The significant chemicals of living tissue are rickety and unstable, which is exactly what is needed for life.
Interpretation
Life's complexity arises from the instability of its foundational components.
In this quote, Isaac Asimov emphasizes that the very nature of life is rooted in the unstable and unpredictable behavior of the chemicals that compose living tissues. This instability allows for the diversity and adaptability of life, suggesting that imperfection is an essential ingredient for biological existence and thriving.
In practice
In a science class discussing the fundamentals of biology and the nature of life.
Democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies.
Science does not promise absolute truth, nor does it consider that such a thing necessarily exists. Science does not even promise that everything in the Universe is amenable to the scientific process.
Democracy cannot survive overpopulation.
Although the time of death is approaching me, I am not afraid of dying and going to Hell or (what would be considerably worse) going to the popularized version of Heaven. I expect death to be nothingness and, for removing me from all possible fears of death, I am thankful to atheism.
A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.
During the century after Newton, it was still possible for a man of unusual attainments to master all fields of scientific knowledge. But by 1800, this had become entirely impracticable.
Certainly I see the scientific view of the world as incompatible with religion, but that is not what is interesting about it. It is also incompatible with magic, but that also is not worth stressing. What is interesting about the scientific world view is that it is true, inspiring, remarkable and that it unites a whole lot of phenomena under a single heading.
The illusion of purpose and design is perhaps the most pervasive illusion about nature that science has to confront on a daily basis.
Modern agriculture is the use of land to convert petroleum into food.
Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.
We have never observed infinity in nature. Whenever you have infinities in a theory, that's where the theory fails as a description of nature. And if space was born in the Big Bang, yet is infinite now, we are forced to believe that it's instantaneously, infinitely big. It seems absurd.
We wouldn't think of going to our doctor and saying 'Treat me the way doctors treated people in the 19th Century', and yet that's what we're demanding in food production.
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