Quotes About Science

establishment. In 1966, the Dutch geologist M. G. Rutten could write, in a charmingly antiquated style that has passed forever from the scientific journals:

One mitochondrion contains tens of thousands of copies of each respiratory complex. A single cell contains hundreds or thousands of mitochondria. Your 40 trillion cells contain at least a quadrillion mitochondria, with a combined convoluted surface area of about 14,000 square metres; about four football fields. Their job is to pump protons, and together they pump more than 1021 of them – nearly as many as there are stars in the known universe – every second.

The first true eyes appeared somewhat abruptly in the fossil record around 540 million

A cell can also look static under a microscope, yet its state is the product of more than a billion metabolic reactions every second.11 You are composed of at least thirty trillion cells, so in the last second your tranquil demeanour was sustained by an incomprehensible one hundred billion trillion reactions (1023, or 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). I'm now in my mid-fifties, so my wrinkles and aches and pains are the product of about 1032 reactions to date, roughly a billion times

Geochemistry gives rise seamlessly to biochemistry.

the igneo-aerial food." In other words, despite

We now know that free-radical signals are central to cell physiology, so we can begin to see why antioxidants (which mop up free radicals) do as much harm as good.

If free-radical leak is fast, degenerative diseases set in quickly; if it's slow, they're postponed or even abrogated altogether.

this chapter is different from the other chapters in this book, in that not only does science not (yet) know the answer, but at present we can barely conceive of how that answer might look in terms of the known laws of physics or biology or information.

of oxygen, whether we think of it as 'good' or 'bad', is the formation of free radicals. As conventionally stated, the idea that breathing oxygen causes ageing is disarmingly simple. We produce free

astronomical units

just as there can be no general theory of the- economy (no 'economic science') having a theoretical object that remains unchanged through the various modes of production, so can there be no 'general theory' of the state-political (in the sense of a political 'science' or 'sociology') having a similarly constant object.

We cannot leave it to history as a discipline nor to sociology nor science nor economics to tell the story of our people

I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties. It might as well be said that God has properties. He has not, but only attributes and these are of our own making. Of properties we can only speak when dealing with matter filling the space. To say that in the presence of large bodies space becomes curved is equivalent to stating that something can act upon nothing. I, for one, refuse to subscribe to such a view.

The scientists from Franklin to Morse were clear thinkers and did not produce erroneous theories. The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.

Science is but a perversion of itself unless it has as its ultimate goal the betterment of humanity.

If you only knew the magnificence of the 3, 6 and 9, then you would have a key to the universe

There is scarcely a subject that cannot be mathematically treated and the effects calculated or the results determined beforehand from the available theoretical and practical data.

The recurrence of a phenomenon like [Thomas] Edison is not very likely. The profound change of conditions and the ever increasing necessity of theoretical training would seem to make it impossible. He will occupy a unique and exalted position in the history of his native land, which might well be proud of his great genius and undying achievements in the interest of humanity.

All these observations fascinate us, and fill us with an intense desire to know more about the nature of these phenomena.

All those years spent in science were in vain. Please mother, pray for me over there if you can, sing the Moorish lament for the lost soul of your poor ignorant son...

Telautomatics

If you only knew the magnificence of the 3,6 and 9, then you would have the key to the universe.

human energy is measured by half the product of man's mass with the square of a certain hypothetical velocity. However