The Day the Universe Changed - James Burke [157]
The greatest early discovery by molecular biology, the DNA molecule, shown in a computer-genera ted graphic illustrating its double helix structure.
The increasingly powerful school of pagan naturalism, which held that the water filled the tube because it, like all other natural forms, ‘knew’that nature abhorred a vacuum, gave all nature a conscious purpose equal with that of the human race and thus denied God’s special relationship with man. In such a world there could be no authority, no stability, no hierarchy and, above all, no monarch. Finally, if experimental proof of the existence of the vacuum were to be ignored, the entire value of empirical science to industry and therefore to England’s prosperity and safety would be placed in jeopardy. Establishment of the existence of a vacuum was a social and political necessity.
Scientists themselves can determine the value of their own work within the contemporary structure. In the 1930s a small group of physicists, including Max Delbrück and Leo Szilard, decided that the discipline of physics was unlikely to provide interesting problems worth solving in the foreseeable future. The field of biology seemed to present more opportunity, being relatively untouched by the physical methods which they were used to employing. There followed a migration by a large group of physicists to the discipline of biology. Their arrival created a new kind of biology which incorporated techniques and ideas from physics. The new discipline became known as molecular biology. Research in biology was thereafter seen to be necessary in order to keep physicists involved in interesting work, rather than springing from a stimulus internal to the science itself.
Strategic and political considerations in the late nineteenth century were brought to bear on medical research. At the time it had become urgently necessary to establish a policy regarding the control of malaria. The British, working in far-flung malaria-ridden posts of the Empire, urgently needed the means to prevent or cure the disease if imperial administration were to continue to function.
The problem was approached in two ways. Ronald Ross advocated preventive methods concerned with public health. He visited Equatorial Africa, and while in Sierra Leone ordered garbage to be removed, ponds and all stagnant water to be drained, water containers to be covered, and pest-breeding areas to be sprayed with kerosene or stripped of undergrowth. This sanitarian approach would, he argued, make malarial zones safe for administrators and local population alike.
A different view was held by Patrick Manson, who stressed the need for scientific research. He believed that increased knowledge about the origins and course of tropical diseases would in the end prove more effective than control.
Several committees were formed to decide the matter. The scientific approach won, not through any theoretical or experimental evidence one way or the other, but because of its social implications. The setting up of a School of Tropical Medicine would enhance the scientific reputation of overseas doctors and thereby increase the systematic control and exploitation of the colonies. It was also less expensive than the public health approach, and inasmuch as it reflected a progressive view of the problem it was in tune with the generally optimistic imperial ethic of the time. The scientific method of approach would also enhance the position of those working in the discipline, endowing tropical medicine with some of the kudos of the older sciences. For these social and political reasons, rather than through a desire to ameliorate tropical conditions, the committees,