Further Thoughts on Molecular Biology and Metaphysics

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FURTHER THOUGHTS ON MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AND METAPHYSICS EDWARD O. DODSOS* Stent [1] has written an extremely interesting paper on "Molecular Biology and Metaphysics," but he has prejudged some issues and failed to give adequate consideration to alternative interpretations. He opens his paper with a quotation from Salvador DaIi: "The announcement of Watson and Crick about DNA ... is for me the real proof of the existence of God." Stent then continues: "... I think that DaIi has sized up the situation quite correctly: the achievements of molecular biology have furnished proof for the existence of God. And that," he concludes, ". . . could be bad news." It is the contention of the present paper that Stent's premises are correct, but that his conclusion is wrong. The first part of Stent's paper can be summarized tersely. Einstein is alleged to have said that "the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility ." This comprehensibility is based upon the proposition that all reality is a unified whole, functioning according to natural laws which can be discovered and understood. This is obviously a necessary basis for science, and its metaphysical basis is the axiom that the comprehensibility of nature and its orderly operation depend upon a Giver of Natural Law, which, by definition, is God. "Thus," concludes Stent, "a scientist is a man who believes in God, for without this belief it would be futile to try to discover His Laws." He adds, however, that there are synonyms for the above terms which try to avoid that conclusion. To put it another way, science is based upon the propositions that there are systematic truths in nature, that these truths are discoverable, and that they are comprehensible to the human mind, working according to the laws of logic. Rational symmetry requires that this order and comprehensibility of nature be based upon a comparable metaphysical reality, which is God. And "thus," says Stent, "belief in God is not only not incompatible with rational thought but it is the metaphysical axiom from which it follows that an explanation of the world is accessible to human reason." All of this Stent calls Platonic doctrine, although many ?Department of Biology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario KlN 6X5, Canada. 306 J Edward O. Dodson · Molecular Biology and Metaphysics philosophers, some of whom would not consider themselves to be Platonists, have contributed to its development. Stent concludes his summary of "Platonic doctrine" by pointing out that its ethical counterpart is the proposition that there are objectively valid values of right and wrong. On the other hand, there are pagan systems of ethics which do not profess any ultimate values, but which rather base values upon communal purpose. He then proposes a major non sequitur: "Since, our adherence to the Platonic ideal notwithstanding , we cannot ignore the pagan reality, the ensemble of Western aims and values is internally inconsistent." It would be just as logical to say that "since . . . we cannot ignore the pagan reality, the ensemble of Western science is internally inconsistent," or even that "since, their adherence to the pagan ideal notwithstanding, they cannot ignore the Platonic reality, the ensemble of pagan aims and values is internally inconsistent." That Stent does not believe the second proposition is attested by his highly successful, Platonically based career in that most recent flower of Western science, molecular biology. The logic is identical (and invalid) in all three cases. Nonetheless, the balance of Stent's paper is given over to the development of what he considers to be major contradictions in western Platonic culture. These contradictions, he believes, revolve around the soul, modern concepts of which he says began with Descartes. It is to Descartes that we owe the very fruitful idea that the bodies of animals and of humans can be understood as machines. Nonetheless, moral principles, which have nothing to do with machines, do apply to humans, and it is the incorporeal human soul that makes the difference. "It is from his incorporeal soul that man derives both the freedom of and the responsibility for action, without belief in which there can be no morality." It is in relation to two problems of the soul that Stent finds the major contradictions in Western...

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