Quotes About Biology

Auden turns to his guest and asks: "Do you know the frightening thing about the dandelions?" The guest, bracing himself for a riddle, confesses that he doesn't. Auden says: "The dandelions originally were sexual plants. We don't know when, but in the course of evolution they gave it up. They go on, though, with the same genes.

A typical dog has 20/75 vision,

I come with bad genetics, personally.

I had a conversation with a biologist in an art gallery, and he persuaded me that it was possible to grow a dress from microbes. It was the craziest thing I had ever heard, but I'm a bit of a science fiction fan and I thought it sounded like an interesting challenge.

Because all of biology is connected, one can often make a breakthrough with an organism that exaggerates a particular phenomenon, and later explore the generality.

When we think of what is necessary for the phenomenon that we call life, we think of compartmentalization, keeping the molecules which are important for life in a membrane, isolated from the rest of the environment, but yet, in an environment in which they actually could originate together.

For me, the level at which natural selection causes the phenomenon of adaptation is the level of the replicator - the gene.

Many philosophers say it's impossible to explain our conscious experience in scientific, biological terms at all. But that's not exactly true. Scientists have explained why we have certain experiences and not others. It's just that they haven't explained the special features of consciousness that philosophers care about.

My interest in biology was pretty much always on the philosophical side.

Among intellectuals who consider themselves 'scientific,' the phrase 'the nature of man' is apt to have the effect of a red flag on a bull.

Remember that physical beauty is evolution's way of assuring us that the other person doesn't have too many intestinal parasites.

Anything that makes us take more seriously scientists - or economists or chemists or physicists or biologists - I think is helpful in times when things get distorted because of people not paying attention to all the facts.

I have this amateur side attraction to, and interest in, the sciences and biology and physics and evolution. Paleontology is of interest to me. I'm interested in the way these fields have helped us understand how we are human and why we are human.

And the actual achievements of biology are explanations in terms of mechanisms founded on physics and chemistry, which is not the same thing as explanations in terms of physics and chemistry.

We are increasingly becoming cyborg-like beings. We are becoming literally what we create. Biology, physics, and technology are evolving towards one and the same thing.

Modernity and technology are not going to mitigate the need, the reality, of face-to-face combat, and I don't care who it is - when you put a man against a woman in hand-to-hand combat, the chance is the man is going to win... This is a physiological issue, not a culture issue.

I think it's going to be amazing to see how the world of microbiology, molecular and cellular biology, and human physiology is massively changed by microgravity.

The world has a huge number of trillion-dollar problems wanting to be solved, and biology is the only way to do that.

Natural selection shaped the human brain to be drawn toward aspects of nature that enhance our survival and reproduction, like verdant landscapes and docile creatures. There is no payoff to getting the warm fuzzies in the presence of rats, snakes, mosquitoes, cockroaches, herpes simplex and the rabies virus.

Scientists and supercomputers have amplified our ability to look ahead. For decades, experts have warned us that human numbers, technology, hyper-consumption and a global economy are altering the chemical, geological, and biological properties of the biosphere.

Originally, I was set on going to Hawaii Pacific University. We visited the campus in Hawaii. I was gonna be a Rainbow Warrior. I was gonna play softball. I was gonna major in marine biology. Everything was set. Then my dad was like, 'So you're not gonna do music? If you do go to Hawaii, there's no studios there, baby girl.'

The advent of AIDS circa 1980 has really forced medicine and biology to take enormous steps just for sheer survival. The same way war propels hard technology, AIDS has created wartime conditions in the field of biology that will have all sorts of spin-offs.

I went into science, ending up with a Ph.D. in cell biology, but along the way I found out that experimental science involves many hours and days and nights of laboratory work, which is a lot like washing dishes, only a little more challenging. I was too impatient, and maybe a little too sloppy, for it.

an undiscovered tumor squats on her kidney.