Quotes About Biology

The first thing that the boy called Smoke told Nick Waters was: "Your biology book's in my locker. The combination is 5-3-5." And the second thing he said was: "I didn't do that fire, man. I'm innocent.

If we studied any other creature in nature and found the record of intra-species violence that human beings have, we would be repulsed by it. We'd view it as a great perversion of natural law—but we wouldn't deny it.

Well, you're always talking about the dinosaurs being extinct. Did they know? How did they feel? Blah blah blah. But they're not really extinct. Because right at the end, he talks about the new breed of flying dinosaurs. They were smaller, bat-sized, able to fly, so when the asteroid hit, these new guys were somehow able to survive. And eventually... They evolved.

Women are from Mars, men have a penis

You could be the fittest person imaginable in terms of strength, intelligence, disease resistance and vitality, but if you fail to reproduce your contribution to the future of the human gene pool is zero. For anything to evolve it has to affect the probability of passing on your genes.

It seems likely that male choice shaped breasts not to distinguish girls from women, but to distinguish young women from older women. Here, the informative thing about breasts is the way they droop with the effects of age and gravity.

If you tell me the size of a mammal, I can use the scaling laws to tell you almost everything about the average values of its measurable characteristics: how much food it needs to eat each day, what its heart rate is, how long it will take to mature, the length and radius of its aorta, its life span, how many offspring it will have, and so on. Given the extraordinary complexity and diversity of life, this is pretty amazing.

Julian Huxley brought several other new words and concepts into biology, including replacing the much-maligned term race with the phrase ethnic group.

However difficult it is to study nonlinear systems, such systems probably determine the most important features of choice. As one chaos theorist remarked, "nonlinear systems" may be about as extensive as "non-elephant biology."2

I account for morality as an accidental capability produced, in its boundless stupidity, by a biological process that is normally opposed to the expression of such a capability.

Sixty-some years ago, biochemical organisms began to assemble digital computers. Now digital computers are beginning to assemble biochemical organisms. Viewed from a distance, this looks like part of a life cycle. But which part? Are biochemical organisms the larval phase of digital computers? Or are digital computers the larval phase of biochemical organisms?

religion arises from culture; spirituality arises from biology.

If a sect does officially insist that its structure of belief demands that evolution be false, then no compromise is possible. An honest and competent biology teacher can only conclude that the sect's beliefs are wrong and that its religion is a false one.

Males and farts. Any species, any planet, didn't matter. We

Males and farts. Any species, any planet, didn't matter.

Being human in our world is synonymous with being included into the framework of society. Humanity entitles one to certain rights and privileges, but also implies voluntary acceptance of laws and rules of conduct. It transcends mere biology. It's a choice and therefore belongs solely to the individual. In essence, if a person feels they are human, then they are.

it exhibited reanimative metamorphosis. It was dead and instead of staying dead, it turned into something else and came back to life. It also went cross-phylum, from mammal to insect. That means there is a good chance it might come back to life again as something really strange, like a terrestrial octopus shooting lightning from its tentacles.

Humanity entitles one to certain rights and privileges, but also implies voluntary acceptance of laws and rules of conduct. It transcends mere biology. It's a choice and therefore belongs solely to the individual. In essence, if a person feels they are human, then they are.

our bodies must work pretty well, or there wouldn't be so many humans on the planet.

You see, proteins, as I probably needn't tell you, are immensely complicated groupings of amino acids and certain other specialized compounds, arranged in intricate three-dimensional patterns that are as unstable as sunbeams on a cloudy day. It is this instability that is life, since it is forever changing its position in an effort to maintain its identity--in the manner of a long rod balanced on an acrobat's nose.

Based on the science, you can make somewhat clear statements: The number of people who can survive on six hours of sleep without impairment is zero.

Most of the things at the zoo don't look like us. We're one design that works. Our chimp pals sort of look like us, so that's a different take on the same basic design. But fish don't look like us, and giraffes don't. They look a little like us, but not too much. And insects certainly don't look like us, and they work just fine.

Ageing is very rare. We only see it in humans and laboratory animals and in zoo animals and in our pets. Basically, organisms that are protected from the external world. Once you create that protection, you live long enough to see ageing.

We humans, just like the animals in our zoos, were born into bodies whose workings are both mechanistically predictable and unfathomably complex. Put in lots of sugar, and we'll get fat and sick. Confine our movement, and we'll get weak and antsy. Give us some manageable problems with which to grapple, and we'll cheer up.