Among other important elections, on November 4 Californians will be voting on Proposition 8, a measure to amend the state Constitution in order to ban same-sex marriages. The polling has been very close, with a possible late break toward a “Yes” vote; this would effectively overturn a California Supreme Court decision from this May that held that same-sex couples had a right to marry under the equal protection clause of the California Constitution. Eventually, of course, gay marriage will be accepted throughout the country, and we will look back on today as the bad old days of discrimination. But that’s cold comfort to the couples who would like to celebrate their love for each other right now. You can donate and learn more about the measure at No On 8.
We are occasionally asked why a Physics Blog spends time talking about religion and politics and all that nonsense. A perfectly correct answer is that this is not a Physics Blog, it’s a blog by some people who happen to be physicists, and we talk about things that interest us, blah blah blah. But there is another, somewhat deeper, answer. Physics is not just a technical pastime played with numerical simulations and Feynman diagrams; nor is it a purely instrumental technique for unlocking Nature’s secrets so as to build better TV sets. Physics, as it is currently practiced, is a paradigm for a naturalistic way of understanding the world. And that’s a worldview that has consequences stretching far beyond the search for the Higgs boson.
Charles Taylor makes an admirable stab at a very difficult task: understanding the premodern mindset from our modern vantage point. (Via 3 Quarks Daily.) There are many ways in which our perspective differs from that of someone living five hundred years ago in a pre-scientific age, but Taylor emphasizes one important one:
Almost everyone can agree that one of the big differences between us and our ancestors of five hundred years ago is that they lived in an “enchanted” world, and we do not; at the very least, we live in a much less “enchanted” world. We might think of this as our having “lost” a number of beliefs and the practices which they made possible. But more, the enchanted world was one in which these forces could cross a porous boundary and shape our lives, psychic and physical. One of the big differences between us and them is that we live with a much firmer sense of the boundary between self and other. We are “buffered” selves. We have changed.
Our ancestors lived in an enchanted world, where the boundary between the physical and the moral and the spiritual was not very clearly drawn. It made perfect sense, at the time, to attribute to the external world the same kinds of meanings and impulses that one found in the human world — purposes, consciousnesses, moral judgments. One of the great accomplishments of modernity was to construct a new way of understanding the world — one based on understandable, formal rules. These days we understand that the world is not magic.
This change in perspective has led to extraordinary changes in how we live, including the technology on which we are sharing these words. But the consequences go enormously deeper than that, and it is no exaggeration to say that our society has still not come fully to grips with the ramifications of understanding the world around us as fundamentally natural and rules-based. That’s the point at which the worldview suggested by science has had a profound effect on moral reasoning.
For our present purposes, the most important consequence is this: notions of “right” and “wrong” are not located out there in the world, waiting to be discovered, in the same sense that a new kind of elementary particle (or even a new law of physics) is located out there in the world. Right and wrong aren’t parts of the fundamental description of reality. That description has to do with wave functions and Hamiltonian dynamics, not with ethical principles. That is what the world is made of, at a deep level. Everything else — morality, love, aesthetics — is up to us.
Which is not to say that moral concepts don’t exist. It’s just that they are things we construct, not things that we come to understand by examining the world around us. To Plato or Aristotle, as well as their Medieval followers, the kinds of reasoning used to tackle moral questions wasn’t all that different from that used to tackle questions about the natural world. One looked at the world, noticed that certain things seemed to serve certain purposes, and (somewhat presumptuously) elevated those appearances to laws of nature. Some sort of conception of Natural Law has been an important strand of philosophical thinking all the way through to the modern era, even showing up in the Declaration of Independence (“We hold these truths to be self-evident…”).
But it’s wrong. There aren’t Natural Laws that distinguish right from wrong in human behavior. There are only Laws of Nature, which can account for the behavior of the complicated chemical reactions that make up human beings, but stand strictly silent about what those human beings “should” be doing. Things happen in the world, not because of any underlying purpose, but because of the combination of initial conditions and the laws of physics. The fundamental category mistake underlying the idea of Natural Law should have become perfectly obvious and universally accepted in the years after the scientific revolution, but it stubbornly persists, because people want to believe it. If the laws governing right behavior were inherent in Nature, waiting to be discovered, everything would be so much easier than if we have to work them out ourselves.
