Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
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J Darnell, H Lodish and D Baltimore (1986) Molecular Cell Biology. Scientific American Books
….A sense of genetic unity, kinship, and deep history are among the values that bond us to the living environment. They are survival mechanisms for ourselves and
our species. To conserve
biological diversity is an investment in immortality. Edmund O Wilson (2002) The future of life. Little, Brown, London.
Personal uniqueness itself says something useful: molecular biology has made individuals of us all. Genetics disproves Plato’s myth of the absolute, that there exists one ideal form of human being from which there are rare deviations such as those who have an inborn disease.
S Jones (1993) The Language of the Genes. HarperCollins, London.
..When we contrast the physical with the social laws under which man finds himself here below, we must grant that Physiology and Social Sciences are in collision. Man is both a physical and a social being; yet he cannot at once pursue to the full his physical and his social end, his physical duties (if I may so speak) and his social duties, but is forced to sacrifice in part one or the other. If we were wild enough to fancy that there were two creators, one of whom was the author of our animal frames, the other of society, then indeed we might understand how it comes to pass that labour of mind and body, the useful arts, the duties of a statesman, government, and the like, which are required by the social system, are so destructive of health, enjoyment, and life.
J H Newman. The Idea of a Liberal Education. Ed: H Tristram (1952) Harrap, London.
We are now in a position to compare the gradual increase through evolutionary time of both the amount of information contained in the genetic material and the amount of information contained in the brain of organisms. The two curves cross at a time corresponding to a few hundred million years ago and at an information content corresponding to a few billion bits. Somewhere in the steaming jungles of the Carboniferous Period there emerged an organism that for the first time in the history of the world had more information in its brains than in its genes.
Carl Sagan ((1977) The Dragons of Eden. Hodder and Stoughton, London.
He began to wonder whether we could ever make psychology so absolute a science that each little spring of science would be revealed to us. As it was, we always misunderstood ourselves, and rarely understood others. Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely a name men gave to their mistakes.
Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray In: Stories. Collins, London
