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.
Interpretation
Understanding our brains helps us comprehend our existence in the universe.
Francis Crick emphasizes the importance of studying our brains to better understand our role and significance in the vast and intricate universe. He suggests that by exploring the complexities of our minds, we can gain insight into our place within the greater cosmos and the nature of our existence.
In practice
In a lecture about neuroscience and its impact on our understanding of the universe, this quote can emphasize the interconnectedness of mind and cosmos.
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
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.
In the fullness of time, educated people will believe there is no soul independent of the body, and hence no life after death.
It is a test of true theories not only to account for but to predict phenomena.
Once you can reproduce a phenomenon, you are well on the way to understanding it.
Emissions of greenhouse gases warm the planet, altering the carbon and water cycles. A warmer ocean stores more heat, providing more fuel for hurricanes. A warmer atmosphere holds more water, bringing dangerous deluges. Rising sea levels threaten coastal zones.
The observation that species are amazingly conservative and static entities throughout long periods of time has all the qualities of the emperor's new clothes: everyone knew it but preferred to ignore it. Paleontologists, faced with a recalcitrant record obstinately refusing to yield Darwin's predicted pattern, simply looked the other way.
Scientists surely have a special responsibility. It is their ideas that form the basis of new technology. They should not be indifferent to the fruits of their ideas. They should forgo experiments that are risky or unethical.
If we just stay at the crest of the mycelial wave, it will take us into heretofore unknown territories that will be just magnificent in their implications.
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