Edward G. BELAGA Institut de Recherche Mathématique Avancée C. N. R. S., Université Louis Pasteur 7, rue René Descartes F-67084 Strasbourg Cedex FRANCE Téléphone : 33 (0)3 90 24 02 35. Fax : (33) (03) 90 24 03 28 http://www-irma.u-strasbg.fr/~belaga ; e-mail:
[email protected] _______________________________________________________________________________________________ July 2007 Francis Crick and the missing Biblical rib Ever since the creation of the world, the invisible existence of God and His everlasting power have been clearly seen by the mind’s understanding of created things. Epistle of Saint Paul the Apostle to the Romans 1:20 Abstract. The main purpose of the present paper is — proceeding from a real-life showcase particularly rich in scientific and epistemological implications — to discern, expose, interpret, and thus, to contribute to both the rehabilitation and the renewal of a mysterious but indubitable unity of both «objective» and «subjective» factors of the scientific knowledge acquisition, — the unity so manifestly present at the very heart of the scientific pursuit of Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton, or, for that matter, of Albert Einstein, but resolutely passed over if not openly scorned by modern science. To be more precise, by the objective factor we understand the sum of all realities important for the outcome of the scientific quest, the realities related both to a particular researcher’s competence and skills and to science at large — science understood, at a given historical juncture, as (1) the sum of already acquired knowledge, experimental skills, theoretical methods, applied know-how and (2) cultural traditions of public institutions preserving, promoting, teaching and otherwise guiding, disseminating, developing, and applying these skills, methods and knowledge.