QUOTES ABOUT FLIES AND SCIENCE

If any person thinks the examination of the rest of the animal kingdom an unworthy task, he must hold in like disesteem the study of man.

 ~~~☼§☺§☼~~~

 The penis of the Mite [Piophila casei] is so artfully contrived, that the seven wonders of the world together, cannot compare with it...

Flies are by nature of a very warm and lustful constitution; so that the female, immediately after its first appearance in this form, and before it has changed its gray colour, invites the male to copulation. In this act, which lasts for a considerable time, the male always gets upon the female; and in this situation he is carried by her up and down like a man on horseback. All this time the female keeps her wings expanded, and extending her vulva to that part of the male's body, where the penis lies, thrusts it into the cavity of this organ, which does not upon this occasion, suffer any erection.

  ~~~☼§☺§☼~~~

 More honourable state, more courtship lives
In carrion-flies than Romeo: they may seize
On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand
And steal immortal blessing from her lips,
Who even in pure and vestal modesty,
Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin;
But Romeo may not; he is banished:
Flies may do this, but I from this must fly:
They are free men, but I am banished.

 ~~~☼§☺§☼~~~

Many have believed that this beautiful part of the universe which we commonly call the earth, on leaving the hands of the Eternal, began to clothe itself in a kind of green down, which gradually increasing in perfection and in vigor, by the light of the sun and nourishment from the soil, became plants and trees, which afforded food to the animals that the earth subsequently produced of all kinds, from the elephant to the most minute and invisible animacule.

  ~~~☼§☺§☼~~~

Why certain characters should be inherited by both sexes, and other characters by one sex alone...is in most cases quite unknown. It may be added that the mental faculties of the Diptera are probably higher than in most other insects, in accordance with their highly developed nervous system.

 ~~~☼§☺§☼~~~

The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance.
 

It might be well for all of us to remember that, while differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal.

All this means that a young scientist who hopes to make discoveries is badly advised if his teacher tells him, 'Go round and observe,' and that he is well advised if his teacher tells him: 'Try to learn what people are discussing nowadays in science. Find out where difficulties arise, and take an interest in disagreements. These are the questions which you should take up.' In other words, you should study the problem situation of the day. This means that you pick up, and try to continue, a line of inquiry which has the whole background of the earlier development of science behind it; you fall in with the tradition of science. It is a very simple and a decisive point, but nevertheless one that is often not sufficiently realized by rationalists-that we cannot start afresh; that we must make use of what people before us have done in science. If we start afresh, then, when we die, we shall be about as far as Adam and Eve were when they died (or, if you prefer, as far as Neanderthal man). In science we want to make progress, and this means that we must stand on the shoulders of our predecessors. We must carry on a certain tradition. From the point of view of what we want as scientists-understanding, prediction, analysis, and so on-the world in which we live is extremely complex. I should be tempted to say that it is infinitely complex, if the phrase had any meaning. We do not know where or how to start our analysis of this world. There is no wisdom to tell us. Even the scientific tradition does not tell us. It only tells us where and how other people started and where they got to. It tells us that people have already constructed in this world a kind of theoretical framework-not perhaps a very good one, but one which works more or less; it serves us as a kind of network, as a system of co-ordinates to which we can refer the various complexities of this world. We use it by checking it over, and by criticizing it. In this way we make progress.

  ~~~☼§☺§☼~~~

'Wastepaper-baskets' were containers used in the seventeenth century for the disposal of some first versions of manuscripts which self-criticism -- or private criticism of learned friends -- ruled out on the first reading. In our age of publication explosion most people have no time to read their manuscripts, and the function of wastepaper-baskets has now been taken over by scientific journals.