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Biology Quotes

“Finally, on October 26, 1981, the Great Barrier Reef received what two of its finest historians, James and Margarita Bowen, have called a 'conservation climax' - World Heritage listing 'as the most impressive marine area in the world.' The Reef met all four of UNESCO's 'natural criteria.' It was an outstanding example of the earth's evolutionary history, an arena of significant ongoing geological processes and biological evolution, a superlative natural phenomenon, and a significant natural habitat containing threatened species of animals or plants with exceptional universal scientific value.”

EarthScienceHistorySpeciesBiologyGeologyMarine LifeUnescoGreat Barrier Reef
Book:The Reef: A Passionate History: The Great Barrier Reef from Captain Cook to Climate Change
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“We must not only be concerned with what is happening to the soil; we must wonder to what extent insecticides are absorbed from contaminated soils and introduced into plant tissues. Much depends on the type of soil, the crop, and the nature and concentration of the insecticide. Soil high in organic matter releases smaller quantities of poisons than others. Carrots absorb more insecticide than any other crop studied; if the chemical used happens to be lindane, carrots actually accumulate higher concentrations than are present in the soil. In the future it may become necessary to analyze soils for insecticides before planting certain food crops. Otherwise even unsprayed crops may take up enough insecticide merely from the soil to render them unfit for market.”

ScienceNatureIndustrySoilBiologyFarmingEnvironmentalismCarrotsPesticidesOrganic
Author:Rachel Carson
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“The biologists are a ruthless bunch, and quite devoid of any particular regard for doctors. In theory they don’t even want a surgeon to patch up a man who has been hit on the head with a brick, the argument being that it is better for the human race to be able to dodge bricks. Which is a correct viewpoint, I suppose, unless it happens to be your head and your brick.”

BiologyGeneticsSurvival Of The FittestEthics And MoralityNature Vs CultureDarwinst Thinking
Book:Strong Medicine
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“Wherever sufficiently numerous series of the remains of any given group, which has endured for a long space of time, are carefully examined, their morphological relations are never in discordance with the requirements of the doctrine of evolution, and often afford convincing evidence of it. At the same time, it has been shown that certain forms persist with very little change, from the oldest to the newest fossiliferous formations; and thus show that progressive development is a contingent, and not a necessary result, of the nature of living matter.”

MatterScienceNatureDevelopmentEvolutionLivingEvidenceRemainsBiologyFossilsConvincingRequirementMorphologyExamineContingent
Book:Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century, The
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“The older revolutionaries sought to change the social environment in the hope (if they were idealists and not mere power seekers) of changing human nature. Then coming revolutionaries will make their assault directly on human nature as they find it, in the minds and bodies of their victims or, if you prefer, their beneficiaries.”

EvolutionSocialismCommunismBiologyFascismWokeSjwTirannyChavism
Book:Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience
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“...Why is it, that from the moment you enter medical school to the moment you retire, that the only disorder you will ever diagnosis with a physics book - is obesity? This is biology folks, it's endocrinology, it's physiology - physics has nothing to do with it. The law of thermodynamics is always true, [but] the energy balance equation is irrelevant...”

ScienceEnergyDoctorsPhysicsBiologyObesityDoctorPhysiologyMedical SchoolThermodynamicsMedical ResearchObesity EpidemicBad ScienceEndocrinology
Author:Gary Taubes
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“And then red, marbled with pink, around two imperfect circles of bone-white with dark centers. A space where there shouldn’t be one—ground visible, covered with grass, and some clover. Red again—an image of the tomatoes on the kitchen counter flashed across Beatrice’s mind—surrounding two more bone-white circles. The hand bearing the peacock was severed, that was why Beatrice could see a sliver of ground where basic biology dictated there should be skin. There was a clean cut five inches or so above the wrist, just missing the edge of the peacock’s tail, the muscles and tendons—the bones—neatly sliced through like a Swiss round steak prepared by an expert butcher.”

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Book:Birds of Wonder
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“There can be no doubt that the existing Fauna and Flora is but the last term of a long series of equally numerous contemporary species, which have succeeded one another, by the slow and gradual substitution of species for species, in the vast interval of time which has elapsed between the deposition of the earliest fossiliferous strata and the present day.”

ScienceTimeDoubtEvolutionSpeciesBiologyExtinctionGeologyFloraFlora And FaunaFaunaFossilStrata
Book:Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century, The
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“Keynes concluded that citizens both rich and poor would have to be led gradually out of capitalism, a base and repugnant system of morals. His fellow liberals in the 1920s debated the morality and efficacy of capitalism, as well as the correctness of the view that, as one Liberal politician put it, “man’s primary concern is to satisfy in ever ampler degree his physical needs.” For Keynes, this might be human nature, but his entanglement with Bateson and Pearson had immersed him in the notion that biological nature was malleable. Greed would be driven out not just by education but by the eugenic cultivation of “special talents.” It would be replaced by “some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue—that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love of money is detestable, that those walk most truly in the paths of virtue and sane wisdom who take least thought for the morrow.” In the meantime, however, Keynes conceded capitalism’s efficacy. In order to improve productivity to the point where everyone’s needs could be easily satisfied, the coming century still demanded devotion to the god of greed. The goal of the next hundred years of capitalism would be its own extirpation.”

CapitalismPopulationBiologyProbabilityEugenicsKeynes
Author:David Roth Singerman
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“Is the term for the human species clearly defined? There is no authoritative definition of 'species'. The boundaries between biological populations are, by definition, fluid. If this wasn't the case, evolution could never have taken place – the principle is change, not being static. In particular, the often quoted criterion, that two different species cannot produce 'fertile offspring' is not consistent with reality. Primates produce fertile offspring, often not only between different species (white-handed gibbon and capped gibbon, hamadryas baboons and olive baboons) but also between different defined genera (such as the hanuman langur [Semnopithecus] and the Nilgiri langur [Presbytis]) and, this happens in the wild. The boundary between the 'species' human and other primates is therefore arbitrary from a biological point of view. There is no 'special characteristic feature' that could justify such a boundary. […]”

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Book:The Dog and his Philosopher: A Call for Autonomy and Animal Rights
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“In a difficult year, trees may increase their mass by less than one gram! During this time, the tree devotes its limited resources to maintaining the status quo. Like an eternal optimist, the tree concentrates on keeping itself alive until such time that conditions improve.”

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Book:Last Stand: A Journey Through the Ancient Cliff-Face Forest of the Niagara Escarpment
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“It seems to be characteristic of the human mind that when it sees a black box in action, it imagines that the contents of the box are simple. A happy example is seen in the comic strip . Calvin is always jumping in a box with his stuffed tiger, Hobbes, and travelling back in time, or himself into animal shapes, or using it as a and making clones of him-self. A little boy like Calvin easily imagines that a box can fly like an airplane (or something), because Calvin doesn't know how airplanes work. In some ways, grown-up scientists are just as prone to wishful thinking as little boys like Calvin. For example, centuries ago it was thought that insects and other small animals arose directly fom spoiled food. This was easy to believe, because small animals were thought to be very simple (before the invention of the microscope, naturalists thought that insects had no internal organs). But as biology progressed and careful experiments showed that protected food did not breed life, the theory of spontaneous generation retreated to the limits beyond which science detect what was really happening. (...) The key to persuading people was the portrayal of the cells as . One of the chief advocates of the spontaneous generation during the middle of the nineteenth century was Ernst Haeckel, a great admirer of Darwin and an eager popularizer of Darwin's theory. From the limited view of cells that microscope provided, Haeckel believed that a cell was a not much different from a piece of microscopic Jell-O. So it seemed to Haeckel that such simple life, with no internal organs, could be produced easily from inanimate material. Now, of course, we know better.”

EvolutionBiologyHaeckelSpontaneous Generation
Book:Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
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“It seems to be characteristic of the human mind that when it sees a black box in action, it imagines that the contents of the box are simple. A happy example is seen in the comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes". Calvin is always jumping in a box with his stuffed tiger, Hobbes, and travelling back in time, or "transmogrifying" himself into animal shapes, or using it as a "duplicator" and making clones of him-self. A little boy like Calvin easily imagines that a box can fly like an airplane (or something), because Calvin doesn't know how airplanes work. In some ways, grown-up scientists are just as prone to wishful thinking as little boys like Calvin. For example, centuries ago it was thought that insects and other small animals arose directly fom spoiled food. This was easy to believe, because small animals were thought to be very simple (before the invention of the microscope, naturalists thought that insects had no internal organs). But as biology progressed and careful experiments showed that protected food did not breed life, the theory of spontaneous generation retreated to the limits beyond which science detect what was really happening. (...) The key to persuading people was the portrayal of the cells as "simple". One of the chief advocates of the spontaneous generation during the middle of the nineteenth century was Ernst Haeckel, a great admirer of Darwin and an eager popularizer of Darwin's theory. From the limited view of cells that microscope provided, Haeckel believed that a cell was a "simple lump of albuminous combination of carbon" not much different from a piece of microscopic Jell-O. So it seemed to Haeckel that such simple life, with no internal organs, could be produced easily from inanimate material. Now, of course, we know better.”

EvolutionBiologyHaeckelSpontaneous Generation
Book:Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
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“Chloroplasts bear chlorophyll; they give the green world its color, and they carry out the business of photosynthesis. Around the inside perimeter of each gigantic cell trailed a continuous loop of these bright green dots. They spun . . . they pulsed, pressed, and thronged . . . they shone, they swarmed in ever-shifting files around and around the edge of the cell; they wandered, they charged, they milled, raced . . . they flowed and trooped greenly . . . All the green in the planted world consists of these whole, rounded chloroplasts . . . If you analyze a molecule of chlorophyll itself, what you get is one hundred thirty-six atoms of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen arranged in an exact and complex relationship around a central ring. At the ring’s center is a single atom of magnesium. Now: If you remove the atom of magnesium and in its place put an atom of iron, you get a molecule of hemoglobin. The iron atom combines with all the other atoms to make red blood, the streaming red dots in the goldfish’s tail.”

