TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “I believe that this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index M > Category: Multicellular

Multicellular Quotes (4 quotes)

As soon as we touch the complex processes that go on in a living thing, be it plant or animal, we are at once forced to use the methods of this science [chemistry]. No longer will the microscope, the kymograph, the scalpel avail for the complete solution of the problem. For the further analysis of these phenomena which are in flux and flow, the investigator must associate himself with those who have labored in fields where molecules and atoms, rather than multicellular tissues or even unicellular organisms, are the units of study.
'Experimental and Chemical Studies of the Blood with an Appeal for More Extended Chemical Training for the Biological and Medical Investigator', Science (6 Aug 1915), 42, 176.
Science quotes on:  |  Analysis (244)  |  Animal (651)  |  Associate (25)  |  Atom (381)  |  Biochemistry (50)  |  Biology (232)  |  Cell (146)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Complete (209)  |  Complex (202)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Field (378)  |  Flow (89)  |  Flux (21)  |  Himself (461)  |  Investigator (71)  |  Labor (200)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  Method (531)  |  Microscope (85)  |  Molecule (185)  |  Must (1525)  |  Organism (231)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Plant (320)  |  Problem (731)  |  Process (439)  |  Scalpel (4)  |  Solution (282)  |  Soon (187)  |  Study (701)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Tissue (51)  |  Touch (146)  |  Use (771)  |  Will (2350)

Leaving aside genetic surgery applied humans, I foresee that the coming century will place in our hands two other forms of biological technology which are less dangerous but still revolutionary enough to transform the conditions of our existence. I count these new technologies as powerful allies in the attack on Bernal's three enemies. I give them the names “biological engineering” and “self-reproducing machinery.” Biological engineering means the artificial synthesis of living organisms designed to fulfil human purposes. Self-reproducing machinery means the imitation of the function and reproduction of a living organism with non-living materials, a computer-program imitating the function of DNA and a miniature factory imitating the functions of protein molecules. After we have attained a complete understanding of the principles of organization and development of a simple multicellular organism, both of these avenues of technological exploitation should be open to us.
From 3rd J.D. Bernal Lecture, Birkbeck College London (16 May 1972), The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1972), 6. Collected in The Scientist as Rebel (2006), 292. (The World, the Flesh & the Devil: An Enquiry into the Future of the Three Enemies of the Rational Soul is the title of a book by J. D Bernal, a scientist who pioneered X-ray crystallography.)
Science quotes on:  |  Applied (176)  |  Attack (86)  |  Attain (126)  |  Avenue (14)  |  Bioengineering (5)  |  Biological (137)  |  Both (496)  |  Century (319)  |  Coming (114)  |  Complete (209)  |  Computer (131)  |  Condition (362)  |  Count (107)  |  Dangerous (108)  |  Design (203)  |  Development (441)  |  DNA (81)  |  Engineering (188)  |  Enough (341)  |  Existence (481)  |  Exploitation (14)  |  Factory (20)  |  Foresee (22)  |  Form (976)  |  Function (235)  |  Genetic (110)  |  Human (1512)  |  Living (492)  |  Machinery (59)  |  Material (366)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Miniature (7)  |  Molecule (185)  |  Name (359)  |  New (1273)  |  Open (277)  |  Organism (231)  |  Organization (120)  |  Other (2233)  |  Powerful (145)  |  Principle (530)  |  Protein (56)  |  Purpose (336)  |  Reproduction (74)  |  Revolutionary (31)  |  Self (268)  |  Simple (426)  |  Still (614)  |  Surgery (54)  |  Synthesis (58)  |  Technological (62)  |  Technology (281)  |  Transform (74)  |  Two (936)  |  Understanding (527)  |  Will (2350)

Life arose as a living molecule or protogene, the progression from this stage to that of the ameba is at least as great as from ameba to man. All the essential problems of living organisms are already solved in the one-celled (or, as many now prefer to say, noncellular) protozoan and these are only elaborated in man or the other multicellular animals. The step from nonlife to life may not have been so complex, after all, and that from cell to multicellular organism is readily comprehensible. The change from protogene to protozoan was probably the most complex that has occurred in evolution, and it may well have taken as long as the change from protozoan to man.
The Meaning of Evolution: A Study of the History of Life and of its Significance for Man (1949), 16
Science quotes on:  |  Already (226)  |  Amoeba (21)  |  Animal (651)  |  Cell (146)  |  Change (639)  |  Complex (202)  |  Complexity (121)  |  Comprehension (69)  |  Elaborated (7)  |  Elaboration (11)  |  Essential (210)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Great (1610)  |  Life (1870)  |  Living (492)  |  Long (778)  |  Man (2252)  |  Molecule (185)  |  Most (1728)  |  Nonlife (2)  |  Occurrence (53)  |  Organism (231)  |  Other (2233)  |  Problem (731)  |  Progression (23)  |  Protozoan (3)  |  Say (989)  |  Solution (282)  |  Stage (152)  |  Step (234)

Life spirals laboriously upward to higher and even higher levels, paying for every step.
As quoted in Mark Davidson, Uncommon Sense: The Life and Thought of Ludwig Von Bertalanffy (1901-1972), Father of General Systems Theory (1983), 220. Robert G.B. Reid follow this with an explanatory comment—Death was the price of the multicellular condition; pain the price of nervous integration; anxiety the price of consciousness—in Evolutionary Theory: The Unfinished Synthesis (1985), 236. Reid’s comment was not made in quotation marks. However, Bertanffy’s actually quote was concatenated with Reid's comment and attributed only to Bertanffy, in Michael Dowd, Thank God for Evolution: How the Marriage of Science and Religion (2008), 93, and subsequently requoted thusly by later authors.
Science quotes on:  |  Anxiety (30)  |  Condition (362)  |  Consciousness (132)  |  Death (406)  |  Higher Level (3)  |  Integration (21)  |  Laborious (17)  |  Life (1870)  |  Nervous (7)  |  Pain (144)  |  Pay (45)  |  Price (57)  |  Spiral (19)  |  Step (234)  |  Upward (44)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.