Dunstan Jones

Date:
1968
Reference:
PP/CRI/I/2/6/4
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Dunstan Jones. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tri , ÎJIOLOGICAL POSSIBILITY AND CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 293 after another by ail automated process. The proteins so produced up to the present have been fairly simple. But there seems no reason in principle why chemists should not go on to produce much more complicated proteins by the same method. And this suggests that means will be invented for producing other very complicated molecules - such as DNA. If DNA, proteins and simpler substances can be synthesized, there is some possibility that it may ultimately be possible to put these together in something like a biological cell - when it may be expected to behave as such. This is not within the bounds of present-day technology, and Dr Crick evidently feels that, even if we could do it, we should not find it worth the effort. 1 But, of course, the same argument is used in regard to putting a man on the moon. v. It is a natural scientific assumption that the combination of sub stances necessary to form living matter once happened by natural processes. This would, from a scientific point of view, be the result of random contacts between molecules of the necessary components. But, in many cases, when the requisite large molecules had formed, they would prolife rate by the process of autocatalysis (of which the replication of DNA is really a special form). It is supposed, therefore, that though on earth for instance the production of these substances in sufficient quantity might have taken some billion years, when they had been produced in sufficient quantity, they would begin to replicate themselves. In view of this, it is not unnatural to believe that there must be other places in this vast universe where the same process has been repeated either with the same elements as on earth - carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, etc. - or possibly with combinations of other elements whose chemistry we are, up to now, not so well acquainted with. If this be allowed, there seems to be no reason why rational beings should not have appeared on some other planets throughout the universe, and why civilizations should not have developed in some of them-even of a highly technological kind. There are probably stars older than our own sun. They may have planets older than the earth. Hence, there could be civilizations much older than ours - a sobering thought ! A good many books and papers have been written of these matters by astronomers, molecular biologists and others in recent years. One of the most comprehensive treatments of this subject is the joint effort of I. S. Shklovskii and Carl Sagan, Soviet and American astronomers respec tively, Intelligent Life in the Universe , 2 a summary and exposition of a good deal of evidence and theory. More specialized treatments are A. G. W. Cameron (ed.), Interstellar Communication 3 and J. D. Bernal, The Origin of Life (1967). In making estimates of the number of civiliza tions in the universe, there are obviously many imponderables. In 1950 1 Op. cit., pp. 64-H65, cf. G. Rattray Taylor, The Biological Time-Bomb, pp. 7, 22-30, 158-201. 2 Holden-Day Inc., San Francisco, 1966. 8 W. A. Benjamin, Inc., New York, 1963.