Biology Quotes
337 quotes
"We all know interspecies romance is weird."
"Dream is not that which you see while sleeping it is something that does not let you sleep."
"It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself."
"DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created."
"Are we biology or God or something higher? I know my heart beats and I listen to it. The beat is biology, but what is the song?"
"On ne naît pas femme: on le devient."
"In a very real sense we have two minds, one that thinks and one that feels"
"One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die."
"We are biology. We are reminded of this at the beginning and the end, at birth and at death. In between we do what we can to forget."
"A god who is capable of sending intelligible signals to millions of people simultaneously, and of receiving messages from all of them simultaneously, cannot be, whatever else he might be, simple. Such Bandwidth!"
"In the abstract, it might be tempting to imagine that irreducible complexity simply requires multiple simultaneous mutations - that evolution might be far chancier than we thought, but still possible. Such an appeal to brute luck can never be refuted... Luck is metaphysical speculation; scientific explanations invoke causes."
"Dans la nature rien ne se crée, rien ne se perd, tout change.In nature nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything changes."
"If we are merely matter intricately assembled, is this really demeaning? If there's nothing here but atoms, does that make us less or does that make matter more?"
"And you are made of a hundred trillion cells. We are, each of us, a multitude."
"The fundamental claim of intelligent design is straightforward and easily intelligible: namely, there are natural systems that cannot be adequately explained in terms of undirected natural forces and that exhibit features which in any other circumstance we would attribute to intelligence."
"To put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant—inexcusably ignorant, in a world where three out of four people have learned to read and write."
"There were long stretches of DNA in between genes that didn't seem to be doing very much; some even referred to these as "junk DNA,"though a certain amount of hubris was required for anyone to call any part of the genome "junk,"given our level of ignorance."
"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."
"Every time you understand something, religion becomes less likely. Only with the discovery of the double helix and the ensuing genetic revolution have we had grounds for thinking that the powers held traditionally to be the exclusive property of the gods might one day be ours. . . ."
"Perhaps eggs are like neurons, which also are not replenished in adulthood: they know too much. Eggs must plan the party. Sperm need only to show up- wearing top hat and tails, of course."
"Teaching students the evidence for and against Darwinism is not the same as teaching intelligent design. The U.S. Congress has officially endorsed teaching students 'the full range of scientific views' about Darwinian evolution."
"Whenever explaining an event, we must choose from three competing modes of explanation. These are regularity, chance, and design... To attribute an event to design is to say that it cannot reasonably be referred to either regularity or chance."
"There's no obvious reason to assume that the very same rare properties that allow for our existence would also provide the best overall setting to make discoveries about the world around us. We don't think this is merely coincidental. It cries out for another explanation, an explanation that... points to purpose and intelligent design in the cosmos."
"If Darwinists are opposed to mentioning scientific problems with their view, you would think they would be even more opposed to mentioning intelligent design. Yet Darwinists have been discussing ID in public school science classes for years... Biology textbooks have been mentioning intelligent design since the late 1990s—but only to misrepresent and disparage it."
"Genetics might be adequate for explaining microevolution, but microevolutionary changes in gene frequency were not seen as able to turn a reptile into a mammal or to convert a fish into an amphibian. Microevolution looks at adaptations that concern the survival of the fittest, not the arrival of the fittest... The origin of species — Darwin’s problem — remains unsolved."
"The idea that one can go to the fossil record and expect to empirically recover an ancestor-descendant sequence, be it of species, genera, families, or whatever, has been, and continues to be, a pernicious illusion."
"Everything can't be explained by some general biological phrase."
"I am quite sure that our views on evolution would be very different had biologists studied genetics and natural selection before and not after most of them were convinced that evolution had occurred."
"The ideology and philosophy of neo-Darwinism which is sold by its adepts as a scientific theoretical foundation of biology seriously hampers the development of science and hides from students the field’s real problems."
"The phrase 'the fossil record' sounds impressive and authoritative. As used by some persons it becomes, as intended, intimidating, taking on the aura of esoteric truth as expounded by an elite class of specialists. But what is it, really, this fossil record? Only data in search of interpretation. All claims to the contrary that I know, and I know of several, are so much superstition."
