Tag: Vital Dust
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Christian de Duve about Gaia
A couple of citations from Christian De Duve, Vital Dust about Gaia, p. 220-221. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis She was the Mother Earth goddes of the ancient Greeks. Long forgotten, except in such words as geology, geography, and geometry, she has recently been revived by James Lovelock, a distinguished English scientist, an F.R.S. (Fellow of the Royal Society), the…
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Neurons only die
A somewhat gloomy citation from Christian De Duve, Vital Dust (Chapter 26, Brain, p. 240): The human brain has completed all the neurons it will ever make some five month before birth. Contrary to what happens to other cell types, multiplication of neurons ceases after that. Henceforth, neurons only die, starting in utero, to the tune…
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The Universality of Life
Some citations from Christian De Duve, Vital Dust 1995. Chapter 13, The Universality of Life In the introduction to this book, I argued on theoretical grounds – remember the thirteen spades – that the ermergance of life must have involved a very large number of steps, most of which had a high probability of occuring under…