- Title Pages
- Frontispiece
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Acknowledgments
- A Note on the Translation
- Introduction: A Scientist in His Life's Project
-
1 “I Have Never in My Life Felt I Belonged in the Place Where I Lived” -
2 “Stylistically, I'm Best at Irony” -
3 “I Wanted to Study Something That Couldn't Be Used” -
4 “I Have the Feeling That Everything Around Me Is Enveloped in a Mist” -
5 “When I Look at Other Scientists … None of Them Have Wasted as Many Years as I Have” -
6 “Now I Think Nobody Can Keep Me from Becoming a Doctor” -
7 “To Be Able to Let Nature Reflect in the Depths of My Own Soul” -
8 “I Am Branded with Infidelity, and See That Open-Eyed” -
9 “Letters Are a Spiritual Spiderweb in Which You Snare the Dreaming Soul of a Woman” -
10 “The Happiness of Feeling Superior to a Lot of People” -
11 “I Think the Work Has Principal Application to Immunology” -
12 “Antibody This, Antibody That, They Weren't Really Much Interested” -
13 “These People Don't Know What They're Doing” -
14 “I Suppose I Should Do Something, Maybe an Experiment or Something” - The Selection Theory as a Personal Confession
-
15 “My Hopes and Failures Are Within Myself” -
16 “This Theory Hadn't Made Much of a Stir, So Now, What Was I to Do?” -
17 “I'd Better Make Sure I Learn a Little about Immunology” -
18 “Finally, My Precious, I Have to Be Brilliant and Make Antibodies” -
19 “Like a Log Coming Slowly to the Surface of a Lake” -
20 “I Still Think That My Original Natural Selection Theory Was Better” -
21 “Immunology Is for Me Becoming a Mostly Philosophical Subject” - Epilogue: “What Struggle to Escape”
- Abbreviations Used in Notes
- Unpublished Sources
- Bibliography
- Index
“This Theory Hadn't Made Much of a Stir, So Now, What Was I to Do?”
“This Theory Hadn't Made Much of a Stir, So Now, What Was I to Do?”
- Chapter:
- (p.209) 16 “This Theory Hadn't Made Much of a Stir, So Now, What Was I to Do?”
- Source:
- Science as Autobiography
- Author(s):
Thomas Söderqvist
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
This chapter focuses on Niels Jerne's departure from Pasadena. Students, visiting researchers, and staff wrote their goodbyes. “Have a miserable trip; I hate you (but love Adda),” wrote George Streisinger. The next day, the Jernes flew to New York to sail back to Europe. In the week it took to cross the Atlantic, Jerne buried himself in Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript, a tract on inwardness that mentally prepared him for his return to Denmark. A week with the “subjective problem” was also, he thought, “a valuable antidote” to the endless suburban streets of Pasadena, to Delbruck and his desert excursions, and, not least, to “the objectivism which is spreading so deplorably among the educated [classes],”as he expressed it in a letter to Stent.
Keywords: Niels Jerne, inwardness, Pasadena, George Streisinger, Kierkegaard, subjective problem, objectivism
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- Title Pages
- Frontispiece
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Acknowledgments
- A Note on the Translation
- Introduction: A Scientist in His Life's Project
-
1 “I Have Never in My Life Felt I Belonged in the Place Where I Lived” -
2 “Stylistically, I'm Best at Irony” -
3 “I Wanted to Study Something That Couldn't Be Used” -
4 “I Have the Feeling That Everything Around Me Is Enveloped in a Mist” -
5 “When I Look at Other Scientists … None of Them Have Wasted as Many Years as I Have” -
6 “Now I Think Nobody Can Keep Me from Becoming a Doctor” -
7 “To Be Able to Let Nature Reflect in the Depths of My Own Soul” -
8 “I Am Branded with Infidelity, and See That Open-Eyed” -
9 “Letters Are a Spiritual Spiderweb in Which You Snare the Dreaming Soul of a Woman” -
10 “The Happiness of Feeling Superior to a Lot of People” -
11 “I Think the Work Has Principal Application to Immunology” -
12 “Antibody This, Antibody That, They Weren't Really Much Interested” -
13 “These People Don't Know What They're Doing” -
14 “I Suppose I Should Do Something, Maybe an Experiment or Something” - The Selection Theory as a Personal Confession
-
15 “My Hopes and Failures Are Within Myself” -
16 “This Theory Hadn't Made Much of a Stir, So Now, What Was I to Do?” -
17 “I'd Better Make Sure I Learn a Little about Immunology” -
18 “Finally, My Precious, I Have to Be Brilliant and Make Antibodies” -
19 “Like a Log Coming Slowly to the Surface of a Lake” -
20 “I Still Think That My Original Natural Selection Theory Was Better” -
21 “Immunology Is for Me Becoming a Mostly Philosophical Subject” - Epilogue: “What Struggle to Escape”
- Abbreviations Used in Notes
- Unpublished Sources
- Bibliography
- Index
