Plot Summary
The Lives of a Cell
Lewis Thomas
The Lives of a Cell
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1974
Plot Summary
The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher is a 1974 collection of essays by Lewis Thomas. Comprising twenty-nine essays, each written between 1971 and 1973, the collection casts a wide net over Thomas’s intellectual interests, from computer science, to Bach, to biology, and mass media. Thomas makes an analogy between the interconnectedness of our lines of scientific inquiry and the interconnectedness of life on Earth. The subjects of his essays exist on scales both small and large, and move between remote past and distant future, demonstrating that we have much more to learn about reality than we currently know.
The collection’s titular essay, “The Lives of a Cell,” challenges the conception of the human as an individual organism. In fact, Thomas explains, our own bodies do not fully belong to us, but rather to trillions of cells that work tirelessly and in harmony to produce our consciousness. Expanding this metaphor to a planetary scale, he suggests that we might see the Earth as a single cell and the human species as a tiny organelle that accomplishes only a few relatively insignificant functions. In another essay, “On Societies as Organisms,” Thomas employs another metaphor: that of humans as ants. Both species, when observed at the scale of population, exhibit group behaviors that cause some scientists to ask whether these groups are equivalent to organisms. Thomas argues that the transmission of knowledge between individual humans through the medium of language qualifies human populations as organisms. Many other species, such as termites, mold, and fish, synchronize their behaviors as well.
In the essay, “The Music of This Sphere,” Thomas shows that music is not only created by the human species, provoking his readers to develop a more inclusive definition. Some animals can create and interpret rhythms, notes, and sometimes even harmonies. Some advanced species, such as gorillas, even extract aesthetic pleasure and feelings of community from music. Simpler species utilize simpler components of music, such as rhythm, to survive. For example, earthworms can analyze properties of the surrounding soil, like its density and closeness to the surface, through minuscule vibrations. Thomas challenges readers to think of music outside of a species context and to understand that it transcends individual lives and arguments about its meaning. Moreover, music connects all species to an unfinished evolutionary legacy.
Many of Thomas’s essays are concerned with human technological evolution and its effects on the planet. He criticizes the idea that technological evolution is necessarily good, arguing that the idea assumes that we know exactly how new technologies will affect most, if not every, aspect of our planet. In fact, we know only the tiniest amount about how our advanced technologies influence other species and systems. He uses this fact to propose a moral thought experiment, in which we prohibit ourselves from launching a nuclear weapon until we fully explain a single living organism. He selects as a candidate a tiny microbe called Myxotricha paradoxa that lives in the digestive system of some termite species. A full understanding of just this one organism, a distant ancestor of humans, might unlock a much deeper understanding of how human cells evolved. Its study would certainly help illuminate our interconnectedness with the millions of other species on Earth.
Thomas also looks at technology through a human rights lens. In “The Technology of Medicine,” he develops a three-tiered model of technology-based medical care. Two of the three tiers – “nontechnology,” or pseudoscience-based care, and “halfway technology,” or care that temporarily soothes suffering – are highly funded, but disproportionately served to the wealthy. The third tier, “high technology,” focuses on solving common medical ailments through understanding their fundamental mechanisms. Thomas argues that high technology is the most helpful for humankind because the solutions it obtains can be rapidly shared and reproduced, tending to be cheaper and more effective than the solutions implemented by other tiers.
Thomas’s book shifts constantly between the microscopic and the global, the human-centric and the ecological, and the past to the future. In doing so, he demonstrates, paradoxically, that the earth and its inhabitants are more glued-together and relevant to each other than we assume.
The collection’s titular essay, “The Lives of a Cell,” challenges the conception of the human as an individual organism. In fact, Thomas explains, our own bodies do not fully belong to us, but rather to trillions of cells that work tirelessly and in harmony to produce our consciousness. Expanding this metaphor to a planetary scale, he suggests that we might see the Earth as a single cell and the human species as a tiny organelle that accomplishes only a few relatively insignificant functions. In another essay, “On Societies as Organisms,” Thomas employs another metaphor: that of humans as ants. Both species, when observed at the scale of population, exhibit group behaviors that cause some scientists to ask whether these groups are equivalent to organisms. Thomas argues that the transmission of knowledge between individual humans through the medium of language qualifies human populations as organisms. Many other species, such as termites, mold, and fish, synchronize their behaviors as well.
In the essay, “The Music of This Sphere,” Thomas shows that music is not only created by the human species, provoking his readers to develop a more inclusive definition. Some animals can create and interpret rhythms, notes, and sometimes even harmonies. Some advanced species, such as gorillas, even extract aesthetic pleasure and feelings of community from music. Simpler species utilize simpler components of music, such as rhythm, to survive. For example, earthworms can analyze properties of the surrounding soil, like its density and closeness to the surface, through minuscule vibrations. Thomas challenges readers to think of music outside of a species context and to understand that it transcends individual lives and arguments about its meaning. Moreover, music connects all species to an unfinished evolutionary legacy.
Many of Thomas’s essays are concerned with human technological evolution and its effects on the planet. He criticizes the idea that technological evolution is necessarily good, arguing that the idea assumes that we know exactly how new technologies will affect most, if not every, aspect of our planet. In fact, we know only the tiniest amount about how our advanced technologies influence other species and systems. He uses this fact to propose a moral thought experiment, in which we prohibit ourselves from launching a nuclear weapon until we fully explain a single living organism. He selects as a candidate a tiny microbe called Myxotricha paradoxa that lives in the digestive system of some termite species. A full understanding of just this one organism, a distant ancestor of humans, might unlock a much deeper understanding of how human cells evolved. Its study would certainly help illuminate our interconnectedness with the millions of other species on Earth.
Thomas also looks at technology through a human rights lens. In “The Technology of Medicine,” he develops a three-tiered model of technology-based medical care. Two of the three tiers – “nontechnology,” or pseudoscience-based care, and “halfway technology,” or care that temporarily soothes suffering – are highly funded, but disproportionately served to the wealthy. The third tier, “high technology,” focuses on solving common medical ailments through understanding their fundamental mechanisms. Thomas argues that high technology is the most helpful for humankind because the solutions it obtains can be rapidly shared and reproduced, tending to be cheaper and more effective than the solutions implemented by other tiers.
Thomas’s book shifts constantly between the microscopic and the global, the human-centric and the ecological, and the past to the future. In doing so, he demonstrates, paradoxically, that the earth and its inhabitants are more glued-together and relevant to each other than we assume.