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39th out of 596 books
—
1,318 voters
The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher
by
Lewis Thomas
Elegant, suggestive, and clarifying, Lewis Thomas's profoundly humane vision explores the world around us and examines the complex interdependence of all things. Extending beyond the usual limitations of biological science and into a vast and wondrous world of hidden relationships, this provocative book explores in personal, poetic essays to topics such as computers, germs...more
Paperback, 160 pages
Published
February 23rd 1978
by Penguin Books
(first published January 1st 1974)
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A non-fiction book about biology that reads more like fiction. It offers a wonderful, almost poetic scientific perspective on mankind, other species and the Earth as a whole. Although I had to keep a dictionary of scientific terms handy as I read, it was an otherwise very enjoyable read.
A quote from the book:
"I have been trying to think of the earth as a kind of organism, but it is no go. I cannot think of it this way. It is too big, too complex, with too many working parts lacking visible conne...more
A quote from the book:
"I have been trying to think of the earth as a kind of organism, but it is no go. I cannot think of it this way. It is too big, too complex, with too many working parts lacking visible conne...more
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This is a collection of essays (I think all of Lewis Thomas' books are) that were published in science and medical journals prior to being collected in book format.
The essays are each so well written, beautifully phrased and accessible. Each begins by looking at life at the tiny cellular level but reaches beyond the cellular level to encompass life at the fullest level.
For his ability to write about science and nature in a intellecutal yet humble and humorous manner appeals immediately. He essa...more
The essays are each so well written, beautifully phrased and accessible. Each begins by looking at life at the tiny cellular level but reaches beyond the cellular level to encompass life at the fullest level.
For his ability to write about science and nature in a intellecutal yet humble and humorous manner appeals immediately. He essa...more
The lives of a cell is an amazing book, which i believe most people should read, if they can handle it. The reason i say this is because it explores the human vision of the world around us, and the life forms and beings that pass us by in a matter of a lifetime. Thomas explains in a very scientific, and biological style of writing how the world has a major sense of interdependence. It reveals the human nature in all of us, and how we are indeed a social species. However, this book does not focus...more
I read this book as part of Family Book Club, which I instituted with Christmas gifts last year. If I'm going to expect my family to read a gift-book, I should read it too, went the thought.
The selfish part of this is that I may have given them books I wanted to read anyway (three of them are on a recent Time Magazine list of essential nonfiction, but I like to think I tailored the list to their interests--how my dad relates to Zen and motorcyles, I'm not sure, but it is about fathers and sons,...more
The selfish part of this is that I may have given them books I wanted to read anyway (three of them are on a recent Time Magazine list of essential nonfiction, but I like to think I tailored the list to their interests--how my dad relates to Zen and motorcyles, I'm not sure, but it is about fathers and sons,...more
The good: Lewis Thomas weds his knowledge of biology and medicine with an enjoyable prose style to describe the physical world as a wondrous place worth knowing more about. I feel science writing has a way of sometimes reducing things to formula, when it really should open us up to the idea of re-imagining how we perceive who we are and how the world works. This is a skill that Thomas seems particularly adept at, and one I wish that was more common.
The bad: As many of these essays were published...more
The bad: As many of these essays were published...more
A modern day polymath, Lewis Thomas was a physician, poet, etymologist, essayist, administrator, educator and researcher, but most of us knew him simply for his essays.
