jeremy Burgess writes from Ketteringham in Norfolk.

To the agent鈥檚 surprise and, in these recessionary times slightly to
mine, I refused. Which is not to say that this century鈥檚 most significant
discovery in biological science is not worth acknowledging, but my own
feelings on it are too mixed for syndication.

I do not want to be curmudgeonly, so I鈥檒l list briefly the benefits
that have accrued from the discovery. First is a deeper understanding of
the process of heredity, something that has mystified humans for millennia.
No matter that their ancient ignorance did not stop them domesticating the
horse, the cow, wheat, barley, rice and all the rest of them. We should
be so lucky.

Secondly, there are social benefits, such as DNA fingerprinting of rapists,
the development of genetically engineered microorganisms to produce pharmaceuticals
and gene therapy. The jury is still out in some of these areas, but I think
the verdict will be favourable.

Then there鈥檚 . . . Well, I think I have said enough about the benefits.
The drawbacks are less obvious and not so fashionable in the media. To
many they are perhaps only sensed subconsciously.

In part they concern the conduct and nature of science. As anyone who
still manages to hold down a job in biological research will know, projects
in molecular biology dominate grant applications and also grant awards.
This is inevitable since for many companies molecular biology holds the
promise of financial benefits. Which would not matter too much but for the
nature of molecular biology. It is a curious subject. Molecular biologists
by their own admission are rarely exponents of either chemistry or biology.
They do not need to be since they concentrate on one sort of molecule. By
the use of a variety of highly expensive commercial aids, from the so-called
restriction enzymes to sequencing machines, and following the instructions
in the book there is every chance they will achieve their goals.

There is an increasing tendency to view all problems through a genetic,
molecular biology filter. On the PhD conveyor belt, students can be allocated
their mutant or their gene these days in much the same unimaginative way
as in my day some were allocated their enzyme.

This is not what science should be about. Or at least, not so predominantly.
To mix a metaphor, the overuse of filters can produce tunnel vision. Clearly
there is a case for regarding science as the paid servant of an industrialised
society, with the role of developing modern tools and demonstrating their
successful use. To argue otherwise is to risk being called a Luddite, a
medievalist, or at least a romantic nostalgic.

But biological science can have other social functions. It is one of
a range of activities by which we can expand our perception of the natural
world. It is, or should be, an exciting and stimulating career, not merely
a way of earning a living by following a series of dull procedures. It can
define and seek to push back the frontiers of human knowledge about the
most interesting part of the Universe its living creatures.

The unravelling of DNA鈥檚 double helix has brought about a shift in the
perceived power of biological science. Biologists are no longer expected
to be mere onlookers, curious investigators, reporters. They can change
things. Instead of studying the world and attempting to describe its complexity,
they can ignore all that, sit down with a word processor and formulate schemes
for improving it.

I suspect that this shift is responsible for much of the public anxiety
about science, which the neurophysiologist Richard Gregory recently suggested
is a peculiarly British thing. We are wrong to fear technology in the way
that we appear to these days. To do so underestimates the goodwill of scientists
and probably over-over their abilities. It is one thing to see into the
mind of God, quite another to become God. But in its fear, the public may
be expressing a profound insight.

There surely is interaction between a society and the advanced ideas
of its intellectual elite. The current overemphasis on genetic approaches
in biological research seems likely to be perceived as a new determinism.
Determinism is an alluring concept in a timid age such as ours. It means
we can escape that most inconvenient feeling, responsibility.

For a trivial example, take the discovery of a 鈥榞ene for obesity鈥�. It
might appear to free the obese from responsibility for their own shape,
to their great relief no doubt. Whereas the laws of thermodynamics are surely
more fundamental. Genes may incline the body to store the energy from ingested
food in a particular way, but reducing food intake might overcome that
without any need for sophisticated therapy. The effects of the gene for
obesity do not show up much in the starving Third World.

The genetic paradigm is thus a particularly gloomy one to my mind. Its
determinist overtones need to be watched. In some dark corners, they can
be used to justify other 鈥榠sms鈥�. There is nepotism, for example, and racism.
It is, of course, outrageously unfair to blame science for the way in which
society perverts it. Adolf Hitler was not Charles Darwin鈥檚 fault any more
than the hydrogen bomb was Ernest Rutherford鈥檚. 杏吧原创s are not paid
to be society鈥檚 conscience and their activities do not absolve society of
responsibility.

Arthur Schopenhauer together with Friedrich Nietzsche, the arch proponent
of the ruthless Will was far from a cringing fatalist in his private life.
He did not like, or believe, his own philosophy. In the same way, we must
all try to remember that despite current biological fashion, DNA is not
the Will. I fear it may take another forty years for this truth to sink
in.

At the end of the 19th century people were feeling the bumps on each
other鈥檚 heads with determinist concepts in mind. We can scoff at that now.
Obviously a bump on your head does not determine your character, your fate
or your morality. But what about a band on an electrophoresis gel? What
if a gene for committing murder were to emerge from 鈥楾he Project鈥�? Do we
cease to blame the individual and by so doing further insult ourselves?
Oh come on, you may say. It all just goes to show that science, as usual,
is running ahead of society. The nature of research makes it so. And anyway,
what about those soggy tomatoes in the supermarket? Surely the prospect
of their demise is a cause for celebration?

