Update
Show Summary Details

Page of

PRINTED FROM OXFORD REFERENCE (www.oxfordreference.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2023. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single entry from a reference work in OR for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 15 June 2025

J. B. S. Haldane 1892–1964
Scottish mathematical biologist 

  1. Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose…I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy.
    Possible Worlds and Other Essays (1927) ‘Possible Worlds’; see Shakespeare
  2. If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason for supposing that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.
    Possible Worlds (1927) ‘When I am Dead’
  3. My final word, before I'm done,
    Is ‘Cancer can be rather fun’.
    Thanks to the nurses and Nye Bevan
    The NHS is quite like heaven
    Provided one confronts the tumour
    With a sufficient sense of humour.
     
    ‘Cancer's a Funny Thing’ (1968)
  4. From the fact that there are 400,000 species of beetles on this planet, but only 8,000 species of mammals, he [Haldane] concluded that the Creator, if He exists, has a special preference for beetles.
    report of lecture, 7 April 1951, in Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (1951) vol. 10
  5. No-one could study mathematics intensively for more than five hours a day and remain sane.
    in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine (1966) ‘An Autobiography in Brief’
  6. I'd lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins.
    attributed; in New Scientist 8 August 1974