Quotes About Biology

Biology is more like history than it is like physics. You have to know the past to understand the present. And you have to know it in exquisite detail.

An oak tree and I are made of the same stuff. If you go far enough back, we have a common ancestor. The

neither we nor our planet enjoys a privileged position in Nature. This insight has since been applied upward to the stars, and sideways to many subsets of the human family, with great success and invariable opposition. It has been responsible for major advances in astronomy, physics, biology, anthropology, economics and politics. I wonder if its social extrapolation is a major reason for attempts at its suppression.

Natural selection has served as a kind of intellectual sieve, producing brains and intelligences increasingly competent to deal with the laws of nature.

at least some paleontologists believe that the demise of the dinosaurs was accelerated by nocturnal predation on reptilian eggs by the early mammals. Two chicken eggs for breakfast may be all-at least on the surface-that is left of this ancient mammalian cuisine.

If artificial selection can make such major changes in so short a period of time, what must natural selection, working over billions of years, be capable of? The answer is all the beauty and diversity of the biological world. Evolution is a fact, not a theory.

Until fairly recently it was thought that humans had fortv-eight chromosomes in an ordinary somatic cell. We now know that the correct number is forty-six. Chimps apparently really do have forty-eight chromosomes, and in this case a viable cross of a chimpanzee and a human would in any event be rare.

Anatomy is not destiny, but it is not irrelevant either.

Individual asexual organisms die by mistake - when the run out of something, or when they experience a lethal accident. Sexual organisms are designed to die, preprogrammed to do so. Death serves as a poignant reminder of our limitations and frailties - and of the bond with our ancestors who, in a way, died that we might live.

Evrim bir kuram deÄŸil bir olgudur.

En basit yap?l? tek hücreli organizma bile en mükemmel cep saatinden daha karma??k bir makinedir.

But deep down, the the molecular heart of life, the trees and we are essentially identical.

Those mothers with hereditary large pelvises were able to bear large-brained babies who because of their superior intelligence were able to compete successfully in adulthood with the smaller-brained offspring of mothers with smaller pelvises.

Somos el producto de una larga serie de accidentes biológicos. En la perspectiva cósmica no hay razón alguna para pensar que seamos los primeros, los últimos o los mejores.

It would seem that our intelligence is the source of our unhappiness in an almost literal way; but it would also imply that our unhappiness is the source of our strength as a species.

Somos el producto de cinco mil millones de años de evolución biológica lenta, fortuita, y no hay razón alguna para pensar en que se haya detenido tal proceso evolutivo. El hombre es un animal en período de transición. No es el clímax de una creación.

We are not primarily biological, with mind emerging as a kind of iridescence, a kind of epiphenomenon at the higher levels of organization of biology. We are hyperspatial objects of some sort that cast a shadow into matter. The shadow in matter is our physical organism.

Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is 'The Book of British Birds,' and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.

Chickens can move and flop for hours after their heads are cut off. They have no heartbeat either, Naja said, and that doesn't involve magic.

The entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.

Human beings, little bags of thinking water held up briefly by fragile accumulations of calcium...

EMOTIONS GET LEFT BEHIND, IT'S ALL A MATTER OF GLANDS.

Society thinks of violent acts as manifestations of evil or immorality. We're told we have ultimate control over our own behavior, that each and every one of us has the free will to choose not to hurt another human being. But it's not just morality that guides us. Biology does as well. Our frontal lobs helps us integrate thoughts and actions. They help us weight the consequences of those actions. Without such control, we'd give in to every wild impulse.

Is this all we are? A necklace of chemicals? Where, in the double helix, does the soul lie?