“Q: What's the difference between an enzyme and a hormone?

A: You can't hear an enzyme.”

— Dorothy Parker

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Dorothy Parker172

American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist 1893–1967

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The Genetic Revolution—Great Promise With Growing Concern, Awake! magazine, July 22, 1989.

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Stuart Kauffman (1939) American biophysicist

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“Virtually every chemical reaction in a cell occurs at a significant rate only because of the presence of enzymes.”

Albert L. Lehninger (1917–1986) American biochemist

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“…. there is a difference between hearing and listening. You can't always help what you hear. But you can control what holds your interest, what you choose to dwell on.”

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“[G]enes make enzymes, and enzymes control the rates of chemical processes. Genes do not make “novelty seeking” or any other complex and overt behavior. Predisposition via a long chain of complex chemical reactions, mediated through a more complex series of life's circumstances, does not equal identification or even causation.”

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“You can't hear me.
You can't hear me.
You can't hear what I'm saying.
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“Classical science in its diverse disciplines, be it chemistry, biology, psychology or the social sciences, tried to isolate the elements of the observed universe - chemical compounds and enzymes, cells, elementary sensations, freely competing individuals, what not -- expecting that, by putting them together again, conceptually or experimentally, the whole or system - cell, mind, society - would result and be intelligible. Now we have learned that for an understanding not only the elements but their interrelations as well are required: say, the interplay of enzymes in a cell, of many mental processes conscious and unconscious, the structure and dynamics of social systems and the like.”

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Source: General System Theory (1968), p. xix

“There is a difference between listening and hearing, just as there is a difference between seeing and knowing.”

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“Life cannot have had a random beginning … The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 1040,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.”

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