Just because moral instructions are not located out there in the world, immutable and awaiting discovery, doesn’t mean that “anything goes.” It means that moral guidelines are invented by human beings. Too many people fear that if this sort of moral relativism is true (which it is), then there is no way to denounce Hitler or Charles Manson from a standpoint of ethical absolutes. Well, what of it? I don’t need to live in a world where Hitler was wrong because the universe tells me so — I feel that he was wrong myself, and fortunately many other people agree with me. So I and these other like-minded people sit down to work out among ourselves what rules we want to live by, and we decide that people like Hitler are bad and should be stopped. The codification of moral rules does not come from examining the world or thinking about logical necessities; it comes from individual human beings examining their own desires, and communicating with other human beings to formulate rules of common consent. Some people might prefer that moral rules have a more timeless, universal standing; but personal preference does not affect the working of the actual universe.
Gay marriage is a excellent example of a rule that would be almost universally agreed upon by individual human beings negotiating in good faith, and it is to our culture’s endless embarrassment that at this late stage we are still struggling to get it right. Deep down, there are only two arguments against gay marriage. One, which is the one that actually drives most people’s views on the matter, is that it’s icky. They just don’t like the idea, and therefore don’t want it to exist. There is little point arguing against that, but we can hope that increasing normalization of the idea of homosexuality will cause such attitudes to become increasingly rare.
The other argument is that gay marriage is a violation of Natural Law. That the two human sexes clearly belong together (“Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”) and the institution of marriage is a sacred covenant between a man and a woman. But once we understand how the universe works, in our post-Enlightenment era, there is no reason to take arguments like this seriously. Nature doesn’t have anything to say about the moral status of two individuals falling in love and formalizing their relationship. It is a matter for us individual human beings to get together and decide how we should structure our legal system. We have long ago decided to recognize the special legal status of two people who love each other and wish to formalize their status as a legal union. Marriage is a wholly invented institution; there is nothing “natural” about it. And there is simply no reason — ickiness aside — to limit that institution to heterosexual couples. There might be, if the existence of gay married couples had directly deleterious effects on other members of society; but it doesn’t, crazy exhortations about the looming threat to traditional families notwithstanding.
Opponents of gay marriage are either squeamish and prejudiced, or philosophically confused. Eliminating prejudice takes time, but the situation is gradually improving. But there is even less excuse for the philosophical confusion surrounding issues like this. And if it takes a Physics Blog to sort things out, we’re happy to take up the challenge.
The entire gay marriage debate is mostly disingenuous in that most people who are in favor of gay marriage do not also support other types of marriages. And the fact is that the logic one uses to promote gay marriages could just as easily apply to other marriages. Sure you can say that we are just chipping away, but really, that is not how gay marriage is being sold to the general public.
Mark,
As I mentioned this wasn’t a point against homosexual couples. Just that the foundation the argument is built off of “no culture is better than another” is fundamentally flawed and I don’t think should be used as the basis for the claim. Anyways, you are correct though it just leads to more trouble if we only debate that.
To the others quoting Natural Law, I wonder how one can rationally follow that genitalia should only be used for reproduction because one of it’s uses is reproduction and so not be used in a homosexual way as it doesn’t promote reproduction. Do you also support stripping the tax benefits of those that are impotent or infertile? If we’re looking at this strictly from a reproduction stand point a woman who can not bare a child enjoying intercourse with a man is as against the natural order as a man who can not bare a child enjoying intercourse with a man. That seems rubbish to me.
This is the same point andyo made so I give credit to him.
As to statistics of homosexual men being more promiscuous. Marriage in it’s creation was a tool to stop heterosexual men from this type of behavior and so why would it not have the same effect on many homosexual men as well? Marriage should only help not hinder the issue.
Regardless, I could care less if a church institutes gay marriage. I would much rather the government grant civil unions to both heterosexual or homosexual couples and leave the term “marriage” to the church until they figure out that it’s time to change another rule to allow more people.
If the majority of people would prefer to call marriage a union between a man and a woman, why shouldn’t they?
Certainly we can see that there is a difference between a union between a man and a woman as opposed to a union between a man and a man or a woman and a woman.
Think children.
Why shouldn’t society recognize that there is a difference?
