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Horace Freeland Judson.
The Eighth Day of Creation: makers of the revolution in biology.
Penguin. 1979

[p.337] Why had he called it the central dogma? “Ah! That’s a very, very interesting thing! It was because, I think, of my curious religious upbringing.” He moved in his chair. “Because Jacques has since told me that a dogma is something which a true believer cannot doubt!” Crick laughed. “And indeed, a friend said to me the same thing at dinner last night, when I used the word ‘dogma,’ talked about the central dogma. But that wasn’t what was in my mind. My mind was, that a dogma was an idea for which there was no reasonable evidence. You see?!” And Crick gave a roar of delight. “I just didn’t know what dogma meant. And I could just as well have called it the ‘Central Hypothesis,’ or—you know. Which is what I meant to say. Dogma was just a catch phrase.”

Horace Freeland Judson.
The Search for Solutions.
Hutchinson. 1980

‘Science has several rewards, but the greatest is that it is the most interesting, difficult, pitiless, exciting, and beautiful pursuit that we have yet found. Science is our century’s art.’

With these words, Horace Judson introduces the reader to a subject that is as engrossing as it is important, and to a book that is itself a work of art. Drawing on four hundred years of scientific discovery and on revealing first-hand interviews with contemporary scientists he sets out the foundations of our scientific knowledge, and sets our universe – from the single cell to the solar system – in a new perspective. In so doing he reveals how the human mind approaches problem solving; for whether we are trying to build a house with proper ventilation or build a space capsule that is light and yet strong, whether we are trying to predict the outcome of a new recipe before risking it or predict the timing and force of a new tremor in an earthquake zone, we are dealing with the same mental processes – identifying problems, recognizing variables, discovering patterns, building models, gathering and weighing evidence, looking for feedback, forming theories, testing predictions.

As the author unravels the complexities of modern science, telling us where we are now and how we got here, he also demonstrates the ways in which the human mind grasps problems – scientific or otherwise – and arrives at solutions. The Search for Solutions is a book for anyone who is curious about the state of the art of science and for everyone who is delighted by the complex affair we call the human mind.