Great Biology Quotes & Sayings

Fly flight is just a great phenomenon to study. It has everything - from the most sophisticated sensory biology; really, really interesting physics; really interesting muscle physiology; really interesting neural computations. — Michael Dickinson

This fundamental discovery that all bodies owe their origin to arrangements of single initial corpuscular type is the beacon that lights the history of the universe to our eyes. In its own way, matter obeyed from the beginning that great law of biology to which we shall have to recur time and time again, the law of "complexification." — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

On these expanded membranes [butterfly wings] Nature writes, as on a tablet, the story of the modifications of species, so truly do all changes of the organisation register themselves thereon. Moreover, the same colour-patterns of the wings generally show, with great regularity, the degrees of blood-relationship of the species. As the laws of nature must be the same for all beings, the conclusions furnished by this group of insects must be applicable to the whole world. — Henry Walter Bates

Great literature remains great when it says new things to new generations, and the loops of a knot quite nicely parallel the contours and convolutions of Carroll's plot anyway.What's more, he probably would have been delighted at how this whimsical branch of math invaded the real world and became crucial to understanding our biology. — Sam Kean

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. — Michael Denton

mostly I saw her efforts to induct me into adulthood much as a calf might see its mother's explanations of veal: I was being recruited into the great death march of biology - be born, reproduce, die. — Barbara Ehrenreich

[D]umb evolutionary processes have dramatically amplified the intelligence in the human lineage even compared with our close relatives the great apes and our own humanoid ancestors; and there is no reason to suppose Homo sapiens to have reached the apex of cognitive effectiveness attainable in a biological system. — Nick Bostrom

We forget that, historically, people have eaten for a great many reasons other than biological necessity. Food is also about pleasure, about community, about family and spirituality, about our relationship to the natural world, and about expressing our identity. As long as humans have been taking meals together, eating has been as much about culture as it has been about biology. — Michael Pollan

The great merit of Stephen Gould's account of the disastrous history of phychometrics is that he shifts the argument from a sterile contest between environmentalists and hereditarians and turns it into an argument between those who are impressed with what our biology stops us doing and those who are impressed with what it allows us to do. — Stephen Jay Gould

The deviation of man from the state in which he was originally placed by nature seems to have proved to him a prolific source of diseases. From the love of splendour, from the indulgences of luxury, and from his fondness for amusement he has familiarised himself with a great number of animals, which may not originally have been intended for his associates.
The wolf, disarmed of ferocity, is now pillowed in the lady's lap. The cat, the little tiger of our island, whose natural home is the forest, is equally domesticated and caressed. The cow, the hog, the sheep, and the horse, are all, for a variety of purposes, brought under his care and dominion. — Edward Jenner

I'm enjoying my life, post-menopause, so much. It's just so great to grow into yourself, and not be bothered with all that tyranny of biology. — Roseanne Barr

When the judge calls the criminal's name out he stands up, and they are immediately linked by a strange biology that makes them both opposite and complementary. The one cannot exist without the other. Which is the sun and which is the shadow? It's well known some criminals have been great men. — Jean Genet

The great evolutionary biologist J B S Haldane (1892-1964), on being asked by a cleric what biology could say about the Creator, entertainingly replied, 'I'm really not sure, except that the Creator, if he exists, must have an inordinate fondness of beetles. — David Beerling

A National Database on Autism Research is fostering sharing of data and collaborations. Scientists are also making great strides at the interface of biology and engineering with new technologies that are laying the groundwork for future advances. — Thomas R. Insel

We only recently figured out the origin of our own moon. And we have some idea of how the Sun and Earth formed, but that's only because modern telescopes empower us to see other stars and planets freshly hatched within gas clouds across the galaxy. As for the origin of life itself, the transition from inanimate molecules to what any of us would call life remains one of the great frontiers of biology. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Biology doesn't know in advance what the end product will be; there's no Stuffit Compressor to convert a human being into a genome. But the genome itself is very much akin to a compression scheme, a terrifically efficient description of how to build something of great complexity-perhaps more efficient than anything yet developed in the labs of computer scientists (never mind the complexities of the brain, there are trillions of cells in the rest of the body, and they are all supervised by the same 30,000-gene genome). And although there is no counterpart in nature to a program that compresses a picture into a compact description, there is a natural counterpart to the program that decompresses the compressed encoding, and that's the cell. Genome in, organism out. Through the logic of gene expression, cells are self-regulating factories that translate genomes into biological structure. — Gary F. Marcus

As a result of his insistence that the individual should
bow before the eternity of the species and should submerge himself in the great cycle of time, race has
been turned into a special aspect of the species, and the individual has been made to bow before this
sordid god. The life of which he spoke with fear and trembling has been degraded to a sort of biology for
domestic use. Finally, a race of vulgar overlords, with a blundering desire for power, adopted, in his
name, the "anti-Semitic deformity" on which he never ceased to pour scorn. — Albert Camus

