“Let us admit that no matter how small the chance it could happen, one molecule could be created by such astronomical odds of chance. However, one molecule is of no use. Hundreds of millions of identical ones are necessary. Thus we either admit the miracle or doubt the absolute truth of science.”

— Pierre Lecomte du Noüy

Human Destiny, 1947, p. 33
Commenting on Charles-Eugene Guye's calculation that the odds against the random formation of a particular protein molecule would be about 1 in 10 to the 243rd.

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Pierre Lecomte du Noüy 2

French philosopher 1883–1947

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Ronald Fisher (1890–1962) English statistician, evolutionary biologist, geneticist, and eugenicist

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“If we assume that the last breath of, say, Julius Caesar has by now become thoroughly scattered through the atmosphere, then the chances are that each of us inhales one molecule of it with every breath we take.”

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“Absolute greatness will never be great and also small, but that greatness in us or in the concrete will never admit the small or admit of even being exceeded; instead of this, one of two things will happen—either the greater will fly and retire before the opposite, which is the less, or the advance of the less will cease to exist; but will not, if allowing or admitting smallness, be changed by that…nor can any other opposite which remains the same ever be or become its own opposite, but either passes away or perishes in the change.”

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“You will say, 'How can chance assemble in one place all the things necessary to produce an oak tree?' My answer is that it would be no miracle if the matter thus arranged had not formed an oak. But it would have been a very great miracle if, once the matter was thus arranged, an oak had not been formed.”

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655) French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist

The Other World (1657)
Context: You will say, 'How can chance assemble in one place all the things necessary to produce an oak tree?' My answer is that it would be no miracle if the matter thus arranged had not formed an oak. But it would have been a very great miracle if, once the matter was thus arranged, an oak had not been formed. A few less of some shapes, and it would have been an elm, a poplar, a willow, an elder, heather or moss. A little more of some other shapes and it might have been a sensitive plant, an oyster in its shell, a worm, a fly, a frog, a sparrow, an ape or a man.

“Would it not be better if one could really 'see' whether molecules…were just as experiments suggested?”

Dorothy Hodgkin (1910–1994) British chemist

the question that decided her to specialize in X-ray cristallography, as quoted by [Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, Nobel Prize women in science: their lives, struggles, and momentous discoveries, Joseph Henry Press, 1998, http://books.google.com/books?id=-PqK3zxkRrIC&pg=PA231, 0-309-07270-0, 231]

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as quoted in [Dave DeMille, Diatomic molecules, a window onto fundamental physics, Physics Today, 2015, December, 34, 68, 12, 10.1063/PT.3.3020]

“Here we use the vibrations of the material molecules of the atmosphere to transmit intelligence from one brain to another.”

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Context: Ordinarily we communicate intelligence to each other by speech. I first call up in my own brain a picture of a scene I wish to describe, and then, by means of an orderly transmission of wave vibrations set in motion by my vocal chords through the material atmosphere, a corresponding picture is implanted in the brain of anyone whose ear is capable of receiving such vibrations. If the scene I wish to impress on the brain of the recipient is of a complicated character, or if the picture of it in my own brain is not definite, the transmission will be more or less imperfect; but if I wish to get my audience to picture to themselves some very simple object, such as a triangle or a circle, the transmission of ideas will be well-nigh perfect, and equally clear to the brains of both transmitter and recipient. Here we use the vibrations of the material molecules of the atmosphere to transmit intelligence from one brain to another.

“But there was one other thing that the grown-ups also knew, and it was this: that however small the chance might be of striking lucky, the chance is there. The chance had to be there.”

Roald Dahl book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Source: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

“I am saddened by how people treat one another and how we are so shut off from one another and how we judge one another, when the truth is, we are all one connected thing. We are all from the same exact molecules.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

“we never experiment with just one electron or atom or (small) molecule. In thought-experiments we sometimes assume that we do.”

Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) Austrian physicist

ARE THERE QUANTUM JUMPS ? PART II(1952)

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Pierre Lecomte du Noüy 2

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