1 The prime source for this anecdote is Watson, James, The Double Helix, London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1968, p. 197Google Scholar. However, Crick also referred to having found the ‘basic copying mechanism by which life comes from life’ in a letter to his son. See Francis Crick to Michael Crick, 19 March 1953, Box 2, Folder 24, Francis Crick Personal papers, MSS660, Mandeville Library, UCSD. Quoted by permission.

2 Turner, Frank M., ‘The Victorian conflict between science and religion: a professional dimension’, Isis (1978) 69, pp. 356–376Google Scholar; Bowler, Peter, Reconciling Science and Religion: The Debate in Early-Twentieth-Century Britain, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001Google Scholar.

3 On the complex growth of spiritualism see Hazelgrove, Jennifer, Spiritualism and British Society between the Wars, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000Google Scholar. This book provides insight into the complex democratizing factors behind widespread interest in spiritualism and the sense of life being irreducible to material reality.

4 Of course there is a century-old concern. See Richards, Robert J., The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2002Google Scholar. As early as 1838, Mill had distinguished between the ‘conservative’ views of Coleridge and the ‘progressive’ views of Jeremy Bentham. All Englishmen, he contended, could be associated with the philosophy of one or the other. See Mill, John Stuart, ‘Bentham’, London and Westminster Review (August 1839) 29, pp. 467–506Google Scholar; and idem, ‘Coleridge’, London and Westminster Review (March 1840) 33, pp. 257–302Google Scholar. Mill's categories were echoed and analysed by Karl Mannheim, who explored the disenchantment of the world in his 1927 essay ‘Das conservative Denken’ (which appropriately appeared in English in 1953, ‘Conservative Thought’, in P. Kecskemeti (ed.), Essays on Sociology and Social Psychology: By Karl Mannheim, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953, pp. 74–164) and in his very well-known 1929 Ideologie und Utopie, which had been translated in 1936. Mannheim, Karl, Ideology and Utopia, London: Routledge, 1936Google Scholar. Mannheim contrasted the attitudes of two generations and mindsets. He contrasted the rationalists, looking forward ideologically to a bright future, with conservatives who harked back to a utopian past. On spiritualism before the First World War and the reaction against the disenchantment of the world see Owen, Alex, The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the interwar period see Hazelgrove, op. cit. (3).

5 Balfour, Arthur James, Theism and Thought: A Study in Familiar Beliefs. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1923, pp. 3–4Google Scholar.

6 ‘Science and life. Ancient mystery unresolved. Professor Evans on research’, The Times, 11 September 1928Google Scholar.

7 ‘England stirred by theories on life’, New York Times, 13 September 1928Google Scholar.

8 ‘The nature of life. Scientists’ discussion at The Cape’, The Times, 26 July 1929Google Scholar.

9 Smith, Roger, ‘Biology and values in interwar Britain: C.S. Sherrington, Julian Huxley and the vision of progress’, Past and Present (2003) 178, pp. 210–242Google Scholar; Olby, Robert, ‘Schrödinger's problem: What is life?’, Journal of the History of Biology (1971) 4, pp. 119–148Google Scholar. Olby argues that in fact Crick and Watson were not influenced by Schrödinger's philosophical approach. Kenneth Schaffner has argued that even their findings are not necessarily reductionist. Schaffner, Kenneth, ‘The Watson–Crick model and reductionism’, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (1969) 20, pp. 325–348Google Scholar. See also Hein, Hilde, ‘The endurance of the mechanism–vitalism controversy’, Journal of the History of Biology (1972) 5, pp. 159–188Google Scholar; Beatty, John, ‘Evolutionary anti-reductionism: historical reflections’, Biology and Philosophy (1990) 5, pp. 199–210Google Scholar.

10 The debate in the Oxford Union in 1933, which carried the motion that ‘this house would in no circumstances fight for King and country’, is a well-known example. On the meaning of this debate see Creadel, Martin, ‘The “King and country” debate, 1933: student politics, pacifism and the dictators’, Historical Journal (1979) 22, pp. 397–422CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The historian Taylor, A.J.P.cited the debate as an indicator of national mood in his classic English History 1914–1945, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965, p. 362Google Scholar.

11 Giršavičius, J.O., ‘Biochemistry’, Experiment (November 1928) 1, pp. 34–37Google Scholar.

12 Harding, Jason, ‘Experiment in Cambridge: a manifesto of young England’, Cambridge Quarterly (1998) 27, pp. 287–309Google Scholar. Also see Price, Kate, ‘Finite but unbounded: Experiment magazine Cambridge, England, 1928–33’, Jacket (December 2002) 20, available at http://jacketmagazine.com/20/price-expe.html, consulted 1 December 2008Google Scholar.

