Maker of Patterns

by Freeman Dyson

  My portrayal of Jim Bates as a tragic Captain Ahab turned out to be totally wrong. After our visit, Jim slowly recovered from his injuries and succeeded in patching the holes in the bottom of D’Sonoqua. To my astonishment, he made her seaworthy, turned her upright, and got her afloat. He continued for several years to sail her up and down the coast of British Columbia. Then he sailed her down through the Panama Canal to the Atlantic. The last time George saw her, he was on St. Simon’s Island in Georgia and unexpectedly ran into Jim Bates at the island’s grocery store. D’Sonoqua was anchored in the nearby river, making her way up the Atlantic Coast. Jim eventually sailed her to the Bay of Fundy, where she now still sits, up on land on a property where Jim rents cabins to tourists.

  I also misjudged Will and Georgeanna Malloff when I described them as a suitable team for colonizing an asteroid. Less than a year after our visit, Georgeanna abandoned Will and left the island. She is an artist and needs a community to give meaning to her life. Five years of solitude was enough. Will stayed on the island, unwilling to move but unhappy to be alone. He died in 2015 at Alert Bay.

  The battle of Princeton was a turning point in the American War of Independence. It was the first major battle that Washington won, proving to doubtful fence-sitters in America and to doubtful observers in Europe that the rebellious colonists might actually defeat the British Empire. Princeton is justly proud of this victory, paid for by the citizens with heavy losses of life and property.

  JANUARY 10, 1977

  The big event this week was the Battle. January 3, 1977, was exactly two hundred years from the original battle, and they reenacted the whole thing as precisely as they could. Five hundred real redcoats from England came over for the occasion, and a suitably rugged and miscellaneous crowd of Americans were collected from various places to make up Washington’s army. The only difference from the original battle was that nobody was hurt. About ten thousand Princetonians came to watch and got in the way to some extent. The great good luck was that the weather was the same as on January 3, 1777, a cold sunny day with about three inches of snow on the battlefield and the ground hard frozen. So not only Washington’s troops but also the spectators were able to move around without producing a sea of mud. The battlefield was still clean and white when it was over. What people forget is that the real battle destroyed about half of the houses in Princeton, and more people died afterwards from cold and sickness than died in the battle.

  Our home is on Battle Road, on the edge of the Battlefield Memorial Park, a protected area of grassland where the reenactment of the battle took place. Historians are still disputing how much of the fighting in 1777 was actually within the park. Much of the battle was probably in the built-up area of the town, where many buildings were destroyed.

  JANUARY 29, 1977

  Today I went to the first meeting of a citizens’ committee which is supposed to decide for the town of Princeton whether the biologists at the university are to be permitted to work with recombinant DNA. I was asked to serve on the committee and agreed to do so because this is an important question and I should not stand aside. The committee will involve a great deal of work, and is supposed to produce a final report by May 1. We were told to expect to put into it about ten hours of work per week for ten weeks. It will probably add up to more than that.

  The modern era of genetic science began in 1976 with the discovery of recombinant DNA, popularly known as gene splicing. Recombinant DNA is the genetic hybrid produced by splicing a gene from one species into another. Recombinant DNA allows an experimenter to take genes from a bacterium or from a mouse and insert them into a living human embryo. Experimenters could break the barrier that nature had put between species. Biologists all over the world understood that such experiments could raise serious problems of ethics. An international meeting of biologists at Asilomar in California agreed to impose a set of guidelines, deciding which experiments should be allowed and which should be forbidden. The biologists at Princeton University accepted the Asilomar guidelines, but the municipal authorities of Princeton Township were unsure whether the Asilomar guidelines were sufficient to ensure public safety. The municipal authorities set up our committee to find out whether recombinant DNA experiments were acceptable to the Princeton community. Our job was to educate ourselves and also to educate the public concerning the possible costs and benefits of the new technology. Most of our time was spent listening rather than talking. We invited expert and nonexpert witnesses to come and express their opinions. Anyone who wished to be heard was heard. We treated every witness with respect, no matter how long-winded or ignorant they might be. As a result of our patience, the public debate remained friendly and nobody felt excluded. When we finally announced our conclusions, they were generally accepted as fair and reasonable.

  Today we had our first meeting, and I found to my surprise that the main subject of discussion was whether I am fit to serve. A lady who is a vociferous opponent of DNA research challenged my membership on the ground that I have taken a public position in favor of the research and cannot have an open mind. So we argued about this for the whole afternoon. I said I would be happy to step down if the township authorities ask me to. I really hope they will. But I feel an obligation to stick it through if they decide to keep me on. This will be decided next week.

  The lady who opposed my membership was Susanna Waterman, an environmentalist who sincerely believed that DNA research was a violation of nature. The township denied her objection, and I continued to serve on the committee. Quite soon Susanna and I became friends, and I valued her presence as the most thoughtful and eloquent voice on the committee. In the end, I voted with the majority to allow DNA experiments, and Susanna voted with the minority to forbid experiments. But we learned to respect each other’s opinions and stayed friends.

