Quote of the Month... July 2003

To return to the apprentice sushi master: his education seems a matter of passive observation. The young man cleans the dishes, mops the kitchen floor, bows to the clients, fetches ingredients, and in the meantime follows from the corners of his eyes, without ever asking a question, everything that the sushi masters are doing. For no less than three years he watches them without being allowed to make actual sushi for the patrons of the restaurant--an extreme case of exposure without practice. He is waiting for the day on which he will be invited to make his first sushi, which he will do with remarkable dexterity.

--Frans de Waal, The Ape and the Sushi Master: Cultural Reflections of a Primatologist, Prologue

Quote of the Month... June 2003

……四十億年は、私の経験にはない。私がこうした長年月を考えることができるのは、アナロジーによる。類推によるのである。なんの類推か。自分の一生の、である。一生が大ゲサなら、自分の過去から今までである。その間に私自身は変化し、さして薬にはなっていないにしても、とにかく経験を積んだ。そうした自分の変化について、私はなんらかの法則性を考えることはできるであろう。……（養老孟司『唯脳論』、「時間」より）

[ ... Four billion years is not something that one can experience personally. The only reason we can fathom these long periods of time is by analogy. Analogy to what?-- Analogy to one's lifetime. If "lifetime" is too grandiose a word, perhaps "your past up to the present moment" is more acceptable. During that time, we change, and although we may not improve markedly, we do gain experience, at least. And from these changes that we experience, we can extract some sort of regularity. ...]

--Takeshi Yoro, [Encephalism: A Neuroanatomical Worldview]

Quote of the Month... May 2003

... Theorizing at this stage is like skating on thin ice--keep moving, or drown. Ego, Id, and Superego are conceptions that help one to see and state the important facts of behavior, but they are also dangerously easy to treat as ghostly realities: as anthropomorphic agents that want this or disapprove of that, overcoming one another by force or guile, and punishing or being punished. ... When theory becomes static, it is apt to become dogma; and psychological theory has the further danger, as long as so many of its problems are unresolved, of inviting a relapse into the vitalism and indeterminism of traditional thought.

--D. O. Hebb, The Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory, Introduction

Referring to psychological theories of Freud and Pavlov, and also science in general. Seems particularly germane to modern biology?

Quote of the Month... March 2003 (2)

There is nothing perhaps more adverse to nature and reason than to hold in obedience remote countries and foreign nations, in opposition to their inclination and interest

--Edward Gibbon, The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chap. XLIX

Quote of the Month... March 2003

... One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.

--J. Watson, The Double Helix, Chap. 2

Quote of the Month... February 2003 (4)

[What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war. Gasoline is much more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict.]

--Simone Weil, [The Need for Roots], 1949

Quote of the Month... February 2003 (3)

[... Far more of metal, both white and red, have others, in mines and in exchanges. But among Danes daily bread is to be found in the hovels of the poor. And we have found true riches indeed in our land when few have too much and fewer too little. ...]

--N. F. S. Grundvig, Værker i Udvalg, vol. VII

Quote of the Month... February 2003 (2)

... Some of the challenge of science lies in the art of choosing a strong, if incompletely tested framework for thinking. The sooner one can recognize "correct" hypotheses and reject false ones, the faster the field can be advanced into new territory. However, the benefits must be balanced against the risks of undue speed: superficiality, weak science, and outright error.
--Bertill Hille, Ion Channels of Excitable Membranes, 3 ed.

Quote of the Month... February 2003

Live in the ward. Do not waste the hours of daylight in listening to that which you may read at night. But when you have seen, read. And when you can, read the original descriptions of the masters who, with crude methods of study, saw so clearly.

--Sir William Osler

Quote of the Month... January 2003

... It turns out that I am really an experimental chemist hiding as a theoretician. I think that is the key to my success. That is, I think I can empathize with what bothers the experimentalists. In another day I could have become an experimentalist. ...

--Roald Hoffmann