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閱讀劉易斯·托馬斯 Lewis Thomas在百家争鸣的作品!!! |
劉易斯·托馬斯 - 人生經歷
劉易斯·托馬斯博士是美國傑出的醫學家和教育傢。他出身於美國紐約的一個醫生家庭，就讀於普林斯頓大學和哈佛醫學院，曾經在許多著名的大學醫院行醫，主持研究和領導教學工作。
劉易斯·托馬斯歷任明尼蘇達大學兒科研究所教授、紐約大學——貝爾維尤醫療中心病理學係和內科學係主任、耶魯醫學院病理學係主任、紐約市斯隆—凱特林癌癥紀念中心（研究院）院長，並榮任美國科學院院士。
他親身經歷了本世紀醫學的重要發展時期，做出過許多創造性業績。他的閱歷豐富，學識淵博，思想深邃。和許多優秀的科學家一樣，托馬斯的興趣廣泛，關心社會和人類的命運，並且愛好音樂，長於詩文。
1970 年代初，他應美國最負盛名的醫學刊物《新英格蘭醫學雜志》(New England Journal of Medicine)主編之約，為該刊撰寫專欄文章，筆觸所及縱情宇宙萬物，謳歌生命、大自然和人類的科學事業；對醫療技術和保健體製的論述鞭闢入裏，富有遠見。這些寓意深刻、情理交融、文筆清新的科學隨筆，後來集成《細胞生命的禮贊》和《水母與蝸牛》；中文譯本近年由湖南科技出版社納入“第一推動叢書”出版。
劉易斯·托馬斯的名字在美國傢喻戶曉，他並非文學大師，而是—位傑出的科普作傢。作者實際上是以《細胞生命的禮贊》和《水母與蝸牛》而著名的，這兩本書都是他在new england journal of medicine和nature上寫的隨筆。他的《細胞生命的禮贊》一書是一個醫學家、生物學家關於生命、人生、社會乃至宇南的思考，內容博大而深邃，閱讀這樣的作品，將是一次最具啓發性的跨時空的知識思辨之旅。
劉易斯·托馬斯 - 名言
如果沒有人嚮我們提供失敗的教訓，我們將一事無成。我們思考的軌道是在正確和錯誤之間二者擇一，而且錯誤的選擇和正確的選擇的頻率相等。
如果沒有人嚮我們提供失敗的教訓，我們將一事無成。我們思考的軌道是在正確和錯誤之間二者擇一，而且錯誤的選擇和正確的選擇的頻率相等。
如果沒有人嚮我們提供失敗的教訓，我們將一事無成。我們思考的軌道是在正確和錯誤之間二者擇一，而且錯誤的選擇和正確的選擇的頻率相等。
Thomas was born in Flushing, New York and attended Princeton University and Harvard Medical School. He became Dean of Yale Medical School and New York University School of Medicine, and President of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute.
He was invited to write regular essays in the New England Journal of Medicine, and won a National Book Award for the 1974 collection of those essays, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher. He also won a Christopher Award for this book. Two other collections of essays (from NEJM and other sources) are The Medusa and the Snail and Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony. His autobiography, The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine Watcher is a record of a century of medicine and the changes which occurred in it. He also published a book on etymology entitled Et Cetera, Et Cetera, poems, and numerous scientific papers.
Many of his essays discuss relationships among ideas or concepts using etymology as a starting point. Others concern the cultural implications of scientific discoveries and the growing awareness of ecology. In his essay on Mahler's Ninth Symphony, Thomas addresses the anxieties produced by the development of nuclear weapons. Thomas is often quoted, given his notably eclectic interests and superlative prose style.
The Lewis Thomas Prize is awarded annually by The Rockefeller University to a scientist for artistic achievement.
Parallels to Gaia Theory
In the book The Lives of a Cell, Thomas makes an observation very similar to James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis:
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.
On Probability and Possibility
In 1974, Thomas wrote in The Lives of a Cell that the function of humans is communication.
"We pass thoughts around, from mind to mind, so compulsively and with such speed that the brains of mankind often appear, functionally, to be undergoing fusion."
Thirty-some years later, with the developments in communication such as the Internet and all its derivatives (newsgroups, email, websites), the import of these words takes on a whole new meaning.
"Or perhaps we are only at the beginning of learning to use the system, with almost all our evolution as a species still ahead of us. Maybe the thoughts we generate today and flick around from mind to mind...are the primitive precursors of more complicated, polymerized structures that will come later, analogous to the prokaryotic cells that drifted through shallow pools in the early days of biological evolution. Later, when the time is right, there may be fusion and symbiosis among the bits, and then we will see eukaryotic thought, metazoans of thought, huge interliving coral shoals of thought.
The mechanism is there [n.b.: in the human brain], and there is no doubt that it is already capable of functioning...
We are simultaneously participants and bystanders, which is a puzzling role to play. As participants, we have no choice in the matter; this is what we do as a species."
Book
* The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher, 1974, Viking Press: ISBN 0-670-43442-6, Penguin Books, 1995 reprint: ISBN 0-14-004743-3
* The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher, 1979, Viking Press: ISBN 0-670-46568-2, Penguin Books, 1995 reprint: ISBN 0-14-024319-4
* Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony, 1983, Viking Press: ISBN 0-670-70390-7, Penguin Books, 1995 reprint: ISBN 0-14-024328-3
* The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine-Watcher, 1983, Viking: ISBN 0-670-79533-X, Penguin Books, 1995 reprint: ISBN 0-14-024327-5
* Et Cetera, Et Cetera: Notes of a Word-Watcher, 1990. Little Brown & Co ISBN 0-316-84099-8, Welcome Rain, 2000 ISBN 1-56649-166-5
* The Fragile Species, 1992, Scribner, ISBN 0-684-19420-1, Simon & Schuster, 1996 paperback: ISBN 0-684-84302-1