  MARCH 8, 1977

  Our Princeton committee has been meeting twice a week for five weeks, and we are getting to know each other very well. I am already quite sentimental about the group and shall be sorry when our task is done. We shall be friends when it is over, however much we may disagree about details. I discovered that Emma Epps, the black woman who is one of the most thoughtful and sensible of the group, lived for thirty years as a maid in the house two doors away from ours. Dora Panofsky used to talk in those days about her wonderful Emma, but we never got to know her as a person. Now she is one of the leaders of the black community and a powerful person in Princeton. If only Robert Armstrong and his friends in Rhodesia would understand that black power is not the end of everything.

  Dora Panofsky was the wife of the famous art historian Erwin Panofsky and herself also an art historian. They had twin sons who both became famous scientists. Emma Epps ran the household and brought up the twins. One of them was Wolfgang Panofsky, a physicist whom we knew well. He spoke of Emma Epps with affection and respect. I felt the same way after getting to know her on the committee. Robert Armstrong was a cousin of mine who settled in Rhodesia, owned a tea plantation there, and stayed there through the years when the white supremacy government of Ian Smith ran the country and afterwards when the black power government of Robert Mugabe changed its name to Zimbabwe. After the country became Zimbabwe, I wrote to my cousin asking how he was getting along with black power. He replied, “If we had not known how to get along with the blacks, we would not have lasted six weeks.” He continued to live peacefully in Zimbabwe until he died many years later.

  APRIL 14, 1977

  Our committee had its crucial meeting last Monday when we each had to decide on the main question, whether to approve the plans of the university. The vote was seven to two in favor with two people absent, and one of the absentees has told us he also votes yes. I am much relieved. It now remains for us to find out if we can agree on the wording of our report.

  The final vote was eight to three. The minority consisted of Susanna Waterman, Emma Epps, and Wallace Alston who was pastor of the Presbyterian church. The committee remained divided, because the majority in
terpreted our task to be to judge whether the DNA research would be an immediate danger to public health, while the minority wanted to judge whether the research might be a violation of long-range ethical principles. Though I voted with the majority, I felt more personal sympathy with the minority, and I was delighted to see that the minority opinions were heard and understood by the public. We quickly decided that we could not write a unanimous report as requested by the township. The majority and minority wrote separate reports, so that the township authorities could hear the arguments of both sides. After considering our two reports, the township finally decided to accept the advice of the majority and allow the university to go ahead with gene-splicing experiments. In forty years since this decision was made, no public health hazards have arisen from the experiments.

  FEBRUARY 8, 1978, VANCOUVER

  Here I am in Vancouver taking a long walk on the beach with George. I never heard him talk so much. All about his expedition of last summer. At least enough material to fill a book. The expedition was completely crazy, with twelve people who had never been together before, most of them with no experience of the ocean, wandering around the Pacific with six little boats. They started quarreling immediately, some of them panicked, some of them were lost for weeks at a time, and some of them ran out of food. The amazing thing is that George got them all back alive with no loss of boats or equipment. He said he has no desire ever to lead an expedition again. But obviously he has a gift for it and I think this will not be his last. He said he made more real friends and more enemies in that summer than he ever had before. The friends will last and the enemies he will not see again. I found George less strange than he used to be. He is talking more plainly and more freely. He is self-confident in his plans for the future. He will not build any more boats for the time being, but will run a school where people can learn to build their own boats and sail them. He has already leased a big empty house in the woods near to his treehouse and will begin his school there. The house is now derelict, but for George it is no problem to fix it up. The big surprise, George owns a car and drives around in it. He already drove it to California and back. It is a twelve-year-old Volvo, and he bought it derelict for two hundred dollars. He took it apart and put it together so that it now goes beautifully.

  Lastly, Katrin. This Katrin who for so many years was living her crazy life, and we never knew where she was. Now here she is, working as a secretary in the very same building where I am staying, the faculty club of the university. This evening we had a faculty dinner, and she was invited to join us. All the professors know her as a secretary but were astonished when she appeared as my daughter. She came looking very elegant in a long black dress and a necklace that Imme bought for her in Princeton. The necklace matches her eyes and is exactly right.

  FEBRUARY 12, 1978, VANCOUVER

  I spent two days at George’s hideout in the woods. Just Katrin and George and I. Sunshine all day long. Sea birds and snowy mountains. On Saturday Jason came out to join us for supper, and George cooked an immense brew of lasagne with mushrooms that he had picked in the mountains. I don’t worry about anything when George is in charge, not even mushrooms. At night I slept in the house which he has furnished with two big old wood stoves, one for cooking and one for heating. Like a true seaman, he makes everything clean and neat. At bedtime I looked out of my window into the starry night and watched him climb like a squirrel up to his treehouse. I could hear the click of his door opening and shutting, and then I could see the golden light of his oil lamp shining on his wooden ceiling. I was looking up through his window into his house at an impossibly high angle. That little golden lighted window seemed to be floating among the stars.

