Letter from Francis Crick to C. H. Waddington
- 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