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Biologist Quotes

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Biologist Quotes

“She knelt and scooped sand in her hands, sifting it through her fingers, examining organisms left squiggling in her palm. He smiled at the young biologist, absorbed, oblivious. He imagined her standing at the back of the birding group, trying not to be noticed but being the first to spot and identify every bird. Shyly and softly, she would have listed the precise species of grasses woven into each nest, or the age in days of a female fledgling based on the emerging colors of her wing-tips. Exquisite minutiae beyond any guidebook or knowledge of the esteemed ecology group. The smallest specifics on which a species spins. The essence.”

YoungEssenceIntelligentEcologyBiologistOrnithology
Book:Where the Crawdads Sing
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“Oxygen deprivation and supplemental oxygen are both bio-hazards for Mauna Kea workers”

SickWorkersIllIllnessAstronomyOshaSicknessBiologyMaunaKeaOxygenDeprivedSupplementsBiologistBiologicalAstrophysicsWorkerAstronomicalSickness And HealthSupplementAstronomerAstrobiologySickness And DiseasesSuffocationAstrosociobiologySuffocateDepriveSickness Of The MindBiological TerrorismSickeningBiological NeedsWorker RightsDolOxygen Of LifeOxygen Theory
Author:Steven Magee
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“Professor Smith has kindly submitted his book to me before publication. After reading it thoroughly and with intense interest I am glad to comply with his request to give him my impression. The work is a broadly conceived attempt to portray man's fear-induced animistic and mythic ideas with all their far-flung transformations and interrelations. It relates the impact of these phantasmagorias on human destiny and the causal relationships by which they have become crystallized into organized religion. This is a biologist speaking, whose scientific training has disciplined him in a grim objectivity rarely found in the pure historian. This objectivity has not, however, hindered him from emphasizing the boundless suffering which, in its end results, this mythic thought has brought upon man. Professor Smith envisages as a redeeming force, training in objective observation of all that is available for immediate perception and in the interpretation of facts without preconceived ideas. In his view, only if every individual strives for truth can humanity attain a happier future; the atavisms in each of us that stand in the way of a friendlier destiny can only thus be rendered ineffective. His historical picture closes with the end of the nineteenth century, and with good reason. By that time it seemed that the influence of these mythic, authoritatively anchored forces which can be denoted as religious, had been reduced to a tolerable level in spite of all the persisting inertia and hypocrisy. Even then, a new branch of mythic thought had already grown strong, one not religious in nature but no less perilous to mankind -- exaggerated nationalism. Half a century has shown that this new adversary is so strong that it places in question man's very survival. It is too early for the present-day historian to write about this problem, but it is to be hoped that one will survive who can undertake the task at a later date.”

ScienceSufferingHumanityFearFutureNationalismHistorianObjectivityOrganized ReligionBiologistMythsForwardHomer SmithHomer W SmithMan And His GodsMythic Thought
Book:Man and His Gods
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“I wanted to be a marine biologist my whole life until I graduated high school. And even now, I'm still like, 'Maybe I'll just quit the biz and go to Santa Cruz and study marine biology and have my own research center in the Bahamas.' Yeah, I'm sure it would be just that smooth.”

StillsWholeWould BeWantedSchoolMy OwnStudyResearchHigh SchoolYeahWhole LifeQuittingBiologySmoothMarineSantaBiologistCruzMarine LifeBahamasMarine BiologyMarine BiologistSanta Cruz
Author:Cobie Smulders
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“It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist: the threat is rather to life itself.”

WayLifeShouldFirstsFormExistenceSituationEnvironmentSeaChangedActivityOceanThreatEnvironmentalCuriousConservationThreatenedOur EnvironmentSinisterEnvironmentalistBiologistMarine LifeSave The EnvironmentOcean SeaSilent SpringOceans And SeasSea LifeThe Wild NatureBeach And OceanBeach OceanOcean ConservationMarine BiologyMarine BiologistWild Sea
Book:The Sea Around Us
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“Life, individual or collective, personal or historic, is the one entity in the universe whose substance is compact of danger, of adventure. It is, in the strict sense of the word, drama. The primary, radical meaning of life appears when it is employed in the sense not of biology, but of biography. For the very strong reason that the whole of biology is quite definitely only a chapter in certain biographies, it is what biologists do in the portion of their lives open to biography.”

ReasonWholeCertainUniverseIndividualStrongDangerAdventureDramaRadicalPrimariesSubstanceMeaning Of LifeCollectivesBiologyVery StrongPortionsChaptersEntityStrictBiographiesEmployedHistoricBiologistCompact
Author:Jose Ortega y Gasset
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“[E]volutionists sometimes take as haughty an attitude toward the next level up the conventional ladder of disciplines: the human sciences. They decry the supposed atheoretical particularism of their anthropological colleagues and argue that all would be well if only the students of humanity regarded their subject as yet another animal and therefore yielded explanatory control to evolutionary biologists.”

