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The joys of imperfection

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Re-reading one of Thomas' wonderful essay collections this week reminded me of his high standing on my life-list of essayists. Both this volume and the earlier THE LIVES OF A CELL (Penguin, 1978)) are stimulating excursions into the everyday phenomena that make life what it is. Thomas' probing intellect is as likely to find delight in the play of otters as in the conjugation of paramecia. He is a cleverly cerebral cliff diver, leaping into the murk of the mundane only to come up with a shiny new coin between his teeth. For example, in the essay "To err is human," the author considers the truth embodied in the phrase, "Learn by trial and error." The ability to make mistakes is essential to progress, to invention, to creation, he posits, and it is true down to the sub-cellular level. He speculates that if modern scientists had been assigned to invent DNA, the project would have failed due to our bias toward making things work - we try to eliminate failure from a system. If DNA had always replicated perfectly the earth would still be populated by single celled organisms. A wonderful read.

29 Brief Essays on Biology; Very Entertaining; Very Witty

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This is quite simply one of the best written books on biology that you'll ever read. If you are in the camp which believes that scientists use one side of their brain, and that writers use the other, be prepared for a big surprise. If you've read Bill Bryson, you may already realize that there are a gifted few who possess both talents. This is a collection of 29 very brief essays (they average only 6 pages each). Prepare to be thoroughly amazed by Dr. Lewis Thomas' descriptions of the most remarkable features of our natural world. The title story serves to illustrate his literary technique. This essay is a mere four and a half pages. The protagonists are a sea slug and a jellyfish, which Dr. Thomas re-christens with artistic license. The lead sentence is "We've never been so self-conscious as we seem to be these days." Then follows some three pages about how lower animals (coral polyps, for example) have some, yet undiscovered method of discriminating between their own species (self) and others which may be extremely close. Then, as if to prove the general rule with a startling exception, Dr. Thomas shows how a particular medusa and snail in the Sea of Naples appear to be confused about their molecular configuration and fuse into a single organism. The jellyfish (medusa) is affixed to the mouth of the slug (snail), and when the slug produces larvae, one becomes entrapped in the tentacles of the tiny jellyfish. At first it looks like the parasite is the predator. But no. The slug larvae eats away at the jellyfish from the inside and as the jellyfish shrinks, the slug grows, until a new equilibrium is reached in adulthood. Lewis finishes by saying that this cycle is so bizarre, so thoroughly unexpected, and so confusing that "I cannot get my mind to stay still and think it through." Now you have twenty-eight essays to go, and I assure you that your mind will not be able to stay still through any of them. One of my favorites isn't about science at all, but about punctuation. Yes, literally, punctuation. In writing about the uses, and misuses, of parentheses, commas, semicolons, exclamation points, quote marks, and dashes, Dr. Thomas employs them in the relevant paragraph in such a way as to draw the readers' attention. Take for instance the comma: "The commas are the most useful and usable of all the stops. It is highly important to put them in place as you go along. If you try to come back after doing a paragraph and stick them in the various spots that tempt you you will discover that they tend to swarm like minnows into all sorts of crevices whose existence you hadn't realized and before you know it the whole long sentence becomes immobilized and lashes up squirming in commas. Better to use them sparingly, and with affection, precisely when the need for each one arises, nicely, by itself." If Dr. Thomas carries a dominant theme throughout the book, it is that a liberal education is critically important, even for a very dedicated scientist.

The humane scientist Modern Montaigne with Microscope

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Lewis Thomas' essays draw on his wide knowledge and experience as doctor and research scientist. They also draw on his humane perception , and Montaigne- like desire to think and inquire about all which is human. He can clarify the most complex issues in a few brief paragraphs. I have read much on the subject of human cloning but I do not believe I have read anything which analyzes the subject in such a clear and convincing way as Thomas in this following paragrah. "Cloning is the most dismaying of prospects, mandating as it does the elimination of sex with only a metaphoric elimination of death as compensation. It is almost no comfort to know that one's cloned, identical surrogate lives on, especially when the living will very likely involve edging one's real, now aging self off to side, sooner or later. It is hard to imagine anything like filial affection or respect for a single, unmated nucleus: harder still to think of one's new, self- generated self anything, but an absolute, desolate orphan. Not to mentrion the complex interpersonal relationship involved in raising one's self from infancy , teaching the language, enforcing discipline, instilling good manners and the like. How would you feel if you became an incorrigible juvenile dilenquent at the age of fifty- five" Aside from cloning Thomas writes in this collection about the symbiotic relation of medusa and snail, of the meaning of 'self' in relation to being outside, and other, about the heatlh- care system and its costs, about 'warts' about humanity as the worrying species, about the meaning of 'disease' The closing essay is a brief history of medical practice. There are also two small but wonderful essays on Montaigne's way of thinking. Thomas while deeply aware of humanity's capacity for grandiose error is a hope-filled and hope- giving writer. Here is the way he writes about the worrying animal, a passage which is a sample of his elegant etymologically informed prose. "But security is the last thing we feel entitled to feel. We are, perhaps uniquely among the earth's creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing gthe future, discontent with the present, unable to take in the idea of dying, unable to sit still. We deserve a better press, in my view. We have always had a strong hunch about our origin, which does us credit; from the oldest language we know, the Indo-European tongue, we took the word for earth- Dhghem- and turned it into 'humus' and 'human' ; 'humble' too which does us more credit ; We are by all odds the most persistently and obsessively social of all species, more dependent on each other than the famous social insects, and really when you look at us, infinitely more imaginative and deft at social living. We are good at this; it is the way we have built our cultures and the literature of our civilizations. We have high expectations and set high standards for our social behavior , and when we fail at it and endanger the species- as we have done several times in this century- the strongest words we can find to condemn ourselves are the telling words 'inhuman' and' inhumane'. There is nothing at all absurd about the human condition. We matter. It seems to me a good guess, hazarded by a good many people who have thought about it, that we may be engaged in the formation of something like a mind for the life of this planet.If this is so we are still at the most primitive stage., still fumbling with language and thinking, but infinitely capacitated for the future. It is remarkable that we've come so far as we have in so short a period , really no time at all as geologists measure time. We are the newest, the youngest and the brightest thing around." What a wonderful hope- giving human being wrote this book.

Very Interesting

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Lewis Thomas takes a simple observation, like the report on pollution, and changes the reader's perception. In one of his essays, he chastises the reader on his or her selfishness with a fiery passion. Thomas convinces the reader of the ideas inferred with his scientific observations, the theme of this book being the major human fault: striving to reach perfection. The essays are short, abrupt but leave you to ponder your own interactions in life, nature.

Why did I never have to read this in high school Biology?

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While I sat through boring lectures and starch staining labs, this book sat on a shelf somewhere waiting for me to read it. At that time, I believed all science not just biology were just boring fact-finding and number recording. Given this book earlier, I may have had a different life. A hobby that I enjoy now may have been a fulfilling career. Lewis will show you that biology is about more than dissection and grainy movies from the early eighties. His essays touch on a wide variety of subjects. However, all contain a sense of wonder that is sadly lacking in our schools, at least when I was there. Read this if you would like to find or rekindle your love of science.