Tiny Panda Quotes
Lewis Thomas (1913-1993) was an esteemed American physician, poet, and essayist, renowned for bridging the worlds of science and the humanities. A graduate of Harvard Medical School, Thomas served as a prominent educator and researcher, holding significant positions at institutions like New York University and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. His works, including the acclaimed "The Lives of a Cell," reflect his deep appreciation for the interconnectedness of life. Through his eloquent prose, Thomas left a lasting legacy that continues to inspire interdisciplinary thinking in both science and literature.
9 quotes found
"I won't compare ants and people, but ants give us a useful model of how single members of a community can become so organized that they end up resembling, in effect, one big collective brain. Our own exploding population and communication technology are leading us that way."
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."
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."
Lewis Thomas
"The dilemma of modern medicine, and the underlying central flaw in medical education and, most of all, in the training of interns, is the irresistible drive to do something, anything. It is expected by patients and too often agreed to by their doctors, in the face of ignorance."
Lewis Thomas"The great secret of doctors, known only to their wives, but still hidden from the public, is that most things get better by themselves; most things, in fact, are better in the morning."
Lewis Thomas"It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits."
Lewis Thomas"The most solid piece of scientific truth I know of is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature."
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."
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."
Lewis Thomas