Francis Crick - What Mad Pursuit (1988)

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A final proof of our ideas can only be obtained by detailed studies on the alterations produced in the amino acid sequence of a protein by mutations of the type discussed here.

Francis Crick
If the code does indeed have some logical foundation then it is legitimate to consider all the evidence, both good and bad, in any attempt to deduce it.

Francis Crick
Moreover the incorporation requires the same components needed for protein synthesis, and is inhibited by the same inhibitors. Thus the system is most unlikely to be a complete artefact and is very probably closely related to genuine protein synthesis.

Francis Crick
It is one of the more striking generalizations of biochemistry — which surprisingly is hardly ever mentioned in the biochemical textbooks — that the twenty amino acids and the four bases, are, with minor reservations, the same throughout Nature.

Francis Crick
Some scientists work so hard there is no time left for serious thinking.

Francis Crick
Again the message to experimentalists is: Be sensible but don't be impressed too much by negative arguments. If at all possible, try it and see what turns up. Theorists almost always dislike this sort of approach.

Francis Crick
In research the front line is almost always in a fog.

Francis Crick
A theory will always command more attention if it is supported by unexpected evidence, particularly evidence of a different kind.

Francis Crick
The average adult can usually enjoy something only if it relates to what he knows already, and what he knows about science is in many cases pitifully inadequate.

Francis Crick
It is virtually impossible for a theorist, by thought alone, to arrive at the correct solution to a set of biological problems.... The best a theorist can hope to do is to point an experimentalist in the right direction..

Francis Crick
The basic trouble is that nature is so complex that many quite different theories can go some way to explaining the results.... What constraints can be used as a guide through the jungle of possible theories? It seems to me that the only useful constraints are contained in the experimental evidence.

Francis Crick
One of the striking characteristics of modern science is that it often moves so fast that a research worker can see rather clearly whether his earlier ideas, or those of his contemporaries, were correct or incorrect.

Francis Crick
It is all too easy to make some plausible simplifying assumptions, do some elaborate mathematics that appear to give a rough fit with at least some experimental data, and think one has achieved something. The chance of such an approach doing anything useful, apart from soothing the theorist's ego, is rather small..

Francis Crick
I have no doubt, as will emerge later, that this loss of faith in Christian religion and my growing attachment to science plays a dominant part in my scientific career, not so much on a day-to-day basis but in the choice of what I have considered interesting and important.

Francis Crick
Nowadays most people know what DNA is, or if they don't know it must be a dirty word, like "chemical" or "synthetic."

Francis Crick
Mathematics cares neither for science nor for engineering (except as a source of problems) but only about the relationship between abstract entities.

Francis Crick
It is not easy to convey, unless one has experienced it, the dramatic feeling of sudden enlightenment that floods the mind when the right idea finally clinches into place.

Francis Crick
Since I essentially knew nothing, I had an almost completely free choice.

Francis Crick
Theorists will often complain that experimentalists ignore their work. Let a theorist produce just one theory of the type sketched above (i.e., one that makes nonobvious verified predictions) and the world will jump to the conclusion (not always true) that he has a special insight into difficult problems.

Francis Crick
No good model ever accounted for all the facts, since some data was bound to be misleading if not plain wrong. A theory that did fit all the data would have been "carpentered" to do this and would thus be open to suspicion.

Francis Crick
A knowledge of the true age of the Earth and of the fossil record makes it impossible for any balanced intellect to believe in the literal truth of every part of the Bible in the way that fundamentalists do.

Francis Crick
Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.

Francis Crick
For simplicity one can think of the + class as having one extra base at some point or other in the genetic message and the - class as having one too few.

Francis Crick
Almost all aspects of life are engineered at the molecular level, and without understanding molecules we can only have a very sketchy understanding of life itself.

Francis Crick
It would appear that the number of nonsense triplets is rather low, since we only occasionally come across them. However this conclusion is less secure than our other deductions about the general nature of the genetic code.

Francis Crick
It seems likely that most if not all the genetic information in any organism is carried by nucleic acid — usually by DNA, although certain small viruses use RNA as their genetic material.

Francis Crick
To produce a really good biological theory one must try to see through the clutter produced by evolution to the basic mechanisms lying beneath them, realizing that they are likely to be overlaid by other, secondary mechanisms. What seems to physicists to be a hopelessly complicated process may have been what nature found simplest, because nature could only build on what was already there.

Francis Crick
Attempts have been made from a study of the changes produced by mutation to obtain the relative order of the bases within various triplets, but my own view is that these are premature until there is more extensive and more reliable data on the composition of the triplets.

Francis Crick
Rather than believe that Watson and Crick made the DNA structure, I would rather stress that the structure made Watson and Crick.

Francis Crick
It is essential to understand our brains in some detail if we are to assess correctly our place in this vast and complicated universe we see all around us.

Francis Crick