108. We are not the only species: Ronald K. Siegel, Intoxication: Life in the Pursuit of Artificial Paradise (New York: Pocket Books, 1989); Cindy Engel, Wild Health (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002).
109. self-medication is also involved: R. K. Siegel and M. Brodie, “Alcohol Self-Administration by Elephants,” Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 22: 49–52 (1984).
110. There are many nonchemical routes: Peter T. Furst, “ ‘High States’ in Culture-Historical Perspectives,” in N. E. Zinberg, Alternate States of Consciousness (New York: Free Press, 1977), pp. 53–88.
111. the ancient Greeks were the first: William J. Broad, “For Delphic Oracle, Fumes and Visions,” New York Times, March 19, 2002.
112. “absolutely intoxicated me”: letter from Sir Humphry Davy to Davies Giddy, April 10, 1799, quoted in John Ayrton Paris, The Life of Sir Humphry Davy (London: Colburn, 1831), pp. 79–80.
113. “Such a gas has Davy discovered!”: Robert Southey, The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, 6 vols., ed. Charles Cuthbert Southey (London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1849), vol. 2, pp. 21–22.
114. “united power of 700 instruments”: Henry Wansey, quoted in James Hamilton, Faraday: The Life (London: HarperCollins, 2002), p. 68.
115. “Depth beyond depth”: James, Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 387–88.
116. “utterly what they are”: William James, “The Psychology of Belief,” Mind, 14: 321–52 (1889), p. 322.
117. “nine cases out of ten”: Sir James Crichton-Browne, “The Cavendish Lecture on Dreamy Mental States,” Lancet, July 13, 1895, 73–75, p. 73.
118. “A medical man”: ibid., pp. 73–74.
119. by stimulating a part of the brain: G. F. Koob and E. Nestler, “The Neurobiology of Drug Addiction,” Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 9: 482–97 (1997); W. Schultz, P. Dayan, and P. R. Montaque, “A Neural Substrate of Prediction and Reward,” Science, 275: 1593–99 (1997); C. W. Bradberry, R. L. Barrett-Larimore, P. Jatlow, and S. R. Rubino, “Impact of Self-Administered Cocaine and Cocaine Cues on Extracellular Dopamine in Mesolimbic and Sensorimotor Striatum in Rhesus Monkeys,” Journal of Neuroscience, 20: 3874–83 (2000); P.E.M. Phillips, G. D. Stuber, M.L.A.V. Helen, R. M. Wightman, and R. M. Carelli, “Subsecond Dopamine Release Promotes Cocaine Seeking,” Nature, 422: 614–18 (2003).
120. Prolonged cocaine use: J. M. Wilson, A. Levey, C. Bergeron, K. Kalasinsky, L. Ang, F. Peretti, V. I. Adams, J. Smialek, W. R. Anderson, K. Shannak, J. Deck, H. B. Niznik, and S. J. Kish, “Striatal Dopamine, Dopamine Transporter, and Vesicular Monoamine Transporter in Chronic Cocaine Users,” Annals of Neurology, 40: 428–39 (1996); K. Y. Little, L. Zhang, T. Desmond, K. A. Frey, G. W. Dalack, and B. J. Cassin, “Striatal Dopaminergic Abnormalities in Human Cocaine Users,” American Journal of Psychiatry, 156: 238–45 (1999); K. Y. Little, D. M. Krolewski, L. Zhang, and B. J. Cassin, “Loss of Striatal Vesicular Monoamine Transporter Protein (VMAT2) in Human Cocaine Users,” American Journal of Psychiatry, 160: 47–55 (2003).
121. “Hashish spreads out”: Charles Baudelaire, “The Poem of Hashish,” in The Essence of Laughter and Other Essays, Journals and Letters by Charles Baudelaire, ed. Peter Quennell (New York: Meridian Books, 1956), p. 101.
122. “This will be deducted”: Théophile Gautier, Revue des Deux Mondes, first published in 1846; reprinted from The Drug Experience: First-Person Accounts of Addicts, Writers, Scientists and Others (New York: Orion Press, 1961), pp. 6–15.
123. A love of festivities: William James, The Principles of Psychology, 2 vols. (1890; New York: Dover, 1950), vol. 1, p. 428.
124. As a bomber pilot: letter from Senator George McGovern to the author, February 29, 2000.
125. “It is difficult for me to imagine”: ibid.
126. “I am apt to believe”: John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776, in The Adams Papers: Adams Family Correspondence, ed. L. H. Butterfield, vol. 2: June 1776-March 1778 (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1963), p. 30.
127. “The endless crackling of torpedoes”: Julia Ward Howe, quoted in Robert Haven Schauffler, Independence Day (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1927), p. 25.
Chapter 7: “Forces of Nature”
1. “Theexcitement of discovery”: Richard Fortey, Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth (New York: Knopf, 1998), pp. 13–14.
2. “When you’re the first person”: Sue Hendrickson, interview with Robert Kurson, “Close to the Bone,” New York Times Magazine, May 28, 2000.
3. “It’s the thrill of discovery”: quoted in Steve Fiffer, Tyrannosaurus Sue: The Extraordinary Saga of the Largest, Most Fought Over T. Rex Ever Found (New York: W. H. Freeman, 2000), p. 9.
4. “We were now getting into areas”: Richard E. Byrd, Skyward (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1928), p. 176.
5. “an ecstasy induced not by drugs”: Neil Campbell, Biology, 2d ed. (1990), cited in Nicola McGirr, Nature’s Connections: An Exploration of Natural History (London: Natural History Museum, 2000), p. 75.
6. “there was no runway up there”: Buzz Aldrin, “What It Feels Like to Walk on the Moon,” Esquire, June 2001, p. 90.
7. “Then felt I like some watcher”: John Keats, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” in The Complete Poetical Works and Letters of John Keats (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1899), p. 9.
8. “the heavens afford the most sublime”: Mary Somerville, Mechanism of the Heavens (London: John Murray, 1831); quoted in Kathryn A. Neeley, Mary Somerville: Science, Illumination and the Female Mind (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 110–11.
9. crystallizing experiences: Howard Gardner, Creating Minds (New York: Basic Books, 1993), p. 32.
10. “an essential step in the scientific demonstration”: Jesse L. Greenstein, “An Introduction to ‘The dyer’s hand,’ ” in Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: An Autobiography and Other Recollections, 2d ed., Katherine Haramundanis (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 3.
11. “the bravery and adventure”: ibid., p. 10.
12. fervor for science: The title of Payne-Gaposchkin’s autobiography, The dyer’s hand, reflects the intensity of her life of science. It is taken from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 111: “My nature is subdued / To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand.”
13. heritage “dominated by women”: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, The dyer’s hand: An Autobiography, in Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: An Autobiography and Other Recollections, p. 83.
14. “The Bee Orchis”: ibid., p. 84.
15. “When I won a coveted prize”: ibid., p. 102.
16. “I had, in a sense, converted”: ibid., p. 99.
17. “was peopled with legendary figures”: ibid., pp. 115–16.
18. “when I returned to my room”: ibid., pp. 117–18. In her intense enthusiasm for work, she resembles another remarkable woman scientist, the crystallographer Dorothy Hodgkins, who elucidated the structure of Vitamin B12, insulin, and penicillin and received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1994. A friend is quoted as saying, “She arrived back just before the lecture [she was an undergraduate at Oxford] in one of her utterly irresponsible and delirious moods—leaping about on one foot and saying she had still two hours work to do that night.… Dorothy had had nothing since lunch to eat and was obviously in a state of nervous excitement.… she left the labs at 3 a.m.… She was in a state of excitement all [the next day]—“ Quoted in Georgina Ferry, Dorothy Hodgkins: A Life (London: Granta, 1999), p. 70.
19. “lived largely on her enthusiasms”: Quoted in Peggy A. Kidwell, “An Historical Introduction to ‘The dyer’s hand,’ ” in Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, p. 17.
20. “had opened the doors”: Payne-Gaposchkin, The dyer’s hand, p. 120.
21. “who walked with the stars”: ibid., p. 124.
22. “in the heady atmosphere of New England”: ibid., p. 136.
23. “the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis”: In their history of twentieth-century astronomy, Otto Struve and Ve
lta Zebergs write that Payne-Gaposchkin’s dissertation was “undoubtedly the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.” O. Struve and V. Zebergs, Astronomy in the 20th Century (New York: Macmillan, 1962), p. 220.
24. “in a kind of ecstasy”: Payne-Gaposchkin, The dyer’s hand, p. 165.
25. “Being a woman”: ibid., p. 227.
26. “Astronomers are incorrigible optimists”: from the introduction to Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, Stars in the Making (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952), p. xi.
27. “is the emotional thrill”: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, Russell Prize Lecture, American Astronomical Society, Honolulu, Hawaii, January 17, 1977.