IfsHumansWellsSometimesWould BeHumanityNextAnimalLevelsAttitudeSubjectsStudentsDisciplineArguingConventionalColleaguesLaddersNext LevelBiologistHaughty
Book:An Urchin in the Storm: Essays about Books and Ideas
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“A complete theory of evolution must acknowledge a balance between "external" forces of environment imposing selection for local adaptation and "internal" forces representing constraints of inheritance and development. Vavilov placed too much emphasis on internal constraints and downgraded the power of selection. But Western Darwinians have erred equally in practically ignoring (while acknowledging in theory) the limits placed on selection by structure and development what Vavilov and the older biologists would have called "laws of form.”

FormLawForceEnvironmentToo MuchTheoryDevelopmentEvolutionBalanceLimitsStructureWesternLocalsAcknowledgeInternalsEmphasisSelectionAdaptationInheritanceConstraintsRepresentingImposingBiologistTheory Of EvolutionExternal Forces
Book:Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History
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“What good men most biologists are, the tenors of the scientific world - temperamental, moody, lecherous, loud-laughing, and healthy. Your true biologist will sing you a song as loud and off-key as will a blacksmith, for he knows that morals are too often diagnostic of prostatitis and stomach ulcers. Sometimes he may proliferate a little too much in all directions, but he is as easy to kill as any other organism, and meanwhile he is very good company, and at least he does not confuse a low hormone productivity with moral ethics.”

KnowsMenWorldMayLittlesDoeSometimesSongEasyCompanyMoralLaughingToo MuchKeysHealthyLowsEthicsVery GoodProductivityLoudGood ManStomachOrganismsHormonesAnd OffBiologistGood CompanyMoodyTenorsMoral EthicsUlcersBlacksmiths
Author:John Steinbeck
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“The attitude of the true scientist towards the real limits of human understanding was unforgettably impressed on me in early youth by the obviously unpremeditated words of a great biologist; Alfred Kuhn finished a lecture to the Austrian Academy of Science with Goethe 's words, "It is the greatest joy of the man of thought to have explored the explorable and then calmly to revere the inexplorable." After the last word he hesitated, raised his hand in repudiation and cried, above the applause, "No, not calmly, gentlemen; not calmly!”

MenHumansRealHandsLastsJoyUnderstandingAttitudeYouthHe ManLimitsScientistRaisedFinishedGentlemanCriedImpressedLast WordsLecturesApplauseAcademyBiologist
Author:Konrad Lorenz
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“It is so hard for an evolutionary biologist to write about extinction caused by human stupidity. Let me then float an unconventional plea, the inverse of the usual argument. The extinction of Partula is unfair to Partula. That is the conventional argument, and I do not challenge its primacy. But we need a humanistic ecology as well, both for the practical reason that people will always touch people more than snails do or can, and for the moral reason that humans are legitimately the measure of all ethical questions for these are our issues, not nature's.”

PeopleNeedsWritingHumansWellsHardReasonChallengesMoralIssuesArgumentLet MeStupidityPracticalsEthicalUsualConventionalUnfairEcologyExtinctionFloatsBiologistUnconventionalSnailHumanisticInversePrimacyHuman StupidityEthical Questions
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“More attention to the History of Science is needed, as much by scientists as by historians, and especially by biologists, and this should mean a deliberate attempt to understand the thoughts of the great masters of the past, to see in what circumstances or intellectual milieu their ideas were formed, where they took the wrong turning or stopped short on the right track.”

ShouldMeanIdeasPastAttentionMastersNeededCircumstancesIntellectualScientistTrackHistorianDeliberateBiologistHistory Of ScienceRight TrackMilieuWrong Turn
Author:Ronald Fisher
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“This argument [that life is too improbable to have arisen by chance] comes up repeatedly: its latest manifestation is Hoyle's discussion of the likelihood of a wind blowing through a junkyard assembling a Boeing 707 [sic]. What is wrong with it? Essentially, it is that no biologist imagines that complex structures arise in a single step.”

Life IsChanceStepsImagineWindArgumentStructureComplexesCome UpAriseDiscussionManifestationImagine ThatImprobableLikelihoodBiologistBoeingAssemblingSingle StepWind BlowingJunkyard
Author:John Maynard Smith
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“Biochemists and biologists who adhere blindly to the Darwinism theory search for results that will be in agreement with their theories and consequently orient their research in a given direction, whether it be in the field of ecology, ethology, sociology, demography (dynamics of populations), genetics (so-called evolutionary genetics), or paleontology. This intrusion of theories has unfortunate results: it deprives observations and experiments of their objectivity, makes them biased, and, moreover, creates false problems.”

ProblemGivenResultsKnowledgeFieldsTheoryResearchPopulationExperimentsObservationAgreementUnfortunateEcologySociologyObjectivityGeneticsDynamicsBiasedBiologistIntrusionPaleontologyDemography
Author:Pierre-Paul Grasse
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“Psychohistory, like psychoanalysis, is a science in which the researcher's feelings are as much or even more a part of his research equipment than his eyes or his hands. Weighing of complex motives can only be accomplished by identification with human actors, the usual suppression of all feeling preached and followed by most "science" simply cripples a psychohistorian as badly as it would cripple a biologist to be forbidden the use of a microscope. The emotional development of a psychohistorian is therefore as much a topic for discussion as his or her intellectual development.”

