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In no sense other than an utterly trivial one is reproduction the inverse of chemical disintegration. It is a misunderstanding of genetics to suppose that reproduction is only 'intended' to make facsimiles, for parasexual processes of genetical exchange are to be found in the simplest living things.

Peter Medawar

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Peter Medawar
Age: 72 †
Born: 1915
Born: February 28
Died: 1987
Died: October 2
Autobiographer
Biologist
Immunologist
Physician
Physiologist
Professor
Writer
Zoologist
Rio
P.B. Medawar
P. B. Medawar
Sir Peter Medawar
Sense
Simplest
Inverse
Found
Exchange
Disintegration
Make
Chemicals
Genetics
Things
Utterly
Reproduction
Intended
Trivial
Suppose
Misunderstanding
Living
Chemical
Process
Processes

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A danger sign that fellow-obsessionals will at once recognize is the tendency to regard the happiest moments of your life as those that occur when someone who has an appointment to see you is prevented from coming.
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The purpose of scientific enquiry is not to compile an inventory of factual information, nor to build up a totalitarian world picture of natural Laws in which every event that is not compulsory is forbidden. We should think of it rather as a logically articulated structure of justifiable beliefs about nature.
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[A certain class of explanations in science are] analgesics that dull the ache of incomprehension without removing the cause.
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The case I shall find evidence for is that when literature arrives, it expels science.
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Observation is the generative act in scientific discovery. For all its aberrations, the evidence of the senses is essentially to be relied upon provided we observe nature as a child does, without prejudices and preconceptions, but with that clear and candid vision which adults lose and scientists must strive to regain.
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Ask a scientist what he conceives the scientific method to be and he will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and shifty-eyed: solemn, because he feels he ought to declare an opinion shifty-eyed, because he is wondering how to conceal the fact that he has no opinion to declare.
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It is a truism to say that a good experiment is precisely that which spares us the exertion of thinking: the better it is, the less we have to worry about its interpretation, about what it really means.
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I regret my disbelief in God.
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The bells which toll for mankind are - most of them, anyway - like the bells of Alpine cattle they are attached to our own necks, and it must be our fault if they do not make a cheerful and harmonious sound.
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All scientists know of colleagues whose minds are so well equipped with the means of refutation that no new idea has the temerity to seek admittance. Their contribution to science is accordingly very small.
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Scientists who think science consists of unprejudiced data-gathering without speculation are merely cows grazing on the pasture of knowledge.
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To deride the hope of progress is the ultimate fatuity, the last word in poverty of spirit and meanness of mind.
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Psychoanalytic theory is the most stupendous intellectual confidence trick of the twentieth century and a terminal product as well-something akin to a dinosaur or zeppelin in the history of ideas, a vast structure of radically unsound design and with no posterity.
Peter Medawar
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Is the Scientific Paper a Fraud?
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When asked to make the formal declaration that I did not intend to overthrow the Constitution of the United States, I was fool enough to reply that I had no such purpose, but that were I to do it by mistake I should be inexpressibly contrite.
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The attempt to discover and promulgate the truth is nevertheless an obligation upon all scientists, one that must be persevered in no matter what the rebuffs—for otherwise what is the point in being a scientist?
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Scientific reasoning is a dialogue between the possible and the actual, between proposal and disposal between what might be true, and what is in fact the case.
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It can be said with complete confidence that any scientist of any age who wants to make important discoveries must study important problems. Dull or piffling problems yield dull or piffling answers. It is not enough that a problem should be interesting.
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An experiment not worth doing is not worth doing well.
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Scientists are people of very dissimilar temperaments doing different things in very different ways. Among scientists are collectors, classifiers and compulsive tidiers-up many are detectives by temperament and many are explorers some are artists and others artisans. There are poet-scientists and philosopher-scientists and even a few mystics.
Peter Medawar