Sean B. Carroll > Quotes

“I would like to raise them as I was. I would like for them to learn naturally, effortlessly, almost without knowing it, that the love of beautiful things, critical thinking, and intellectual honesty are the three essential virtues. This way, they will like things for themselves, will judge for themselves. This way, they will be real men, as there used to be, they won’t be fooled by intellectual snobs and political scoundrels. They will know how to live above and outside of a century which is only getting deeper into infamy, lies, and stupidity. I love you my dears because I know that it is because of you that I possess some of these virtues that I wish for them to have.”
― Sean B. Carroll, Brave Genius: A Scientist, a Philosopher, and Their Daring Adventures from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize

“During the war, Monod had joined the Communist Party as a matter of expediency, so that he could join the FTP. But he developed reservations about the Communists’ intolerance of other political views and quietly quit the Party after the war, at a time when many fellow citizens were joining. That might have been the end of Monod’s involvement with Communism, were it not for bizarre developments in the sphere of Soviet science. In the summer of 1948, Trofim Denisovich Lysenko, Joseph Stalin’s anointed czar of Soviet agriculture, launched a broad attack on the science of genetics. Lysenko believed that virtually any modification could be made rapidly and permanently to any plant or animal and passed on to its offspring. His belief, while consistent with Soviet doctrine that nature and man could be shaped in any way and were unconstrained by history or heredity, flew in the face of the principles of genetics that had been established over the previous fifty years. Nevertheless, Lysenko demanded that classical genetics, and its supporters, be purged from Soviet biology. Lysenko’s outrageous statements were heralded in Communist-run newspapers in France. Monod responded with a devastating critique that ran on the front page of Combat. Monod exposed Lysenko’s stance on genetics as antiscientific dogma and decried Lysenko’s power as a demonstration of “ideological terrorism” in the Soviet Union. The public scrutiny damaged the credibility of Soviet socialism in France. The episode thrust Monod into the public eye and made him resolve to “make his life’s goal a crusade against antiscientific, religious metaphysics, whether it be from Church or State.”
― Sean B. Carroll, Brave Genius: A Scientist, a Philosopher, and Their Daring Adventures from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize

“Evolution of form is very much a matter of teaching very old genes new tricks!”
― Sean B. Carroll, Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo

“Let us listen to the lesson of Martin Luther King, who wrote:
"The movement does not seek to liberate blacks at the price of the humiliation of the whites. It wants to liberate American society and to help all people to liberate themselves.”
― Sean B. Carroll, Brave Genius: A Scientist, a Philosopher, and Their Daring Adventures from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize

“Behe named this inability to explain the creation of new taxa through genetics "Darwin's black box". When the box is opened, he expects evidence of the Deity to be found. However, inside Darwin's black box resides merely another type of genetics--developmental genetics”
― Sean B. Carroll, Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo

“What a tragic irony, that the more we understand of biology, the less we have of it to learn from and enjoy. What will be the legacy of this new century - to cherish and to protect Nature or to see butterflies and zebras and much more vanish into legend like the thylacine, moa and dodo?”
― Sean B. Carroll, Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo

“But in just the past hundred years or so, we have turned the tables and taken control of biology. Smallpox, a virus that killed as many as 300 million people in the first part of the twentieth century (far more than in all wars combined) has not merely been tamed but has been eradicated from the planet.”
― Sean B. Carroll, The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters - With a new Q&A with the author

“As delightful as the Just So explanations are of how spots, stripes, humps and horns came to be, biology can now tell us stories about butterflies, zebras and leopards that I contend are every bit as enchanting as Kipling's fairy tales. What's more, they offer some simple, elegant truths that deepen our understanding of all animal forms, including ourselves.”
― Sean B. Carroll, Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo

“Castles in the air—they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build too. —HENRIK IBSEN (1828–1906), The Master Builder”
― Sean B. Carroll, Brave Genius: A Scientist, a Philosopher, and Their Daring Adventures from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize

“So, for our own sake, let’s know all the rules, not just those that pertain to our bodies. Only through wider understanding and application of these ecological rules will we control and have a chance to reverse the side effects we are causing across the globe.”
― Sean B Carroll, The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters

“Fifty years ago, when the human population was about 3 billion, we were using about 70 percent of the Earth’s annual capacity each year. That broke 100 percent by 1980 and stands at about 150 percent now, meaning that we need one and one-half Earths to regenerate what we use in a year. As the authors of this now annual study note, we have a total of just one Earth available.”
― Sean B Carroll, The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters

“نرى في تعابير وجوه الشمبانزي والسعالي والغوريلات وفي سلوكها وحركات أياديها البارعة الجميلة انعكاسات أنفسنا. لقد وَلَّدَت دومًا هذه الانعكاسات أسئلةً استفزازية، مزعجة للبعض، حول الفجوة بين الإنسان والبهيمة. ما الذي يخطر بخلد النسانين عندما ترى زائريها ثنائيي القَدم عديمي الشعر؟ ما الكامن خلف تحديقة الغوريلا الطويلة؟ ما هي ضربة الحظ الجينية والبيئية التي وضعَتنا خارج هذه الأقفاص محدِّقين داخلها وليس العكس؟”
― Sean B. Carroll, Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo

“ALL GREAT DEEDS AND ALL GREAT
THOUGHTS HAVE A RIDICULOUS BEGINNING. —ALBERT CAMUS,
THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS”
― Sean B. Carroll, Brave Genius: A Scientist, a Philosopher, and Their Daring Adventures from the French Resistance to the Nobel Prize

“California State University Professor Mike Orkin points out that if a person drives ten miles to buy a ticket, he or she is about sixteen times more likely to get killed in a car crash on the way than to win the jackpot. Wait a minute, you say; that may be for one ticket, but they’re buying a lot of tickets—surely, that improves the odds. It does, but Orkin notes that a person who buys fifty tickets a week will win the jackpot on average about once every 30,000 years.”
― Sean B. Carroll, The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution

“Algal populations dropped, fish populations grew. The recovery of Lake Erie was so dramatic that in 1986, Dr. Seuss even agreed to remove its mention from later editions of The Lorax. But Lake Erie is again getting glumped. The immediate culprit is a tiny, single-celled, blue-green algae called Microcystis that forms thick mats that can cover many miles of lake surface.”
― Sean B Carroll, The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters

“تتلخص العلاقة بين الدنا والرنا والبروتين على النحو التالي: الدنا هو قالب مخصص لصناعة الرنا، والرنا هو قالب لصناعة البروتين. ولذلك فإن الشفرات الوراثية المخزَّنة في الدنا تُفك -على مرحلتين- لإنتاج البروتين، الذي يقوم بجميع الأعمال في الخلية والجسم. والكروموسوم هو جزيء طويل جدا من الدنا، أما الجين فيشغل حيزًا محدَّدًا من هذا الجزيء الطويل.”
― Sean B. Carroll, Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo

“it was not that plants treated with insecticides had as many eggs, nymphs, and insects on them as untreated plants—they had more! Indeed, insecticide treatment caused up to an 800-fold increase in insect density. This meant that insecticides weren’t preventing hopperburn, they were largely responsible for causing it. How the hell could that happen?”
― Sean B Carroll, The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters

“Now, you might think to increase those numbers, you might add thousands of fish. Think again. Fish live a Darwinian existence. A female walleye can lay 50,000 eggs in a single night, but in a stable population, all but two will perish before adulthood from predation, starvation, and other perils.”
― Sean B Carroll, The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters

“أكاد أخمن أنني سأحتاج إلى ألف صفحة لكتابة المنطق الكامل لصناعة ذبابة.”
― Sean B. Carroll, Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo

“قليلة هي القوانين في علم الأحياء، وتلك التي تَجرَّأَ العلماءُ على تسطيرها كُسرت غالبًا من قِبَل بعض الكائنات الحية.”
― Sean B. Carroll, Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo

“Evo Devo has not just provided a critical missing piece of the Modern Synthesis - embryology - and integrated it with molecular genetics and traditional elements such as paleontology. The wholly unexpected nature of some of its key discoveries and the unprecedented quality and depth of evidence it has provided toward settling previously unresolved questions bestow it with a revolutionary character.”
― Sean B. Carroll, Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo

