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I also suspect that many workers in this field [molecular biology] and related fields have been strongly motivated by the desire, rarely actually expressed, to refute vitalism.

Francis Crick

It is not easy to convey, unless one has experienced it, the dramatic feeling of sudden enlightenment that floods the mind when the right idea finally clinches into place.
FRANCIS CRICK

Drama Easy Enlightenment Experience Feeling Place
There is no form of prose more difficult to understand and more tedious to read than the average scientific paper.
FRANCIS CRICK

Average Difficult Paper Reading Science Understand
We are sometimes asked what the result would be if we put four +’s in one gene. To answer this my colleagues have recently put together not merely four but six +’s.
FRANCIS CRICK

Experiment Myself Result Science Team Work
There is no scientific study more vital to man than the study of his own brain. Our entire view of the universe depends on it.
FRANCIS CRICK

Brain Man Ourselves Science Study Universe
If revealed religions have revealed anything it is that they are usually wrong.
FRANCIS CRICK

Religion Reveal Wrong
Free will is located in or near the anterior cingulate sulcus.
FRANCIS CRICK

Freedom Location
You can do reverse engineering, but you can’t do reverse hacking.
FRANCIS CRICK

Professional Technology Yourself
The dangerous man is the one who has only one idea, because then he’ll fight and die for it.
FRANCIS CRICK

Dangerous Death Fight Himself Ideas Thinking
It now seems very likely that many of the 64 triplets, possibly most of them, may code one amino acid or another, and that in general several distinct triplets may code one amino acid.
FRANCIS CRICK

Biology Born Possible Reproduction Science
It is notoriously difficult to define the word living.
FRANCIS CRICK

Difficult Live World
The ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is in fact to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry.
FRANCIS CRICK

Biology Chemistry Explanation Fact Modern Movement
It would appear that the number of nonsense triplets is rather low, since we only occasionally come across them. However this conclusion is less secure than our other deductions about the general nature of the genetic code.
FRANCIS CRICK

Appearance Nature Ourselves Security
Exact knowledge is the enemy of vitalism.
FRANCIS CRICK

Enemy Knowledge One Liner
Again the message to experimentalists is: Be sensible but don’t be impressed too much by negative arguments. If at all possible, try it and see what turns up. Theorists almost always dislike this sort of approach.
FRANCIS CRICK

Argument Experiment Impression Negative Possible
If, for example, all the codons are triplets, then in addition to the correct reading of the message, there are two incorrect readings which we shall obtain if we do not start the grouping into sets of three at the right place.
FRANCIS CRICK

Correction Group Place Reading Right Start
A knowledge of the true age of the Earth and of the fossil record makes it impossible for any balanced intellect to believe in the literal truth of every part of the Bible in the way that fundamentalists do.
FRANCIS CRICK

Age Balance Earth Fundamental Impossible Intellectual Knowledge Record True

I also suspect that many workers in this field [molecular biology] and related fields have been strongly motivated by the desire, rarely actually expressed, to refute vitalism.

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I also suspect that many workers in this field [molecular biology] and related fields have been strongly motivated by the desire, rarely actually expressed, to refute vitalism.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Francis Crick Quotes