The Information (87 page)
♦
“THAT SOME OF US SHOULD VENTURE TO EMBARK”
: Erwin Schrödinger,
What Is Life?
, reprint ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 1.
♦
“SCHRÖDINGER’S BOOK BECAME A KIND OF
UNCLE TOM’S CABIN
”
: Gunther S. Stent, “That Was the Molecular Biology That Was,”
Science
160, no. 3826 (1968): 392.
♦
“WHEN IS A PIECE OF MATTER SAID TO BE ALIVE
?
”
: Erwin Schrödinger,
What Is Life?
, 69.
♦
“THE STABLE STATE OF AN ENZYME”
: Norbert Wiener,
Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine
, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1961), 58.
♦
“TO PUT IT LESS PARADOXICALLY”
: Erwin Schrödinger,
What Is Life?,
71.
♦
“A COMPLETE (DOUBLE) COPY OF THE CODE-SCRIPT”
: Ibid., 23.
♦
“IT SEEMS NEITHER ADEQUATE NOR POSSIBLE”
: Ibid., 28.
♦
“
WE BELIEVE A GENE—OR PERHAPS THE WHOLE CHROMOSOME FIBER
”
: Ibid., 61.
♦
“THE DIFFERENCE IN STRUCTURE”
: Ibid., 5 (my emphasis).
♦
“THE LIVING ORGANISM HEALS ITS OWN WOUNDS”
: Léon Brillouin, “Life, Thermodynamics, and Cybernetics,” 84.
♦
HE WROTE THIS IN 1950
: Léon Brillouin, “Maxwell’s Demon Cannot Operate: Information and Entropy,” in Harvey S. Leff and Andrew F. Rex, eds.,
Maxwell’s Demon 2
, 123.
♦
“MAXWELL’S DEMON DIED AT THE AGE OF 62”
: Peter T. Landsberg,
The Enigma of Time
(Bristol: Adam Hilger, 1982), 15.
♦
“WHAT LIES AT THE HEART OF EVERY LIVING THING”
: Richard Dawkins,
The Blind Watchmaker
(New York: Norton, 1986), 112.
♦
“THE BIOLOGIST MUST BE ALLOWED”
: W. D. Gunning, “Progression and Retrogression,”
The Popular Science Monthly
8 (December 1875): 189, n1.
♦
“THE MOST NAÏVE AND OLDEST CONCEPTION”
: Wilhelm Johannsen, “The Genotype Conception of Heredity,”
American Naturalist
45, no. 531 (1911): 130.
♦
IT MUST BE QUANTIZED
: “Discontinuity and constant differences between the ‘genes’ are the quotidian bread of Mendelism,”
American Naturalist
45, no. 531 (1911): 147.
♦
“THE MINIATURE CODE SHOULD PRECISELY CORRESPOND”
: Erwin Schrödinger,
What Is Life?
, reprint ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 62.
♦
SOME OF THE PHYSICISTS NOW TURNING TO BIOLOGY
: Henry Quastler, ed.,
Essays on the Use of Information Theory in Biology
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1953).
♦
“A LINEAR CODED TAPE OF INFORMATION”
: Sidney Dancoff to Henry Quastler, 31 July 1950, quoted in Lily E. Kay,
Who Wrote the Book of Life: A History of the Genetic Code
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000), 119.
♦
NUMBER OF BITS REPRESENTED BY A SINGLE BACTERIUM
: Henry Linschitz, “The Information Content of a Bacterial Cell,” in Henry Quastler, ed.,
Essays on the Use of Information Theory in Biology
, 252.
♦
“HYPOTHETICAL INSTRUCTIONS TO BUILD AN ORGANISM”
: Sidney Dancoff and Henry Quastler, “The Information Content and Error Rate of Living Things,” in Henry Quastler, ed.,
Essays on the Use of Information Theory in Biology
, 264.
♦
“THE ESSENTIAL COMPLEXITY OF A SINGLE CELL”
: Ibid., 270.
♦
AN ODD LITTLE LETTER
: Boris Ephrussi, Urs Leopold, J. D. Watson, and J. J. Weigle, “Terminology in Bacterial Genetics,”
Nature
171 (18 April 1953): 701.
♦
MEANT AS A JOKE
: Cf. Sahotra Sarkar,
Molecular Models of Life
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005); Lily E. Kay,
Who Wrote the Book of Life?
