Thomas Lewis compare planet

There is a great descriptive book written by American researcher Thomas Lewis, which made many people change their attitudes to life and look differently on the planet and its parts. I am among those people as well. Lewis’ collection of twenty nine essays formed an exceptional book, which became a masterpiece. Its name is The lives of a cell: Notes of a biology watcher. In my opinion, this book revolutionized the way people thought of life organization on the Earth and changed their points of view on many problems.

Reading this book reminded me of reading a fairy tale not just because it is beautifully phrased: the way Thomas Lewis compare planet, people, plants and other creatures with different organisms using scientific terms will amuse every reader. The author looks on everything from a cellular point of view and gradually builds a picture of the World as of the whole system, which consists of tiny pieces.

The pivotal issue of The lives of a cell is the problems of our planet Earth. Its comparison with a cell is the first thing that comes to mind of every reader who is being asked about the content of this book. The most famous quote that reflects the overall sense of the book presents our planet as a well- organized body:

I have been trying to think of the earth as a kind of organism, but it is no go. I cannot think of it this way. It is too big, too complex, with too many working parts lacking visible connections. The other night, driving through a hilly, wooded part of southern New England, I wondered about this. If not like an organism, what is it like, what is it most like? Then, satisfactorily for that moment, it came to me: it is most like a single cell (Lewis, 1978, p. 141).

Although this book covers various topics such as human evolution, micro- biology and other scientific aspects, the reader should not necessary be a biologist or Doctor of Medicine to understand what the author wanted to tell in his book. It is understandable for everyone who is being interested in world evolution, its changes and the role human being plays in destroying it: “Watching television, you’d think we lived at bay, in total jeopardy, surrounded on all sides by human-seeking germs, shielded against infection and death only by a chemical technology that enables us to keep killing them off” (Lewis, 1978, p. 113).