Lewis Thomas Quotes About Science

Quotes about: Science

The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music.

Lewis Thomas

Real, Science, Dna

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”
The greatest single achievement of nature to date was surely the invention of the molecule DNA.

Lewis Thomas

Nature, Science, Dna

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”
As evolutionary time is measured, we have only just turned up and have hardly had time to catch breath, still marveling at our thumbs, still learning to use the brand-new gift of language. Being so young, we can be excused all sorts of folly and can permit ourselves the hope that someday, as a species, we will begin to grow up.

Lewis Thomas

Growing Up, Learning, Science
I am entitled to say, if I like, that awareness exists in all the individual creatures on the planet-worms, sea urchins, gnats, whales, subhuman primates, superprimate humans, the lot. I can say this because we do not know what we are talking about: consciousness is so much a total mystery for our own species that we cannot begin to guess about its existence in others.

Lewis Thomas

Knowledge, Science, Talking

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”
The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers.

Lewis Thomas

Flower, Sunshine, Science

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”
It is in our genes to understand the universe if we can, to keep trying even if we cannot, and to be enchanted by the act of learning all the way.

Lewis Thomas

Science, Understanding, Trying
Animals have genes for altruism, and those genes have been selected in the evolution of many creatures because of the advantage they confer for the continuing survival of the species.

Lewis Thomas

Science, Animal, Survival

Lewis Thomas (1984). “Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony”, Bantam
All of today's DNA, strung through all the cells of the earth, is simply an extension and elaboration of [the] first molecule.

Lewis Thomas

Science, Dna, Cells

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”
I cannot think of a single field in biology or medicine in which we can claim genuine understanding, and it seems to me the more we learn about living creatures, especially ourselves, the stranger life becomes.

Lewis Thomas

Life, Science, Thinking
Science is founded on uncertainty. Each time we learn something new and surprising, the astonishment comes with the realization that we were wrong before.

Lewis Thomas

Learning, Science, Realization
We are a spectacular, splendid manifestation of life. We have language. . . . We have affection. We have genes for usefulness, and usefulness is about as close to a 'common goal' of nature as I can guess at.

Lewis Thomas

Life, Music, Science

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”
The only solid piece of scientific truth about which I feel totally confident is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature... It is this sudden confrontation with the depth and scope of ignorance that represents the most significant contribution of twentieth-century science to the human intellect.

Lewis Thomas

Truth, Ignorance, Science

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”
Animals, even plants, lie to each other all the time, and we could restrict the research to them, putting off the real truth about ourselves for the several centuries we need to catch our breath. What is it that enables certain flowers to resemble nubile insects, or opossums to play dead, or female fireflies to change the code of their flashes in order to attract, and then eat, males of a different species?

Lewis Thomas

Truth, Lying, Real

Lewis Thomas (1984). “Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony”, Bantam
It is not a simple life to be a single cell, although I have no right to say so, having been a single cell so long ago myself that I have no memory at all of that stage of my life.

Lewis Thomas

Memories, Science, Simple

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”
I do not understand modern physics at all, but my colleagues who know a lot about the physics of very small things, like the particles in atoms, or very large things, like the universe, seem to be running into one queerness after another, from puzzle to puzzle.

Lewis Thomas

Running, Knowledge, Science
The overwhelming astonishment, the queerest structure we know about so far in the whole universe, the greatest of all cosmological scientific puzzles, confounding all our efforts to comprehend it, is the earth.

Lewis Thomas

Knowledge, Science, Effort

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”
It would seem to me... an offense against nature, for us to come on the same scene endowed as we are with the curiosity, filled to overbrimming as we are with questions, and naturally talented as we are for the asking of clear questions, and then for us to do nothing about, or worse, to try to suppress the questions.

Lewis Thomas

Science, Curiosity, Trying

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”
We do not understand much of anything, from... the "big bang" , all the way down to the particles in the atoms of a bacterial cell. We have a wilderness of mystery to make our way through in the centuries ahead.

Lewis Thomas

Science, Cells, Bangs
I can say, if I like, that social insects behave like the working parts of an immense central nervous system: the termite colony is an enormous brain on millions of legs; the individual termite is a mobile neurone.

Lewis Thomas

Hard Work, Science, Brain

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”
The central task of science is to arrive, stage by stage, at a clearer comprehension of nature, but this does not at all mean, as it is sometimes claimed to mean, a search for mastery over nature.

Lewis Thomas

Nature, Mean, Science

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”
The greatest achievements in the science of this [twentieth] century are themselves the sources of more puzzlement than human beings have ever experienced. Indeed, it is likely that the twentieth century will be looked back at as the time when science provided the first close glimpse of the profundity of human ignorance. We have not reached solutions; we have only begun to discover how to ask questions.

Lewis Thomas

Ignorance, Science, Achievement
...the life of the planet began the long, slow process of modulating and regulating the physical conditions of the planet. The oxygen in today's atmosphere is almost entirely the result of photosynthetic living, which had its start with the appearance of blue-green algae among the microorganisms.

Lewis Thomas

Life, Science, Blue

Lewis Thomas (1982). “The Nineteenth Cosmos Club Award, Lewis Thomas, M.D.”
We are built to make mistakes, coded for error.

Lewis Thomas

Mistake, Science, Errors

Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”
Good applied science in medicine, as in physics, requires a high degree of certainty about the basic facts at hand, and especially about their meaning, and we have not yet reached this point for most of medicine.

Lewis Thomas

Science, Hands, Medicine
It is the very strangeness of nature that makes science engrossing. That ought to be at the center of science teaching. There are more than seven-times-seven types of ambiguity in science, awaiting analysis. The poetry of Wallace Stevens is crystal-clear alongside the genetic code.

Lewis Thomas

Nature, Teaching, Science

Lewis Thomas (1984). “Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony”, Bantam

You May Also Like:

Steven Strogatz

Lewis Thomas

Follow

Born: November 25, 1913
Died: December 3, 1993
Occupation: Physician
Cite this Page: Citation

Popular Topics