Biology Quotes - Page 8

• Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes, biology is about microscopes or chemistry is about beakers and test tubes. Science is not about tools. It is about how we use them, and what we find out when we do.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Tools, Use, Telescopes

  "SIGACT trying to get children excited about CS" by Michael R. Fellows, Computing Research News, archive.cra.org. January, 1993.

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• With my biology degree, I got this job at an environmental lab. We tested sewage runoff, we tested chemical warfare waste runoff. It's a job I'll never do again and I would never wish upon anybody.

  Dustin Lynch

  Jobs, Wish, Environmental

  4 Copy quote

• Extreme heroism springs from something that no scientific theory can fully explain; it's an illogical impulse that flies in the face of biology, psychology, actuarial statistics, and basic common sense.

  Christopher McDougall

  Spring, Common Sense, Psychology

  7 Copy quote

• A permanent base on Mars would have a number of advantages beyond being a bonanza for planetary science and geology. If, as some evidence suggests, exotic micro-organisms have arisen independently of terrestrial life, studying them could revolutionise biology, medicine and biotechnology.

  Paul Davies

  Medicine, Numbers, Exotic

  "Fly me to Mars. One-way" by Paul Davies, www.theguardian.com. September 15, 2009.

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• It will be in the convergence of evolutionary biology, developmental biology and cancer biology that the answer to cancer will lie. Nor will this confluence be a one-way street.

  Paul Davies

  Cancer, Lying, Answers

  "Cancer: The beat of an ancient drum?" by Paul Davies, www.theguardian.com. April 25, 2011.

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• The language of chemistry simply does not mesh with that of biology. Chemistry is about substances and how they react, whereas biology appeals to concepts such as information and organisation. Informational narratives permeate biology.

  Paul Davies

  Doe, Substance, Narrative

  "The secret of life won't be cooked up in a chemistry lab" by Paul Davies, www.theguardian.com. January 13, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The student of biology is often struck with the feeling that historians, when dealing with the rise and fall of nations, do not generally view the phenomena from a sufficiently high biological standpoint. To me, at least, they seem to attach too much importance to individual rulers and soldiers, and to particular wars, policies, religions, and customs; while at the same time they make little attempt to extract the fundamental causes of national success or failure.

  Ronald Ross

  War, Fall, Science

  22 Copy quote

• Today the human race is a single twig on the tree of life, a single species on a single planet. Our condition can thus only be described as extremely fragile, endangered by forces of nature currently beyond our control, our own mistakes, and other branches of the wildly blossoming tree itself. Looked at this way, we can then pose the question of the future of humanity on Earth, in the solar system, and in the galaxy from the standpoint of both evolutionary biology and human nature. The conclusion is straightforward: Our choice is to grow, branch, spread and develop, or stagnate and die.

  Robert Zubrin

  Mistake, Moon, Race

  Robert Zubrin (1999). “Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization”, Tarcher

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Natural selection is not gene centrist and nor is biology all about genes; our comprehending minds are a result of our fast evolving culture.

  Daniel Dennett

  Mind, Culture, Natural

  "Daniel Dennett: 'I don't like theory of mind'". Interview with Carole Jahme, www.theguardian.com. March 22, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Some cultural phenomena bear a striking resemblance to the cells of cell biology, actively preserving themselves in their social environments, finding the nutrients they need and fending off the causes of their dissolution.

  Daniel Dennett

  Cells, Bears, Needs

  7 Copy quote

• I'm an amateur science enthusiast. I'm not even a professional enthusiast. I don't know anything; I never even passed biology in high school. But I read the science section of the newspaper.

  Dave Eggers

  School, Newspapers, Knows

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. February 23, 2005.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Don't know much about history, don't know much biology, don't know much about a science book, don't know much about the French I took.

  Sam Cooke

  Education, Book, Knows

  Song: What A Wonderful World This Would Be, 1960

  33 Copy quote

  Show source

• Geology has joined biology in lowering mankind's self-esteem. Geology suggests how mankind's existence is contingent upon the geological consent of the planet.