13 See ‘The Union Society’, Cambridge Review (2 November 1928) 50(1223), pp. 94–95Google Scholar. For Venture, see the account of Bell's life in Stansky, Peter and Abrahams, William, Journey to the Frontier, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1966Google Scholar.

14 Mark Hillegas, ‘Introduction’, in idem (ed.), Shadows of Imagination: The Fantasies of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1979, pp. xii–xix, xvii.

15 ‘British Association. Bishop of Ripon's address. Science and religion’, The Times, 5 September 1927. See Pursell, Carroll, ‘“A savage struck by lightning”: the idea of a research moratorium, 1927–37’, Lex et Scientia (1974) 10, pp. 146–158Google Scholar.

16 Bowler, op. cit. (2).

17 On this group see Werskey, Gary, The Visible College, London: Allen Lane, 1978Google Scholar. It is striking that while Werskey cites the scepticism over reductionism of two members of his group, Needham and Hogben, both move away from experimental biology and neither comes to be involved in molecular biology.

18 J.B.S. Haldane, ‘Daedalus, or science and the future, a paper read to the Heretics, Cambridge, on February 4th, 1923’. The lecture was published as Daedalus, London: Kegan Paul, 1924.

19 Needham, Joseph, ‘Notes on the way’, Time and Tide (10 September 1932) 12, pp. 970–972Google Scholar.

20 Toulmin, Stephen, ‘Progressive man’, New York Review of Books (March 1966) 6, p. 20Google Scholar.

21 There is an extensive correspondence between Julian Bell and Eileen Bernal in the Archives Centre, King's College, Cambridge, see PP/JHB/2. See, for instance, Eileen Bernal to Julian Bell, 7 July 1936. Cited with permission.

22 On Bernal's artistic friends, particularly Barbara Hepworth, see Brown, Andrew, J.D. Bernal: The Sage of Science, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 153–154Google Scholar. A mural sketched by Picasso on Bernal's wall now hangs over the entrance of the Wellcome Collection.

23 Perutz, Max, ‘Co-chairman's remarks: before the double helix’, Gene (1993) 135, pp. 9–13, 9Google Scholar; see Ferry, Georgina, Max Perutz and the Secret of Life, London: Chatto and Windus, 2007, pp. 26–39Google Scholar.

24 Bernal, J.D. ‘Dialectical materialism and modern science’, Science and Society (1937) 2, pp. 58–66Google Scholar.

25 Bernal, J.D., The Physical Basis of Life, London: Routledge, 1951Google Scholar; Cyril Darlington, The Facts of Life, London: Allen & Unwin, 1953Google Scholar; Conrad Waddington, The Nature of Life, London: Allen & Unwin, 1961Google Scholar. On the difference between the American and British schools see the comments of Kendrew, John, ‘How molecular biology got started’, Scientific American (1967) 216, pp. 141–143Google Scholar.

26 Fuerst, John A., ‘The role of reductionism in the development of molecular biology: peripheral or central?’, Social Studies of Science (1982) 12, pp. 241–278CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. See also the references in note 9.

27 On Russell see Ironside, Philip, The Social and Political Thought of Bertrand Russell, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996Google Scholar. Ironside (on p. 44) points out how in the philosophy of Russell, ‘Desire and emancipation take on the function of sin and salvation’.

28 On the Christian humanists see Oser, Lee, The Return of Christian Humanism: Chesterton, Eliot, Tolkien, and the Romance of History, New York: University of Missouri, 2007Google Scholar. For a critical review of this book which explores Oser's concept of religious humanism see Kenny, Anthony, ‘Too good to last’, Essays in Criticism (2009) 59, pp. 91–98Google Scholar. Interestingly, while Oser does not deal with C.S. Lewis in detail, Kenny suggests that he might have been a more appropriate case study than Tolkien. For the relation of Coleridge to religion see Barth, J. Robert, Coleridge and Christian Doctrine, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987Google Scholar.

29 Garth, John, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-Earth, London: HarperCollins, 2003Google Scholar.

30 Amazon reports that sales of The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien have exceeded 150 million copies worldwide, and the films based on the book are among the most expensive and most successful ever made. The seven Narnia books of C.S. Lewis have sold 85 million copies, according to the BBC.

31 On Lewis see Edwards, Bruce L. (ed.), C.S. Lewis: Lifework and Legacy, 4 vols., Westport: Praeger, 2007Google Scholar. On Tolkien see Curry, Patrick, Defending Middle-Earth: Tolkien, Myth and Modernity, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004Google Scholar.

