Sunday, November 1, 2009
LIVES OF A CELL
Sophomores read Lewis Thomas' classic essay Lives Of A Cell this weekend. In this essay, Thomas reflects on the precise mechanism of cell dynamics - how the structure of molecules and organelles relates to their specific functions.
At the end of the essay Thomas jolts the reader with a question that initially seems preposterous: Is our planet, the earth, most like a single self-contained cell?
Is it a question of proportion? Are the organisms that inhabit the biosphere analogous to the molecules and organelles that transport, communicate, package, send, receive, read, translate, tranmit, decode, and create new material within the cell?
Is it all merely a question of scale and frame of reference? Are we the fleas on the elephant - incapable of seeing the whole resulting from the sum of its parts?
Sophomores typically find it a difficult concept to fathom. The earth? A cell? How can that possibly be?
Watching this video, in which digital animation recreates some familiar structures and functions of a cell - reading the genetic code, building proteins at the ribosome, the Golgi packaging the proteins in vesicles, moving these proteins through the cell membrane, and transporting them throughout the body - made me think once again of Thomas' koan (mind puzzle). For if the earth is indeed a single "cell" in a macro-universe, what is the the entire "organism"?
What hope is there for us to see, let alone comprehend, the elephant as a whole? And if we do, will we understand it, or will it forever be a mystery?
I look forward to reading your reflections on this.
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11 comments:
Not having read the essay in a while I can’t comment completely. However I do like the Idea that life, in a sense, layered First signal celled organisms, getting bigger, and bigger. It’s not such a stretch to imagine that the earth is just another cell in a cosmic sized organism. The video is humbling in a way, humanity is such a small part of the universe but to a bacteria we ARE the universe. I suppose It could make one feel depressed that “I” am essentially meaningless in a cosmic sense, or feel empowering as you realize that you are in another sense a god to the billions of smaller creatures/signal celled organisms (etc.) around us. Defiantly food for thought, seems more like fodder for a philosophy class than zoobot
cac.
i thought this was very interesting. I have many times thought to myself. What would the parts of the cell, down the the smallest things in a cell compare to our world. I think they are very similar. We (our world) are so small, wrapped up in aconfusing huge mass of nothing. What if we were just a cell lost in a huge body ( the universe)? I have thought abou this for a couple of years now. I was shocked when we talked about this and another person thought about the same thing. The exact same idea i was thinking about Thomas wrote about. I am still shocked. I do believe that the universe is just one giant being and we are just a small cell or even somthing smaller like DNA just waiting for the giant being to die or something. crazy stuff.
-Ben Stearns
SO if the world is a cell, a gigantic cell, then we're pretty goddamn annoying I would bet, cause we're messing with the general balance of things.
If the world is a cell making up an organism, it's a pretty old organism. I don't know that I can believe that though, because no other planet really goes through this like we do.
I will continue this tonight.
LAURA
to folowoup on whatChris said, I have not read this essay in a fw years. I enjoy seeing the cell and being"up close and personal" with its functions to gain a better unbderstadning of how it works in the video. The fact that we are just a small part of everything like the cell makes me wonder.
Going back to Dr. Seuse (which happenes often when the worlddoesnt make sens- see Sneaches to connect to world affairesd!) I could only think of Horton and his little clover with the little speck of dust with Hooville on top where, the little Hoos live in harmony.
TO BE CNTINUED!
Caileigh
Anyway, yeah. I don't think the Earth is a cell because if it is, it's pretty far away from any other cell taht functions in the same way. Unless perhaps we're a single celled organism trapped inside a multi celled organism and we're the only ones that function as we do. What a strange question. We are like a single celled organism floating through space. Where does space end and begin, and what's after that? I bet our perception of time is different from other organisms. I bet plants, if they could think, would think of time going faster. I really do.
LAURA
I suppose this is an interesting theory, and although I see the logic in it, it proves to be too much for me, having only watched the animation (sorry, I don't remember the essay at all). The animation was certainly amusing to watch, that's ALL it was to me. It didn't provoke as much thought as the possibility itself. And it could make sense: are we just tiny pieces in a much grander puzzle? Who knows... Maybe we should ask the TA math department, because they seem to think they know everything anyway. Just kidding.
--Tyler
The world operates like a cell. It is filled with cells so it makes sense that it would act like a cell. Humans tagged cells as "cells" the world din't try to create these things. Cells just appeared. I don't think it is right to name everything and try to make sense of everything around us.
Learning as much as possible is good but trying to solve and explain everything is not even worth it.
It is crazy to imagine being so far away from the earth that it looks like a cell.
I love Caileigh's comment! It is true we can see our world through doctor seuss.
For example: that speck of dust in Horton Hears a Who can be a model of our world (at a very small scale) In side that speck of dust lives a vibrant and bubbly busy world with towers and whoos and clocks and workers and parts and this and that. All of these things make up the cell, the speck of dust. Now that speck of dust, being a cell is like many others, though different types of cells or specks of dust. Some with such diversity in parts and some just plain and simple, but all making up a giant dust storm or collection of dust. All of those dust specks make up an entire hue of color you may see when the wind picks up. They may be small, but inside is a factory or busy life, like where the whoos live. And they may be small, but they make something much bigger than they can imagine, a sweep of dust with cells similar to it.
Going back to the main point of the earth being a cell is very intriguing and true once you think about it. I like it, it is ver neat. We think the earth is so huge given its diversity, so did the whoos on that speck of dust. They thought their world was huge. They did not consider that they were apart of a huge sweep of dust or something bigger that they could imagine. The earth is apart of something bigger that itself, the universe which is larger than comprehension. The earth is yet a cell (cells being tiny) making up an organism or one atom at a time. And like a cell, the earth is producing and may other functions of a cell. One example in comparison is the input and output of water, as cells do too.
We are yet a mere cell in an organism of a universe.
Becca Page
All that I can say is well yes.
They way that we function like a puzzle (cell) everything fits so nicely together. Animals interact with plants, plants interact with the sun and the climent,Just like the parts of a cell interact with changes.
The same things that happen to a cell when it is thrown out of balance can happen to the world. We really should consider this more and rethink a lot of what we do.
For the most part, I think Lewis Thomas' theory that Earth is like a single self contained cell is wrong. Though I do agree that a cell could be considered simular to a world in the way that there are a bunch of little parts, all with a specific job to keep the cell/world up and running, I also know that a world is not necessarily Earth.
What makes the two so different is that while the parts of a cell perform their normal routines so that the cell itself might live and function, people of earth do what they need to do for themselves. People perform tasks to better their health, or for material gain, or simply to clear their own consciences. Yet while people are going through worlds of trouble only to better themselves, the planet is paying the price. As a race, human beings will always look out for themselves first and foremost, even if it's at the coast of the planet. I think that overall people have a completely different outlook on what the planet is than they should. I think that if Thomas' theory was true, the world would not be experiencing the environmental problems that face us today. If earth were like a cell, there is no doubt in my mind that things would be different. To say planet earth is our is like the parts of the cell owning the cell itself.
~erika
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