小时候看过沃森的《双螺旋》，但一点儿情节也想不起来了。关于DNA的发现，只知道物理学的作用似乎大于生物学的——甚至感觉发现它不需要懂生物。

这会儿想起它来，是因为听说有本书（不知什么书）要用下面的一段话做广告：

From the irregular trivia of ordinary life mixed with a bit of scientific doodling and failure, to the intense dramatic concentration as one closes in on the truth and the final elation (plus with gradually decreasing frequency, the sudden sharp pangs of doubt)--that is how science is done.

这是费曼给沃森的一封信里的话（1967年2月10日），乍看像老师告诉学生科学是怎么做的，实际上是老费对《双螺旋》（The Double Helix）手稿的评论——他大概听说了不少人对Watson的书稿颇有微词（哈佛大学出版社甚至拒绝出版），所以信一开头就说Don't let anybody criticise that book who hasn't read it through to the end。

双螺旋的发现确实是一个有趣的例子，很多人做了很多年的实验和研究，结果是两个无名小子占了先，而且过程似乎还不那么光彩——Bragg老板在序言里隐约提到了这一点：

The story is a poignant example of dilemma which may confront an investigator. He [Watson] knows that a colleague has been working for years on a problem and has accumulated a mass of hard-won evidence, which has not yet been published because it is anticipated that success is just around the corner. He has seen the evidence and has good reason to believe that a method of attack which he can envisage, perhaps merely a new point of view, will lead straight to the solution.

我倒觉得这个poignant example同样说明了我一贯坚持的唯心主义观点：实验不会自发形成理论。很多人一辈子守着一座实验和数据的大山，但除了眼前的东西，什么也没看到。

Watson是爱玩儿也爱思考的青年，有人说他在剑桥做的事就是打球和泡妞。费曼也是爱玩儿的主，大概是他喜欢W的原因。而且，W关于发现过程的描写，更令他感到心有戚戚（I have had the same beautiful and frightening experience）——所以，他支持W出版他的稿子，而且尽可能不要改（Leave it that way. Publish with as little change as possible），因为科学就是那么做出来的！

Bragg爵士在序言里，也表达了差不多同样的意思：

The latter chapters, in which the birth of the new idea is described so vividly, are drama of the highest order; the tension mounts and mounts towards the final climax. I do not know of any other instance where one is able to share so intimately in the researcher's struggles and doubts and final triumph.

“tension mounts and mounts towards the final climax”，就是老费说的intense dramatic concentration as one closes in on the truth and the final elation，连词儿好像都是一个模子出来的呢。