Talk:Lewis Thomas

Request for Images

Anyone have any pictures of him? yes i do —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.148.133.192 (talk) 16:32, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are we sure that LT did not graduate from high school?

This claim crept into the Wikipedia entry on Sept. 23, 2005 (I think). I don't think it is accurate but I don't know for sure. (I'm suspicious in part because the diction of this added sentence suggests the writer is not particularly careful about knowledge.) FanofWiki 05:57, 24 March 2006 (UTC)FanofWiki[reply]

Added "Observations on Human Evolution"

Please review this entry and suggest any needed changes. Thanks. I'm new to this. --Laurel 17:00, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Review comments

Some suggestions for improvement as the article is expanded:

Template:Infobox Scientist should be added
Photograph should be added from a source with a free license, if available
Dates for his positions held required
Further division into subheadings would be beneficial
Information on writings should be expanded and references required
References should be added, preferably in the inline format
External links to useful online resources should be added if available

Espresso Addict 02:06, 17 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Quotes

Strongly disagree with removal these particular quotes, for they are critical to an understanding of the man. --Pawyilee (talk) 13:17, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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."

See WP:QUOTEFARM - what secondary sources have referred to those quotations in the context used? Per WP:OR we need a source. Vsmith (talk) 13:37, 9 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Obituaries

Lewis Thomas, Whose Essays Clarified the Mysteries of Biology, Is Dead at 80 By MARILYN BERGER Published: December 04, 1993. Accessed:6:37 PM 11/9/2013

Lewis Thomas, 80; Spent Life Studying, Fighting Cancer Published:Saturday, December 4, 1993. Accessed: 6:44 PM 11/9/2013

—Pawyilee (talk) 11:48, 9 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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boston city hospital

Was he an intern at the Boston City Hospital as an intern during the pre-penicilin year? User:ScotXW^t@lk 20:37, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the New York Times's obituary (see above) says he was in 1937, which would have to be pre-antibiotic. NRPanikker (talk) 09:04, 7 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]