"Birth after birth the line unchanging runs,And fathers live transmitted in their sons;Each passing year beholds the unvarying kinds,The same their manners, and the same their minds:Till, as erelong successive buds decay,And insect-shoals successive pass away,Increasing wants the pregnant parent vexWith the fond wish to form a softer sex. .."
"it is high time we stop using the term “theory” while mentioning Evolution. The term “theory” somehow makes some people think of Evolution as an unproven “hypothesis”. Theory of Evolution is an incontrovertible fact of science. It is not a fictitious story like Creationism. It’s a hard reality. It is the bed-rock of Biology. Defying evolution means defying one’s own existence as a human being."
"Neither humans nor the Gods that they have created are superior to old Mother Nature."
"If this book has a lesson, it is that we are awfully lucky to be here-and by 'we' I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans we are doubly lucky, of course: We enjoy not only the privilege of existence but also the singular ability to appreciate it and even, in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is a talent we have only barely begun to grasp."
"But there is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death."
"Biology is destiny only for girls."
"There were long stretches of DNA in between genes that didn't seem to be doing very much; some even referred to these as "junk DNA," though a certain amount of hubris was required for anyone to call any part of the genome "junk," given our level of ignorance."
Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief
"The biological equipment of a man rigidly restricts the field in which he can serve."
"All our sentiments - religious, romantic or any other - are born in the neurons."
Abhijit Naskar, Neurons of Jesus: Mind of A Teacher, Spouse & Thinker
"Biologically speaking, you are the child of Mother Nature, and neurologically speaking, you are the heirs of immortal bliss."
"We gain from the new science of mind not only insights into ourselves - how we perceive, learn, remember, feel, believe and act - but also a new perspective of ourselves and our fellow human beings in the context of biological evolution."
Abhijit Naskar, Love, God & Neurons: Memoir of a scientist who found himself by getting lost
"I submit a body of facts which cannot be invalidated. My opinions may be doubted, denied, or approved, according as they conflict or agree with the opinions of each individual who may read them; but their worth will be best determined by the foundation on which they rest—the incontrovertible facts."
William Beaumont, Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice: and the Physiology of Digestion
"...Why is it, that from the moment you enter medical school to the moment you retire, that the only disorder you will ever diagnosis with a physics book - is obesity? This is biology folks, it's endocrinology, it's physiology - physics has nothing to do with it. The law of thermodynamics is always true, [but] the energy balance equation is irrelevant..."
"Reply when questioned on the safety of the polio vaccine he developed:It is safe, and you can't get safer than safe."
"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I confess, absurd in the highest degree...The difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection , though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered subversive of the theory."
"The conclusion of intelligent design flows naturally from the data itself—not from sacred books or sectarian beliefs. Inferring that biochemical systems were designed by an intelligent agent is a humdrum process that requires no new principles of logic or science. It comes simply from the hard work that biochemistry has done over the past forty years, combined with consideration of the way in which we reach conclusions of design every day."
Michael J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
"Is the conclusion that the universe was designed - and that the design extends deeply into life - science, philosophy, religion, or what? In a sense it hardly matters. By far the most important question is not what category we place it in, but whether a conclusion is true. A true philosophical or religious conclusion is no less true than a true scientific one. Although universities might divide their faculty and courses into academic categories, reality is not obliged to respect such boundaries."
Michael J. Behe, The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism
"No fossil is buried with its birth certificate. That, and the scarcity of fossils, means that it is effectively impossible to link fossils into chains of cause and effect in any valid way... To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story—amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific."
"The controversy between Darwinism and intelligent design has the characteristics of major scientific revolutions in the past. Darwinists are losing power because they treat with contempt the very people on whom they depend the most: American taxpayers. The outcome of this scientific revolution will be decided by young people who have the courage to question dogmatism and follow the evidence wherever it leads."
Jonathan Wells, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design
"The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable, event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle."
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