28. “Martin had one characteristic”: Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith (1925; New York: Signet, 1998), p. 292.
29. “The joy I felt”: quoted in F. D. Drewitt, The Life of Edward Jenner (London: Longmans, 1931), p. 53.
30. “passion for collecting”: Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin and Selected Letters, ed. Francis Darwin (1892; Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 1958), p. 6.
31. “I had strong and diversified tastes”: ibid., p. 9.
32. “to the utmost”: ibid., p. 31.
33. “has been steady and ardent”: ibid., p. 55.
34. “We are not looking into the universe from outside”: George Wald, “The Origins of Life,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 52: 595–611 (1964), pp. 609–10.
35. “I had been attracted to aviation”: Charles A. Lindbergh, Autobiography of Values (1976; San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich/Harvest, 1992), p. 310.
36. “I know nothing”: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, trans. Lewis Galantière (1939; San Diego: Harvest, 1992), p. 130. A classmate of Saint-Exupéry said of him: “He was above all a dreamer. I remember him, his chin resting on his hand, staring out the window at the cherry tree.… I recall an unassuming boy, an original, who was not bookish, and yet who was prone from time-to-time to certain explosions of joy, of exuberance.” Quoted in Stacy Schiff’s excellent biography, Saint-Exupéry (New York: Knopf, 1994), p. 54.
37. “There was a fierce kind of joy”: quoted in Paul Hoffman, Wings of Madness: Alberto Santos-Dumont and the Invention of Flight (New York: Theia, 2003), p. 49.
38. “is with the wind”: Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars, p. 166.
39. “I was neither hungry nor thirsty”: ibid., p. 131.
40. “I have lifted my plane”: Beryl Markham, West with the Night (London: Virago, 1984), p. 9.
41. “Of the gladdest moments in human life”: quoted in James C. Simmons, Star-Spangled Eden (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2000), pp. 186–87.
This is a sentiment expressed as well by the scientist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt; in 1801 he wrote, “I was spurred on by an uncertain longing for what is distant and unknown, for whatever excited my fantasy: danger at sea, the desire for adventures, to be transported from a boring daily life to a marvellous world.” Discontent was a sharp spur. “I despised anything to do with bourgeois life,” he said, “that slow rhythm of home life and fine manners sickened me.” Alexander von Humboldt, Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, abridged and trans. Jason Wilson (London: Penguin, 1995), p. xxxv; first published in 3 vols., 1814–1825.
42. “I do not think there is any thrill”: quoted in Margaret Cheney, Tesla: Man Out of Time (New York: Laurel, 1981), p. 107.
43. “The point of the search for comets”: David Levy, “How to Catch a Comet: A Night Watchman’s Journey,” lecture given at the National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C., April 9, 2003.
44. “passion for dazzling pursuits”: Thomas Jefferson, “Life of Captain Lewis,” August 18, 1813, in M. Lewis, The Lewis and Clark Expedition, “The 1814 edition” (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1961), vol. I, p. xvi.
45. “no season or circumstance”: ibid.
46. “I miss the intensity”: Alan Lightman, “Looking Back at Pure World of Theoretical Physics,” New York Times, May 9, 2000.
47. “I couldn’t believe”: Glenn Seaborg, quoted in George Johnson, “Sometimes the March of Science Goes Backward,” New York Times, July 23, 2002.
48. “Beginning with the discovery”: Lewis Thomas, “Connections,” in The Fragile Species (New York: Collier, 1993), p. 180.
49. “The book, the statue, the sonata”: Robert Louis Stevenson, “Letter to a Young Gentleman Who Proposes to Embrace the Career of Art,” in The Lantern Bearers and Other Essays, ed. Jeremy Treglown (New York: Cooper Square, 1999), p. 245; essay first published in 1888.
50. “Science is not everything”: Thomas Morgan, “With Oppenheimer on an Autumn Day,” Look, December 27, 1966, p. 63.
51. “The mathematician’s patterns”: G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 85.
52. “Bohr’s atom seemed to me”: Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood (New York: Knopf, 2001), p. 307.
53. “we had lunch”: James D. Watson, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA (1968; New York: Mentor, 1969), p. 131.
54. “I have seen more than one speaker”: Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery (New York: Basic Books, 1988), pp. 78–79.
55. Physics of the Air: W. J. Humphreys, Physics of the Air, 3d ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1940). Humphreys was an early supporter of Wilson A. Bentley and wrote the text for their classic book of snow crystal photography, Snow Crystals.
