Making Connections: Rosalind Franklin

The lecture was intended to provide us with a platform to discuss the nature of truth and goodness in Science (and their opposites: falsehood and evil). The replacement of the emotive and relational nature of goodness and truth in the Judeo-Christian culture that we have been raised in with the dispassionate and objective ideals of Science wrecks once again on the failure of human nature to ever completely follow the whispers of our "greater angels". It was ever thus.

So we have to deal with reality in all its messy details. In "The Race for the Double Helix" the science myth is created where Watson and Crick are self revealed as lying, thieving, glory hounds. Since this is self revealed it must be true for who would promote a historical account of themselves that makes them seem foolish. Odd ... that argument seems strangely like the argument that the disciples must have been telling the truth when they recorded the New Testament accounts that make them all look like stupid, lying, thieving glory hounds.

In any event it was important for us to see how two accounts of the same events, even with many of the principle players still alive and involved in the accounts, can be different in both tone and content.



It is interesting however that just recently the New York Times published an article that referenced Rosalind Franklin. It would appear that in some of the sciences there continues to be an unexplained exit of female scientists. One of the organizations that promotes the role of women in Science turns out to be the Rosalind Franklin Society.

LINK TO ARTICLE ON WOMEN IN SCIENCE

If we understand her at all after all these years since her death I doubt that she would want us to shed a tear for her or waste our time on pity but the seize the day that we have been given.

PS there is a line in the NYT article that describes the relative difficulty level of physics, chemistry and biology and the writer in describing chemistry says "the fact that women earn half of the undergraduate degrees in chemistry, which is not quite plush toy material." LOL