32 On Lewis's attitude to Wells see David Downing, ‘Rehabilitating H.G. Wells: C.S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet’, in Edwards, op. cit. (31), vol. 2, pp. 13–34.

33 Green, Roger Lancelyn and Hooper, Walter, C.S. Lewis: A Biography, London: Collins, 1974, p. 179Google Scholar.

34 Gee, Henry, The Science of Middle Earth, London: Souvenir, 2005Google Scholar.

35 On the status of the Inklings as a group see David Bratman, ‘Gifted amateurs: C.S. Lewis and the Inklings’, in Edwards, op. cit. (31), vol. 4, pp. 279–320. For the opposition between the Inklings and the biological materialists see Mark B. Adams, ‘The quest for immortality: visions and presentiments in science and literature’, in Stephen Garrard Post and Robert H. Binstock (eds), The Fountain of Youth, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 38–71. See also idem, ‘Last judgement: the visionary biology of J.B.S. Haldane’, Journal of the History of Biology (2000) 33, pp. 457–491CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Lewis, C.S., The Abolition of Man, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1943, pp. 54–55Google Scholar.

37 Ward, Michael, Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008Google Scholar.

38 On the possible inspirations for Lewis's image of N.I.C.E. and indeed of the nearby town of Belbury see Pearce, Joseph, C.S. Lewis and the Catholic Church, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003, p. 93Google Scholar.

39 Bowler, op. cit. (2), p. 403.

40 Haldane, J.B.S., ‘“Auld Hornie”, F.R.S.’, Modern Quarterly (1946) NS 1, pp. 32–40Google Scholar.

41 Conekin, Becky, The Autobiography of a Nation: The 1951 Festival of Britain, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003Google Scholar. On the designs see Jackson, Leslie, From Atoms to Patterns: Crystal Structure Designs from the Festival of Britain, Shepton Beauchamp: Richard Dennis, 2008Google Scholar. Perhaps the very last gathering representing this community was the centenary memorial meeting for J.B.S. Haldane, held at the Science Museum 10–11 April 1992. Attendees included Professor Patricia Clarke and Haldane's sister Naomi Mitchison.

42 Conekin, op. cit. (41), p. 227; and see Sir Gibbs, Phillip, The New Elizabethans, London: Hutchinson, 1953Google Scholar. Also see Hewison, Robert, Culture and Consensus, London: Methuen, 1995, pp. 66–67Google Scholar.

43 See ‘Peter Ibbetson’, published to accompany an exhibition held at Little Gallery, London, 4–30 April 1949. Blake was, of course, also a hero for Bronowski, who had written a biography, William Blake: A Man without a Mask, London: Secker & Warburg, 1944.

44 Max Perutz, ‘Molecular aspects of living processes’, WORK 25/23, National Archives UK.

45 Haldane appeared at the Socratic Society and Lewis at the British Interplanetary Society. C.S. Lewis also engaged in debate with Arthur C. Clarke in an Oxford pub in 1944, an encounter described by Spufford, Francis, The Backroom Boys, London: Faber, 2003, p. 9Google Scholar. See also Miller, Ryder W. (ed.), From Narnia to a Space Odyssey: The War of Letters between Arthur C. Clarke and C.S. Lewis, New York: I Books, 2005Google Scholar.

46 See the Sunday Times (London), 27 May 1956, 3 June 1956, 10 June 1956. Famously the last of these articles emphasizing the continuing potential of new chemical sources of happiness and the potential replacement of alcohol prompted the board of the Distillers company to look seriously at the potential of Thalidomide.

47 See, for instance, the essays included in Watson, J.D. and Gratzer, Walter, A Passion for DNA: Genes, Genomes, and Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000Google Scholar.

48 For Francis Crick the standard reference is Olby, Robert, Francis Crick: Hunter of Life's Secrets, Cold Spring Harbor: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2009Google Scholar. Olby emphasizes Crick's dislike of the institutional strength of the Church.

49 Crick, Francis, What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery, New York: Basic Books, 1990, p. 17Google Scholar.

50 Abir-Am, Pnina, ‘The discourse of physical power and biological knowledge in the 1930s: a reappraisal of the Rockefeller Foundation's “policy” in molecular biology’, Social Studies of Science (1982) 12, pp. 341–382Google Scholar. See ‘Chemists unravel protein's secrets’, New York Times, 5 September 1951.

51 Olby, op. cit. (48), p. 194.

52 Crick, Living Matter, broadcast on the BBC World Service, 15 November 1960, PP/CR1/H2/39 Special Collection, Wellcome Library. I am grateful to the Wellcome Library for permission to quote this passage.

