Biochemistry

Every science has its characteristic temptation. Physics is tempted tosuppose that the universe is simple; history, that it is significant; andbiochemistry - the youngest and most self-confident of the experimentalsciences - is tempted to suppose that it is finished. One need only open amodern compendium to see the shape of the temptation: here are the pathways,neatly engraved; here the enzymes, each with its number; here the genomes,each with its address. The whole of life, it would appear, has been filed. Thepresent treatise is written in the conviction that this appearance, though a creditto the industry of a hundred years, is a little premature - and that a subject soyoung ought not yet to speak of itself in the past tense.What, then, is attempted here? Not an encyclopaedia, for the world hasexcellent ones, and an encyclopaedia is by its nature a cabinet in which theobjects have ceased to touch one another. Not a laboratory manual, for handsare taught in laboratories and not in prefaces.