Considering that resume, where he found the time to write essays, I’ll never know, but he did. They originally appeared in the “New England Journal of Medicine,” a publication I really never see. But several of them were collected in 1974 and published in the book, “The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher.” It won a Natio...more
Considering that resume, where he found the time to write essays, I’ll never know, but he did. They originally appeared in the “New England Journal of Medicine,” a publication I really never see. But several of them were collected in 1974 and published in the book, “The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher.” It won a Natio...more
The most salient quality of these essays is their ability to confront us with new realms of microbiological phenomena. Their more interesting facets, however, are Lewis' several philosophical preoccupations. He loves viewing humanity through the lens of sociobiology. He believes language is our grand social project, as nests are to social insects. Looking at humanity and the progressive accumulation of knowledge and culture this way was a bit of a revelation. He imagines the network of humanity,...more
Essays by a biologist who can write poetically without considering at all whether his ideas are practical. so good: "It would be nice to have better ways of monitoring what we’re up to so that we could recognize change while it is occurring, instead of waking up as we do now to the astonished realization that the whole century just past wasn’t what we thought it was, at all. Maybe computers can be used to help in this, although I rather doubt it. You can make simulation models of cities, but wha...more
This book, simply, is amazing and wonderful and makes you feel happy, as well as stunned, to be alive. In this collection of essays Lewis Thomas tackles a variety of subjects relating to biology, chemistry, linguistics (as a parallel to biology) and much more. The reader finds out so much about the human body that is not only startling but is basically an existential nightmare. Instead of being a single form we are in fact made up of millions or billions of cells that share no DNA with us and ar...more
In "The Lives of a Cell", Lewis Thomas dances around the question of what life is, and what it means to be alive. This book is a collection of essays that discuss biology, language, society, and other issues of naturalism and scientific observation that weave together into a rather unique way of looking at the lives of individuals with respect to the others. When I had finished this book, I was very excited by the new way I looked at the world around me, and eagerly discussed many of its concept...more
Although written in the 1970′s, these essays by Lewis Thomas cover subjects that are still some of the most interesting questions in biology today. From the awe-inspiring complexity of a single cell to our approach to curing diseases, from how our interactions compare to those of social insects to the health care system, the essays in this book will give you a new appreciation for biology and a unique, thoughtful perspective on these fascinating topics. Every time I finished an essay, I was stru...more
I'm still in page 31 of this book, but this part already revealed it to be a masterpiece:
“Morowitz has presented the case, in thermodynamic terms, for the hypothesis that a steady flow of energy from the inexhaustible source of the sun to the unfillable sink of the outer space, by way of the earth, is mathematically destined to cause the organization of matter into an increasingly ordered state. The resulting balance act involves a ceaseless clustering of bonded atoms into molecules of higher an...more
“Morowitz has presented the case, in thermodynamic terms, for the hypothesis that a steady flow of energy from the inexhaustible source of the sun to the unfillable sink of the outer space, by way of the earth, is mathematically destined to cause the organization of matter into an increasingly ordered state. The resulting balance act involves a ceaseless clustering of bonded atoms into molecules of higher an...more
This book was recommended to me, and I'm definitely glad that I read it. It's a collection of brief essays about biology, the wonder of cells and their internal machinery, and human society. Thomas strikes me as the M.F.K. Fisher of biology writing, able to turn a striking phrase every page or so, using clear prose and occasional poetry to communicate his thoughts. Here's a great example: ""It is hard to imagine a solitary, independent, existentialist minnow, recognizable for himself alone." Tha...more
Profound scientific knowledge combined with poetic vision.
Check it:
"Viewed from the distance of the moon, the astonishing thing about the earth, catching the breath, is that it is alive. The photographs show the dry, pounded surface of the moon in the foreground, dead as an old bone. Aloft, floating free beneath the moist, gleaming membrane of bright blue sky, is the rising earth, the only exuberant thing in this part of the cosmos. If you could look long enough, you would see the swirling of t...more
Check it:
"Viewed from the distance of the moon, the astonishing thing about the earth, catching the breath, is that it is alive. The photographs show the dry, pounded surface of the moon in the foreground, dead as an old bone. Aloft, floating free beneath the moist, gleaming membrane of bright blue sky, is the rising earth, the only exuberant thing in this part of the cosmos. If you could look long enough, you would see the swirling of t...more
Ever have a book give you a deeper appreciation for life by revealing your ignorance? And this type of revealing ignorance doesn't make you feel bad or inadequate. You just kinda feel the need to keep reading and learn more. It makes you never want to be ignorant again. Well, in my case it did.