You clearly don’t know what this is about. If the government decided to stop “marrying” people altogether, and perform civil unions instead, with all the benefits that “marriages” carry, as long as they don’t discriminate homosexuals, I’m sure most of us will be happy. Let churches do their silly marriage ceremonies, let whatever pointy-hatted personality do his (it has to be a HE, doesn’t it?) mumbling and whatnot. But keep it AWAY from law and ANY other government benefits. The term “marriage” is not what this is about, it’s about the government benefits (not only taxes) that come with it.
Hmmm …, if you read the Gospels you will find that Jesus had nothing at all to say about homosexuals.
L. C.
There are some “interesting” viewpoints here…
I am confused about the whole gay marriage thing anyway, largely because one of the attractions of being gay is precisely that you can reject such absurd institutional distractions. Perhaps society feels less threatened by gay people as long as they conform to heterosexual norms by living in a facsimile of a straight marriage. The prime motivation of many advocates of same-sex marriage or civil partnerships seems to be that gay people are currently denied the tax breaks and pension benefits given to heterosexual couples. That may be true, but (a) it shows what a materialistic world we are living in and (b) continues to discriminate against those who choose to live alone or in non-exclusive relationships. Surely the only rational response to this situation is to remove the perks from those who already benefit unfairly rather than giving them to a few others?
And then there’s the business about the “perversity” of gay sex. I note the argument that any sex that isn’t done solely for the purpose of procreation is perverse. Well that applies also to any heterosexual (or solitary) act that doesn’t have that aim either. Come to think of it why not take the argument further and say that listening to music and reading books are also perverse? They don’t fulfill any “natural” purpose, either. How many things do you do each day that you could honestly describe as natural? So I think the alleged perversity of gay sex is a red herring. Or maybe a pink one.
Attempting to justify your prejudices by reference to some ill-conceived notion of what is “natural” is just a step on the road to fascism. Humans are social animals who live in complex societies and in which different people take different roles. It is true that societies need to reproduce to survive but that doesn’t mean every individual within them has to. We need physicists (perhaps), but not everyone has to be one and I’m not convinced the world would be all that wonderful if it only had physicists in it.
Finally, the only persuasive argument I’ve ever heard in favour of there being an intelligent Creator is the way men’s bodies are designed specifically to make gay sex so pleasurable. One can argue that the various bits and pieces that have to fit into each other to produce babies could have evolved that way by natural selection, but I think the Supreme Being must have had a brainwave when he decided to make willies and bums just the right size for each other.
Jack Jones: I’m married. Marriage is (can be) great! It’s not for everyone. Gay marriage is a Good Thing. I’m sorry to be your counterexample.
bobby666 & Lawrence B Crowell: As a Lutheran, we are taught that one of Jesus’ goals on Earth was to heal splits between divided people. He did this by, say, curing leprosy. However, even given this clear support to gay people and their struggles to be accepted, there are many who would take such a goal to mean that gay people need to be ‘cured’ in order to rejoin ‘normal’ society. So, sadly, the religious view isn’t clear when dealing with homosexuality.
Peter Coles: There’s a common viewpoint among young-ish couples thinking about marriage where they suddenly ask themselves, “Why do we need all this pomp, etc? We should elope to Vegas!” And it’s certainly in fashion among many different kinds of educated people to decry the problems of marriage and its history of evil. [andyo: I would like to point out, though, that there are two main parts to marriage: one, public expression of love; and two, legal status. Without either of those parts, it’s not a true marriage, as they are both critical to the success of the relationship. Anywho…] I would venture a hypothesis that the couples that eschew marriage come in both homosexual and heterosexual varieties, and aren’t really the people we are talking about here. We’re talking about gay people who WANT to be married. Which, as found on these comments, there’s obviously some interest in.
applmak,
While I can’t speak for a gay person, I’m sure most of them aren’t going for the religious, or even the “public expression of love”, part. They can get that without getting married. The prime injustice is that they can’t get the same rights from the government that married couples share. Like I said, I’m pretty sure most woule even be happy if the government stopped discriminating even if they took out “marriage” and replaced it with “civil union”. Marriages can be performed by individual churches, but without any legal advantages WHATSOEVER. You know, the state/church separation everyone talks about but that so few people really believe in.
I’m sorry, but marriage as you see it is not how everybody sees it. I don’t even think most gay people are that religious or have a lot of respect for the word “sacred” (which is a good thing in my mind, I’m pretty sure we also disagree there). The point is that as it is now, not letting gay people marry is just unfair, unethical and just plain discriminatory. If the churches want to discriminate, then by all means, it’s still wrong, but they’re free to do it. When they demand that the government also do it, that’s stepping over the line big time.
