Quote by James D. Watson

James D. Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, uttered for Time an assertion that has been quoted hundreds of times:
"We used to think our fate is in our stars. Today we know, in large measure, our fate is in our genes."

Vidal, Fernando and Ortega, Francisco. Being Brains: Making the Cerebral Subject (Forms of Living) (...

Right now we are compelled to rely on different disciplines to try to understand behavior on multiple levels, with inherent tensions between them. Some people want to reduce that ambiguity by making one discipline all-explaining. They want to eliminate the confusing ambiguity of human freedom by reducing everything to material determinism.

But that is the form of intellectual utopianism that always leads to error. An important task these days is to harvest the exciting gains made by science and data while understanding the limits of science and data. The next time somebody tells you what a brain scan says, be a little skeptical. The brain is not the mind. - David Brooks

More on James D. Watson

Jaroff, Leon. 1989. “The Gene Hunt.” Time (20 March).

James D. Watson's TED Talk