Discusses the concept of the earth as a larger version of a cell. Down to the structures, to our interactions. So the "lives of the cell" are the occurrences of our everyday life. Visible and "invisible".
A...more
Discusses the concept of the earth as a larger version of a cell. Down to the structures, to our interactions. So the "lives of the cell" are the occurrences of our everyday life. Visible and "invisible".
A...more
This is a pretty fast, short book. Usually I shy away from anything that has to do with biology. I have pretty much always hated the subject of the living. But I am getting over that now, and stand more in amazement. This is a good book to get that sense of amazement at life. It is a collection of short essays on various biology subjects. The author was a medical researcher among many other things. The writing is good, if only more aimed at people that are familiar with all the biology lingo. Bu...more
Perhaps I screwed up by reading The Medusa and the Snail first. Or at all.
For the most part, the writings here would actually appear to do with *gasp* biology. (Perish the thought!)
Compare this to TMatS, which seemed more like a collection of random thoughts lacking any discernible focus.
Looking at this on its own merits, it's still quite good. But there's nothing about it (at least not to my eyes) that would make it noteworthy.
For the most part, the writings here would actually appear to do with *gasp* biology. (Perish the thought!)
Compare this to TMatS, which seemed more like a collection of random thoughts lacking any discernible focus.
Looking at this on its own merits, it's still quite good. But there's nothing about it (at least not to my eyes) that would make it noteworthy.
Jun 14, 2012
Upom
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Shelves:
nonfiction,
science,
biology,
cells,
ants,
insects,
medicine,
essays,
complexity,
linguistics,
atmosphere,
death,
earth,
worth-rereading
The musings of a poetic biology polymath are put together in this series of essays covering a vast variety of topics from cells, to death, to complexity, to linguistics, to mythology, to the nature of science as a study. The book is a bit dated, as much of what Thomas talks about has been answered with the internet and greater knowledge of biology. Yet there is an imaginative and timeless quality to Thomas's that makes me want to read it again and again for inspiration. The most intriguing idea...more
An anthology of short, philosophical meditations on the biology and ecology of life, pondering such varied topics as; Can we learn from ant colonies? How would an alien species view us? What exactly is the health industry? Are there parallels to be drawn between what science observes and our socio-political life? An emotional response to road kill and the odd venture in the direction of 'the Gaia Hypothesis' en route.
I found it a little dry in places but the entries regarding linguistics and gen...more
Thomas seems to be intrigued by the fact that humans are social creatures. All the aspects of what defines a social creature- communication, language, community, work- intrigues him. He often goes on tangents explaining the intricate innards of a cell. Pieces like ribosomes and mitochondria inside a cell work together and formulate tissue, which makes organs, which turn into organ systems, and so on until a body and mind is formed. Of the parts of a cell, Thomas finds the mitochondria to be the...more
It is with a heavy heart that I report what a drag it was to read this book. I love science, I love essays, I love philosophical wanderings linking the various arts and sciences together in a creative web of understanding. But apparently I do not enjoy Lewis Thomas' version of any of those things.
Firstly, the science in the book is terribly dated. Not his fault, but worth mentioning. Secondly, Thomas' tendency to assume opinions as a basis for truth, and begin his extrapolations from that point,...more
Firstly, the science in the book is terribly dated. Not his fault, but worth mentioning. Secondly, Thomas' tendency to assume opinions as a basis for truth, and begin his extrapolations from that point,...more
I came across a truly lyrical biology book, a series of essays by Lewis Thomas entitled The Lives of a Cell. Now this is a man who can write about biology in a way that delights. For example, this paragraph on pheromones:
" 'At home, 4 p.m. today', says the female moth, and releases a brief explosion of bombykol, a single molecule of which will tremble the hairs of any male within miles and send him driving upwind in a confusion of ardor. But it is doubtful if he has an awareness of being caught...more
" 'At home, 4 p.m. today', says the female moth, and releases a brief explosion of bombykol, a single molecule of which will tremble the hairs of any male within miles and send him driving upwind in a confusion of ardor. But it is doubtful if he has an awareness of being caught...more
This is an odd little book, very slim and breezy to read, even though it drops some serious seven-syllable science words without so much as a nod towards defining them or even contextualizing them. Like The Flight of the Iguana, it's really a collection of essays rather than a single narrative or thematic work, but that aspect is much more obvious in this book. Apparently the book either collects essays from disparate sources, or their original single source didn't care if Thomas frequently recy...more
This is one of the first of Lewis Thomas's books I read ... long time ago (i.e., decades ago) ... and I just remember being fascinated at how he could reflect on various aspects of life in general, taking off from some biological truth.
