Biology

"A common stone meets with more ready patronage than a man of genius. It may be said to have its social home and proper place of refuge in some Society, expressly established for its discovery, polishing, classification, preservation, &c., and all its numerous claims to notice and learned consideration, are admitted instantly; but Genius is "sui generis," and a homeless outcast by general consent, during the full term of its natural life. Driven through the inhospitable desert of mortality, or tossed upon its bleak and stormy seas, the man of genius finds at length a haven in posterity; and there, after due course of precedence has fulfilled its progressive order, his claim also is gradually admitted: the tenacious world being quite sure that he is dead "as any stone.""

"Different types of molecules are discussed in relation to their fitness for providing the basis for a molecular phylogeny. Best fit are the "semantides", i.e. the different types of macromolecules that carry the genetic information or a very extensive translation thereof. The fact that more than one coding triplet may code for a given amino acid residue in a polypeptide leads to the notion of "isosemantic substitutions" in genic and messenger polynucleotides. Such substitutions lead to differences in nucleotide sequence that are not expressed by differences in amino acid sequence. Some possible consequences of isosemanticism are discussed"

"Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other."

"Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires."

"Make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof."

"Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit."

"All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else."

"τὸ γὰρ φρόνημα τῆς σαρκὸς θάνατος, τὸ δὲ φρόνημα τοῦ πνεύματος ζωὴ καὶ εἰρήνη."

"The natural gravitation of the body pulls down with it those of little mind, strangling and overwhelming them with the multitude of the fleshly elements. Blessed are they to whom it is given to resist with superior strength the weight that would pull them down, taught by the guiding lines of right instruction to leap upward from earth and earth-bound things into the ether and the revolving heavens."

"How can you desire flesh, which by nature is devoid of consciousness? The mind you desire cannot be seen or touched; and that which can be is not conscious. Why do you embrace it in vain?"

"There are bitter tears in human flesh."

"Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. ... Following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. ... They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all."

"What you have eaten, what you have eaten -- it was not bread that you have eaten, it was your flesh that you have eaten!"

"When speaking of the spiritual nature or the soul, we are referring to that which is “inner” or “new.” When speaking of the bodily nature, or that which is flesh and blood, we are referring to that which is called “sensual,” “outward,” or “old.” Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:16: “Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.”"

"For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world."

"When you see a person squirming in the clutches of the Law, say to him: “Brother, get things straight. You let the Law talk to your conscience. Make it talk to your flesh."

"From my youth upwards My Spirit walked not with the souls of men, Nor looked upon the earth with human eyes; The thirst of their ambition was not mine, The aim of their existence was not mine; My joys—my griefs—my passions—and my powers, Made me a stranger; though I wore the form, I had no sympathy with breathing flesh."

"That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the spirit is spirit."

"All those men and women … who in their body serve the world through the desires of the flesh, the concerns of the world and the cares of this life: They are held captive by the devil, whose children they are, and whose works they do."

"When the spirit is lukewarm, and gradually growing cold as it moves from grace, flesh and blood inevitably seek their own interests. When the soul finds no delight, what is left except for the flesh to look for some? Then the base instinct covers itself with the excuse of necessity, and the mind of the flesh forms the conscience."

"But what is meant by “flesh” (σάρξ)? It is not what is corporal or sensual but rather the whole sphere of what is visible, available, disposable, and measurable, and as such the sphere of what is transient. This sphere becomes a power over us insofar as we make it the foundation of our lives by living “according to it,” that is, by succumbing to the temptation to live out of what is visible and disposable instead of out of what is invisible and nondisposable—regardless of whether we give ourselves to the alluring possibilities of such a life imprudently and with desire or whether we lead our lives reflectively and with calculation on the basis of our own accomplishments, “the works of the law.” “Flesh” embraces not only material things but also all of our creating and accomplishing insofar as it is concerned with achieving something demonstrable such as fulfilling the demands of the law (Gal. 3:3); to “flesh” belongs every achieved quality and every advantage that we can have within the sphere of what can be seen and disposed of (Phil. 3:4ff.)."

"You were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”"

"FLESH, n. The Second Person of the secular Trinity."

