ABSTRACT
In his lectures, O f Molecules and Men, Francis Crick cele brates the approaching end of what he calls ‘vitalism’ and the triumph of a scientific mentality which will envisage all of nature, human and animate as well as non-organic, in terms of the laws governing the behavior of its least parts. He writes:
Once one has become adjusted to the idea that we are here because we have evolved from simple chemical compounds by a process of natural selection, it is remarkable how many of the problems of the modern world take on a completely new light. It is for this reason that it is important that science in general, and natural selection in particular, should become the basis on which we are to build the new culture. C. P. Snow was quite right when he said there were two cultures.. . . The mistake he made, in my view, was to underestimate the difference between them. The old, or literary culture, which was based originally on Christian values, is clearly dying, whereas the new culture, the scientific one, based on scientific values, is still in an early stage of development, although it is growing with great rapidity. It is not possible to see one’s way clearly in the modern world unless one grasps this division between these two cultures and the fact that one is slowly dying and the other, although primitive, is bursting into life.1
