Insight and Expression

At the risk of belaboring an obvious symbol, let me underscore the appropriateness of two intertwined chains with identical base sequences as both the chemistry and the communication that are fundamental to life itself. I first read The Double Helix about fifteen years ago and was struck by the breezy, almost unsettling, informality with which James Watson handled the history of his momentous discovery. Then as now, I was not prepared to assess, professionally, the significance of the double helix as a biological breakthrough. Along with thousands of other nonscientists, however, I found myself thoroughly caught up in a quest I could not fully comprehend but which was almost irresistibly compelling.

My own literary background suggests that as I read The Double Helix, I probably employed Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief”—or perhaps more precisely, a willing suspension of understanding—that Coleridge identified as “poetic faith.”¹ Yet I felt something beyond faith in Watson’s scientific explanations. That is, I felt a sense of participating in a fundamental process that would have meaning wherever I was skillful enough to use it. How did Watson’s writing differ from that with which I was familiar in Scientific American or Science 83? At least superficially, Watson’s account had more in common with James Herriot than with Lewis Thomas. Was The Double Helix simply a brash, myth-destroying account that let the hoi polloi peep beneath the forbidding white coats and laboratory paraphernalia?

As I re-read this short account recently, I had no trouble distinguishing it from the arcane or slightly highfalutin work I find so unsatisfactory in Scientific American. While a little less formal than many scientific periodicals, Scientific American concedes very little to interest that is not buttressed by extensive training. Science 83, on the other hand, which is one of my favorite magazines, is excitingly informational and clearly responsive to nonscientists who would like to be introduced to material they do not fully comprehend. Nevertheless, I rarely experience the vicarious involvement in Science 83 that is endemic throughout The Double Helix. Young James Watson is far less attractive, personally, than the engaging veterinarian James Herriot, but my mind was at idle—or even happily out of gear—during much of All Creatures Great and Small, while even a second reading of The Double Helix was a stimulating intellectual experience.

Why have I had such different reactions to these science-based works? I have concluded that I can easily ignore writing that floats above me, that I easily forget the essentially informational, and that writing that indulges me provides little more than an emotional binge. Only works containing effectively expressed insight make a difference down where the meanings are. We may acquire a great deal of information without gaining a single insight. Discoveries may abound without providing insight.

I am indebted to my friend Warren Bryan Martin for a concept that has helped me understand my appreciation of The Double Helix. Writing in a recent issue of Educational Record, Dr. Martin suggests that our preoccupation with “the cutting edge” of our disciplines—what is taking place at the frontiers of inquiry—must presuppose a vital center, a core that energizes and defines the circle. In DNA research, for instance, we need only contrast Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin’s approach with that of Francis Crick and James Watson to see how significant discovery remains incomplete without the synthetic power of insight. Rosy Franklin’s crystallographic skill—and the evidence of her x-ray photographs—made her confident that the sugar phosphate backbone was on the outside of the DNA molecule. But only the insight of Crick and Watson both accommodated and completed this fact. The suspicion, bordering on contempt, with which Wilkins et al viewed Crick and Watson’s model building as a legitimate scientific approach to the riddle of DNA was almost total. Yet one does not come away from this contrast either a convert or a combatant. We find, rather, a deepening appreciation for fresh ways of thinking about and undertaking scientific inquiry. In fact, if Watson had attempted to stimulate my interest by concentrating on the importance of his discovery alone, he likely would not have succeeded. He was, however, quite successful in getting me to identify with his quest. That identification is the primary insight he provided for me—not the result of his efforts so much as the exhilaration of the chase.

In helping me gain insight into the scientific process, James Watson did not have to take my deficient scientific training into account. I could thrill to the chase even without fully recognizing the quarry. Humanity’s sense of wholeness may be instinctive, but it is prompted by symmetry. Neatness does count. I was a little nonplussed some years ago when I first heard a mathematician express delight with the “elegance” of a solution he had worked out. Watson’s repeated word is “pretty.” Both terms suggest something aesthetically satisfying that has an aura of inevitability. While we must take with some reservation Watson’s protest that he lacked sufficient background in biochemistry, we cannot doubt that the insight he and Crick finally caught was not simply the result of exhaustive research. Their culminating efforts contain more than a suggestion of the “Aha!” phenomenon—an experience echoed by their readers. Surely only a very few of the many thousands who have read this account could really follow the explanations offered or understand the nature of the problems encountered. But all could participate in the excitement of the chase.