"Any kind of material form whatever, whether past, future, or present, internal or external, gross or subtle, inferior or superior, far or near, all material form should be seen as it actually is with proper wisdom thus: “This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.”"

"In after ages, when humanity will have regained robust health, when peace will have been once more established between body and soul, and they again live together in primal harmony, it will scarcely be possible for men to comprehend the unnatural enmity Christianity has set between them. Happier and fairer generations, born of free unions, and nurtured in a religion of joy, will smile with pity at their poor ancestors, who passed their lives in melancholy abstinence from all the enjoyments of this beautiful world, and who mortified the warm, rosy-hued flesh till they became mere pale cold ghosts."

"Rahula, whatever internally, belonging to oneself, is solid, solidified, and clung-to, that is, head-hairs, body-hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, bone-marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, large intestines, small intestines, contents of the stomach, feces, or whatever else internally, belonging to oneself, is solid, solidified, and clung-to: this is called the internal earth element. Now both the internal earth element and the external earth element are simply earth element. And that should be seen as it actually is with proper wisdom thus: “This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.” When one sees it thus as it actually is with proper wisdom, one becomes disenchanted with the earth element and makes the mind dispassionate towards the earth element."

"Love in animals, has not for its only object animals of the same species, but extends itself farther, and comprehends almost every sensible and thinking being. A dog naturally loves a man above his own species, and very commonly meets with a return of affection."

"The boundaries of the species, whereby men sort them, are made by men."

"We are chosen “according to the foreknowledge of God the Father,-through sanctification of the Spirit;” and this sanctification, it is a comfort to know, is a sanctification we may safely confide in; because it is widely different from the self-sanctification, the fleshly holiness, or wilful separation, to which “he that runneth,” and “he that willeth,” addicts himself, in order that the idol self may be magnified and worshipped."

"It would be quite false to say that competition is the only relation that obtains between species. Mutual dependence is in general quite as important. Each kind exists within an ecosystem, and needs the others to keep the system going. Thus, grazing animals on the African plains co-exist because each specializes in eating some particular kind of plant, and needs the others to keep the whole pasture at a balanced level. They depend, too, on each other's specialized capacities to give warning of danger. … each also depends for survival on innumerable others, such as the insects which pollinate the plants, the fauna of their intestines and of course their predators. It is unthinkable that any species should be an island."

"Hayek’s writings on cultural evolution are some of his most controversial. Some of the criticisms that have been advanced are:1) that his analysis of the evolutionary process is too pessimistic, leaving little room for attempts to improve the institutional or constitutional setting; 2) that Hayek’s endorsement of group selection as the mechanism by which cultural institutions are selected is inconsistent with his methodological individualism; and 3) that group selection itself has been discredited among biologists on grounds that are germane to its applications in the social sciences."

"By the 1960s Hayek was seeing complex orders everywhere. The orders were created as the result of individual elements following simple rules, and the principles at work could be effectively described using an evolutionary (though not Darwinian) metaphor. In the late 1960s Hayek explicitly added the mechanism of group selection to his description of cultural evolution. In the 1970s Hayek published the three volumes of Law Legislation and Liberty, and rules, orders and cultural evolution were all prominently on display. This was equally true of his last book, The Fatal Conceit, though there were also some new ideas to be found there. That Hayek’s health began deteriorating as this book was put together raises some intriguing interpretive issues."

"Hayek’s thought did not emerge in a vacuum, and part of the goal here, particularly in the early chapters, is to trace the intellectual background of his work. The dominating idea in Hayek’s early life was Darwinian evolutionary theory, stemming from his father’s and grand father’s work in botany and biology. Hayek ended his career with an evolutionary account of the growth of civilization."

"My basic criticism of F. A. Hayek’s profound interpretation of modern history and his diagnoses for improvement is directed at his apparent belief or faith that social evolution will, in fact, insure the survival of efficient institutional forms. Hayek is so distrustful of man’s explicit attempts at reforming institutions that he accepts uncritically the evolutionary alternative. We may share much of Hayek’s skepticism about social and institutional reform, however, without elevating the evolutionary process to an ideal role. Reform may, indeed, be difficult, but this is no argument that its alternative is ideal."

"Indeed, in its endeavour to explain and predict particular events, which it does so successfully in the case of relatively simple phenomena (or where it can at least approximately isolate ‘closed systems’ that are relatively simple), science encounters the same barrier of factual ignorance when it comes to apply its theories to very complex phenomena. In some fields it has developed important theories which give us much insight into the general character of some phenomena, but will never produce predictions of particular events, or a full explanation—simply because we can never know all the particular facts which according to these theories we would have to know in order to arrive at such concrete conclusions. The best example of this is the Darwinian (or Neo-Darwinian) theory of the evolution of biological organisms. If it were possible to ascertain the particular facts of the past which operated on the selection of the particular forms that emerged, it would provide a complete explanation of the structure of the existing organisms; and similarly, if it were possible to ascertain all the particular facts which will operate on them during some future period, it ought to enable us to predict future development. But, of course, we will never be able to do either, because science has no means of ascertaining all the particular facts that it would have to possess to perform such a feat."

"The answer to this question, sketched in the first three chapters, is built upon the old insight, well known to economics, that our values and institutions are determined not simply by preceding causes but as part of a process of unconscious self-organisation of a structure or pattern. This is true not only of economics, but in a wide area, and is well known today in the biological sciences. This insight was only the first of a growing family of theories that account for the formation of complex structures in terms of processes transcending our capacity to observe all the several circumstances operating in the determination of their particular manifestations. When I began my work I felt that I was nearly alone in working on the evolutionary formation of such highly complex self-maintaining orders."

"Regarding social order, Fukuyama writes, "The systematic study of how order, and thus social capital, can emerge in spontaneous and decentralized fashion is one of the most important intellectual developments of the late twentieth century." He correctly attributes the modern origins of this argument to F.A. Hayek, whose pioneering contributions to cognitive science, the study of cultural evolution, and the dynamics of social change put him in the forefront of the most creative scholars of the 20th century. But Hayek's views about the "spontaneity" of social order remain controversial. In their extreme form, they imply that all deliberate efforts to manipulate social order — social engineering — are doomed to failure because the complex nature of our cultural heritage makes a complete understanding of the human condition impossible. Hayek was certainly correct that we have, at best, a very imperfect understanding of the human landscape, but "spontaneous" it is not. What distinguishes human evolution from the Darwinian model is the intentionality of the players. The mechanism of variation in evolutionary theory (mutation) is not informed by beliefs about eventual consequences. In contrast, human evolution is guided by the perceptions of the players; their choices (decisions) are made in the light of the theories the actors have, which provide expectations about outcomes."

"Competition is a procedure of discovery, a procedure involved in all evolution, that led man unwittingly to respond to novel situations; and through further competition, not through agreement, we gradually increase our efficiency."

"Hayek’s theory of evolutionary rationality shows how traditions and customs (those surrounding sexual relations, for example) might be reasonable solutions to complex social problems, even when, and especially when, no clear rational grounds can be provided to the individual for obeying them. These customs have been selected by the ‘‘invisible hand’’ of social reproduction, and societies that reject them will soon enter the condition of ‘‘maladaptation,’’ which is the normal prelude to extinction."

"Importantly, Hayek is keen to distance himself from the idea that by invoking the idea of cultural evolution he is drawing any strict analogy with the notion of natural selection in biology. […] Hayek, then, is clearly no believer in social Darwinism."

"Hayek was influenced by the biological metaphor of evolution (in contrast to Walras, who was inspired by notions in physics of “equilibrium”). Darwin had talked about the survival of the fittest, and Social Darwinism similarly contended that ruthless competition with the survival of the fittest firms would imply ever-increasing efficiency of the economy. Hayek simply took this as an article of faith, but the fact of the matter is that unguided evolutionary processes may, or may not, lead to economic efficiency. Unfortunately, natural selection does not necessarily choose the firms (or institutions) that are best for the long run. One of the main criticisms of financial markets is that they have become increasingly shortsighted. Some of the institutional changes (such as investors’ focus on quarterly returns) have made it more difficult for firms to take longer-run perspectives. In this crisis, some firms complained that they didn’t want to take on as much leverage as they did—they realized the risk—but if they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have survived. Their return on equity would have been low, market participants would have misinterpreted the low return as a result of lack of innovativeness and enterprise, and their stock price would have been beaten down. They felt that they had no choice but to follow the herd—with disastrous effects over the long run, both to their shareholders and to the economy."

