“The recognition of certain basic impossibilities has laid the foundations of some major principles of physics and chemistry; similarly, recognition of the impossibility of understanding living things in terms of physics and chemistry, far from setting limits to our understanding of life, will guide it in the right direction. And even if the demonstration of this impossibility should prove of no great advantage in the pursuit of discovery, such a demonstration would help to draw a truer image of life and man than that given us by the present basic concepts of biology.”

Life's irreducible structure (1968)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The recognition of certain basic impossibilities has laid the foundations of some major principles of physics and chemi…" by Michael Polanyi?
Michael Polanyi photo
Michael Polanyi 15
Hungarian-British polymath 1891–1976

Related quotes

Frederick Soddy photo

“Chemistry has been termed by the physicist as the messy part of physics, but that is no reason why the physicists should be permitted to make a mess of chemistry when they invade it.”

Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) chemist and physicist from England

As quoted in American Journal of Physics, Vol. 14 | (1946), p. 248

Frederick Buechner photo

“It is as impossible for man to demonstrate the existence of God as it would be for even Sherlock Holmes to demonstrate the existence of Arthur Conan Doyle.”

Frederick Buechner (1926) Poet, novelist, short story writer, theologian

Source: Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC

Aleister Crowley photo

“The discovery of radioactivity created a momentary chaos in chemistry and physics; but it soon led to a fuller interpretation of the old ideas.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Appendix VI : A few principal rituals – Liber Reguli.
Magick Book IV : Liber ABA, Part III : Magick in Theory and Practice (1929)
Context: The discovery of radioactivity created a momentary chaos in chemistry and physics; but it soon led to a fuller interpretation of the old ideas. It dispersed many difficulties, harmonized many discords, and — yea, more! It shewed the substance of Universe as a simplicity of Light and Life, manners to compose atoms, themselves capable of deeper self-realization through fresh complexities and organizations, each with its own peculiar powers and pleasures, each pursuing its path through the world where all things are possible.

Pearl S.  Buck photo

“All things are possible until they are proved impossible — and even the impossible may only be so, as of now.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

A Bridge for Passing (1962)

Matt Ridley photo

“That life is chemistry is true but boring, like saying that football is physics.”

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 1 “Life” (p. 15)

Joseph Silk photo
Francis Crick photo

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

Francis Crick (1916–2004) British molecular biologist, biophysicist, neuroscientist; co-discoverer of the structure of DNA

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

Benito Mussolini photo

“With each new discovery of chemistry, physics, biology, the anthropological sciences, of the practical application of sound principles, dogma collapses. It is a part of that old edifice of religion which crumbles and falls in ruins.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

1900s, God Does Not Exist (1904)

Richard Brinsley Sheridan photo

Related topics