53 Crick, Francis, Of Molecules and Men, Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2004Google Scholar; first published 1966. For the correspondence with Waddington see Crick to Waddington, PP/CR1/I2/6/5, see online http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/SC/B/B/L/T/.

54 Crick, Of Molecules and Men, op. cit. (53), p. 93.

55 Ortolano, Guy, The Two Cultures Controversy: Science, Literature and Cultural Politics in Postwar Britain, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009Google Scholar.

56 Snow, C.P., The Two Cultures, 2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993Google Scholar; first published 1964, p. 11.

57 Snow, op. cit. (56), p. 74.

58 The manuscript copy is to be found in the Crick papers at the Wellcome Foundation, PP/CR1/9/20.

59 This was broadcast on 16 November 1962 and published in The Nation two years later. See Bronowski, Jacob, ‘The abacus and the rose, a dialogue after Galileo’, The Nation, 4 January 1964Google Scholar. This essay is treated in a piece published on the Web by Timothy Sandefur, at http://sandefur.typepad.com/freespace/2009/05/the-two-cultures-and-the-abacus-and-the-rose.html, consulted July 2009. There Sandefur suggests that the character of the host was based on C.P. Snow and that of Harping on F.R. Leavis. His piece agrees with my own assessment that Potts is clearly based on Crick.

60 Snow to Bronowski, 10 December 1962, folder 15, box 70, MS coll 173, Bronowski papers, University of Toronto Library.

61 Compare Crick's formulation in his Living Matter broadcast in 1960 quoted above almost in the same terms.

62 I am grateful to Jon Agar for this insight.

63 I am grateful to Professor Deborah Cameron for the possible association of Harping with some aspects of D.H. Lawrence's philosophy. It may also be mentioned that Lawrence was also a favourite writer of Leavis himself.

64 See Hare, William (Lord Ennismore), ‘Beauty: a problem and an attitude to life’, Experiment (November 1928) 1, pp. 5–10Google Scholar; (February 1929) 2, pp. 2–6. In Hare's description of his ‘aesthetic’ approach to beauty as empirical and psychological, and in contrast to the ‘practical-sensuous, the moral, the religious, and the scientific attitudes’, one may look fruitfully for roots of Bronowski's own attitudes.

65 Ernst Haeckel, The Riddle of the Universe at the Close of the Nineteenth Century, tr. John Maccabe, New York: Harper, 1905, p. 338. For an insight into Haeckel's aesthetics I am grateful for the opportunity to have heard a paper by Bernhard Kleeberg, ‘Evolutionary monism and aesthetics’, presented at the The Monist Century: 1845–1945 colloquium at Queens University Belfast, 2–3 October 2009. I am grateful to Professor Kleeberg for permission to cite his article. Also see Kleeberg, Bernhard, ‘God-Nature progressing: natural theology in German monism’, Science in Context (2007) 20, pp. 537–569Google Scholar. On the influence of Haeckel on art nouveau see Greenhalgh, Paul (ed.), Art Nouveau, London: V&A, 2000Google Scholar.

66 Haeckel, op. cit. (65), p. 343. We may reflect on why the immigrant Polish Jew still with a foreign accent but with a very wide and cosmopolitan knowledge may have decided not to cite Haeckel's German work in a broadcast less than fifteen years after the end of the Second World War.

67 In his book The Double Helix, op. cit. (1), Watson described Maurice Wilkins's encounter with the model. The encounter of Rosalind Franklin memorably portrayed in the BBC dramatization does not seem to have happened. Watson recounts how Wilkins told her about the proposed structure which she then checked against her data.

68 See the account by Anthony Barrington-Brown himself, ‘How I came to take their photograph’, at http://www.thednastore.com/dnastuff/picture1.html, accessed 19 October 2008. See also de Chadarevian, Soraya, ‘The making of an icon’, Science (11 April 2003) 300(3617), pp. 255–257Google Scholar.

69 The most detailed and authoritative account of the building and rebuilding of the model has been provided by de Chadarevian, Soraya, ‘Relics, replicas and commemorations’, Endeavour (2003) 27, pp. 75–79Google Scholar.

70 The model was, for instance, included in the museum's list of ten seminal objects, released for the 2009 centenary.

71 For the comparison with the Mona Lisa and a reconstructed Greek pot see Kemp, Martin, ‘The Mona Lisa of modern science’, Nature (January 2003) 421, pp. 416–420Google Scholar. The process of reconstruction is recounted by its progenitor Farooq Hussain on his website, http://www.farooqhussain.org/projects/doublehelixmodel/document_view, consulted 1 December 2008.