  George Will

  Self Esteem, Planets, Existence

  George Will (2008). “One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation”, p.357, Crown Forum

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The blooming of a flower is, in my mind, not a miracle. It's something that we can understand on the basis of molecular biology these days.

  Francis Collins

  Flower, Miracle, Mind

  Source: www.pbs.org

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• We argue with our biology, and the result of that argument is civilization.

  Charles Siebert

  Civilization, Arguing, Argument

  5 Copy quote

• I don't believe, for instance, that evolutionary biology or any scientific endeavor has much to say about love. I'm sure a lot can be learned about the importance of hormones and their effects on our feelings. But do the bleak implications of evolution have any impact on the love I feel for my family? Do they make me more likely to break the law of flaunt society's expectations of me? No. I simply does not follow that human relationships are meaningless just because we live in a godless universe subject to the natural laws of biology.

  Greg Graffin

  Believe, Impact, Law

  16 Copy quote

• The term "informatics" was first defined by Saul Gorn of University of Pennsylvania in 1983 (Gorn, 1983) as computer science plus information science used in conjunction with the name of a discipline such as business administration or biology. It denotes an application of computer science and information science to the management and processing of data, information and knowledge in the named discipline.

  Saul Gorn

  Data, Names, Discipline

  4 Copy quote

• Twentieth-century developments in science support a new animism. Developments in physics have led to a world of energetic events which seem to be self-moving and to behave in unpredictable ways. And recent studies in biology seem to demonstrate that bacteria and macromolecules have elemental forms of perception, memory, choice, and self-motion.

  David Ray Griffin

  Memories, Moving, Self

  David Ray Griffin (1989). “God and Religion in the Postmodern World: Essays in Postmodern Theology”, p.88, SUNY Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, contribute to the detection of concrete human woes and to the development of plans for remedying them and relieving the human estate, they become moral; they become part of the apparatus of moral inquiry or science? When the consciousness of science is fully impregnated with the consciousness of human value, the greatest dualism which now weighs humanity down, the split between the material, the mechanical and the scientific and the moral and ideal will be destroyed.

  John Dewey

  Medicine, Humanity, Inquiry

  1920 Reconstruction in Philosophy.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• My thinking is very flexible, and I hope that it will remain flexible and creative as long as biology permits me to think and that I will remain a rebel all my life.

  Murray Bookchin

  Thinking, Long, Creative

  Interview with Jeff Riggenbach, reason.com. October 1979.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The neuro-biology of playing a musical instrument is completely scientific, but it’s also an absolute miracle, that you’re taking basically a calcium bucket filled with salt-water that’s run by a weak electrical signal, and you’re using it to move your flesh around in order to manipulate an instrument which disturbs air molecules between you and the listener, and then the listener’s ears picks up those disturbed air molecules which generates a weak electrical signal to their calcium bucket full of salt water, and they feel a feeling. That’s miraculous, and that’s where I live.

  Bob Brozman

  Running, Moving, Air

  8 Copy quote

• I do sense, as compared with let's say the early '50s, there's somewhat more of a careerism. I don't think it's anything special to economics; it's equally true with physics or biology. A graduate education has become a more career-oriented thing, and part of that is because of the need for funding. In fact, that's a much worse problem in the natural sciences than it is in economics. So you can't even do your work in the natural sciences, particularly, and even to some extent in economics, without funding.

  Kenneth Arrow

  Thinking, Careers, Special

  Source: www.minneapolisfed.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually, as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

  Jacques Monod

  Mean, Thinking, Theory Of Evolution

  "Evolution". Book edited by Mark Ridley, p. 389, 1997.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Monday, Zoos, First Love

  "Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History". Book by Stephen Jay Gould, 1995.

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Merit, Argument, Environmentalist

  4 Copy quote