Reports about work on a discipline’s periphery may be stimulating—even exciting—to those of sufficient background to relate the developing circumference to the suspected center, but that which tries to define the center by integrating random experiment and lonely evidence can be infectious as well. We may follow the developing pattern with at least the same satisfaction we gain from assembling the exquisite electronic components now available in kits for the most sophisticated equipment. In fact, I suspect our eagerness to perform is more basic than our desire to know. Watson allows me to share not only his laboratory life, which in Mark Twain’s hilarious transformation of scripture I know as “through a glass eye darkly,”² but he also shares the petty trials and triumphs of a young man who is awkward in appearance and social grace—even as you and I.

This personal sharing leads to an aspect of insight that may explain why The Double Helix became a bestseller. If perceiving the core or center of a problem or process marks the heart of insight, self-knowledge is a concomitant benefit. We may concentrate our research efforts so narrowly, so completely, that we keep personality traits and attitudes in abeyance (since the process of experimentation can develop a life of its own). But if the day arrives that a discovery turns into an insight, when we can bask if we choose or get the hearing we have not been able to command before, then the kind of human being we are will stand revealed. Watson and Crick are engagingly aware that their work with DNA, if successful, will almost guarantee a Nobel Prize. They comment and make small jokes about this. How will one act when one is compared with Darwin? The reader senses that Crick’s garrulous, nonstop commentary is at least partly an attempt to fill the silence in which introspection might take over. Watson’s almost giddy, sophomoric social whirl is both tryout and relaxation. The Double Helix, then, helps us understand that we begin to know ourselves when such fundamental states as ambition, envy, and greed—truly some of the seven deadly sins—are no longer theological or moral abstractions. We note in others the flaws reflected in our own actions. Readers whose pedestrian lives have provided little opportunity for grand gestures or even modest heroics can identify with Crick and Watson in their ingenuous attempts to stand up to Wilkins, Franklin, and the Braggs family. The Double Helix contains an unmistakable Horatio Alger motif, the triumph of the misunderstood underdog summoning the dreams of glory that unsettle the blood and coerce the hopes of the adolescent who remains part of most of us throughout our lives.

I should note that The Double Helix was written after the fact, when Watson had successfully met temptations and could afford to be generous. In the preface, however, he acknowledges that he made extensive use of letters written during the actual happenings he describes. Much of the book, in other words, could have been a simple compilation of journal entries. Watson’s approach, however, gives an on-the-spot feeling (complete with casually candid responses) that makes the reader’s own sharing and examination—the reader’s own invitation to insight—even more compelling.

Expression is the chain intertwined with insight, truly insight’s necessary companion. The Double Helix illustrates this relationship, for Watson’s story is less a chapter in the history of science than it is the testament of a scientist who recognizes that insight without appropriate expression is simply incomplete. The article in which Crick and Watson gave their triumph to the world began as follows: “We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (D.N.A). This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest.” In literature this introduction would be known as epic understatement. By simply reporting their insight, Crick and Watson displayed the objectivity that science apparently demanded of them, and the 900 words from the original paper in Nature proved to be the biological bombshell that both men envisioned. Yet, the 140 pages in which Watson recounts the experience of the five people most involved in solving the mystery of DNA sound the full diapason of the term expression; in so doing, those pages share an almost unique insight into the scientific process.

For some years, I have been interested in trying to define creativity. I have read many psychological and pedagogical explanations, have subjected myself to creativity tests, have argued language and analyzed theories—all to little avail. For some time now, when asked for a working definition of the creative act, I have simply referred those who ask to The Double Helix, for here is an experiential definition that retains all the complexity and untidiness of living process, yet arrives at an unarguably creative result.

