BOOK REVIEW : A Story of Biology, but Not of Lives : TOWARD THE HABIT OF TRUTH: A LIFE IN SCIENCE <i> by Mahlon Hoagland</i> W. W. Norton $19.95, 206 pages

At base, we are all storytellers, and we all tell--or try to tell--a coherent story of our lives. It is the story dearest to each of us, though it takes a bit of doing. We have to downplay some things and embellish others. But we all walk around with a Story, the Story. We tell it to ourselves, and sometimes we tell it to others.

Of necessity, everyone’s story is different. From the moment of birth we all have different experiences and lead different lives.

But there are patterns of stories that recur, one of which is the dedicated scientist doing research to expand knowledge and help people. In fiction, it is the story of Sinclair Lewis’ “Arrowsmith.” In nonfiction, it is Paul de Kruif’s “Microbe Hunters.” In autobiography there are many examples, the latest of which is Mahlon Hoagland’s “Toward the Habit of Truth,” the book we take up today.

Hoagland is one of the major figures in the unfolding of microbiology. After Watson and Crick discovered the form and structure of DNA--the molecular basis of heredity--Hoagland and a colleague discovered transfer RNA, the mechanism by which DNA creates a new living being. DNA contains the blueprint. Transfer RNA converts the blueprint into a specific individual.

In describing this work, which was carried out at the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, Hoagland tells the story of science and scientists and of his own role in the biological enterprise that stretches unbroken from Charles Darwin to the present day. Hoagland writes:

“The story of man’s rapidly expanding understanding of his origins is one of the greatest sagas of human creativity--of the use of imagination in the rigorous pursuit of evidence--to bring connection, continuity and community to a bewildering mass of data. Explanation has brought harmony, pattern, meaning and beauty in its wake.”

Hoagland’s story is interesting enough, and he writes with precision and grace, focusing on the big picture and the small details--and the interplay between them. As in all lives, chance played no small part in his. While in medical school in the mid-1940s, Hoagland came down with a severe case of tuberculosis, which took two years to overcome. When he resumed his studies, he found he could no longer perform surgery, his first interest, and he turned his attention to research.

Along the same lines, Hoagland’s book is understandably studded with observations about the edifice of science and its practice as well as with parenthetical asides that are no less revealing.

A large observation: “Science is a process, a progression, because its discoveries are cumulative, the stones of an edifice under construction. While science gives us reliable knowledge about the external world, it cannot do much directly to solve the problems of values that press upon us in our daily lives that have no objective solution. This should not preclude the use in our daily lives of the scientific habit of skepticism, its esteem for evidence, its awareness of how hard it is to get at the truth, its insistence on distinguishing between testable hypothesis and belief.” An orthodox plea for the scientific method.

A small observation: “I have known several scientists whose encyclopedic knowledge seemed to impede, mask or substitute for whatever creative potential they might have had. Their ability to act--and science is action--was impeded by their erudition. They seemed to be weighed down by a sense that everything had already been done.” There are nonscientists as well as scientists like that.

Hoagland’s book is fine as far as it goes, but if there is any caveat about it, it is that it does not go far enough. His relationship with his father, Hudson Hoagland, a distinguished scientist in his own right and the founder of the Worcester Foundation, is not sufficiently explored.

Hoagland tells us that only 21 years separated them and that sometimes his father was more like an older brother, but the complexities of the relationship are only alluded to. He refers to an “awkward, self-conscious competitiveness” between them and the “parent-child duel” that characterized their lives. I’d have liked more.

In the genre of scientific autobiography, Hoagland tells a great deal. Readers interested in important microbiology and how it is done will be well rewarded. Those interested in a deep personal story may not.