I can say, if I like, that social insects behave like the working parts of an immense central nervous system: the termite colony is an enormous brain on millions of legs; the individual termite is a mobile neurone.
Lewis ThomasRead
The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses concerns about the ethical implications of scientific advancements, particularly human cloning and its associated risks.
Lewis Thomas highlights the various scientific advancements that raise ethical and existential concerns, particularly focusing on human cloning. By listing cloning alongside other technologically advanced but potentially troubling concepts, he invites reflection on the implications of science without moral restraint, urging society to consider the consequences that come with such innovations.
Themes
CloningScienceEthicsTechnologyConcerns
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about bioethics, this quote could be a launching point for exploring the implications of human cloning.
More from Lewis Thomas
All quotes →I suggest that the introductory courses in science, at all levels from grade school through college, be radically revised. Leave the fundamentals, the so-called basics, aside for a while, and concentrate the attention of all students on the things that are not known.
Lewis ThomasRead
I maintain, despite the moment's evidence against the claim, that we are born and grow up with a fondness for each other, and we have genes for that. We can be talked out of it, for the genetic message is like a distant music, and some of us are hard-of-hearing. Societies are noisy affairs, drowning out the sound of ourselves and our connection.
Lewis ThomasRead
Science is founded on uncertainty. Each time we learn something new and surprising, the astonishment comes with the realization that we were wrong before.
Lewis ThomasRead
It is the very strangeness of nature that makes science engrossing. That ought to be at the center of science teaching. There are more than seven-times-seven types of ambiguity in science, awaiting analysis. The poetry of Wallace Stevens is crystal-clear alongside the genetic code.
Lewis ThomasRead
In the fields I know best, among the life sciences, it is required that the most expert and sophisticated minds be capable of changing course - often with a great lurch - every few years.
Lewis ThomasRead
Similar quotes
You make observations, write theories to fit them, try experiments to disprove the theories and, if you can't, you've got something.
Kary MullisRead
Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.
Georg C. LichtenbergRead
The sciences, even the best,-mathematics and astronomy,-are like sportsmen, who seize whatever prey offers, even without being able to make any use of it.
Ralph Waldo EmersonRead
Scientific research was much like prospecting: you went out and you hunted, armed with your maps and instruments, but in the ened your preparations did not matter, or even your intuition. You needed your luck, and whatever benefits accrued to the diligent, through sheer, grinding hard work.
Michael CrichtonRead
Testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs.
Edsger DijkstraRead
Politicians, real-estate agents, used-car salesmen, and advertising copy-writers are expected to stretch facts in self-serving directions, but scientists who falsify their results are regarded by their peers as committing an inexcusable crime. Yet the sad fact is that the history of science swarms with cases of outright fakery and instances of scientists who unconsciously distorted their work by seeing it through lenses of passionately held beliefs.
Martin GardnerRead