The Harvard Law states: Under controlled conditions of light, temperature, humidity, and nutrition, the organism will do as it damn well pleases.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Larry Wall jokes that even under perfect lab conditions, living things still act independently.
- In plain terms
- Organisms will do their own thing even when everything is controlled.
- What can you take from it?
- Expect unpredictability in biology.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- How much control can we really exert on living systems?
Another view
It oversimplifies scientific control.
More from Larry Wall
As pointed out in a followup, Real Perl Programmers prefer things to be visually distinct.
Permalink to quote #142 That should probably be written: no !@#$%^&*:@!semicolon
Permalink to quote #144 It may be possible to get this condition from within Perl if a signal handler runs at just the wrong moment. Another point for Chip... :-)
Permalink to quote #141
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