Imagining science: Narrative, discovery, and 'The Double Helix' (James Watson, Ernest Hemingway)

“Imagining Science” discloses in James Watson's narrative of scientific inquiry, The Double Helix, affinities with Hemingway's writing and his widely emulated construction of himself as an artist. Watson frames his autobiographical narrative about discovering the molecular structure of DNA as an exhilarating intellectual adventure, whose success depends on his ability to imagine invisible matter and on his collaboration with colleagues. Watson's story invokes Hemingway's masculine adventures and their associations with his creative process. Like Hemingway, Watson insists that his participation in the events he describes and the courageous candor of his descriptions authorize what he regards as the integrity of his representations. In his understated prose and his approach to solving the structure of DNA, Watson shows a stylistic preference for simplicity that recalls Hemingway's aesthetics. Watson's redescription of scientific practice challenges its representation in scientific discourse, where science appears to be a self-effacing project that denies the influence of human affection, taste, and imagination. He challenges as well the representation of a scientist as the inadvertently heroic figure who inhabits popular narratives, such as the erroneous stories told about Alexander Fleming and the discovery of penicillin. The final chapter of my study analyzes Watson's detailed description of building a free-standing model of DNA. This discussion elucidates how Watson engages artifice to understand the phenomenal world more intimately. To make DNA materialize, Watson depends on both his aesthetic preference for simplicity and his sense of touch. By using his hands to detect resistance as he fits the atoms of his model together, Watson can imagine the configuration of the actual DNA molecule. In the process, he makes agile transitions between imagining DNA and verifying his mimesis of it. Molecular model-building, introduced by Linus Pauling, assumes that a structural consistency exists across the material universe. This assumption also informs Buckminster Fuller's architecture, Kenneth Snelson's sculpture, and Donald Ingber's dynamic sculptural models of cells. When we compare the resonance between Watson's work as a scientist and the work of verbal and visual artists, we can discover how lavishly the labor of the imagination is distributed across fields of human invention.