Amara Bharathy

“Although gravitation is an important force in the immediate environment of large objects like trees and human beings, it is not felt by bacteria in a liquid medium. For them, because of their size, Brownian motion is a dominant environmental factor, while we are not buffeted to and fro by bombarding molecules. But that size disparity is a consequence of genetic differences between life-forms, so just as environment is a factor in the development of an organism, so genes are a factor in the construction of the environment.”
― Richard C. Lewontin, Biology Under the Influence: Dialectical Essays on Ecology, Agriculture, and Health

“On the one hand, science is the generic development of human knowledge over the millennia, but on the other it is the increasingly commodified specific product of a capitalist knowledge industry.”
― Richard C. Lewontin, Biology Under the Influence: Dialectical Essays on Ecology, Agriculture, and Health

“Whole heap o’ folks, ’cludin’ me till I got grown, ain’t knowed at firs’ weren’t nobody in dis country but Indians, fishin’ an’ huntin’ an’ fightin’ one ’nother, jes’ mindin’ dey own business. Den here come l’il ol’ boat o’ white folks a-wavin’ an’ grinnin’. ‘Hey, y’all red mens! How ’bout let us come catch a bite an’ a nap ’mongst y’all an’ le’s be friends!’ Huh! I betcha nowdays dem Indians wish dey’s made dat boat look like a porcupine wid dey arrows!”
― Alex Haley, Roots: The Saga of an American Family

“For Darwinian biology the organism is the nexus of the internal and external forces. It is only through natural selection of internally produced variations, which happen to match by chance the externally generated environmental demands, that what is outside and what is inside confront each other.”
― Richard C. Lewontin, Biology Under the Influence: Dialectical Essays on Ecology, Agriculture, and Health