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Book:PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
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“Kinds are like the dog sort (including dingoes, wolves, coyotes, domestic dogs, etc.), cat sort (including lions, tigers, cougars, bobcats, domestic cats, etc.), horse sort (ponies, Clydesdales, donkeys, zebras, etc.), and so on. There is variation within these kinds especially since the Flood, but not evolution where one kind changes into a totally different kind over long periods of time — which is not observed anyway (e.g., amoebas turning into dogs).”

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Book:A Flood of Evidence: 40 Reasons Noah and the Ark Still Matter
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“Those that entered the ark in pairs were for the purpose of repopulating their kind after the Flood. This is why the female is paired with it. But the sacrificial clean animals were obviously not required to go in pairs as they had no mates and their function was not to keep their kinds alive after the Flood (Genesis 7:36). Sacrifice costs the sacrificer something. If not, it really isn’t a sacrifice. King David later recognized this (2 Samuel 24:24”

ScienceBiologyCreation ScienceNoah S FloodNoah S Ark
Book:A Flood of Evidence: 40 Reasons Noah and the Ark Still Matter
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“It only took starlings (a type of bird) about 100 years to cover the entire North American continent when about 60 were released in New York City in 1890. With this in mind, it probably did not take long for many places to be populated with flying creatures after the Flood. Many birds can transverse great distances over lakes, seas, and oceans. Some birds and other flying creatures may have lost the ability to fly due to mutations or breeding (particularly inbreeding) since the Flood. This could have occurred after migrating long distances.”

ScienceBiologyCreation ScienceNoah S FloodNoah S Ark
Book:A Flood of Evidence: 40 Reasons Noah and the Ark Still Matter
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“In general, placental animals would move slower than marsupials, which can collect their young (e.g., in pouches) and continue migrating. Many placental animals need to stop and settle for a time to raise their young but, theoretically, great varieties of land animals could have gone to any region of Europe, Asia, and Africa.”

ScienceBiologyCreation ScienceNoah S Flood
Book:A Flood of Evidence: 40 Reasons Noah and the Ark Still Matter
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“English: "It is paradoxical that we do not consider the constant death of our cells as our own death, while we do consider the death of ourselves as individuals, even though we are cells of society." Česky: „Je paradox, že neustálé smrti svých buněk nepovažujeme za svou smrt, zatímco smrt sebe jako jedince ano, přestože jsme buňkou společnosti.”

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Author:Sebastián Wortys
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“But just as the material necessity to produce the means of production and subsistence does not determine the historically specific social relations in which they are produced, the biology of procreation does not determine the mode of reproduction, i.e. social relations in which children are born and raised, although it imposes limits on their variations. (,,,) this family form [nuclear family unit of parents and children] is prevalent in capitalist societies; it is not, however, universal because those functions can be fulfilled within a variety of social arrangements”

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Book:Marx, Women, and Capitalist Social Reproduction: Marxist Feminist Essays
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“Most instincts are allied to specialized organs, it is true, but it is nonetheless true that perception and acquired behavior, including the higher types of operative intelligence, do, in a more supple way, manifest certain functional possibilities or "reaction norms" of the anatomical and physiological structure of the species. In a word, the general coordinations of action upon which the building up of most basic types of knowledge is conditional, presuppose not only nervous coordinations but coordinations of a much more deep-seated kind, those which are, in fact, interactions dominating the entire morphogenesis.”

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Book:Biology and Knowledge: An Essay on the Relations between Organic Regulations and Cognitive Processes
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“This irrelevance of molecular arrangements for macroscopic results has given rise to the tendency to confine physics and chemistry to the study of homogeneous systems as well as homogeneous classes. In statistical mechanics a great deal of labor is in fact spent on showing that homogeneous systems and homogeneous classes are closely related and to a considerable extent interchangeable concepts of theoretical analysis (Gibbs theory). Naturally, this is not an accident. The methods of physics and chemistry are ideally suited for dealing with homogeneous classes with their interchangeable components. But experience shows that the objects of biology are radically inhomogeneous both as systems (structurally) and as classes (generically). Therefore, the method of biology and, consequently, its results will differ widely from the method and results of physical science.”

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Book:Atom and Organism: A New Aproach to Theoretical Biology
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“Might one not say that in the chance combination of nature's production, since only those endowed with certain relations of suitability could survive, it is no cause for wonder that this suitability is found in all species that exist today? Chance, one might say, produced an innumerable multitude of individuals; a small number turned out to be constructed in such fashion that the parts of the animal could satisfy its needs; in another, infinitely greater number, there was neither suitability nor order: all of the later have perished; animals without a mouth could not live, others lacking organs for reproduction could not perpetuate themselves: the only ones to have remained are those in which were found order and suitability; and these species, which we see today, are only the smallest part of what blind fate produced.”

LifeSciencePurposeNatureChanceExistenceWonderEvolutionSurvivalInnovationBlindBiologyNatural SelectionSurvival Of The FittestIncredibleStruggle For Life
Author:Pierre-Louis Moreau De Maupertuis
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