Maybe. But I can only wonder if the scientific endeavours of the past
three hundred years amount to that. On the other hand, is science about
to convince us that we are indeed machines at the mercy of our base pairs?
Not so much a cause for celebration, more a pause for thought. Throw me
an overripe tomato any day; a useful part of a calorie-controlled diet.

Jeremy Burgess is a biochemist turned science writer based in Wydmondham,
Norfolk.

Not all Australian is so appealing. I resisted regarding the person
who delivered my mail in Australia as a 鈥榩ostie鈥�, for example. And when
it came after noon, as it often did, I did not blame him for getting to
the house in the 鈥榓rvo鈥�, and I would certainly not have 鈥榙obbed鈥� him in
for having had a 鈥榮moko鈥� on the way. My unease with these Australian expressions
is simply a matter of taste and habit. Anyone can grasp their meaning without
difficulty, which is after all the main purpose of language. Every journo
knows that. Language can be seen as a series of coded sounds when spoken,
or signs when written. If you understand the code, you can communicate.

Science has its own language and its own codes. We all know the name
of at least one. There is machine code in computing, for example, and then
there is the DNA code. The DNA code is particularly intriguing. It consists
of 鈥榳ords鈥� of three letters that are arranged in continuous streams. Read
correctly by living organisms, it can specify the design of anything from
a virus coat protein to the entire body of a tree or a human being.

I still remember the day it was cracked. My tutor hotfooted it in from
Hills Road in Cambridge bearing a sheet of paper with the three-letter base
combinations and their corresponding amino acid. There was much drinking
of college sherry and recounting of anecdotes about the social mores of
Francis Crick. We all had the impression that here was history in the making.
If you knew the sequence of DNA bases, then you knew the chemical structure
of the protein, and that was that.

In one sense, we were right, but as time went on, it became clear that
organisms are a lot more subtle in their decoding abilities than was first
suspected. The correspondence between the linear base code and the sequence
of amino acids in a protein is not so simple. There is, for example, the
small problem of processing RNA 鈥� the first product during the transcription
of DNA. There is the rather larger problem of what the vast amount of apparently
silent DNA in higher organisms is doing. And there is the continual nag
of the importance of minor base changes (mutations), which may produce
no effect in an end product, while others may merely produce a chemical
change and yet others a three 鈥� dimensional structural change that profoundly
affects function.

All of which is perhaps not surprising; at least, I would hope that
no-one would be surprised to discover that living organisms are extremely
complex. However, this very complexity presents a problem.

One of the favoured tools of molecular biology today is the concept
of 鈥榟omology鈥� between sequenced lengths of DNA. It seems a simple enough
idea. If two pieces of DNA are very similar, it is reasonable to assume
that they have a common source. Applying this tool might therefore be expected
to reveal evolutionary relationships. For example, if all ribosomal genes
have similar code sequences, it can be assumed that the structure of the
ribosome has been highly conserved because it is a highly efficient piece
of protein synthesising machinery. This is very reassuring.

There are however, two potential flaws in the procedure. The first is
the measurement of homology itself. For most research workers, this means
using computer software to judge the similarity between two pieces of DNA.
It is expressed as a percentage. This leads to a difficulty; 90 per cent
homology is certainly great similarity, but what of 60 per cent or 45 per
cent? The second is that given the nature of the active centre of a functional
protein for example, even quite a high degree of correspondence between
two lengths of DNA need not represent identity of function in their two
products.

Logic is stretched to its limit when, as is now happening, scientists
argue back solely from DNA homology to evolutionary or biological significance.
A typical argument might run like this. Biologists discover and sequence
a new gene. They do not know what its product is. The computer announces
that it has, say, 60 per cent homology with a couple of other genes that
biologists already suspect are regulating genes. They conclude that the
new gene is also a regulatory gene. In doing this they are ignoring the
basic facts of any language that words spelled similarly may have quite
different meanings, just as translated words can have the same meaning although
they have few or no letters in common.

Which is not to suggest that the DNA code has somehow become undecipherable;
clearly it has not. But be warned, the mechanical application of rules
to what is rightly regarded as a coded language should always be tempered
with respect for the idea of meaning. Judgments about meaning cannot confidently
be left to machines; at least, not yet.

The meaning of a length of DNA lies in the nature of whatever chemical
entity it encodes. Comparing base sequences may not be as valuable as it
is often assumed. This is analogous perhaps to human language, where meaning
cannot be deduced from the order of letters in a word. Look up 鈥榓rvo鈥� in
the Oxford English Dictionary. If it is absent from your edition 鈥� in other
words, if its product is unknown 鈥� you might be left guessing as to whether
it somehow refers to a priest, a ploughman or a funeral director. Until
you ask your postie, that is.