Denis Noble Quotes

[L]ike the Bellman in The Hunting of the Snark... 'what I tell you three times is true'. I have deliberately included a certain amount of repetition... usually by expressing the same concept from a different angle or in a different context.

[T]here is no one-to-one correspondence between genes and biological functions. Strictly... to speak of a 'gene for x' is always incorrect.

[T]he book begins with the fundamentals of physics and cosmology, yet ends with the fundamentals of biology and the limits to our knowledge. ...[T]here are many links between these various threads.

[T]here is no privileged level of causation, which is the central statement of the theory of Biological Relativity.

[S]ome very influential twentieth-century biologists presented a simplistic gene-centered view...

In the Anglo-Saxon world the debate has been dominated by arguments between the gene-centered views of people like Richard Dawkins... and the multi-level selection views of people like Stephen Jay Gould... The gene-centered view... is a metaphorical polemic: the invention of a colourful metaphor to interpret scientific discovery. It is not a straightforward empirical scientific hypothesis.

DNA does nothing outside the context of a cell containing these protein systems, just as a CD can do nothing without a CD reader. So we have the paradox that proteins are required for the machinery to read the code to produce the proteins.

[T]he music of life has no conductor.

[L]iving organisms are open systems. ...All the molecules, organs and systems dance to the tune of the organism and its social context. Those molecules include the sequences of DNA we now call s.

[T]here are no genes 'for' anything. ...Genes are used. They are not active causes.

[W]hat does DNA do? As biological molecules go, not very much.

[T]he general principle of relativity informs the whole book.

[I]f genes dance, they have been doing so for... most of the period of the Earth's existence... about 4.5 billion years.

A living cell is a continuous action-packed drama. ...Complex chains of molecular interaction happen again and again. We call them 'pathways'... And proteins form the backbone of all these biochemical pathways.

[W]e are far from certain what a gene is... many of the confusions and misrepresentations of biology arise from mixing up different definitions of genes and genetics.