Title:

Letter from Francis Crick to C. H. Waddington

Creator:

Crick, Francis, 1916-2004

Recipient:

Waggington, C. H. (Conrad Hal), 1905-1975

Date:

9 November 1967

Description:

Crick's letter was written in response to a review by Waddington of Crick's book, Of Molecules and Men (1966), a discourse on the relationship between science and philosophy in which Crick argued against vitalism, the belief that living beings are animated by an autonomous soul or metaphysical inner force that cannot be explained by natural laws. Instead, Crick argued that, with the major exception of evolution by natural selection (a process driven by chance mutations), all biological phenomena, including human consciousness, could eventually be reduced to the laws of physics and chemistry.

Original Repository:

The Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine. Francis Harry Compton Crick Papers

Location:

Box: 102. Folder: PP/CRI/I/2/6/5

Rights:

Reproduced with permission of the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine. and http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/

Genre:

Letters (correspondence)

Subject:

Biology, Vitalism, Physics, and Chemistry

Format:

Text

Extent:

3 pages

Relation:

Letter from C. H. Waddington to Francis Crick, 1967

Language:

English

Legacy Source Citation:

Original Repository. Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine. Francis Harry Compton Crick Papers. 11646. URL. http://archives.wellcome.ac.uk/

Legacy ID:

SCBBLT

NLM ID:

101584582X160

Profiles Collection:

The Francis Crick Papers

Shareable Link:

https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/101584582X160

Story Section:

Embryology and the Organization of DNA in Higher Organisms, 1966-1976