If I recall correctly, it was Joyce Carol Oates who "discovered" Thomas, having been given a collection of his essays from The New England Journal of Medicine, and she was so taken by his writing that she championed him for the general reading public.
If I recall correctly, it was Joyce Carol Oates who "discovered" Thomas, having been given a collection of his essays from The New England Journal of Medicine, and she was so taken by his writing that she championed him for the general reading public.
The essays herein are a bit more narrow than those included in The Medusa & The Snail (and, in my opinion, a tad less interesting), but so well-written. And, honestly, a man who writes a statement like, "Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise," deserves to be read, voraciously, even if one is less interested in medicine than the author.
Feb 24, 2009
kyle
added it
Just for the section on ants worth it. Great short essays on "humans as a social species." Great companion reading to Your Inner Fish as both look at the interconnection between species. You realize more and more how species is such an arbitrary designation in some ways (important of course in others). Also great to connect with Teresa Brennan, Deleuze & Guattari, Elizabeth Grosz, Lepecki, etc. on our interconnectedness (let alone yoga and Buddhism).
I enjoyed The Lives of a Cell -- but there was a little something of the "now I can check THAT one off my list" triumph about the reading. Some of the science that was new or theoretical when he wrote it has been cemented since then, so the freshness that might initially have been implicit in the essays reads as old news, and some of the political asides are confusing. However, I went back through the book to find two or three of the essays that I'd particularly recommend, and found the task alm...more
Lewis Thomas' essays are so well-written that I learn biological trivia with relish. For instance, did you know that termites don't digest cellulose (i.e., wood)? It's another organism that lives inside the termite that does the digesting. And some species of ant was removed from its native territory, enclosed in a glass box of some sort and put on display in some museum in New York. The ants died within a short time, perhaps a month. When Thomas wrote the essays, the cause of their death was un...more
An eye opening look at the beauty and complexity of all life. My thoughts re: evolution were refined and curiosity stimulated. I began to see my world in a very different way, and, this view persists.
As our understanding of DNA developed, I had a basis to put it in perspective.
An elegant presentation of complex phenomenon.
LB 2012
As our understanding of DNA developed, I had a basis to put it in perspective.
An elegant presentation of complex phenomenon.
LB 2012
Erudite essays about the world we live in, and how we live in it. Scientifically detailed, but for the most part accessible to the layman, or at least to this layman. Mixing practicality with biological data, Mr. Thomas draws homespun philosophical conclusions for humans from phenomena of the natural world.
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| earth as a cell | 3 | 23 | Apr 23, 2013 05:59am |
Lewis Thomas (November 25, 1913–December 3, 1993) was a physician, poet, etymologist, essayist, administrator, educator, policy advisor, and researcher.
Thomas was born in Flushing, New York and attended Princeton University and Harvard Medical School. He became Dean of Yale Medical School and New York University School of Medicine, and President of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute. His formative...more
More about Lewis Thomas...
Thomas was born in Flushing, New York and attended Princeton University and Harvard Medical School. He became Dean of Yale Medical School and New York University School of Medicine, and President of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute. His formative...more
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“The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music.”
—
19 people liked it
“If we had better hearing, and could discern the descants of sea birds, the rhythmic tympani of schools of mollusks, or even the distant harmonics of midges hanging over meadows in the sun, the combined sound might lift us off our feet.”
—
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