reviews
Apr 04, 2008
Michelle
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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 lack 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 lack More...
Dec 16, 2009
John
rated it:
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 ap 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 ap More...
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Jan 12, 2011
Stephen
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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 More...
The bad: As many of these essays were More...
May 26, 2009
Stephen
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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 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 More...
Aug 29, 2010
Adam
rated it:
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 huma
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Aug 01, 2011
Chris
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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,
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Sep 28, 2010
Austin
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These essays from The New England Journal of Medicine are beautiful little philosophical prose-poems on the nature of living things. Thomas, a practicing M.D., had a thorough-going knowledge of science and his poetic notions are different from those of lay writers who often appropriate scientific principles as metaphors without understanding the science. Thomas is poetic, but he's thinking deeply about biology as it really is, not merely as it appears to be to the uninitiated, and his thoughts
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Nov 05, 2010
Scott
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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
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Jan 07, 2010
John
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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
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Nov 03, 2011
Hito1
rated it:
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 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 More...
Sep 21, 2009
Jamie
rated it:
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, yo 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, yo More...
Mar 03, 2009
Michael
rated it:
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. Vis 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. Vis More...
Nov 15, 2010
Erica
rated it:
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
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Apr 05, 2011
Olive
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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
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Jul 28, 2010
Nancy
rated it: 
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 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 More...
Oct 14, 2008
Poiema
rated it: 
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 a 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 a More...
Nov 25, 2008
Dale
rated it:
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 re
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Jun 27, 2011
John
rated it:
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
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
Feb 24, 2009
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).
Feb 28, 2009
Ginna
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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 th
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Apr 07, 2009
Andrew
rated it:
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
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Oct 10, 2010
Al
rated it:
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.
Apr 18, 2010
Lauren
rated it:
The cool thing about systems ecology is that everything is a metaphor for everything else. The earth is a cell. Human societies are termite mounds. The focus is not on the thing but on the web of relationships that connects the thing to other things. Even the idea of a "thing" is in question: if my muscles cannot move, my heart cannot beat, my brain cannot think without the help of my mitochondria -- which are separate organisms with their own DNA -- what exactly defines "me?"
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Jun 04, 2011
Kirsten
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Assigned as extra credit in AP Bio-this book is awesome! Little vignettes about how the cell is like a world unto itself. Thomas has such a different view of things, including science. This book is a mind opener and you can read it in little pieces.
Feb 04, 2011
Matthew
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Still good, but not as good as The Youngest Science, or even The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher. Just too much evolutionary hogwash.
May 24, 2009
Adrian
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Read this in high school along with Medusa and the Snail. Amazing essays. Lewis Thomas made me love biology.
Jan 29, 2012
Brian
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After a while, you get used to Lewis Thomas as a sort of pleasant neighbor. Sadly mistaken in numerous places, but very pleasant. He is at his best discussing our preoccupations with health and (I think) at his worst discussing our 'social lives'.
May 03, 2009
Spencer
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A normal man's insight into a highly convoluted world of science. He walks you through a biosphere of experiences with the ability to point out individual smells among thousands, leaving you sensually satisfied and scientifically literate.
Oct 25, 2010
Tom
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Lewis Thomas provides many different lenses through which to look again at life. I'm reading this book for my second time and am thoroughly enjoy his musings on 'the self' and our interconnectedness with the biosphere.
Dec 08, 2009
Joey
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this is truly my favorite book in the whole world. over the years, i've bought at least 6 copies and i still don't have one. damn me for passing along the best book ever! always a great present (for me!). :)