  In Vancouver one of the physics professors gave a supper party to which George, Katrin, and Jason were invited. It was good to see the two cultures sitting together around the supper table. After supper George gave his slide show of the 1977 expedition. It was a magnificent show, and George told his stories well. He is quite at his ease now in any sort of company. He has the air of a man who knows where he is going. George’s plans for the future are definite and ambitious. He wants to buy a particular island near to the place we camped in 1975. This island would be the permanent base of his Baidarka School. Until the money materializes he will keep the school at the Indian Arm base where he has his workshop. To run the school at Indian Arm he will need about $20,000 a year. He has budgets and plans written down for prospective donors. He told me the main thing he has learned in this year of the 1977 expedition has been how to ask for money. The 1977 expedition cost $11,000, which he successfully raised and spent. The final accounting showed he had overspent the account by exactly ten dollars. The two weapons he has in raising money are his slide show and his air of self-confidence. This side of George, the administrator, the man who can handle money, was absolutely new to me. He said it is new to him too. And yet after all, it is obvious where it comes from. He begins more and more to resemble his grandfather.

  Carl Sagan and Edward Wilson were first-rate scientists who knew how to communicate science to the public. Both aroused some hostility, Carl because he was too successful as a television star, Edward because his views on human biology were politically incorrect. In 1977 Carl had given the Christmas Lectures for Children at the Royal Institution in London, a famous lecture series started by Michael Faraday in 1827.

  FEBRUARY 18, 1978, PRINCETON

  I ran into Carl Sagan in Washington and told him you had enjoyed his talks. He said he had a very good time with the Christmas lectures and found the children delightful, except for the two royal princes who were there and made everyone feel stiff and uncomfortable. He said these princes are so well trained, they can talk intelligently about everything and are interested in nothing. Back from the London lectures, he was immediately invited for a family evening at the Carters, with Jimmy, Rosalynn, Amy, Jeff, and Caron, chatting about Mars and Jupiter and extraterrestrial intelligence. He found Jimmy not so well trained as the English princes but interested in everything.

  The trip back from Washington was more exciting than usual. We hit a bad patch where the freezing and thawing of winter made the track bumpy. After a few violent bumps the whole train jumped off the rails. We ended up tilted half over but not quite overturned. Nineteen people were injured, none seriously. After a long wait we were rescued by buses which took us back to Union Station in Washington. I was sitting in the waiting room, battered and disheveled, when I noticed Ed Wilson, a friend of mine who is a professor of biology at Harvard, sitting in the next chair, looking more battered and disheveled than I was. He had a pair of crutches, one leg in a cast, his hair dripping wet, and his clothes looked as if he had been in a fight. I asked him if he had also been in the train wreck and he said no. But he had a bad week. First he slipped on some ice in Boston and broke his leg. But he had agreed to talk to the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) meeting where I also was talking and painfully dragged himself on his crutches to Washington for the meeting. He is the world’s greatest authority on the behavior of ants, and he has written a book, Sociobiology [1975], pointing out the analogies and differences between social behavior in insects and human beings. This is politically dangerous ground, and the young radicals at Harvard have been accusing him of being a fascist and a racist. When he came to give his talk in Washington, a bunch of young hooligans invaded the platform, grabbed the microphone out of his hands, told the audience what an evil character he is, and ended by emptying the speaker’s water jug over his head. After this he gave his talk, and the audience gave him a standing ovation. But he said that is the last time he ever comes to a AAAS meeting.

  APRIL 19, 1978, PRINCETON

  The main event of the last weeks has been the Moonchildren affair, which has been in all the local newspapers and even for a few days in the New York Times. Moonchildren is a play which Imme and I saw in New York, a good play, rather Chekhovian in theme, about a group of students in a rooming house during the
Vietnam years. Miriam’s high school drama class decided to perform it at the high school, and Miriam has beeen working at the sets and the production with all her heart and soul. She also had a minor part as Aunt Stella. Then just two weeks before opening night, the high school principal announced that the play must be expurgated and certain four-letter words omitted. The children got a lawyer and took the case to court in Trenton as a violation of their rights of freedom of speech. For two days Miriam was at the trial in Trenton, learning a lot more about life than she would have learnt in class at the high school. The children lost the case. But the production, even without the four-letter words, was a huge success and crowds of people had to be turned away from the door.

  After the expurgated Moonchildren production at the high school was over, the Unitarian Church invited the children to put on an unexpurgated production at the church meeting room.

  APRIL 27, 1978

  We went to the unexpurgated version of Moonchildren at the Unitarian church. The acting was magnificent. All this fuss has made the children do a far better job than they would have been capable of under normal circumstances. Unfortunately the drama teacher Arlene Sinding who produced the play will now be leaving the school. She is not exactly kicked out, but after this affair it would be hard for her to stay. This morning Miriam was working hard in the bathroom getting the makeup out of her face and hair.