72 Chadarevian, op. cit. (69), p. 78.

73 Kemp, op. cit. (71), p. 416.

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75 See Kay, Lily, The Molecular Vision of Life: Caltech, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of the New Biology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993Google Scholar. It was even after the horrors of the Holocaust that Pauling suggested that anybody found to have the inherited sickle cell anaemia trait should be tattooed. Also see Abir-Am, Pnina, ‘Molecular biology in the context of British, French and American cultures’, International Social Science Journal (2001) 53, pp. 187–99Google Scholar. Abir-Am's portrait of post-war France provides a parallel with the geographically claustrophobic but politically polarized nature of British intellectual life in which the double helix was formulated. However, the politics of existentialism created a rather different set of concerns. See also Strasser, Bruno, ‘Institutionalizing molecular biology in post-war Europe: a comparative study’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological Sciences (2002) 33, pp. 515–546CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

76 See Igor Polianski, ‘Between Hegel and Haeckel: monism and dialectical materialism in the Soviet Union and East Germany’, presented at The Monist Century, 1845–1945. Cited with permission.

77 See Deichmann, Ute, Flüchten, Mitmachen, Vergessen: Chemiker und Biochemiker in der NS-Zeit, Weinheim: Wiley, 2001Google Scholar.

78 Fangerau, Hainer, ‘From Mephistopheles to Isaiah: Jacques Loeb, technical biology and war’, Social Studies of Science (2009) 29, pp. 229–256Google Scholar, see particularly 235–236. I am grateful to Professor Fangerau for bringing this article to my attention. On the influence of Loeb's ideas in the United States see Pauly, Philip J., Controlling Life: Jacques Loeb and the Engineering Ideal in Biology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987Google Scholar. I am delighted to have had the opportunity to discuss the issues in this article with Professor Pauly at the 2007 meeting of the International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology shortly before his untimely death. It is to him I owe the realization of the difference between the US and British expressions of tension between science and religion.

79 Miller, S.L., ‘A production of amino acids under possible primitive earth conditions’, Science (15 May 1953) 117(3046), pp. 528–529Google Scholar. It is interesting to note that one of the three references in this article was to work by Bernal.

80 Fry, Iris, ‘The origins of research into the origins of life’, Endeavour (2006) 30, pp. 24–28Google Scholar; and idem, The Emergence of Life on Earth: A Historical and Scientific Overview, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2000Google Scholar.

81 Of the 7,853 papers published in Science between 1945 and 1954, Miller's paper was the fifth most highly cited up to October 2009 as measured by ISI's ‘World of Knowledge’. The links between the work of Muller, Oparin and Haldane and Watson and Crick are ably described by Lazeano, Antonio, ‘What is life? A brief historical overview’, Chemistry and Biodiversity (2008) 5, pp. 1–15Google Scholar.

82 Evans, John H., Playing God? Human Genetic Engineering and the Rationalization of Public Bioethical Debate, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002Google Scholar.

83 Rosenfeld, Albert, The Second Genesis: The Coming Control of Life, Englewood Cliffs: Vintage Books, 1969Google Scholar.

84 See Paul, Diane, ‘Genetic engineering and eugenics: the uses of history’, Pittsburgh Workshop in the History and Philosophy of Biology, Pittsburgh, PA; 2–17 March 2002Google Scholar, published at http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000852/00/Chapter_1.pdf, accessed 27 January 2009; Peters, Ted, Playing God? Genetic Determinism and Human Freedom, London: Routledge, 1996Google Scholar.

85 On the links between the 1950s and the 1980s see Veldman, Meredith, Fantasy, the Bomb, and the Greening of Britain: Romantic Protest, 1945–1980, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994Google Scholar. On the two-cultures debate see Burnett, D. Graham, ‘A view from the bridge: the two cultures debate, its legacy, and the history’, Daedalus (1999) 128, pp. 193–218Google Scholar.

86 See Dawkins, Richard, The God Delusion, London: Bantam Press, 2006Google Scholar. See also Bunting, Madeleine, ‘Why the intelligent design lobby thanks God for Richard Dawkins’, The Guardian, 27 March 2006Google Scholar.

87 de Chadarevian, Soraya, ‘Of worms and programmes: Caenorhabditis elegans and the study of development’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (1998) 29, pp. 81–105Google Scholar.

88 Andrew Balmer and Paul Martin, ‘Synthetic biology: social and ethical challenges’, an independent review commissioned by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), May 2008.

89 ‘Is this a clump of cells or a living being with a soul?’, The Independent, 26 March 2008Google Scholar.