"Some people seem to think that behavior is behavior only when it is a mystery, Hall continued. But once any piece of behavior is understood at the molecular level, it all comes down to metabolism, whether we are talking about the way a weaver ant folds a leaf, a weaverbird weaves a hanging nest, a human being learns and speaks Swahili, or a fly rises with the dawn and settles down at dusk. “Benzer was once subjected, in my earshot,” Hall said, “to some dumb question like ‘Is that the mind or the brain?’ But every aspect of mind and brain is ultimately metabolism! What do we think? Some kind of electric aura hovers around our heads?” We still seem to want something outside the mechanism, Hall said, some deus ex machina to save us from the clockwork that we have been exploring above and inside our heads for the last several centuries. It is now time for us to accept that behavior is as much a part of the material world as the stars above us and the atoms inside us. All behavior turns on molecular clockwork, Hall said, yet all behavior is fascinating."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Pulitzer Prize winnersAcademics from the United StatesNon-fiction authors from the United StatesJews from the United StatesScience authors
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Chapter 12, “Cloning an Instinct” (pp. 161-162)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jonathan_Weiner
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Jonathan Weiner
22 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Jonathan Weiner →
Related Quotes
"Whether or not we choose to watch, evolution is shaping us all."
"Evolution discloses a meaning in death, although the meaning is like some of the berries that Darwin tasted in the Ga…"
"For all species, including our own, the true figure of life is a perching bird, a passerine, alert and nervous in eve…"
"Geneticists will tell you that. Evolution is always happening. What they mean is that the genes of this generation ar…"
"Why are there so many kinds of animals? Adaptive radiations like Darwin’s finches are the essence of the answer."
"We are doing what the dinosaurs did before us, only faster. We bring strangers together to make strange bedfellows, a…"
"“Our only real competition for domination of the planet remains the viruses,” the microbiologist Joshua Lederberg onc…"
"What we don’t understand on either front is that the more pressure we put on our pests, the more we cause them to evo…"
"All times seem special to those who live in them."
"Taken together, these new studies suggest that Darwin did not know the strength of his own theory. He vastly underest…"