MinibearRex comments on Rationality Quotes November 2011 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Jayson_Virissimo 01 November 2011 06:28PM

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Comment author: MinibearRex 04 November 2011 02:36:39PM 12 points [-]

Through the discovery of Buchner, Biology was relieved of yet another fragment of mysticism. The splitting up of sugar into CO2 and alcohol is no more the effect of a "vital principle" than the splitting up of cane sugar by invertase. The history of this problem is instructive, as it warns us against considering problems beyond our reach because they have not yet found their solution.

-Jacques Loeb, 1906, on the discovery of the mechanism of glycolysis