The logic of life : a history of heredity. The possible and the actual / François Jacob ; translated by Betty E. Spillmann.

  • Jacob, François, 1920-2013.
Date:
1989
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The logic of life : a history of heredity. The possible and the actual / François Jacob ; translated by Betty E. Spillmann. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Introduction The Programme Few phenomena in the living world are so immediately evident as the begetting of like by like. A child soon comes to realize that dog is bom of dog and corn comes from corn. Mankind early learnt to interpret and exploit the permanence of forms through successive generations. To cultivate plants, to breed animals, to improve them for food or to domesticate them, all require long experience. This already implies a certain notion of heredity and its uses. To obtain good crops, it is not sufficient to wait for the full moon or offer up sacrifices to the gods before sowing; it is also necessary to know how to select the right kind of seed. Farmers of the prehistoric era were somewhat like Voltaire’s hero, who undertook to wipe out his enemies with a judi cious mixture of prayers, incantations and arsenic. Particularly in the living world, it proved most difficult to separate the arsenic from the incantations. Even when the virtues of the scientific method had be come solidly established for the study of the physical world, those who studied the living world continued to think of the origin of living beings in terms of beliefs, anecdotes and superstitions for several generations. Relatively simple experiments suffice to make short work of the notion of spontaneous generations and impossible hybrida tions. Nevertheless, some aspects of the ancient myths concerning the origin of man, of beasts and of the earth persisted, in one form or another, until the nineteenth century. Heredity is described today in terms of information, messages and code. The reproduction of an organism has become that of its con stituent molecules. This is not because each chemical species has the ability to produce copies of itself, but because the structure of macro molecules is determined down to the last detail by sequences of four chemical radicals contained in the genetic heritage. What are trans mitted from generation to generation are the ‘ instructions’ specifying the molecular structures: the architectural plans of the future organ ism. They are also the means of executing these plans and of coordin