| Title | : | The Fragile Species |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0684843021 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780684843025 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 208 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1992 |
With extraordinary perception, author Lewis Thomas discusses topics such as evolutionary biology, the development of language, the therapeutic aspects of medicine, and his love for his profession.
The Fragile Species Reviews
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Hard to go wrong with Lewis Thomas. Lucid and luminescent writing about nature and science.
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I put this down part-way through. I was hoping for an extension from Late Night Thoughts, but he tripped one of my wires. I do not care for books on the human mind or human nature that use experiments on animals as their evidence. It feels like eating fruit of a poisoned tree, and my hunger for insight does not extend that far. Your results may vary.
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Wonderful essays. No idea why I pulled it off the shelf. Glad I did.
Very good essay (p. 158) on cultural evolution, linguistics. Another (p. 99) on "Comprehending my Cat Jeoffry." Includes the author's use of Fibonacci numbers (p. 113). -
Not my favorite of Thomas's, but still--I always fall in love with his writing; it's science made poetry. And I feel like he had some really interesting ways of looking at things--his stuff just clicks with me...
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Lucid prose for a scientist. Now obsessed with our origins as bacteria.
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Although this was published in 1992 and doesn't include the advances in DNA sequencing that has happened since, Dr. Thomas is a visionary that is forseeing those things to come. He scans a broad time frame from the creation of the universe to the start life on earth as simple organisms to human life to the complex organism that is earth itself. Each chapter is a jewel. You do not need to have any more than high school science to understand it but you will come away with much more. He sees science and humans as wonder and not as life under a microscope.
This is not a quick read but one to be savored and understood. -
I love reading Lewis Thomas - his essays are written conversationally, include just enough science for my science-loving brain, and enough hyperbole to get me thinking. The topics in this collection are broad and a few of the discussions and tone are dated to the point of being culturally insensitive. Still glad to find one of his books I hadn't read and to take the good with the bad and think it all over.
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An enjoyable and thought-provoking collection of essays on science, medicine, and nature. The final essay “Connections” is particularly prescient in light of events occurring at the beginning of this decade.
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Enjoyable collection of essays. Thomas is better than a lot of contemporary science writers. Covered topics like nuclear weapons, evolution, symbiosis, psychology, psuedoscience and anti-science, etc.
Some essays dragged a bit for me -
Extraordinary. Lewis Thomas is a wise man; what an honour it would be to dine with him!
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DNF.
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bacteria, language, past, future !
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http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/6... -
Thomas’s most recent collection of essays. He seems to have recovered some of the optimism he appeared to have lost in Late Night Thoughts.... Especially enjoyed his musings on cooperation as the essential basis of genetic evolution and on children as the inventors of language.
