Biological thought and chemical thought : a plea for unification the Linacre lecture for 1938 delivered at Cambridge on May 6th / by Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins.

  • Frederick Hopkins
Date:
[1938?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Biological thought and chemical thought : a plea for unification the Linacre lecture for 1938 delivered at Cambridge on May 6th / by Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Let it be frankly admitted that biochemical studies have still before them, save in small, though not negligible, part, what I will again claim as their legitimate aim and major task—the endeavour namely to describe biochemical events from the standpoint of their organisation during life. If _ and when such effort succeeds, and only then, we shall know just how far chemical thought can reach towards a full description of any living unit. Many, and, I think, most to-day, believe that the full description will call in addition for thought of another kind. Nevertheless at any one level of organisation descrip- tion may have its own measure of completeness. With regard once more to the present position of biochemistry, let me again remind you that it is only during the last few decades that its pursuits have revealed something of the nature of the individual events which must share in the organisation, and made clear how great is their number. Progress is accelerating and a young science need not fear the law of diminishing returns. Moreover as a border- land science, apart from its own momentum, it is constantly gaining impetus and fresh opportunities from advances made on each of its frontiers. Especially is this true at the present moment. BIOCHEMISTRY AND BIOLOGY I chose for this lecture an ambitious title which needs some excuse. You will have realised by now that its terms were meant to apply to a field for thought which, though surely all important and one which, occasionally at least, must occupy the mind of every biologist, is yet, for discussion, a limited one. There are of course, and always will be, great fields of biological endeavour, where no _ direct contacts with chemical thought are sought or called for; there are equally wide fields where chemical endeavours have no concern with biological thought. It is especially for those who feel an irresistibly strong desire to learn what can be known about the fundamental nature of living stuff, to realise that here two modes of thought make immediate contact. As Prof. James Gray has said, ‘“ cytology may rightly claim to be the frontier state in the biological common- wealth, for within its borders biologists and chemists find common ground.” Are their differences such that their thought about the living cell must be mutually exclusive; may they not rather, without
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