If the code does indeed have some logical foundation then it is legitimate to consider all the evidence, both good and bad, in any attempt to deduce it.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of considering all evidence when analyzing a theory, especially in scientific contexts.
Francis Crick, a renowned scientist, highlights the necessity of examining both positive and negative evidence when evaluating scientific theories. This approach is crucial for understanding complex ideas, as it allows one to form a more complete and accurate picture of reality. By acknowledging logical foundations, one engages in a rigorous process to derive conclusions from all available data, ensuring a deeper understanding of the evidence at hand.
In practice
In a lecture on scientific methodology, one might quote Crick to stress the balanced evaluation of evidence.
One can say, looking at the papers in this symposium, that the elucidation of the genetic code is indeed a great achievement. It is, in a sense, the key to molecular biology because it shows how the great polymer languages, the nucleic acid language and the protein language, are linked together.
Exact knowledge is the enemy of vitalism.
A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong
It is essential to understand our brains in some detail if we are to assess correctly our place in this vast and complicated universe we see all around us.
To produce a really good biological theory one must try to see through the clutter produced by evolution to the basic mechanisms lying beneath them, realizing that they are likely to be overlaid by other, secondary mechanisms. What seems to physicists to be a hopelessly complicated process may have been what nature found simplest, because nature could only build on what was already there.
It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.
The enemy of science is not religion... . The true enemy is the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with dogma.
As in biomedical science, pioneering industrial inventions have not been mothered by necessity. Rather, inventions for which there was no commercial use only later became the commercial airplanes, xerography and lasers on which modern society depends.
I think that when we know that we actually do live in uncertainty, then we ought to admit it; it is of great value to realize that we do not know the answers to different questions. This attitude of mind - this attitude of uncertainty - is vital to the scientist, and it is this attitude of mind which the student must first acquire.
Psychological factors are critical in supporting immune function. If you suppress this psychological support by telling someone he's condemned to die, your words alone will have condemned him.
A scientist who is also a human being cannot rest while knowledge which might be used to reduce suffering rests on the shelf.
The problem of distinguishing prime numbers from composite numbers and of resolving the latter into their prime factors is known to be one of the most important and useful in arithmetic.
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