, 58; Harriett Ephrussi-Taylor to Joshua Lederberg, 3 September 1953, and Lederberg annotation 30 April 2004, in Lederberg papers,
http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/BB/A/J/R/R/
(accessed 22 January 2009); and James D. Watson,
Genes, Girls, and Gamow: After the Double Helix
(New York: Knopf, 2002), 12.
♦
GENES MIGHT LIE IN A DIFFERENT SUBSTANCE
: In retrospect, everyone understood that this had been proven in 1944, by Oswald Avery at Rockefeller University. Not many researchers were convinced at the time, however.
♦
“ONE OF THE MOST COY STATEMENTS”
: Gunther S. Stent, “DNA,”
Daedalus
99 (1970): 924.
♦
“IT HAS NOT ESCAPED OUR NOTICE”
: James D. Watson and Francis Crick, “A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid,”
Nature
171 (1953): 737.
♦
“IT FOLLOWS THAT IN A LONG MOLECULE”
: James D. Watson and Francis Crick, “Genetical Implications of the Structure of Deoxyribonucleic Acid,”
Nature
171 (1953): 965.
♦
“DEAR DRS. WATSON & CRICK”
: George Gamow to James D. Watson and Francis Crick, 8 July 1953, quoted in Lily E. Kay,
Who Wrote the Book of Life?
, 131. Reprinted by permission of R. Igor Gamow.
♦
“AS IN THE BREAKING OF ENEMY MESSAGES”
: George Gamow to E. Chargaff, 6 May 1954, Ibid., 141.
♦
“BY PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL BUSH TELEGRAPH”
: Gunther S. Stent, “DNA,” 924.
♦
“PEOPLE DIDN’T NECESSARILY
BELIEVE
IN THE CODE”
: Francis Crick, interview with Horace Freeland Judson, 20 November 1975, in Horace Freeland Judson,
The Eighth Day of Creation: Makers of the Revolution in Biology
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), 233.
♦
“A LONG NUMBER WRITTEN IN A FOUR-DIGITAL SYSTEM”
: George Gamow, “Possible Relation Between Deoxyribonucleic Acid and Protein Structures,”
Nature
173 (1954): 318.
♦
“BETWEEN THE COMPLEX MACHINERY IN A LIVING CELL”
: Douglas R. Hofstadter, “The Genetic Code: Arbitrary?” (March 1982), in
Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern
(New York: Basic Books, 1985), 671.
♦
“THE NUCLEUS OF A LIVING CELL IS A STOREHOUSE OF INFORMATION”
: George Gamow, “Information Transfer in the Living Cell,”
Scientific American
193, no. 10 (October 1955): 70.
♦
UNNECESSARY IF SOME TRIPLETS MADE “SENSE”
: Francis Crick, “General Nature of the Genetic Code for Proteins,”
Nature
192 (30 December 1961): 1227.
♦
“THE SEQUENCE OF NUCLEOTIDES AS AN INFINITE MESSAGE”
: Solomon W. Golomb, Basil Gordon, and Lloyd R. Welch, “Comma-Free Codes,”
Canadian Journal of Mathematics
10 (1958): 202–209, quoted in Lily E. Kay,
Who Wrote the Book of Life?
, 171.
♦
“ONCE ‘INFORMATION’ HAS PASSED INTO PROTEIN”
: Francis Crick, “On Protein Synthesis,”
Symposium of the Society for Experimental Biology
12 (1958): 152; Cf. Francis Crick, “Central Dogma of Molecular Biology,”
Nature
227 (1970): 561–63; and Hubert P. Yockey,
Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 20–21.
♦
“THE COMPLETE DESCRIPTION OF THE ORGANISM”
: Horace Freeland Judson,
The Eighth Day of Creation
, 219–21.
♦
“IT IS IN THIS SENSE THAT ALL WORKING GENETICISTS”
: Gunther S. Stent, “You Can Take the Ethics Out of Altruism But You Can’t Take the Altruism Out of Ethics,”
Hastings Center Report
7, no. 6 (1977): 34; and Gunther S. Stent, “DNA,” 925.
♦
“IT DEPENDS UPON WHAT LEVEL”
: Seymour Benzer, “The Elementary Units of Heredity,” in W. D. McElroy and B. Glass, eds.,
The Chemical Basis of Heredity
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1957), 70.
♦
“THIS ATTITUDE IS AN ERROR OF GREAT PROFUNDITY”
: Richard Dawkins,
The Selfish Gene
, 30th anniversary edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 237.
