Biologist Quotes

Time and again, my sociobiological colleagues have upbraided me as a turncoat, because I will not agree with them that the ultimate criterion for the success of a meme must be its contribution to Darwinian "fitness". At bottom, they insist, a "good meme" spreads because brains are receptive to it, and the receptiveness of brains is ultimately shaped by (genetic) natural selection.

Richard Dawkins

While our view of the world is filtered through our senses, evolution has, by and large, molded those senses to perceive the world accurately, for there's a severe penalty to be paid for seeing things wrongly. That holds not only for the external environment, but also for the character of others. Without accurate perceptions, we couldn't find food, avoid predators and other dangers, or form harmonious social groups. And following those perceptions is indeed the pursuit of true beliefs : beliefs based on evidence. Natural selection doesn't mold true beliefs; it molds the sensory and neural apparatus that, in general, promotes the formation of true beliefs.

The separation of the laws of nature among the different sciences is a human conceit; nature itself is an integrated whole.

Like the resource it seeks to protect, wildlife conservation must be dynamic, changing as conditions change, seeking always to become more effective.

The study of how substances alter gene expression is part of the field of epigenetics. Some chemical exposures appear to turn on and turn off genes in ways that disregulate cell growth and predispose for cancer. From this perspective, our genes are less the command-and-control masters of our cells and more like the keys of piano, with the environment as the hands of the pianist.

Sandra Steingraber

Oral myths are closer to the genetic conclusions than the often ambiguous scientific evidence of archaeology.

Scientific knowledge and understanding is a communal achievement, the sum of a multitude of contributions from many different people. Any individual may feel a certain justifiable pride if he knows that he has added one brick to the structure.

C. H. Waddington

Though we must hold to our faith in the evolution of species, there is little evidence as to how it has come about, and no clear proof that the process is continuing in any considerable degree at the present time.

William Bateson

I'm a biologist who has been interested in the biological roots of cognitive phenomena

Francisco Varela

When laughing children chase after fireflies, they are not pursuing beetles but catching wonder. When wonder matures, it peels back experience to seek deeper layers of marvel below. This is science's highest purpose.

David G. Haskell

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.

Michael E. Soulé

A group is often slower to see the flame of truth than a single open-minded individual. A group must be conservative and being so may run the danger of attempting to hold with both the old and the new—an impossibility when one is incompatible with the other.

Ernest Everett Just

If I had any advice to [give] you it is just this: love science but do not worship it. Put science in its proper place, ranking it along with philosophy and history, music and religion, literature and art. If I had my life to live again (Darwin says), I would make it a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.

Richard M. Eakin

The select who engage in science must look upon knowledge as a treasure entrusted to their care, but belonging to the whole people.

Kliment Timiryazev

I don't know exactly what you guys want to do, but let me tell you why you should do it with fruit flies.

Eric F. Wieschaus

There are already scientists— respected scientists in this country who do experiments on things that most people consider supernatural, such as prayer. When Newton proposed the theory of gravitation it was dismissed as supernaturalism because it was action at a distance. What constitutes supernaturalism in today's science may very well not be supernatural in tomorrow's science.

Find out what really fascinates you and follow that. Almost anything in nature, if you follow it, you will find a scientific problem. That is a better way to do it than following fads, because what is fashionable today may have been solved or fallen out of fashion once you have become a working scientist.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

[Why do animals] undergo in the course of their growth a series of complicated changes, during which they acquire organs which have no function, and which, after remaining visible for a short time, disappear without leaving a trace... The explanation of such facts is obvious. The stage when the tadpole breathes by gills is a repetition of the stage when the ancestors of the frog had not advanced in the scale of development beyond a fish.

Francis Maitland Balfour

Travel is said to be broadening because it makes us realize that our way of doing things is not the only one, that people in other cultures live differently and get by just fine. Insects do that, too, only better.

Scientists who do deny their politics—who claim to be objective and unemotional about gender while living in a world where even boats and automobiles are identified by sex—are fooling both themselves and the public at large.

Anne Fausto-Sterling

Evolution, a fact rather than mere hypothesis, is the central unifying concept in biology. By extension it affects almost all other fields of knowledge and thought and must be considered one of the most influential concepts in Western thought.

Douglas J. Futuyma

The spirit of speculation is the same as the spirit of science, namely... a desire to know the causes of things.

Research consists of formulation of imaginative hypotheses that are open to falsification by experiment.

Mr. S. had a letter to Brigham Young, and took us to interview him, horrid old wretch! My hand felt dirty for a week after shaking hands with him.

If the wolf is to survive, the wolf haters must be outnumbered. They must be outshouted, out financed, and out voted. Their narrow and biased attitude must be outweighed by an attitude based on an understanding of natural processes.