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The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974) [pdf]

38 points by novia 9y ago

dtjohnnymonkey 9y ago
One of my all-time favorite quotes is from this essay. It gives a lot of color into how we all get sucked in to technology. “It is in our collective behavior that we are most mysterious. We won't be able to construct machines like ourselves until we've understood this, and we're not even close. All we know is the phenomenon: we spend our time sending messages to each other, talking and trying to listen at the same time, exchanging information. This seems to be our most urgent biological function; it is what we do with our lives.”
JoeDaDude 9y ago
Lewis Thomas' many essays were collected in book form over the years [1]. In addition to commentary, he shared many insights on biology, society, and language prior to his untimely demise. If you enjoy this, you'll likely enjoy his other books as well. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Lewis-Thomas/e/B000APFUM8 https://www.amazon.com/Lewis-Thomas/e/B000APFUM8
kqr2 9y ago
Link seems down. Assuming that this is the same: https://archive.org/details/TheLivesOfACell https://archive.org/details/TheLivesOfACell
kwhitefoot 9y ago
Beautiful writing by one of the greats. All his writings are suffused with a sense of wonder yet are free from mysticism. I have several of his books my bookshelf. I reread them when I need my faith in humanity restored.
jhbadger 9y ago
I'm a fan of Lewis Thomas, but some essays in the book hold up better than others. In particular, the one on computers and AI is a bit amusing in retrospect: "Even when technology succeeds in manufacturing a machine as big as Texas to do everything we recognize as human, it will still be, at best, a single individual. This amounts to nothing, practically speaking. To match what we can do, there would have to be 3 billion of them with more coming down the assembly line, and I doubt that anyone will put up the money, much less make room." But to be fair, he was bringing up computers to emphasize just how more complicated living beings are than any computers existing in 1974. Not that we are really at the human-level computer stage either, but when we do, they won't be huge Texas sized things made in isolation of each other.

38 points by novia 9y ago

One of my all-time favorite quotes is from this essay. It gives a lot of color into how we all get sucked in to technology. “It is in our collective behavior that we are most mysterious. We won't be able to construct machines like ourselves until we've understood this, and we're not even close. All we know is the phenomenon: we spend our time sending messages to each other, talking and trying to listen at the same time, exchanging information. This seems to be our most urgent biological function; it is what we do with our lives.”

JoeDaDude 9y ago

Lewis Thomas' many essays were collected in book form over the years [1]. In addition to commentary, he shared many insights on biology, society, and language prior to his untimely demise. If you enjoy this, you'll likely enjoy his other books as well. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Lewis-Thomas/e/B000APFUM8 https://www.amazon.com/Lewis-Thomas/e/B000APFUM8

kqr2 9y ago

Link seems down. Assuming that this is the same: https://archive.org/details/TheLivesOfACell https://archive.org/details/TheLivesOfACell

kwhitefoot 9y ago

Beautiful writing by one of the greats. All his writings are suffused with a sense of wonder yet are free from mysticism. I have several of his books my bookshelf. I reread them when I need my faith in humanity restored.

jhbadger 9y ago

I'm a fan of Lewis Thomas, but some essays in the book hold up better than others. In particular, the one on computers and AI is a bit amusing in retrospect: "Even when technology succeeds in manufacturing a machine as big as Texas to do everything we recognize as human, it will still be, at best, a single individual. This amounts to nothing, practically speaking. To match what we can do, there would have to be 3 billion of them with more coming down the assembly line, and I doubt that anyone will put up the money, much less make room." But to be fair, he was bringing up computers to emphasize just how more complicated living beings are than any computers existing in 1974. Not that we are really at the human-level computer stage either, but when we do, they won't be huge Texas sized things made in isolation of each other.