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. — Carl Sagan

Like many great ideas in biology, the idea implicating infectious causation in chronic diseases, though simple, has far-reaching implications. It is so simple and so significant, that one would think it would have been recognized by many and would be the starting point for any discussion on the causes of disease. Not yet. — Paul W. Ewald

There is a great deal more to evolutionary biology than survival of the fittest - although that's all anyone seems to remember. One of Darwin's contemporaries was Alfred Russel Wallace, who had even more profound lessons about evolution - that humans are social creatures. That we coevolve with other species as part of a fabric of interwoven and interdependent life-forms. The world isn't entirely about competition and dominance. And species that cooperate with others succeed better than those who do not. That's what civilization is, cooperation." "And — Daniel Suarez

But biology and computer science - life and computation - are related. I am confident that at their interface great discoveries await those who seek them. — Leonard Adleman

I tell my students, if you're interested in marine biology or llama farming, follow that string. Yes, it will probably take you a longer time to write that book, but it's not a race. That's another great thing about being a writer: you don't age out. — Debra Dean

Neoclassical economics has effectively insulated itself from the great advances made in science and engineering over the last 40 years. This self-imposed isolation must come to an end. For while the concepts of neoclassical economics appear difficult, they are actually quaint in comparison to the sophistication evident in today's mathematics, engineering, computing, evolutionary biology and physics. In order to advance, economics must humbly submit to learning from disciplines that it has studiously ignored for so long. Some researchers in outside fields have called for the wholesale replacement of standard economics curricula, using at least the building blocks of modern thought inherent in other disciplines. — Steve Keen

Sexuality is the great field of battle between biology and society. — Nancy Friday

My choices were partly conditioned by the two great laws - of biology and sociology - for I do not conceive of myself outside of them ... Inside every biological and social situation I am free to make decisions. — Nina Berberova

To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the port holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity. — Michael Denton

On the other hand, the conditions of human existence - life itself, natality and mortality, worldliness, plurality, and the earth - can never "explain" what we are or answer the question of who we are for the simple reason that they never condition us absolutely. This has always been the opinion of philosophy, in distinction from the sciences - anthropology, psychology, biology, etc. - which also concern themselves with man. But today we may almost say that we have demonstrated even scientifically that, though we live now, and probably always will, under the earth's conditions, we are not mere earth-bound creatures. Modern natural science owes its great triumphs to having looked upon and treated earth-bound nature from a truly universal viewpoint, that is, from an Archimedean standpoint taken, wilfully and explicitly, outside the earth. 2 — Hannah Arendt

I sighed and closed my eyes, thumping my head against the bookcase. You take biology? Oh yeah, Franny. What a great fucking pick-up line. — Tahlie Purvis

Finally there is the topic we talked about earlier, which is of great interest to me at the moment, the relationship between biology and culture. I've been reading the work of the late philosopher and theologian Claude Tresmontant. Tresmontant was a Christian, but his books interest me for what they have to say about genetic programming. He situates Christianity at the point of transition between genetic programming - dominant in archaic societies with regard to territorial defense, sexual and hoarding instincts, and so forth - and a new kind of evolutionary programming contained in culture rather than in genes. The argument is suggestive, but it needs to be developed further. Tresmontant doesn't take into account archaic religion, which he conflates with genetic programming in animals. Room has to be made for one more stage. MSB — Rene Girard

Even mistaken hypotheses and theories are of use in leading to discoveries. This remark is true in all the sciences. The alchemists founded chemistry by pursuing chimerical problems and theories which are false. In physical science, which is more advanced than biology, we might still cite men of science who make great discoveries by relying on false theories. It seems, indeed, a necessary weakness of our mind to be able to reach truth only across a multitude of errors and obstacles. — Claude Bernard

One can say, looking at the papers in this symposium, that the elucidation of the genetic code is indeed a great achievement. It is, in a sense, the key to molecular biology because it shows how the great polymer languages, the nucleic acid language and the protein language, are linked together. — Francis Crick

A strong feeling of adventure is animating those who are working on bacterial viruses, a feeling that they have a small part in the great drive towards a fundamental problem in biology. — Max Delbruck

One of the great issues in biology is the origin of altruism - of why you would do something for someone else that could hurt you - and Darwin posited that it might be rooted in maternal instinct, in sacrificing yourself for your children. — Isabella Rossellini

All I hope for is one moment of rational thought and a shot at action before I'm lost to a great saddening madness, pithed at the hands of my own stumbling biology.

