Biochemistry (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798906680105)

Every science has its characteristic temptation. Physics is tempted to

suppose that the universe is simple; history, that it is significant; and

biochemistry - the youngest and most self-confident of the experimental

sciences - is tempted to suppose that it is finished. One need only open a

modern compendium to see the shape of the temptation: here are the pathways,

neatly engraved; here the enzymes, each with its number; here the genomes,

each with its address. The whole of life, it would appear, has been filed. The

present treatise is written in the conviction that this appearance, though a credit

to the industry of a hundred years, is a little premature - and that a subject so

young ought not yet to speak of itself in the past tense.

What, then, is attempted here? Not an encyclopaedia, for the world has

excellent ones, and an encyclopaedia is by its nature a cabinet in which the

objects have ceased to touch one another. Not a laboratory manual, for hands

are taught in laboratories and not in prefaces.