Evolution in Four Dimensions Quotes

“If anyone imagines that scientists are dispassionate and impartial people, discussing theories and ideas unemotionally in the cool clear light of reason, they have been seriously misled.”
― Eva Jablonka, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life

“Darwin thought that heritable variation stems from the effects the conditions of life have on the organism, and from “use and disuse.”3 Discovering that this is what Darwin thought surprises some people, because they associate the idea of evolutionary change through use and disuse with the name of Lamarck.”
― Eva Jablonka, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, And Symbolic Variation in the History of Life

“So on the one hand you can have identical genes leading to very different phenotypes, and on the other you can have dissimilar genes producing exactly the same”
― Eva Jablonka, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life

“It is only when you have average or low levels of cholesterol that being a carrier of "bad" allele 4 puts you at a greater risk than others with the same cholesterol level.”
― Eva Jablonka, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life

“There is no such
limit with DNA replication. The DNA reproduction system is indifferent to the content or function of what is copied”
― Eva Jablonka, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life

“When we learn something new and try to teach it to someone else, our success in both receiving and transmitting the information depends on what it is about.”
― Eva Jablonka, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life

“If we want to solve 95 percent of the health problems in the world, what we need to do is give people enough to eat, and make sure they can drink clean water and breathe clean air.”
― Eva Jablonka, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life

“Proteins are made up of one or more polypeptide chains, which are strings of another kind of unit, amino acids, of which there are twenty types. The sequences of nucleotides in DNA encode the sequences of amino acids in the polypeptide chains of protein molecules.”
― Eva Jablonka, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life

“However, the translation from DNA into proteins is not direct; the DNA sequence is first copied into mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid, another linear sequence of nucleotides), and only then is it translated into proteins.”
― Eva Jablonka, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life

“generation III) do not affect the protein in the offspring, whereas changes in the DNA (bomb in generation V) affect the protein in all subsequent generations. Information flows from DNA to RNA to proteins (solid arrows), and possibly from RNA to DNA (dashed arrows), but never from protein to RNA or DNA.”
― Eva Jablonka, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life

“the popular conception of the gene as a simple causal agent is not valid. The idea that there is a gene for adventurousness, heart disease, obesity, religiosity, homosexuality, shyness, stupidity, or any other aspect of mind or body has no place on the platform of genetic discourse.”
― Eva Jablonka, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life