[Johnny Truant] — Mark Z. Danielewski

Why has the medical profession not taken advantage of the help available from evolutionary biology, a well-developed branch of science with great potential for providing medical insights? One reason is surely the pervasive neglect of this branch of science at all educational levels. Religious and other sorts of opposition have minimized the impact in general education of Darwin's contributions to our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in. — Randolph M. Nesse

I fully agree with all that you say on the advantages of H. Spencer's excellent expression of 'the survival of the fittest.' This, however, had not occurred to me till reading your letter. It is, however, a great objection to this term that it cannot be used as a substantive governing a verb; and that this is a real objection I infer from H. Spencer continually using the words, natural selection.
(Letter to A. R. Wallace July 1866) — Charles Darwin

Everyone knew Sonja was destined for great things, but no one knew what to do with her until then. Even in academia, her natural habitat, she was an exotic species. Though her Russianness gave her certain dispensations, the idea that a young woman of any ethnicity could so excel in the hard sciences was a far-fetched fantasy. Their parents encouraged her at a distance. Neither understood the molecular formulas, electromagnetic fields, or anatomical minutiae that so captivated her, and so their support came by way of well-intentioned, inadequate generalities. Even after Sonja graduated secondary school at the top of her class and matriculated to the city university biology department, their parents found more to love in Natasha. Sonja's gifts were too complex to be understood, and therefore less desirable. Natasha was beautiful and charming. They didn't need MDs to know how to be proud of her. — Anthony Marra

Maybe everyone else thinks your aversion to food is cute- but not me. I've watched you watch Jill. Here's some tough love: you will never, ever have her body. Ever. It's impossible. She's Moroi. You're human. That's biology. You have a great one, one that most humans would kill for- and you'd look even better if you put on a little weight. Five pounds would be a good start. Hide the ribs. Get a bigger bra size — Richelle Mead

Still, if history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth. The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology. Acceptance of the supernatural conveyed a great advantage throughout prehistory when the brain was evolving. Thus it is in sharp contrast to biology, which was developed as a product of the modern age and is not underwritten by genetic algorithms. The uncomfortable truth is that the two beliefs are not factually compatible. As a result those who hunger for both intellectual and religious truth will never acquire both in full measure. — Edward O. Wilson

Biology will relate every human gene to the genes of other animals and bacteria, to this great chain of being. — Walter Gilbert

My own first love was biology. I spent a great part of my adolescence in the Natural History museum in London (and I still go to the Botanic Garden almost every day, and to the Zoo every Monday). The sense of diversity of the wonder of innumerable forms of life has always thrilled me beyond anything else. — Oliver Sacks

The tendency to variation in living beings, which all admitted as a matter of fact; the selective influence of conditions, which no one could deny to be a matter of fact, when his attention was drawn to the evidence; and the occurrence of great geological changes which also was matter of fact; could be used as the only necessary postulates of a theory of the evolution of plants and animals which, even if not at once, competent to explain all the known facts of biological science, could not be shown to be inconsistent with any. — Thomas Henry Huxley

We may, I believe, anticipate that the chemist of the future who is interested in the structure of proteins, nucleic acids, polysaccharides, and other complex substances with high molecular weight will come to rely upon a new structural chemistry, involving precise geometrical relationships among the atoms in the molecules and the rigorous application of the new structural principles, and that great progress will be made, through this technique, in the attack, by chemical methods, on the problems of biology and medicine. — Linus Pauling

[On scientist Carl Friedrich Gauss]
[Carl Friedrich] Gauss told his friend Rudolf Wagner, a professor of biology at Gottingen University, that he did not believe in the Bible but that he had meditated a great deal on the future of the human soul and speculated on the possibility of the soul being reincarnated on another planet. Evidently, Gauss was a Deist with a good deal of skepticism concerning religion. — Gerhard Falk

For who could better describe the eye than God, Who made it? But as it is clearer than the day that God has left a good deal to our own efforts ... we should really follow in these things the thread of nature, by which first principles, reason and daily experience lead us. Therefore, He prompts the minds of great men to inquire into the nature which He created, and He furthers and conducts their studies. These things must be enough to us, and from Holy Scripture we should seek in the first place only those things which are necessary to salvation. — Georg Joachim Rheticus

This irrelevance of molecular arrangements for macroscopic results has given rise to the tendency to confine physics and chemistry to the study of homogeneous systems as well as homogeneous classes. In statistical mechanics a great deal of labor is in fact spent on showing that homogeneous systems and homogeneous classes are closely related and to a considerable extent interchangeable concepts of theoretical analysis (Gibbs theory). Naturally, this is not an accident. The methods of physics and chemistry are ideally suited for dealing with homogeneous classes with their interchangeable components. But experience shows that the objects of biology are radically inhomogeneous both as systems (structurally) and as classes (generically). Therefore, the method of biology and, consequently, its results will differ widely from the method and results of physical science. — Walter M. Elsasser

Because the great beauty of embryo development, the bit that human beings find so hard to grasp, is that it is a totally decentralised process ... no cell need wait for instructions from authority; every cell can act on its own information and the signals it receives from its neighbours. We do not organise societies that way ... Perhaps we should try. — Matt Ridley

As an adult I discovered that I was a pretty good autodidact, and can teach myself all kind of things. And developed a great interest in a number of different things from how to build a street hot rod from the ground up to quantum mechanics, and those two different kinds of mechanics, and it was really in the sciences, quantum mechanics, molecular biology, I would begin looking at these things looking for ideas, but in fact you don't read it for ideas you read it for curiosity and interest in the subject. — Dean Koontz