STANFORD UNIVERSITY
MEDICAL CENTER
PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA

DEPARTMENT OF GENETICS Merch 1 ' 1961
School of Medicine

institute for Scientific Information
1122 Spring Garden Street
Philadelphia 23, Pennsylvania

Mr. Eugene Garfield MAR 3 196}

Dear Gene:

This is in reply to your letter of February 13. | was glad to see how

index Chemicus is coming along. Actually, | have thought quite a bit how
we might systematize biological statement. | am afraid we are a long way

From any practical general developments. There have been some approaches
at the development of axiomatic systems - for example, Woodger, Asiomatic
Method in Biology - but these have not been very useful in developing a
formal language for biological statement. The one place that may become an
exception to this pessimism is in neurology and you might went to look at

Ashby, Design for a frain, for an example,

The main trouble is probably that there are so many variables and
kinds of propositions in biology that it would be only within very narrow
fields that it would pay to set up a formal nomenclature. However, it
strikes me that a great deal could be done to improve the simplicity (sic)
and precision of scientific statement if we were to substitute the format of
the propositional calculus for conventional language. Statements ina
scientific paper ought to be at least numbered for internal and further
referencesand rather compact symbols could well take the place of the
clumsy wordage that we now use in statements of uncertain inference. But |
honestly don't think that such proposals are going to get very far insofar
as biology is still the refuge of the poet in science.

You suggested rather tentatively that | might become a Director on the
Board of IS1. Equally tentatively, | wonder if | could not be much more
useful to your program in aid of scientific communication by remaining a
Proponent without formal status in your corporation, If | can be of help,
| will be glad to be a consultant for you as in the past. This reticence is
not due to any lack of interest on my part for what you are trying to do,

But ft anticipate that there would be times when | could be even more effective
by speaking from the role of consumer rather than producer of your product.
However, there are probably some counter arguments and { would want to know
who else was likely to be sitting on the Board before we came to a conclusion
about this. { am sorry that you have iad so much trouble with USF but am
pleased to see that this is evaporating.
Mr. Garfield, cont. 2 March 1, 196]

With regard to your future plans, | don't think | would go along
completely with the last paragraph of your letter. J| don't think it would
make very much difference in further dealings whether they were made with
you personally or with a corporation in which you held a dominant interest.
llowever, J] could visualize all sorts of other reasons for making ISI a public
stock corporation; these need ns, however, detract from the advantayes of
also setting up the documentation center.

Yours sincerely,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics