A scientist reads the book of life, without annotations, but through imagery

To read the book of life can be a great delight and an edifying experience; but only if one abstains from decorating every page with annotations in the margins and with corrections, and, even more importantly, from tearing them out and throwing them away after reading them.

One could, eventually, observe and describe the various expressions of life, but one can meditate on life only by way of metaphor: to me it seems an immense, interminable flux that embraces all of living reality.

Each life is only a recipient, a system of receptors. The recipient falls away, the receptors fade and vanish, but the flux continues: it is eternal; it neither increases or ebbs; it existed before all recipients and will live long after all of them. The recipient dies, but never the content. Love and fantasy, nostalgia and hope, compassion, loyalty and liberation: these are the points of contact between the flux and the recipients. A certain reflection that comes forth, a hazy recollection of them, suffices to brighten an entire life.

Erwin Chargaff, Mistero impenetrabile, trans. F. and G. Migneco