The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher [Mass Market Paperback]

Lewis Thomas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1995 | ISBN-10: 0140243194 | ISBN-13: 978-0140243192

Continuing the exploration of humanity and its world he began in The Lives of a Cell, the acclaimed scientist examines disease and natural death, cloning, making mistakes, and other timely topics with his trademark wonder and wit. Reprint.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (January 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140243194
• ISBN-13: 978-0140243192
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #103,482 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Overlooked and underappreciated, November 28, 2003

By 

Andrew Parker (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (Mass Market Paperback)

This collection of essays has held a special place on my shelf and in my heart for many years. I return to it often for both the ideas and the wonderful sense of life that Lewis Thomas injects into his writing.

I have read other reviews here questioning both the scientific value of these essays and the author's scientific creditials. As for the latter - this man has been a doctor, a field researcher, a lab director, a professor, the dean of Yale medical school, President of the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and member of the Presidential Science Advisory Board. If you have an issue with these credentials your standards are a little too high.

To speak of the scientific value of this book is difficult. Lewis Thomas didn't write like Steven Jay Gould, with clear theses, dates and names and cited research. He is more like Douglas Hofstadter. (if this comparison helps) I imagine that Lewis Thomas wrote these essays late at night after a day filled with details and the reductionism of modern science. These essays are the antithesis of what his days must have entailed.

What we find on paper here are both the whimsical musisngs and deepest thoughts of a brilliant man whose whole life was devoted to practicing and teaching science. He writes beautifully, with humour, zest, and a sense of wonder that I find endlessly captivating. His love of the natural world is infectious.

Please read this book. Of all the science books I've read (I have two science degrees) and all the fiction I've read, this book continues to inspire, teach, and amaze me.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More good writing and ideas but some are repeated, May 14, 2001

By 

Charles Ashbacher (Marion, Iowa United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (Mass Market Paperback)

The title of the book comes from one of the most unusual instances of symbiosis that exists in nature. A form of jellyfish accepts a snail larva, which then proceeds to feast on the jellyfish until it becomes a truncated parasite on the mouth of the snail. This remnant is capable of reproducing and the cycle begins anew. As Thomas writes so eloquently, it is a misnomer to label such examples of biological cooperation as a parasitic relationship. Both species benefit greatly, each serving to protect and nourish the other at some point in their life-cycle.
What is difficult to understand is how such a relationship could be generated. All organisms are marked by very specific molecular structures, which may be the most species-specific characteristic there is. How these two creatures could somehow forgive the presence of another until the relationship could develop is completely unknown. But any solution would have profound consequences for medicine. Any ability to turn the immune system on and off at will would allow for tremendous advances in battles against specific diseases. It would then be possible to turn on specific antibodies against whatever disease is currently a threat.
The remainder of the book is just as interesting, as Thomas continues in putting forward his philosophy of mother earth as a cooperative biological entity. While his analogy of the cellular cooperation of an organism to that of the biosphere of the earth is a stretch, there is enough truth to take it seriously. Like all his books after the original, I enjoyed it, but wish he would not recycle material used in earlier books. There is so much new biological wonder and he is so talented a writer that I would have loved to see what new material he could generate.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 29 Brief Essays on Biology; Very Entertaining; Very Witty, December 1, 2006

By 

Ralph White (New England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (Mass Market Paperback)

This is quite simply one of the best written books on biology that you'll ever read. If you are in the camp which believes that scientists use one side of their brain, and that writers use the other, be prepared for a big surprise. If you've read Bill Bryson, you may already realize that there are a gifted few who possess both talents. This is a collection of 29 very brief essays (they average only 6 pages each). Prepare to be thoroughly amazed by Dr. Lewis Thomas' descriptions of the most remarkable features of our natural world. The title story serves to illustrate his literary technique.

This essay is a mere four and a half pages. The protagonists are a sea slug and a jellyfish, which Dr. Thomas re-christens with artistic license. The lead sentence is "We've never been so self-conscious as we seem to be these days." Then follows some three pages about how lower animals (coral polyps, for example) have some, yet undiscovered method of discriminating between their own species (self) and others which may be extremely close. Then, as if to prove the general rule with a startling exception, Dr. Thomas shows how a particular medusa and snail in the Sea of Naples appear to be confused about their molecular configuration and fuse into a single organism. The jellyfish (medusa) is affixed to the mouth of the slug (snail), and when the slug produces larvae, one becomes entrapped in the tentacles of the tiny jellyfish. At first it looks like the parasite is the predator. But no. The slug larvae eats away at the jellyfish from the inside and as the jellyfish shrinks, the slug grows, until a new equilibrium is reached in adulthood. Lewis finishes by saying that this cycle is so bizarre, so thoroughly unexpected, and so confusing that "I cannot get my mind to stay still and think it through."

Now you have twenty-eight essays to go, and I assure you that your mind will not be able to stay still through any of them.

One of my favorites isn't about science at all, but about punctuation. Yes, literally, punctuation. In writing about the uses, and misuses, of parentheses, commas, semicolons, exclamation points, quote marks, and dashes, Dr. Thomas employs them in the relevant paragraph in such a way as to draw the readers' attention. Take for instance the comma:

"The commas are the most useful and usable of all the stops. It is highly important to put them in place as you go along. If you try to come back after doing a paragraph and stick them in the various spots that tempt you you will discover that they tend to swarm like minnows into all sorts of crevices whose existence you hadn't realized and before you know it the whole long sentence becomes immobilized and lashes up squirming in commas. Better to use them sparingly, and with affection, precisely when the need for each one arises, nicely, by itself."

If Dr. Thomas carries a dominant theme throughout the book, it is that a liberal education is critically important, even for a very dedicated scientist.