Top 15 Denis Noble Quotes

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

[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.

[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.

[E]ven in the most mathematical areas of science, and biology is rapidly becoming one of those, it is usually possible to explain the concepts in common language, once they have been distilled down from the abstract world of equations.

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

[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.

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

[T]here is no complete programme in our DNA. Programmes... are distributed across scales in the organism.

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

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

If you already know a lot of science, you may need to relearn what you thought you knew. Because... the twentieth-century biology went up the wrong street in the interpretation and presentation of its many impressive discoveries.

[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.

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.

[T]he book of life is life itself. It cannot be reduced to just one of its databases. ...[T]he genome is only one of its databases. Function... depends also on... properties... not specified by genes.

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