Neato, I appreciate the opportunity of being able to bounce off the image of the leviathan you conjured.
It is an apt metaphor, I think, for this issue.
For all its benefits, the leviathan can also be a terribly crushing weight upon some people. Thank goodness for ethics, so to speak.
Peter, I swear you are far too humanistic to be a scientist. I love your further insight about marriage (or civil unions) being materialistic if they are just about the money and legal benefits/rights.
I imagine that some people will enter marriage with materialistic intentions, whether they are gay or straight, or somewhere in between. Of course, that isn’t a very “sacred” reason.
Even more enter into marriage because they “want a family” — this abstract desire of having children or progeny. In that sense, the “sacredness” is more about the perpetuation of the genes, or the imaginations of being a mommy or a daddy, than it is about the sacredness of your relationship to another person. Or a pregnancy accident… with obligations…
Interestingly, if gay people want to get married, those factors doesn’t come into play nearly as often. Since gay people don’t reproduce, their choice of a lifetime mate is not influenced by many external factors from the relationship. It’s about two people, and their intimate connection. And there is something sacred in that, if sacredness exists.
I suppose you could say that sacredness is imbued within an “institution” of marriage. But I’m not really sure how you can link institutions to a spiritual sacredness. Usually those are power plays, or sociological tradition. It’s not always easy telling the difference.
Perhaps that makes me an advocate of chaos. Or, the Devil’s Advocate.
I suppose that’s better than child molester or rapist. I’d probably rather be a mild deviant than a Devil’s Advocate, though.
The trouble is, I’m not any of them.
“What do you think would happen if religion didn’t exist, …. maybe Hitler would be a hero.”
YOU need religion to see that Hitler = bad. But for the rest of us, Hitler = bad. Period.
There is no need to look for the authorization of religion to feel empathy for another human. Religion comes BELOW people. Get it? The whole reason why religion was the source of so much misery for so many people all through history was precisely because religion got priority over people.
Here is why “gay marriage” is a very bad idea. It is because of the way gay marriage came to be legalized both in Massachusetts and in California. In both states, their supreme courts ruled, in the words of Sean, “that same-sex couples had a right to marry under the equal protection clause” of their respective state constitutions. Thus, marriage became a constitutional right for people who have a protected type of behavior. Not only that, gay marriage became legally and socially equivalent to traditional heterosexual marriage. There can be no legal discrimination between the two.
Now for the unintended consequences. The state of Massachusetts ordered that Catholic charities must not discriminate between same sex or opposite sex couples when adopting out children. The same sex couple cannot be denied their place in the queue. If a same sex couple is next in the queue, they get the child. No consideration can be given as to whether it would be better for a child to grow up with two daddies or with a mommy and a daddy. It is no longer a matter of a gay couple being the last best hope for a child, as many have argued for gay adoption. Notice that Catholic charities did adopt out children to gay couples. The issue was that gay couples were not being treated equally with heterosexual couples.
Now this is where Natural Law sneaks in behind and bites Sean when he is not looking. In order to maintain his position, he must argue that a son or daughter being raised by two daddies or two mommies is as good for the child as if he or she were raised by a mommy and a daddy. That argument would be absurd, and has been roundly rejected by scientific studies. This is not to say that children cannot survive or even thrive with same sex parents; experience has shown that they are able. Children are often, despite long odds, able to rise above bad situations. But, in general, when given a choice, a mother and father would be much better for a child. That is Natural Law. And that is why “gay marriage” as constitutionally equivalent to traditional marriage is a very bad idea. If California’s Proposition 8 fails, California’s children would be harmed by that bad idea.
A son or daughter being raised by two daddies or two mommies is as good for the child as if he or she were raised by a mommy and a daddy. So that’s not really an unintended consequence.
andyo:
If everyone made the choice to be homosexual at once, I think it would hinder the progression of the species. Render us extinct in one generation right?
What makes it perverse?
According to the Princeton Right Wing Conspiracy, being perverse is marked by a disposition to oppose and contradict.
So if sexual organs serve the purpose of procreation, well then using them for the opposite ends would be perverse would it not?
It’s not ignorance, not in the slightest. Drawing the line on a culturally relative topic like marriage is not ignorant. Even if I come to a different conclusion than you do.
I wonder if those cultures that rape their women infecting them with Aids believe that we are ignorant for deploring this act?
The nuts of the conversation for me goes something like this:
We already limit US Citizen’s right to marry. We have polygamy, incest, age of consent and many other laws that prohibit the marriage between two consenting adults.
If we believe that a homosexual is not enjoying equal rights because they are two committed, consenting adults in a relationship that are unable to enjoy the rights and privileges of marriage, well we should be consistent.
According to the national conference of state legislatures, “Twenty-five states prohibit marriages between first cousins. Six states allow first cousin marriage under certain circumstances, and North Carolina allows first cousin marriage but prohibits double-cousin marriage. States generally recognize marriages of first cousins married in a state where such marriages are legal.”
So should cousins be allowed to marry, should we allow polygamy back into the fold of acceptable marriage? Not every polygamous relationship is akin to Warren Jeffs’.
Is my argument based on the slippery slope, no. I have already drawn my line in the sand. I don’t however believe that you can rightfully deny the rights to first cousins to marry, or deny a man a second wife if he so desires, if we are going to dress this as an equal rights issue, or lack thereof.
These gray areas are the exact reason why I believe that the government should be out of the marriage business altogether.
Actually I disagree that a child raised by two daddies or two mommies is as good as being raised by a mommy and a daddy in the ideal case. A child should have both male and female influences growing up, especially in the younger years. Children can get this from external sources, but its best provided by the home environment.
That isn’t to say gay/lesbian couples should not have children. A child raised by a gay/lesbian couple that provides a healthy environment is obviously better than a dysfunctional environment provided by a heterosexual couple. I think saying that children in this situation have to rise above a bad circumstance to thrive as Otis says is overstating the case, the first thing a kid needs is a stable, loving environment and gay/lesbian couples certainly can provide that. But all things being equal, a male-female partnership would be better.
But like I said before I am completely in favor of allowing gay/lesbian couples to adopt children. And of course if one of them has children of their own through whatever means, that is their business as to what kind of home environment they are going to have.
Sean:
In my opinion this only holds true when the two mommies or two daddies take on separate roles. Not to say they have the gender roles as our society sees them, just that there be a balance.
Watching stupid shows like the “SuperNanny” or the “Wife Swap”, we can see the inherent danger to the children if you have an imbalance in the parenting roles. If they are both militaristic and strict there are consequences, if both parents are the nurturers with no discipline there are consequences.
My wife and I have identified our roles perfectly, and I believe that my kid/future kids are on the fast track to super success in life. We’ve divided the roles like this: My wife will teach, nurture, console, discipline, and basically show them how to live their lives.
I teach them how to respect and listen to their mom and the other women around them.
It’s a perfect balance 😉
My oldest child is rather mama-centric. In the past she’s been sorely disappointed that she didn’t get two moms.
Practically speaking, lesbian couples are having children and raising them. Is it better for these kids to have some strong, automatic legal protection for their family, or, if something happens to the birth-mom half of the couple, to be at risk of being shipped off to relatives, rather than staying with the person they see as their parent? Yes, gay couples can go through lawyer assisted shenanigins to ensure protection and continuity, but they shouldn’t have to. I can only imagine the bafflement if every single straight father had to formally adopt the children they had with their wives.
My take on this is that functional healthy marriages are a huge societal boon. If all the work that families do on each other’s behalf (child care, medical care, financial assistance) needed to be taken over by the public sphere, it would be the biggest welfare state the world had ever seen. If you believe in small government, you should make it as easy as possible for people to make these contracts with each other. Right now, gay and lesbian couples do make these contracts, but in a piecemeal fashion (rights of attorney, adoption, visitation rights in the event of illness, wills). What straight couples enjoy is an assumption that these rights are there. This keeps legal authorities from having to be involved in every minor decision regarding a straight couple’s family. For example, my husband went to the emergency room while we were flying back from germany, and I could go to see him by announcing “I’m his wife”. If instead, my long term lesbian partner were in the hospital, I could potentially have problems going in to see her unless I had the proper legal documents with me, and clearance from the hospital’s law department. By denying gay marriage, the state has to be _more_ interventionist in people’s daily lives, not less.
The case that religion causes misery for people is completely overblown. Sure there have been things done in the “name of Christ” like how the Spanish treated Native Americans, but that would have happened regardless. That was just the European approach to things at the time. Had they not been Catholic the Spanish would have found some other excuse to “conquer” the “new world”.
In reality, religion provides a lot of good for the vast majority of people. It gives them comfort and community. Its an anchor in their lives.
Peter wrote: We need physicists (perhaps), but not everyone has to be one and I’m not convinced the world would be all that wonderful if it only had physicists in it.
WOW that’s an interesting comment. I certainly agree that the world wouldn’t be all that great if it only had physicists in it. Having spent many years in a physics department I can tell you that would really suck if the world was that way. In a practical sense, I think you could argue physicists have outlived their usefulness. Of course I got a degree in it so I guess I wasted my time in school 😉
“A son or daughter being raised by two daddies or two mommies is as good for the child as if he or she were raised by a mommy and a daddy. So that’s not really an unintended consequence.”
That seems like wishful thinking to me. Other variations on family structure like single parenthood through divorce are generally very detrimental for the child.
I am momentarily dumbfounded by the adduction of “SuperNanny” as evidence for the need for parents of two different genders, so I’ll get back to work now.
My two cents, seems to me that some semantic manipulation would help the cause here. On the one hand the issue of gay marriage is reliably a good polarizing issue to use at election times, for example to fan the flames on the culture wars and increase conservative Christian turnout. On the other hand, I believe there is a clear support for civil unions for gay and lesbian couples, which if constructed the right way are for all intents and purposes identical to marriage, except the religious baggage (and that’s actually not such a bad thing).
Sean: “A son or daughter being raised by two daddies or two mommies is as good for the child as if he or she were raised by a mommy and a daddy.”
A loving household is probably way more important for a kid than a loving “gay” household or a loving “straight” household, so yes, the distinction is *probably* irrelevant in the real world.
But I have to say that I am agnostic on this one. Men and women are different. That much I am certain of.
“if sexual organs serve the purpose of procreation, well then using them for the opposite ends would be perverse would it not”
I’m tempted to make a cheap joke by saying that I’m all in favour of sexual organs being used in the opposite ends, but I won’t.
But if it’s perverse to use your sexual organs for something other than procreation then it’s clearly perverse to use your ears to listen to music or your eyes to read books or your mouth to eat haute cuisine, as these organs weren’t intended to be used those ways either. If you restrict yourself to a life dictated solely by the drab needs of biology then that’s up to you. I happen to think we’ve moved on. If that’s what it is to be a pervert then I’m a pervert and so is anyone who is civilised (even if they’re not gay).
Biology, Psychology, and everyday experience tell us that males and females are quite different and play different roles in the family. So how is it that it makes no difference whether a child has two daddies instead of a mommy & daddy? It does make a difference. Single parents and same sex parents have to compensate for the lack of an opposite gender partner in the family. I have dealt with many single moms who have had to find father figures for their children, and I have occasionally helped in that role. Many of those moms openly weep over that difficulty. The black community has been devastated by the lack of fathers.
But some of you seemed to have missed the point. It is not a question of whether same sex couples make good parents, as defined by some set of standards. Many do and studies have shown that they do. The issue is: Should same sex marriages and traditional marriages be legally equivalent when social service agencies adopt out children? Could the agency select a traditional couple over a same sex couple if they think that would be in the child’s best interest? If Prop 8 fails, then the Massachusetts experience indicates the answer would be no. That would be tragic. Common sense would be trampled on by “gay rights.” That is not the way forward.
Re 91:
Bingo.
Sean stated: “Physics, as it is currently practiced, is a paradigm for a naturalistic way of understanding the world.”
I only scanned through the comments, and didn’t see any that mentioned Sean’s blatant appropriation to his particular portion of scientific endeavor–physics–of what I have always considered to be the fundamental aspect of science itself. Do not biologists also strive for a naturalistic way of understanding the world? What about geologists? Even (gasp!) psychologists and sociologists?
Would gay marriage be more appropriately considered a part of physics, or a part of biology/psychology/sociology?
In my undergraduate days I walked across campus with my biochemistry professor one sunny afternoon. I tried to express to him my joy in biochemistry, because it offered such a fundamental explanation of life. He responded, “Yes, if you believe that life can best be explained at the atomic and molecular level.”