"It is not birth, marriage or death, but gastrulation which is truly the most important time in your life."

"The evidence already discussed stresses the role played by the endoplasmic reticulum and the Golgi complex in the production and processing of secretory proteins. The stress put on secretion leads, however, to an apparent impasse. Since every eukaryotic cell possesses both an endoplasmic reticulum and a Golgi complex, it follows that all eukaryotic cells secrete proteins or that the organs of the secretory pathway have additional, perhaps more general and more important functions than secretion, which have been ignored or are still unknown."

"In summary, I have tried here to develop the view of retroviruses as one of a number of solutions to the problem of creating a virus. Each virus directs synthesis of two critical classes of proteins: proteins for replication and proteins for constructing the virus particle. By encoding the reverse transcriptase, retroviruses have evolved the ability to integrate themselves into the cell chromosome as a provirus. This is a very sheltered environment in which to live, only mutation interferes with the continual transmission of the virus to the progeny of an animal that is infected in its germ cells. In this context, the ability of some retroviruses to cause cancer is a gratuitous one. But it is today the most challenging and important attribute of these retroviruses and the one that will dominate future research efforts in this area."

"Use of restriction enzymes and recombinant DNA methods allowed resolution of a long standing and central issue in immunology, the genetic origin of antibody diversity. It turned out that an organism does not inherit even a single complete gene for antibody polypeptide chains. Rather, the genetic information is transmitted in germline as no more than several hundred gene segments."

"The evidence already discussed stresses the role played by the endoplasmic reticulum and the Golgi complex in the production and processing of secretory proteins. The stress put on secretion leads, however, to an apparent impasse. Since every eukaryotic cell possesses both an endoplasmic reticulum and a Golgi complex, it follows that all eukaryotic cells secrete proteins or that the organs of the secretory pathway have additional, perhaps more general and more important functions than secretion, which have been ignored or are still unknown."

"...we may equally well say that a stamen is a contracted petal, as that a petal is a stamen in a state of expansion; or that a sepal is a contracted stem leaf approaching a certain stage of refinement, as that a stem leaf is a sepal expanded by the influx of cruder saps."

"Much of our fascination with the data of evo-devo arises from the sheer novelty of discovery in biological domains that had been previously and totally inaccessible. These empirical gems also illustrate, even in these early days, the integrating power of scientific conclusions to translate a previous descriptive chaos into explanatory sensibility. As an example, consider the name given to the truly elegant theory of floral genesis, as developed by students of Arabidopsis, the "Drosophila" of angiosperm biology—the ABC Model (Coen and Meyerowitz, 1991; Weigel and Meyerowitz, 1994; Jurgens, 1997; Busch, Bomblies, and Weigel, 1999; Wagner, Sablowski, and Meyerowitz, 1999). In this elegantly simple model (see Fig. 10-12), based on genes with homeotic effects upon serially repeated structures arranged in systematic order (with repetition in concentric whorls rather than linearly along a body axis), A genes operating alone determine the form of the outermost whorl of leaf-like sepals; A plus B genes regulate petals in the next whorl within; B plus C genes mark the male stamens, while C genes working alone determine the most interior female carpels. Moreover, leafy, a "higher control" gene previously recognized as an initiator or suppressor of floral growth and placement in general (Weigel and Nilsson, 1995), apparently also regulates the more specific operation of the ABC series. (Busch et al., 1999, demonstrate that a protein produced by leafy bonds directly to a particular DNA segment of a C gene responsible for the generation of carpels.)"

"I knew the ribosome was going to be the focus of Nobel prizes. It stands at the crossroads of biology, between the gene and what comes out of the gene. But I had convinced myself I was not going to be a winner."

"The ABC model was popularized in a review in Nature published later in 1991 by the senior author and Enrico Coen, whose group had been making parallel new findings of similar homeotic mutants in snapdragon. [...] The ABC model is still widely used as a framework for understanding floral development today."