56. “seldom proceeds in the straight-forward logical manner”: Watson, Double Helix, p. ix.
57. “there remains general ignorance”: ibid., pp. ix-x.
58. the greatest achievement of science: Peter Medawar, “Lucky Jim,” New York Review of Books, March 28, 1968, 3–5, p. 4.
59. “towered over all that the rest of us had achieved”: E. O. Wilson, Naturalist (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1994), p. 233.
60. “The great thing about their discovery”: Medawar, “Lucky Jim,” p. 3.
61. “adventure characterized”: Watson, Double Helix, p. ix.
62. “communicates the spirit of science”: Jacob Bronowski, “Honest Jim and the Tinker Toy Model,” The Nation, March 18, 1968, 381–82, p. 382.
63. “wonderfully candid self-portrait”: Robert Merton, “Making It Scientifically,” New York Times Book Review, February 25, 1968.
64. “You are describing how science is done”: letter from Richard Feynman to James Watson, February 10, 1967; quoted in James Gleick, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (New York: Vintage, 1993), p. 386.
65. “has never been anything”: Alex Comfort, “Two Cultures No More,” Manchester (England) Guardian, May 16, 1968.
66. “The style is elated”: ibid.
67. “no fewer than a dozen”: editorial, “Professor Watson’s Memoirs,” Nature 217, March 25, 1968.
68. “bleak recitation of bickering”: John Lear, “Heredity Transactions,” in The Double Helix, Norton Critical Edition, ed. Gunther S. Stent (New York: Norton, 1980), p. 195; article first published in Saturday Review, March 16, 1968.
69. “Like geographical explorers of old”: Sir Howard Florey, “Development of Modern Science,” Nature, 200: 397–402 (1963), p. 397.
70. “What every scientist knows”: Richard Lewontin, “Honest Jim Watson’s Big Thriller About DNA,” in The Double Helix, Norton Critical Edition, p. 186; article first published in the Chicago Sunday Sun-Times, February 25, 1968.
71. “He betrays in himself”: Medawar, “Lucky Jim,” p. 5.
72. “If, of course”: editorial, Nature, March 25, 1968.
73. “What a much duller”: Matt Ridley, foreword to John Inglis, Joseph Sambrook, and Jan Witkowski, eds., Inspiring Science: Jim Watson and the Age of DNA (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2003), p. xv.
74. “Damn the men”: Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith, p. 272.
75. “just wanted the answer”: Crick, What Mad Pursuit, pp. 69–70.
76. “Maurice continually frustrated Francis”: Watson, The Double Helix, pp. 19–20.
77. “Our characters were imperfect”: James Watson, speech at Harvard University, March 11, 2002.
78. When I asked him: author’s interview with James Watson, February 24, 2002.
79. “It is necessary to share it”: ibid.
80. “Both young men are somewhat mad hatters”: from Gerard Pomerat’s diary, April 1, 1953; quoted in Inspiring Science, p. 66.
81. “would pop up from his chair”: Watson, Double Helix, p. 127.
82. “winged into the Eagle”: ibid., p. 126.
83. more innate than learned: I asked most of the individuals I interviewed for my book whether they thought exuberance was innate, learned, or a mixture of both. They responded as follows: Dr. Samuel Barondes—“Heredity plays a big role but environment does too. I think you can teach people to be a little more or less exuberant. But it remains difficult to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear”; J. Carter Brown—“Primarily innate”; Dr. Andrew Cheng—“It’s innate. In my experience, it can’t really be learned. But it can be influenced”; Dr. Robert Farquhar—“It’s in you”; Dr. Robert Gallo—“One’s innate biology cannot be excluded as a major force dictating emotions, and exuberance must be regarded chiefly as part of the emotions not the intellect. I come back to favoring the innate because there are many ways one can select to avoid hurt [and I] seem prone to use exuberance”; Senator George McGovern—“Equally innate and learned”; Dr. James Watson—“Most likely of innate origin”; Senator Paul Wellstone—“Innate. I was born bouncing”; Dr. Ellen Winner—“My guess is that it is temperamental and inborn. I think that the environment can kill it, but I don’t think the environment can create it.”
84. “I just like to know”: quoted in Melvyn Bragg, with Ruth Gardiner, On Giants’ Shoulders: Great Scientists and Their Discoveries from Archimedes to DNA (New York: John Wiley, 1998), p. 327.
Exuberance: The Passion for Life Page 38
