“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 Parker 172

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

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“What I see coming is a gigantic slaughterhouse, a molecular Auschwitz, in which valuable enzymes, hormones, and so on will be extracted instead of gold teeth.”

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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.
You can't hear what I'm saying to you.”

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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.”

Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) British astronomer

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