University of Groningen
Self-replicators from dynamic molecular networks: selection, competition and subsystem
coupling
Komáromy, Dávid
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Publication date: 2019
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Komáromy, D. (2019). Self-replicators from dynamic molecular networks: selection, competition and subsystem coupling. University of Groningen.
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Stellingen
Behorende bij het proefschrift
“Self-Replicators from Dynamic Molecular Networks: Selection, Competition and
Subsystem Coupling”
van Dávid Komáromy
1. We do not necessarily need to develop new, synthetic life forms on Earth but we definitely have to maintain and preserve existing ones.
2. Based on mainstream media, there are three genders: men, women and children.
3. The quality of research should not be judged by its practical use as the latter usually means that a discovery is turned into a commodity and as such mainly serves capitalist (CEOs, shareholders, military etc.) rather than public interests.
4. Two of the most important skills one can acquire during one’s PhD are the ability to ask for help and to offer help when needed.
5. Automation of domestic work (washing machines, vacuum cleaners etc.) in the 20th century did not
free women from the burden of domestic work, but set higher standards on the quantity of domestic work to be done. Similarly, automation of lab work will not erase jobs but increase the ever-growing load of performance on scientists (see Judy Wajcman: Feminism Confronts Technology,
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991).
6. Writing a paper does not start at the point where the experiments are finished. Rather, the desire to describe results in a clear, concise and logical manner reveals which experiments are missing. 7. Stellingen should be science-related but not necessarily scientific; they should also refer to everyday
experience but not in a bitter or radical manner; they should be funny but not so funny that one can actually laugh about them. That is, they are expected to be inconvenient clichés.
8. If half of the scientific staff of a university department is a former student of the same professor at the university, then it might be possible that the hiring procedure was not a fair one.
9. Whereas Darwinian molecular evolution is a nice idea, one has to keep in mind that Darwin borrowed his concepts from Thomas Malthus, who developed these concepts in the context of human societies; later followers of Malthus (e.g. Herbert Spencer) popularized Darwinian notions (e.g. survival of the fittest) in an eugenic context and had clear ideas about how to dispose of the unfit individuals (Banu
Subramanian: Ghost Stories for Darwin, University of Illinois Press, 2014, pp.65)
10. The question whether a scientific work contributes to the well-being of humanity (and whether it gets funding on this basis) is most often not asked in a right manner; more important is whether the results of science are likely to be used in a manner that is advantageous for humanity, which is, however, not a scientific question.
