Of Molecules & Men

The business of biology is to study all aspects of life, from semiliving molecules to automation. At last week's Manhattan meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which goes heavy on biology, platoons of speakers went to work on life. Some highlights:

Original Soup. Best theory of how life began assumes that the earth once had a "reducing" atmosphere of methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water, as the outer planets have now. Solar radiation and lightning, according to the theory, turned this mixture into organic molecules which gradually grew complex enough to form replicas of themselves. Such reproducing molecules, however simple, are alive.

At the A.A.A.S. meeting, Biochemist Stanley L. Miller of Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons told how he filled a glass container with the gases that were presumably present in the earth's primitive atmosphere. Then he shot electric sparks through them to simulate lightning. In a week he had an organic soup in which he identified nine amino acids, four of which are constituents of proteins found in living organisms. Dr. Miller concluded that nature's first chemical step toward life creation was rather surprisingly easy.

Cave Dreamboat. A group of anthropologists had kind words to say for Neanderthal man, that extinct first cousin of modern humans, generally described as a dim-witted monster whose long arms dangled forward from stooping shoulders. This is slander, says Dr. William L. Straus Jr. of Johns Hopkins University. Neanderthal man probably stood upright with his limbs in seemly positions.

Dr. Loren C. Eiseley of the University of Pennsylvania added that Neanderthal man did not have fangs or other wild-animal features. These unappealing characteristics were given to him by heavy-handed reconstructors. He could not have been as brutish as his detractors say. His face and skull certainly had a somewhat apelike cast, but his brain was as big as that of many modern men. It gave him, for one thing, the emotional ability to form a kind of religion with belief in a future life. In a cave near La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France, a Neanderthal grave has a vault of flat stones to protect the dead man. Beside it are flint tools and a haunch of meat for the dead man's needs. No mere brute, said Dr. Eiseley, could have such tender concern for the dead.

Overshadowed Humans. Neanderthal man was certainly free of one modern worry: his humble weapons and tools did not threaten to dominate his life. Modern man sees the machines that he has created move into higher and higher positions of influence. They already do most of the work of the industrial world, and they are beginning to do a good part of its thinking. Many scientists are alarmed by their rapid march to power.

At last week's meeting Dr. Max W. Lund of the Office of Naval Research took stock of man's abilities and compared them with those of machines. Man's sight and hearing are good, he said. The eye responds to as little as three or four quanta of light, and the ear can hear sounds only slightly louder than the ghostly rustle of air molecules clashing together. Both human sight and hearing apparatus, said Lund, are close to theoretical perfection within their class.

As a computer, said Lund, man's brain does pretty well. It is very good at evaluation, estimating speed, courses, points of interception, etc. with considerable accuracy. It does a wonderful job of turning information into the proper action. A man hovering a helicopter, for instance, is doing something that would force a computer to solve an endless series of a dozen simultaneous equations.

But in some ways the human brain falls far behind electronic computers. Its memory is apt to be faulty, and its "output" of motor responses (muscular movements) falls far behind the electronic output of the machine. The brain tires, gets bored, is easily distracted. It can, however, solve problems by logical induction, which no machine can do yet.

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