Francis Crick: Biology

Francis Crick was British molecular biologist, biophysicist, neuroscientist; co-discoverer of the structure of DNA. Explore interesting quotes on biology.
Francis Crick: 32   quotes 0   likes

“The job of theorists, especially in biology, is to suggest new experiments. A good theory makes not only predictions, but surprising predictions that then turn out to be true. (If its predictions appear obvious to experimentalists, why would they need a theory?) ”

Francis Crick

p, 125
What Mad Pursuit (1988)

Appearance

“What is found in biology is mechanisms, mechanisms built with chemical components and that are often modified by other, later, mechanisms added to the earlier ones. While Occam's razor is a useful tool in the physical sciences, it can be a very dangerous implement in biology. It is thus very rash to use simplicity and elegance as a guide in biological research. While DNA could be claimed to be both simple and elegant, it must be remembered that DNA almost certainly originated fairly close to the origin of life when things were necessarily simple or they would not have got going.
Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved. It might be thought, therefore, that evolutionary arguments would play a large part in guiding biological research, but this is far from the case. It is difficult enough to study what is happening now. To figure out exactly what happened in evolution is even more difficult. Thus evolutionary achievements can be used as hints to suggest possible lines of research, but it is highly dangerous to trust them too much. It is all too easy to make mistaken inferences unless the process involved is already very well understood.”

Francis Crick

What Mad Pursuit (1988)

Life , Study , Science , Parting

“Both of us had decided, quite independently of each other, that the central problem in molecular biology was the chemical structure of the gene.”

Francis Crick

What Mad Pursuit (1988)

Problem

“The ultimate aim of the modern movement in biology is in fact to explain all biology in terms of physics and chemistry.”

Francis Crick

Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966, p. 10.
Of Molecules and Men (1966)

“My own prejudices are exactly the opposite of the functionalists’: “If you want to understand function, study structure,” I was supposed to have said in my molecular biology days. (I believe I was sailing at the time.) I think that one should approach these problems at all levels, as was done in molecular biology. Classical genetics is, after all, a black-box subject. The important thing was to combine it with biochemistry. In nature hybrid species are usually sterile, but in science the reverse is often true. Hybrid subjects are often astonishingly fertile, whereas if a scientific discipline remains too pure it usually wilts.”

Francis Crick

What Mad Pursuit (1988)

Understanding , Nature , Problem , Thinking

“The job of theorists, especially in biology, is to suggest new experiments. A good theory makes not only predictions, but surprising predictions that then turn out to be true.”

Francis Crick

If its predictions appear obvious to experimentalists, why would they need a theory?
What Mad Pursuit (1988)

Making love