Elegant, suggestive, and clarifying, Lewis Thomas's profoundly humane vision explores the world around us and examines the complex interdependence of all things.  Extending beyond the usual limitations of biological science and into a vast and wondrous world of hidden relationships, this provocative book explores in personal, poetic essays to topics such as computers, germs, language, music, death, insects, and medicine.  Lewis Thomas writes, "Once you have become permanently startled, as I am, by the realization that we are a social species, you tend to keep an eye out for the pieces of evidence that this is, by and large, good for us."

The Lives of a Cell
Thoughts for a Countdown
On Societies as Organisms
A Fear of Pheromones
The Music of This Sphere
An Earnest Proposal
The Technology of Medicine
Vibes
Ceti
The Long Habit
Antaeus in Manhattan
The MBL
Autonomy
Organelles as Organisms
Germs
Your Very Good Health
Social Talk
Information
Death in the Open
Natural Science
Natural Man
The Iks
Computers
The Planning of Science
Some Biomythology
On Various Words
Living Language
On Probability and Possibility
The World's Biggest Membranes
Reference Notes