"We are sometimes asked what the result would be if we put four +'s in one gene. To answer this my colleagues have recently put together not merely four but six +'s"
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Crick is doing what he did best: compressing a whole research culture into a brisk, slightly mischievous aside. The line reads like a response to a naive but common question from outsiders (or overeager insiders): what happens if you just keep “adding” the good stuff? The plus signs are lab shorthand, a cartoon of genetic tinkering that treats biology like a dashboard of toggles. By repeating the question’s simplistic framing and then casually outdoing it - “not merely four but six” - Crick both indulges and punctures the fantasy that complexity yields to arithmetic.
The intent is partly clarifying, partly performative. He’s defending experimental ambition while signaling that serious scientists don’t stop at thought experiments; they build the construct and see what the organism does. At the same time, the joke implies a quiet warning: if you think traits scale linearly, you’re already misunderstanding the system. Six pluses isn’t “50 percent better” than four; it’s an invitation to surprise, failure, emergent behavior.
Contextually, it sits in the mid-century moment when molecular biology was inventing its own language and swagger. After the double helix, the field’s public myth was inevitability: crack the code, then engineer at will. Crick’s wit complicates that myth. He’s letting you hear the lab’s internal voice - confident, competitive, a little impatient with simplistic expectations - while reminding you that the real punchline is nature’s refusal to behave like a sum.
The intent is partly clarifying, partly performative. He’s defending experimental ambition while signaling that serious scientists don’t stop at thought experiments; they build the construct and see what the organism does. At the same time, the joke implies a quiet warning: if you think traits scale linearly, you’re already misunderstanding the system. Six pluses isn’t “50 percent better” than four; it’s an invitation to surprise, failure, emergent behavior.
Contextually, it sits in the mid-century moment when molecular biology was inventing its own language and swagger. After the double helix, the field’s public myth was inevitability: crack the code, then engineer at will. Crick’s wit complicates that myth. He’s letting you hear the lab’s internal voice - confident, competitive, a little impatient with simplistic expectations - while reminding you that the real punchline is nature’s refusal to behave like a sum.
Quote Details
| Topic | Science |
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