HumansUseFeelingsHandsEyeActorsEmotionalDevelopmentIntellectualResearchComplexesDiscussionMotiveHis EyesAccomplishedUsualTopicsEquipmentForbiddenPsychoanalysisResearchersIdentificationSuppressionMicroscopesBiologistCripplesWeighingIntellectual DevelopmentEmotional Development
Author:Lloyd deMause
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“Darwin seems to lose out with the public primarily when his supporters force him into a mano-a-mano Thunderdome death match against the Almighty. Most people seem willing to accept Darwinism as long as they don't have to believe in nothing but Darwinism. Thus, the strident tub-thumping for absolute atheism by evolutionary biologists like Richard Dawkins, whom the new issue of Discover Magazine rightly criticizes as "Darwin's Rottweiler," is self-defeating.”

PeopleBelieveLongSelfSeemsForceLosesAcceptingIssuesAtheismWillingAbsolutesMagazinesCriticizeAlmightySupporterDarwinismBiologistTubsRottweilers
Author:Steve Sailer
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“A high place of honor, although doubtless one to be obtained only after enduring the pangs of a prolonged crucifixion, awaits that philosophical biologist, or that philosopher sufficiently acquainted with scientific biology, who subjects the modern doctrine of evolution to a thoroughly critical analysis, with a view to detect and to estimate its metaphysical assumptions.”

ViewsModernSubjectsEvolutionHonorPhilosophicalEndurePhilosopherCriticalDoctrineAnalysisAssumptionBiologyMetaphysicalCrucifixionBiologistHigh PlacesCritical Analysis
Author:George Trumbull Ladd
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“Bird taxonomy is a difficult field because of the severe anatomical constraints imposed by flight. There are only so many ways to design a bird capable, say, of catching insects in mid-air, with the result that birds of similar habitats tend to have very similar anatomies, whatever their ancestry. For example, American vultures look and behave much like Old World vultures, but biologists have come to realize that the former are related to storks, the latter to hawks, and that their resemblances result from their common lifestyle.”

WorldWayLooksDifficultRealizingResultsCommonAirExampleDesignFieldsEvolutionCapableBirdLifestyleFlightFormerBehaveRelatedLatterSevereInsectsCatchingConstraintsAncestryAnatomyResemblanceHawksBiologistHabitatOld WorldVultureTaxonomyStorks
Author:Jared Diamond
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“As an evolutionary biologist, I have learned over the years that most people do not want to see themselves as lumbering robots programmed to ensure the survival of their genes. I don't think they will want to see themselves as digital computers either. To be told by someone with impeccable scientific credentials that they are nothing of the kind can only be pleasing.”

PeopleThinkingWantYearsKindEvolutionComputerSurvivalDigitalGenesI Have LearnedRobotsBiologistImpeccableCredentials
Author:John Maynard Smith
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“Since I was very young I've been fascinated with nature and I actually wanted to be a marine biologist when I was very young. That was a great passion of mine. So I suppose in the off season when I'm not making movies, I became more and more active as an environmentalist trying to be more vocal about issues that I felt were important.”

TryingImportantWantedYoungPassionFeltIssuesMinesSeasonsActiveFascinatedMarineVocalEnvironmentalistBiologistGreat PassionOff SeasonMarine Biologist
Author:Leonardo DiCaprio
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“We live in a highly industrialized society and every member of the Black nation must be as academically and technologically developed as possible. To wage a revolution, we need competent teachers, doctors, nurses, electronics experts, chemists, biologists, physicists, political scientists, and so on and so forth. Black women sitting at home reading bedtime stories to their children are just not going to make it.”

NeedsChildrenStoriesHomePoliticalReadingNationsBlackTeacherRevolutionMembersSittingDoctorsScientistExpertsNurseBlack WomenPhysicistCompetentBedtimeBiologistChemistElectronicsBedtime Stories
Author:Frances M. Beal
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“I think people all over the institution recognize that different ways of understanding are valuable. Artists may think in a different way than biologists or chemists, but you can learn something from that. It is true that the arts at MIT don't have the same amount of funding or same status as the sciences or engineering.”

PeopleThinkingWayMayArtDifferentArtistUnderstandingAmountInstitutionsValuableDifferent WaysEngineeringFundingBiologistChemistMit
Author:Alan Lightman
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“The job of the linguist, like that of the biologist or the botanist, is not to tell us how nature should behave, or what its creations should look like, but to describe those creations in all their messy glory and try to figure out what they can teach us about life, the world, and, especially in the case of linguistics, the workings of the human mind.”

WorldShouldTryingMindHumansLooksJobsTeachCasesFiguresCreationGloryBehaveHuman MindMessyLinguisticsBiologistLinguists
Book:In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build A Perfect Language
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