The main character of any living system is openness.
Ilya PrigogineRead
The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero.
Interpretation
Life is not a product of random chance; it arises from complex and precise processes.
This quote highlights the improbability of life arising purely by accident. It suggests that the intricate and harmonious reactions found in living organisms are too complex to have resulted from random occurrences, indicating a deeper order or design behind the origin of life.
In practice
During a lecture on the origins of life, to emphasize that life is not just a random occurrence.
LSD is a catalyst or amplifier of mental processes. If properly used it could become something like the microscope or telescope of psychiatry.
Water is commonly regarded as the 'solvent of life,' since our bodies are 70% water. All other vertebrates, invertebrates, microbes, and plants are also primarily water. The organization of water within biological compartments is fundamental to life, and the aquaporins serve as the plumbing systems for cells.
Many people have the impression that there is significant scientific disagreement about global climate change. It's time to lay that misapprehension to rest. There is a scientific consensus on the fact that Earth's climate is heating up and human activities are part of the reason. We need to stop repeating nonsense about the uncertainty of global warming and start talking seriously about the right approach to address it.
Gravity is not a version of the truth. It is the truth. Anyone who doubts it is invited to jump out a tenth-storey window.
For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
But I don't see myself as a woman in science. I see myself as a scientist.
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