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The Monk and the Philosopher
we’re nothing but a predictable pattern of wires responding to stimuli
Now it has become to such an extent a sheerly mechanistic world, as interpreted through our physical sciences, Marxist sociology, and behavioristic psychology, that we’re nothing but a predictable pattern of wires responding to stimuli. This nineteenth-century interpretation has squeezed the freedom of the human will out of modern life.
Thus if we choose as our goal the state of happiness for human beings
Thus if we choose as our goal the state of happiness for human beings (a goal deservedly ridiculed by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World), and if we involved all of society in a successful scientific program by which people became happy, we would be locked in a colossal rigidity in which no one would be free to question this goal, because our scientific operations could not transcend themselves to question their guiding purposes.
Most people think of science as a series of dramatic results
Most people think of science as a series of dramatic results, breakthroughs, advances, but science is really first and foremost a process. You start out on one path and then take a sudden turn to find yourself going down a totally different road. Sometimes the steps are small and the progress incremental.
Amino acids are the letters
Amino acids are the letters. Peptides, including polypeptides and proteins, are the words made from these letters. And they all come together to make up a language that composes and directs every cell, organ, and system in your body.