April 1992
A strong voice on a fragile subject:
Lewis Thomas and the world we share
Interview by Peggy Langstaff
"I am a member of a fragile species, still new to the earth, the youngest creatures of any scale, here only a few moments as evolutionary time is measured, a juvenile species, a child of a species. We are only tentatively set in place, error-prone, at risk of fumbling, in real danger at the moment of leaving behind only a thin layer of our fossils . . ."
With such luminously phrased observations as this, Dr. Lewis Thomas continues his ruminations on the riddle of life with his new book of essays, The Fragile Species (Charles Scribner's Sons, $19.95). Readers familiar with his highly acclaimed Lives of a Cell, Medusa and the Snail and other collections will find no diminution here in Thomas's zest for his subject.
Thomas's themes this go around are still rooted in the mysterious beauty of life in its many forms, grounded, as always, in the biologist's framework. But his fans will find him at this moment in his life somewhat more futuristic in his musings. Fortunate for us, these areas of concern coincide nicely with major issues of the day: AIDS, drug abuse, aging, health care and the environment. A more cogent and eloquent thinker would be hard to find on any one of these subjects, let alone as a group.
On the occasion of the publication of his new book, I spoke by phone with Dr. Thomas at his home in New York City and found him as enchanting and incisive a conversationalist as he is a writer.
PL: Dr. Thomas, I confess to being a fan. I've read all of your books and have come away from each feeling somehow enlarged and amazed. Enlarged by having learned something weighty and new rather effortlessly, and amazed at the clarity and fluency with which you tackle difficult subjects. How would you say this particular collection of essays differs from your previous works?
LT: Well, thank you very much! The essays in this book, which were written over the last seven or eight years, are rather different from the books of essays that I've done in the past. For one thing, they are somewhat longer. I was able to cover more territory in biology than I had previously allotted myself.
I became obsessed with the notion that far from being a species continually at risk of extinction, like the dinosaurs, perhaps because of our behavior or because of one or another kind of cataclysm, we are really very new and quite young as a species. I suspected that when new species do appear in the course of evolution, they spend a certain amount of time growing up and protecting themselves. We accept easily the notion that the social insects have been around for millions of years, not changing much, and here we are -- by all the evidence we've only been here 30,000 to 40,000 years. Compare that to 3.7 billion years for life on the planet.
PL: That does put things in perspective. So where, pardon the pun, on earth are we headed?
LT: Our predecessors were the Neanderthals. For some reason or another, probably because they never learned language or never acquired language, they didn't survive. They probably didn't survive because of competition from our immediate forebears, Cro-Magnon man. And 30,000 to 40,000 years is no time at all in the development of a species.
I don't think anything like us has ever taken place on the earth before, where one species not only appears brand new but then swarms over every livable niche of land and literally takes over the world. And when you think about it in these terms, we are very likely a highly immature juvenile species just beginning to feel our way into the world with the various beginnings of social living in the sense of sticking together. This makes the prospects ahead of us quite exciting and suggests some reason for optimism which I have not felt so keenly before.
I think we're undoubtedly here to stay, provided we are able to continue our social development and become more accomplished in the skills of thinking together as members of a social species.
PL: After all, the insects have had millions of years to learn to get along with each other so well. We've just started.
LT: Exactly.
PL: Well, so far so good. I mean, in spite of our bumbling, awkwardness and stupidity, we've managed to survive incredible obstacles as a species -- famine, pestilence, war, natural disasters. What are some of the current, more serious problems you see for us?
LT: Obviously despoiling the earth is the current overriding matter of concern. It's now agreed all around in the biological community that symbiosis is the rule rather than the freak exception. The interdependence of organisms is quite spectacular. The earth itself behaves a lot like an organism. Some people don't like the idea and don't like the term Gaia; but Iıve reached the conclusion that Lovelock and others were right 20-odd years ago, and that's the way the planet works. Human beings have to bring their behavior in line with the inherent symbiosis of all living things.
Also I think the invention of the nation state, which is really historically a recent phenomenon, is obviously a great danger for the earth itself. Nationalism, war departments relabeled defense departments . . . It's a risky way to live for the planet, but I haven't a ghost of an idea what a better way would be. Yet I suspect in my moments of optimism that we'll learn something new and different and begin reducing the risk.
PL: Where? How? People seem to actually like to fight sometimes. I'm thinking now of all the ethnic and religious strife worldwide -- in the Middle East, the Balkans, the welter of smaller countries that made up the former USSR. It seems endless.
LT: The way the international community of science generally behaves is a good example of bridging national boundaries for the common good. If you leave scientists alone, they will communicate nearly everything they know. In this century almost anything that was any good that affected the core of science was the result of collaboration across national boundaries. That began in the 19th century and continues despite the difference in national boundaries. The greatest reward that a good working scientist can look forward to is the opportunity to tell other scientists in his field everything he knows about everything.
PL: Jumping from pillar to post, I don't want to scant the remarks you make about medicine in The Fragile Species. You have been a medical doctor for over 50 years, as well as a very distinguished biomedical investigator. You've been dean of two medical schools and president of the great cancer center, Sloan Kettering. One thing I found particularly interesting from a personal standpoint was your discussion of how benighted medicine was prior to the discovery of sulfa drugs and the antibiotics in the '40s. Before that time, people died from quite ordinary occurrences -- childbirth, infected wounds, strep throat, TB. My father was a doctor, and my grandfather was too, and the differences in their practices was just enormous.
LT: Yes, yes. And now quite another brand new technology, quite apart from the anti-infectious class of drugs, has emerged and we really are beginning to understand something about the underlying mechanism of disease. And gradually I think we're learning how to intervene in a scientific, intelligent way. But we pay a price for it. The modern hospital is a great big whirring machine. The personal contact between the doctor and the patient has been displaced by technology designed for making more and more precise science day to day. The most important contacts I've learned myself, from the other side of the bed as a patient, are frequently those made with the nursing profession. Somehow they are able to keep the vast technological enterprises from flying apart. I've developed a great admiration for the nursing profession.
PL: Thatıs the thing about you, Dr. Thomas. No matter how grim or hopeless or dehumanized a situation, you find some room for marvel, some way to take hold of the facts and find in them a reason for reverence at how wonderful everything is! Life, I mean, living things.
LT: I suppose it does come through between the lines. Underneath all of the science is a tremendous sense of wonder. Really, the older I get and the more I read, the more flabbergasted I am.
Peggy Langstaff lives and writes on a farm in Tennessee.
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