A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.
Albert Szent-GyorgyiRead
It is impossible to encircle the hips of a girl with my right arm and hold her smile in my left hand, then proceed to study the two items separately. Similarly, we can not separate life from living matter, in order to study only living matter and its reactions. Inevitably, studying living matter and its reactions, we study life itself
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the inseparable nature of life and the living matter it encompasses.
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi uses a metaphor to illustrate that life and the elements that constitute it are intertwined, much like the impossibility of studying a girl's smile and her hips as separate entities. This highlights the complexity of life, suggesting that to understand one must also understand the whole context in which it exists.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the complexities of life sciences.
A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.
Science has helped us to understand and master ourselves, creating an elevated new form of human life, the wealth and beauty of which cannot be pictured today by the keenest imagination.
I called it ignose, not knowing which carbohydrate it was. This name was turned down by my editor. 'God-nose' was not more successful, so in the end 'hexuronic acid' was agreed upon. To-day the substance is called 'ascorbic acid' and I will use this name.
Water is life's matter and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water.
The real scientist is ready to bear privation and, if need be, starvation rather than let anyone dictate to him which direction his work must take.
Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought.
Black women's intersectional experiences of racism and sexism have been a central but forgotten dynamic in the unfolding of feminist and antiracist agendas.
I wanted to get far away from those who believed in cruelty, so then I went to France, a land of true freedom, democracy, equality and fraternity.
Daily the Negro is coming more and more to look upon law and justice, not as protecting safeguards, but as sources of humiliation and oppression. The laws are made by men who have little interest in him; they are executed by men who have absolutely no motive for treating the black people with courtesy or consideration; and, finally, the accused law-breaker is tried, not by his peers, but too often by men who would rather punish ten innocent Negroes than let one guilty one escape.
That the foundation of our national policy should be laid in private morality. If individuals be not influenced by moral principles, it is in vain to look for public virtue; it is, therefore, the duty of legislators to enforce, both by precept and example, the utility, as well as the necessity, of a strict adherence to the rules of distributive justice.
This earth indeed is the very Body of God, and it is from this body that we are born, live, suffer, and resurrect to eternal life. Either all is God's Great Project, or we may rightly wonder whether anything is God's Great Project. One wonders if we humans will be the last to accept this.
But for me the sweetest contact with God has no form. I close my eyes, look within, and enter a deep soft silence. The infinity of God's creation embraces me.
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