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François Jacob - The Possible and the Actual (1982)

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Myths and science fulfill a similar function: they both provide human beings with a representation of the world and of the forces that are supposed to govern it. They both fix the limits of what is considered as possible.

François Jacob
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And one of the deepest, one of the most general functions of living organisms is to look ahead, to produce future as Paul Valéry put it.

François Jacob
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For science, there are many possible worlds; but the interesting one is the world that exists and has already shown itself to be at work for a long time. Science attempts to confront the possible with the actual.

François Jacob

Quote of the day

What we observe is not nature itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning. Our scientific work in physics consists in asking questions about nature in the language that we possess and trying to get an answer from experiment by the means that are at our disposal.
Werner Heisenberg

François Jacob

François Jacob
Creative Commons

Born: June 17, 1920
Died: April 19, 2013 (aged 92)
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