♦
“WE ARE SURVIVAL MACHINES”
: Ibid., xxi.
♦
“THEY ARE PAST MASTERS OF THE SURVIVAL ARTS”
: Ibid., 19.
♦
“ENGLISH BIOLOGIST RICHARD DAWKINS HAS RECENTLY RAISED”
: Stephen Jay Gould, “Caring Groups and Selfish Genes,” in
The Panda’s Thumb
(New York: Norton, 1980), 86.
♦
“A THIRTY-SIX-YEAR-OLD STUDENT OF ANIMAL BEHAVIOR”
: Gunther S. Stent, “You Can Take the Ethics Out of Altruism But You Can’t Take the Altruism Out of Ethics,” 33.
♦
“EVERY CREATURE MUST BE ALLOWED TO ‘RUN’ ITS OWN DEVELOPMENT”
: Samuel Butler,
Life and Habit
(London: Trübner & Co, 1878), 134.
♦
“A SCHOLAR … IS JUST A LIBRARY’S WAY”
: Daniel C. Dennett,
Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 346.
♦
“ANTHROPOCENTRISM IS A DISABLING VICE OF THE INTELLECT”
: Edward O. Wilson, “Biology and the Social Sciences,”
Daedalus
106, no. 4 (Fall 1977), 131.
♦
“IT REQUIRES A DELIBERATE MENTAL EFFORT”
: Richard Dawkins,
The Selfish Gene
, 265.
♦
“MIGHT ENSURE ITS SURVIVAL BY TENDING TO ENDOW”
: Ibid., 36.
♦
“THEY DO NOT PLAN AHEAD”
: Ibid., 25.
♦
“THERE IS A MOLECULAR ARCHEOLOGY IN THE MAKING”
: Werner R. Loewenstein,
The Touchstone of Life: Molecular Information, Cell Communication, and the Foundations of Life
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 93–94.
♦
“SELECTION FAVORS THOSE GENES WHICH SUCCEED”
: Richard Dawkins,
The Extended Phenotype
, rev. ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 117.
♦
DAWKINS SUGGESTS THE CASE OF A GENE
: Ibid., 196–97.
♦
THERE IS NO GENE FOR LONG LEGS
: Richard Dawkins,
The Selfish Gene
, 37.
♦
HABIT OF SAYING “A GENE FOR X”
: Richard Dawkins,
The Extended Phenotype
, 21.
♦
“ALL WE WOULD NEED IN ORDER”
: Ibid., 23.
♦
“ANY GENE THAT INFLUENCES THE DEVELOPMENT OF NERVOUS SYSTEMS”
: Richard Dawkins,
The Selfish Gene
, 60.
♦
“IT IS NO MORE LIKELY TO DIE”
: Ibid., 34.
♦
“TODAY THE TENDENCY IS TO SAY”
: Max Delbrück, “A Physicist Looks At Biology,”
Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences
38 (1949): 194.
♦
“WHEN I MUSE ABOUT MEMES”
: Douglas R. Hofstadter, “On Viral Sentences and Self-Replicating Structures,” in
Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern
(New York, Basic Books, 1985), 52.
♦
“NOW THROUGH THE VERY UNIVERSALITY OF ITS STRUCTURES”
: Jacques Monod,
Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology
, trans. Austryn Wainhouse (New York: Knopf, 1971), 145.
♦
“IDEAS HAVE RETAINED SOME OF THE PROPERTIES”
: Ibid., 165.
♦
“IDEAS CAUSE IDEAS”
: Roger Sperry, “Mind, Brain, and Humanist Values,” in
New Views of the Nature of Man
, ed. John R. Platt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 82.
♦
“I THINK THAT A NEW KIND”
: Richard Dawkins,
The Selfish Gene
, 30th anniversary edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 192.
♦
“THIS MAY NOT BE WHAT GEORGE WASHINGTON LOOKED LIKE THEN”
: Daniel C. Dennett,
Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 347.
♦
“A WAGON WITH SPOKED WHEELS”
: Daniel C. Dennett,
Consciousness Explained
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1991), 204.
♦
“GENES CANNOT BE SELFISH”
: Mary Midgley, “Gene-Juggling,”
Philosophy
54 (October 1979).
♦
“A MEME … IS AN INFORMATION PACKET”
: Daniel C. Dennett, “Memes: Myths, Misunderstandings, and Misgivings,” draft for Chapel Hill lecture, October 1998,
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/MEMEMYTH.FIN.htm
(accessed 7 June 2010).