Author: Lewis Thomas

War

Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi raise aphids as livestock launch armies into war use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies capture slaves engage in child labour exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.

Lewis Thomas

Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi raise aphids as livestock launch armies into war use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies capture slaves engage in child labour exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.

Society

If you want to use a cliche you must take full responsibility for it yourself and not try to fob it off on anon. or on society.

Lewis Thomas

If you want to use a cliche you must take full responsibility for it yourself and not try to fob it off on anon. or on society.

Science

We're as clever as we think we are but we'll be a lot cleverer when we learn to use not just one brain but to pool huge numbers of brains. We're at a level technologically where we can share information and think collectively about our problems. We do it in science all the time – there's no reason why we can't do it in other endeavors.

Lewis Thomas

We're as clever as we think we are but we'll be a lot cleverer when we learn to use not just one brain but to pool huge numbers of brains. We're at a level technologically where we can share information and think collectively about our problems. We do it in science all the time – there's no reason why we can't do it in other endeavors.

Science

Very few recognize science as the high adventure it really is the wildest of all explorations ever taken by human beings the chance to glimpse things never seen before the shrewdest maneuver for discovering how the world works.

Lewis Thomas

Very few recognize science as the high adventure it really is the wildest of all explorations ever taken by human beings the chance to glimpse things never seen before the shrewdest maneuver for discovering how the world works.

Science

The central task of science is to arrive stage by stage at a clearer comprehension of nature but this does not at all mean as it is sometimes claimed to mean a search for mastery over nature.

Lewis Thomas

The central task of science is to arrive stage by stage at a clearer comprehension of nature but this does not at all mean as it is sometimes claimed to mean a search for mastery over nature.

Science

I suggest that the introductory courses in science at all levels from grade school through college be radically revised. Leave the fundamentals the so-called basics aside for a while and concentrate the attention of all students on the things that are not known.

Lewis Thomas

I suggest that the introductory courses in science at all levels from grade school through college be radically revised. Leave the fundamentals the so-called basics aside for a while and concentrate the attention of all students on the things that are not known.

Science

Much of today's public anxiety about science is the apprehension that we may forever be overlooking the whole by an endless obsessive preoccupation with the parts.

Lewis Thomas

Much of today's public anxiety about science is the apprehension that we may forever be overlooking the whole by an endless obsessive preoccupation with the parts.

Poetry

The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science along with behaviour control genetic engineering transplanted heads computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers.

Lewis Thomas

The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science along with behaviour control genetic engineering transplanted heads computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers.

Nature

Our behavior toward each other is the strangest most unpredictable and most unaccountable of all the phenomena with which we are obliged to live. In all of nature there is nothing so threatening to humanity as humanity itself.

Lewis Thomas

Our behavior toward each other is the strangest most unpredictable and most unaccountable of all the phenomena with which we are obliged to live. In all of nature there is nothing so threatening to humanity as humanity itself.

Music

Music is the effort we make to explain to ourselves how our brains work. We listen to Bach transfixed because this is listening to a human mind.

Lewis Thomas

Music is the effort we make to explain to ourselves how our brains work. We listen to Bach transfixed because this is listening to a human mind.

Knowledge

Medical knowledge and technical savvy are biodegradable. The sort of medicine that was practiced in Boston or New York or Atlanta fifty years ago would be as strange to a medical student or intern today as the ceremonial dance of a !Kung San tribe would seem to a rock festival audience in Hackensack.

Lewis Thomas

Medical knowledge and technical savvy are biodegradable. The sort of medicine that was practiced in Boston or New York or Atlanta fifty years ago would be as strange to a medical student or intern today as the ceremonial dance of a !Kung San tribe would seem to a rock festival audience in Hackensack.