This book is given rank 11 in the "Modern Library list of 100
best nonfiction." It won the National Book Award in 1974.
Paperback; 181 pages. It consists of of 29 short articles on
issues in biology that were originally published in the New
England Journal of Medicine. The articles are philosophical
rather than technical. Lewis Thomas is a graduate of Princeton
and Harvard, and has been a faculty member at the University of
Minnesota, New York University, and Yale.
The book contains considerable discussion of the fact that the
meaning of "organism" is ambiguous, a matter of the viewer's
perspective. We usually think of one human, one tree, etc., as an
organism, but the matter isn't that clear.
An astonishing fact to ponder is that the organelles within a
single cell are themselves separate organisms. The mitochondria
and chloroplasts [pages 2-3, 82-83] are individual prokaryotic
organisms (related to the monera, that is, the bacteria kingdom),
even though we're talking about the cells of eukaryotic organisms
(animals, plants, fungi, and protista). These organelles have
their own DNA and RNA which are clearly bacteria-like and distinct
from the DNA and RNA of the creatures in whose cells they live.
Somehow they were captured by cells in primordial times and became
adapted to live inside them. These organelle are endosymbionts,
Thomas writes, "... they were probably engulfed by larger cells
more than a billion years ago and have simply lived there ever
since." [page 83] Some biologists also view cilia, flagella,
centrioles, and basal bodies as separate organisms.
This is no small matter, literally. Mitochondria and
chloroplasts are "... the most important things on earth.
Between them they produce the oxygen and arrange for its use. My
mitochondria comprise a very large proportion of me ... there is
almost as much of them in sheer dry bulk as there is the rest of
me." [84] One must raise "the whole question of my identity." [85]
"I did not mind it when I first learned of my descent from lower
forms of life ...[but] ... I had never bargained on descent from
single cells without nuclei .... I have not, in a real sense,
descended at all. I have brought them along with me, or perhaps
they have brought me." [85-86]
The odd but inevitable conclusion is that a single cell is an
entire ecosystem.
This point must segue into a discussion of "societies as
organisms." If one cell is in fact a community, a world, perhaps
we can view the human race or some other biological group as one
macroscopic animal, with an individual metabolism and
intelligence. There are instances in which a distinct
intelligence appears when many "individuals" interact, e.g., the
behavior of flocks of birds and schools of fish, and the division
of labor among ants and bees in the architecture they produce,
even though the behavior a single creature is random and
meaningless. Perhaps, then, an entire community is a kind of
animal.
Bearing this in mind, I review the remark Lewis Thomas
had made in the beginning of 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
connections. The other night, driving through a hilly, wooded
part of southern New England, I wondered about this. If not like
an organism, what is it like, what is it most like? Then,
satisfactorily for that moment, it came to me: it is most like a
single cell." [4]
Some of his conclusions are bound to be controversial in the
political sense:
"There is really no such creature as a single individual; he has
no more life of his own than a cast-off cell marooned from the
surface of your skin." [page 63]
"For total greed, rapacity, heartlessness, and irresponsibility
there is nothing to match a nation. Nations, by law, are
solitary, self-centered, withdrawn into themselves. There is no
such thing as affection between nations, and certainly no nation
ever loved another." [129]
Another example of the philosophical musings of Lewis Thomas is
the article entitled A Fear of Pheromones. "What on earth
would we be doing with such things? With the richness of speech,
and all our new devices for communication, why would we want to
release odors into the air to convey information about anything?"
[17]
A reader who browses the table of contents might not find it
self-explanatory. For example, the chapter called The MBL
is about the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole,
Massachusetts. The chapter called The Iks is about the
tribe known as the Iks in Uganda. In the article entitled
Ceti, this is the acronym for communication with
extraterrestrial intelligence, and discusses the conclusions
reached as a result of a joint U.S.-Soviet CETI conference in
1972.
See several customer comments, pro and con, on
the linked Amazon.com page.