Evolution Quotes by James Gleick

9 Evolution quotes by James Gleick

All Evolution quotes James Gleick’s page

James Gleick’s prose on evolution reads like a story, turning complex ideas into engaging narratives. With nine short pieces, this collection provides a compact look at how he translates scientific concepts into compelling language.

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Genes themselves are made of bits.

James Gleick

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“So in 1910 a Danish botanist, Wilhelm Johannsen, self-consciously invented the word gene.”

James Gleick

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The cells of an organism are nodes in a richly interwoven communications network, transmitting and receiving, coding and decoding. Evolution itself embodies…

James Gleick

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Information is crucial to our biological substance - our genetic code is information. But before 1950, it was not obvious that inheritance…

James Gleick

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The body itself is an information processor. Memory resides not just in brains but in every cell. No wonder genetics bloomed along…

James Gleick

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“Gregor Mendel’s years of research with green and yellow peas showed that such a thing must exist. Colors and other traits vary…

James Gleick

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“Even before the exact answer was reached, Crick crystallized its fundamental principles in a statement that he called (and is called to…

James Gleick

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“The macromolecules of organic life embody information in an intricate structure. A single hemoglobin molecule comprises four chains of polypeptides, two with…

James Gleick

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“Where, then, is any particular gene—say, the gene for long legs in humans? This is a little like asking where is Beethoven’s…

James Gleick

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When the Lilliputians first saw Gulliver's watch, that "wonderful kind of engine...a globe, half silver and half of some transparent metal," they identified it…

James Gleick

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You know, entropy is associated thermodynamically, in systems involving heat, with disorder. And in an analogous way, information is associated with disorder, which seems…

James Gleick

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“No one has even a definitive spelling for Cawdrey’s name (Cowdrey, Cawdry). But then, no one agreed on the spelling of most names: they…

James Gleick

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“Where, then, is any particular gene—say, the gene for long legs in humans? This is a little like asking where is Beethoven’s Piano Sonata…

James Gleick

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Alphabetical order had to be invented to help people organize the first dictionaries. On the other hand, we may have reached a point where…

James Gleick

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As a technology, the book is like a hammer. That is to say, it is perfect: a tool ideally suited to its task. Hammers…

James Gleick

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The universe is computing its own destiny.

James Gleick

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A book is not necessarily made of paper. A book is not necessarily made to be read on a Kindle. A book is a…

James Gleick

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“From this point of view, the laws of science represent data compression in action. A theoretical physicist acts like a very clever coding algorithm.…

James Gleick

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Children and scientists share an outlook on life. If I do this, what will happen? is both the motto of the child at play…

James Gleick

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“Your body moves always in the present, the dividing line between the past and the future, but your mind is more free. It can…

James Gleick

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People worry about Twitter. Twitter is banal. It's 140-character messages. By definition, you can hardly say anything profound. On the other hand, we communicate.…

James Gleick

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“The Difference Engine stands—for a replica works today, in the Science Museum in London—as a milestone of what could be achieved in precision engineering.…

James Gleick