The Code Breaker

by Walter Isaacson

that the key to innovation is connecting a curiosity about basic science to the practical work of devising tools that can be applied to our lives—moving discoveries from lab bench to bedside.

Darwin and Wallace had a key trait that is a catalyst for creativity: they had wide-ranging interests and were able to make connections between different disciplines.

There are some truly grand questions that our mortal minds may never be able to answer: How did the universe begin? Why is there something rather than nothing? What is consciousness? Others may be wrestled into submission by the end of this century: Is the universe deterministic? Do we have free will? Of the really big ones, the closest to being solved is how life began.

CRISPR, for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats.”

Godel, Escher and Bach

“Steam engines led to the understanding of thermodynamics, not the other way round. Powered flight preceded almost all aerodynamics.”2

Lord Kelvin thought heavier than air flight was impossible

Ever since the Republic of Venice in 1474 passed a statute giving the inventors of “any new and ingenious device” the exclusive right to profit from it for ten years, people have been wrestling over patents.

Take Miles Davis. The pain of sickle cell drove him to drugs and drink. It may have even driven him to his death. It also, however, may have driven him to be the creative artist who could produce Kind of Blue and Bitches Brew. Would Miles Davis have been Miles Davis without sickle cell?

For example, almost every champion runner has what is known as the R allele of the ACTN3 gene. It produces a protein that builds fast-twitch muscle fibers, and it is also associated with improving strength and recovery from muscle injury.

I reckon I don’t have that gene…

On most great moral issues, there are two competing perspectives. One emphasizes individual rights, personal liberty, and a deference to personal choice. Stemming from John Locke and other Enlightenment thinkers of the seventeenth century, this tradition recognizes that people will have different beliefs about what is good for their lives, and it argues that the state should give them a lot of liberty to make their own choices, as long as they do not harm others. The contrasting perspectives are those that view justice and morality through the lens of what is best for the society and perhaps even (in the case of bioengineering and climate policy) the species. Examples include requirements that schoolkids be vaccinated and that people wear masks during a pandemic. The emphasis on societal benefits rather than individual rights can take the form of John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism, which seeks the greatest amount of happiness in a society even if that means trampling on the liberty of some individuals. Or it can take the form of more complex social contract theories,

Ever since Watson and Crick ended their famous DNA paper by saying, “It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material,” it has become standard to end journal papers with an understated but important forward-looking sentence.