To begin, consider the language Watson employs. In his preface and opening chapters, he frankly admits the biases he carried in the beginning and the limitations that an account relying basically on first impressions will inevitably display. Rather skillfully, however, he works in the offhand acknowledgment of a former DNA research associate who calls him “Honest Jim” in a casual encounter. This encounter is obviously Watson’s primary defense for the highly personal language he early and persistently uses. His language is honest, if one-sided; honest, if unfair; honest, if often brash. If one’s attitudes toward colleagues are designing and mean, however, honesty is hardly a persuasive defense. Fortunately, Watson’s descriptions can be sharp but they are never sniveling. Consider this introduction to Francis Crick:

At the time of my arrival, Francis’ theories spread far beyond the confines of protein crystallography. Anything important would attract him, and he frequently visited other labs to see which new experiments had been done. Though he was generally polite and considerate of colleagues who did not realize the real meaning of their latest experiments, he would never hide this fact from them. Almost immediately he would suggest a rash of new experiments that should confirm his interpretation. Moreover, he would not refrain from telling all who would listen how his clever new idea might set science ahead.

As a result, there existed an unspoken yet real fear of Crick, especially among his contemporaries who had yet to establish their reputations. The quick manner in which he seized their facts and tried to reduce them to coherent patterns frequently made his friends’ stomachs sink with the apprehension that, all too often in the future, he would succeed, and expose to the world the fuzziness of minds hidden from direct view by the considerate, well spoken manners of the Cambridge colleges.³

We would be hard-pressed to find, in two short paragraphs, a more successful effort to picture a colleague who is a catalyst as well as a bit of a cad. How nicely Watson prepares us for Crick’s intellectual agility while simultaneously preparing us for the constant sufferer from self-inflicted wounds. At the risk of using a term that may have a special meaning in biology, I would describe such language as vascular. Cut these words and they might bleed!

Good creative expression demands a tone we can trust. Writers who choose to walk the line between the saucy and the scurrilous cannot afford a single slip. Readers may enjoy the titillation of watching a tightrope walker, but they will usually not indulge the tightrope walker’s choice. Writers who select the difficult will find their success readily applauded, but the presumption that kept a reader’s attention is simply held against such writers in failure. One looks in vain for a truly tasteless comment in The Double Helix. Watson does not slip, and the slightly raffish quality that begins his work survives both embarrassing failure and resounding success. The book is a tour de force—and Watson is unabashedly aware of his achievements.

Unlike those who try to simplify complex material to widen its appeal, Watson pays his readers the almost intolerable compliment of giving the material to them straight, complete with the cryptic diagrams and dialogue that often comprise academic shorthand. How easily this approach might have gotten out of control by becoming either patronizing or pompous. The timing that is so difficult to help developing writers sense is impeccable in The Double Helix. One can find comparable success only in such accounts as that given in First Genesis, where repetition stops just short of alienating readers. One of the meanings of expression has to do with how much can be squeezed from grapes before involving a bitter residue. James Watson knows almost precisely how much scientific jargon I will read before I start skipping. The actual conversations and highly complex relationships give an undeniable ring of authenticity to the quest, but my ignorance might isolate me hopelessly if technical discussion were prolonged. Thankfully, I inevitably find something to give me a little intellectual traction just before I am bogged down completely.

Another quality of effective, creative expression that Watson appears to have mastered with almost insolent ease is his choice of incident and seemingly gratuitous detail. His efforts to keep his account authentic would be as easily abridged by hapless choice as by ersatz conversation. The first time I read this book I viewed James’ sister, Elizabeth—and the two expensive, Parisian suits he bought for her—as needless stuffing. I cannot possibly estimate how much calculation went into the inclusion of an attractive sister, but I now realize that she is a necessary part of the whole. She establishes normalcy. Scientific inquiry may occasionally be untidy, but it is not merely “kooky.” The manic Crick laugh and the Watson hair, the Wilkins rigidity and the Franklin aggressiveness, are incidental, not primary. Elizabeth marks the plumb line in a world that might otherwise appear simply awry.

In conclusion, I suspect that The Double Helix reads well because Watson, as author, had a perspective given to few people. If we scale our Everest early, we can easily use its actual height rather than its symbolic elevation as a gauge. If an autobiographical sketch can be written before memory needs to be edited by nostalgia, the sketch may be able to assume the emotional accuracy that age and hard-won reputation tend to blur. So, how does Watson handle being compared to Darwin and Mendel? At age 23, perhaps a bit self-consciously, but often realistically and always engagingly, intertwining insight and expression to help readers scale the heights with him.