From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npoiv!hou5f!ariel!houti!hogpc!houxz!ihnp4!ihuxr!lew Newsgroups: net.books Title: An unlikely cross reference Article-I.D.: ihuxr.359 Posted: Sun Mar 13 23:04:13 1983 Received: Tue Mar 15 01:40:14 1983 Reply-To: lew@ihuxr.UUCP (Lew Mammel, Jr.) In "The Eighth Day of Creation" by Horace Judson Freeman (Freeman Judson?) the author compares a conversation of Crick and Watson with Erwin Chargaff to the conversation of Alaric the Goth with Pope Innocent before the sack of Rome. I had to look this up in my (abridged) Decline & Fall. Chargaff was quite the philosophizer, holding that science was a poor attempt to get at the Truth. He regarded Crick and Watson as intellectual barbarians. Similarly, Innocent tried to lecture Alaric on what was proper behavior. Alaric just laughed. I highly recommend "The Eight Day ..." it is a readable, informative, and amusing history of modern molecular biology. It gives new meaning to the author lines of all those Scientific American reprints on cell biology. Lew Mammel, Jr. ihuxr!lew