The Effecting of All Things Possible: Molecular Biology and Bacon's Vision

THE EFFECTING OF ALL THINGS POSSIBLE: MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AND BACON'S VISION LEONARD N. ISAACS* The Original Recipe for Modern Science "The End of our Foundation is the knowledge of Causes and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of Human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible." Thus a senior fellow of Salomon's House, Francis Bacon's idealized scientific institution, reveals the ultimate aims of his order. Though this description may have struck most readers of New Atlantis as marvelously Utopian, the vision soon bore fruit. By the late seventeenth century, it had stimulated the founding of the Royal Society. By the late twentieth century, it stands as a provocative image of the state of contemporary science. The development of modern science cannot, of course, be traced or attributed to any single progenitor. Yet, Bacon can be credited with having clearly and explicitly formulated a schema for the advancement of knowledge that is immediately recognizable to anyone immersed in the scientific worldview of Western culture. It is in this sense that I take the organized, experimental, progressive, and collective pursuit of knowledge that Bacon propounded for the relief of man's estate as constituting the "original recipe" for modern science. The realization of Bacon's vision of scientific advancement in the profound accomplishments of the hard sciences—physics and chemistry— and, still more, in their incredibly productive application that underlies modern technology, is sufficiently obvious to need no further comment. What merits closer investigation, I believe, is a consideration of the Baconian program in terms of the life sciences—and most particularly in regard to the astonishing progress of molecular biology in recent decades . Within the past 10 years this field of research has been highlighted in the popular consciousness through a bewildering mix of pro- *Lyman Briggs School, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824. O 1987 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0031-5982/87/3003-0519$01.00 402 Leonard N. Isaacs ¦ Bacon's Vision claimed benefits and purported risks. Supporters promise, for example, medical advances via new supplies of insulin and human growth hormone or prospective malaria and AIDS vaccines as well as economic rejuvenation of depressed areas through development of biotechnology industries. Detractors raise the threat of novel routes of epidemic infection , new modes of ecological and environmental dislocation, and reliance on technical fixes for complex social problems. Proponents point to the emerging prospects of genetic therapy for the alleviation of devastating metabolic disorders brought about by defective stretches of DNA. Critics charge that those same techniques, if successful, may pave the way to engineering the human gene pool and to "playing God" with future generations. The Baconian program is worth a close examination because both the successes and the dilemmas with which molecular biology so dramatically confronts us are readily discernible in that original prospectus. Most significantly, these correspondences are not accidental or superficial ; on the contrary, they emerge because Bacon's deep insights regarding the nature and the power of advanced scientific knowledge are essentially correct. Among the conclusions I will draw from this analysis of his work are the following: (1) The present achievements and plausible prospects of molecular biology are fully consistent with (and to a surprising degree even anticipated in) Bacon's program. (2) Bacon, for the most part, rightly posited the organizational, methodological, and theoretical prescriptions by which such accomplishments could be brought about. (3) The system ofvalues and beliefs that inspired Bacon's vision, and in terms of which he hoped his humanitarian purposes would be executed, carried from the start the likelihood of being undermined by the very successes of his program. The guideposts that were meant to provide direction for the beneficent application of science cannot be relied on to prevent the potential abuse of scientific discovery .l What I hope to demonstrate in this essay is that the problems as well as the achievements of molecular biology, the tension between what we can do and what we should do with the knowledge that is power, the paradox of possessing godlike abilities of transforming nature conjoined with the limitations ofhuman motivation andjudgment, are not acciden1My perspective on Bacon...