The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

By Lewis Thomas

Synopsis: 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, language, music, death, insects, and medicine. Lewis Thomas writes, “Once you have become permanently startled, as I am, by the realization that we are a social species, you tend to keep an eye out for the pieces of evidence that this is, by and large, good for us.”

First Published: 1974 | ISBN-13: 978-0140047431

Thomas’s enthusiasm for research and the scientific advancement of medicine is embedded in a wider vision of human accomplishment and man’s place in the universe. Some of his social commentary is dated (physicians tend to be male and the sole breadwinner for the family), but his erudition and range of thinking are well represented in this volume. – NYU Medicine, Arts, and Medicine Database Entry

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