“ندرك الآن أن الجينات التي رأيناها في أغلب جينومات الحيوان تشغل جزءًا صغيرًا من الدنا، فالقسم الأكبر من الدنا لدينا يتكون من متواليات لا تنتمي إلى الشفرة البسيطة لأي جين، كما أن وظيفتها لا يمكن أن تُفك بسهولة عبر قراءة هذه المتواليات. هذه هي "المادة المظلمة" في الجينوم. وتمامًا مثلما تتحكم المادة المظلمة بسلوك الأجسام المرئية في الكون، تتحكم المادة المظلمة في الدنا لدينا بالمكان والزمان الذي تستخدم فيه الجينات في عملية النمو.”
― Sean B. Carroll, Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo

“We have taken control of biology, but not of ourselves.”
― Sean B Carroll, The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters

“While dismembering it, perhaps you might have noted the modular design and admired the great variety of body appendages (figure 1.9). There are several aspects to lobster construction that reflect the general themes of modularity and serial homology. First, the body is organized into a head (with the eyes and mouthparts), a thorax (with walking legs), and a long tail (yum!). Second, different sections of the body possess numbers of specific appendages (antennae, claws, walking legs, swimmerets). And third, each jointed appendage is itself segmented, and different kinds of appendages have different numbers of segments overall (compare a claw with a walking leg). If you were feeling adventuresome and dissected an insect or a crab, you’d see some general similarities in body organization, segmentation, and appendages but, again, differences in the number and kind of serially homologous structures. FIG. 1.9 The diversity of the serially repeated appendages of a lobster. The antennae, claws, walking legs, swimmerets, and tail structures are all modifications of a common limb design. DRAWING BY”
― Sean B. Carroll, Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo

“الحجم الكُلي للدماغ ليس بالضرورة مؤشرًا على قدرة أكبر، غير أن المؤشر الأهم هو الزيادة النسبية في حجم الدماغ مقارنةً بكتلة الجسم. إن الدماغ عضو مكلف جدا بسبب الطاقة التي يستهلكها، وهي حوالي 25% من طاقة الإنسان البالغ و60% من طاقة الرضيع.”
― Sean B. Carroll, Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo

“يجب أن نؤكد دائمًا على أن التطور أكثر من مجرد موضوع في علم الأحياء. إنه أساس المبحث بأكمله. فعلم الأحياء من دون التطور مثل الفيزياء من دون الجاذبية. ينبغي أن تكون الرؤية التطورية للحياة متطلَّبًا أساسيًّا للدرجة الجامعية، كمبادئ علم النفس أو الحضارة الغربية.”
― Sean B. Carroll, Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo

“قليلة هي تلك الظواهر الطبيعية التي تخلب ألبابنا وتسمِّرنا مشدوهين بالقدر ذاته الذي تفعله تحولات خلية واحدة إلى جنين ثم إلى كائن بالغ مكتمل الشكل.”
― Sean B. Carroll, Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo

“SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS”
― Sean B Carroll, The Serengeti Rules: The Quest to Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters

“I believe that the teaching of evolution and science is best served by promoting the scientific method and scientific knowledge and not by attacking religious views. The latter is a futile, counterproductive batte. However, I also believe, as many denominations have also concluded, that religion is better served by promoting and evolving its respective teachings and theologies, and not by attacking science, which is definitely a losing strategy”
― Sean B. Carroll, Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo

“يشارك الموتُ أيضًا في نحت جمال الأطراف. فانفصال الأصابع في الفئران والدجاج والبشر يحدث بسبب موت الأنسجة بين الأصابع في الطرف النامي. وبأسلوب يذكِّرنا بقوالب تقطيع البسكويت، تزال الأنسجة بين الأصابع وتبقى الأصابع. والمثير للاهتمام أنه يوجد في البط جين إضافي ينشط في المنطقة بين الأصابع ويمنع الإشارة المحفِّزة للموت، وهذا ما يترك الوَتَرَ بين الأصابع في أقدام البط سليمًا.”
― Sean B. Carroll, Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo