The Lives of a Cell《细胞生命的礼赞》――如此渺小，如此伟大.docVIP

The Lives of a Cell《细胞生命的礼赞》――如此渺小，如此伟大 　　刘易斯?托马斯（Lewis Thomas， 1913～1994），美国医学家、生物学家，生于美国纽约，就读于普林斯顿大学和哈佛医学院，历任明尼苏达大学儿科研究所教授、纽约大学贝尔维尤医疗中心病理学系和内科系主任、耶鲁医学院病理学系主任。其代表作有《细胞生命的礼赞》（The Lives of a Cell）、《水母与蜗牛》（The Medusa and the Snail）、《最年轻的科学》（The Youngest Science）、《脆弱的物种》（The Fragile Species）等。 　　《细胞生命的礼赞》是托马斯最著名的代表作，1974年出版后立即引起美国读书界和评论界的巨大反响和热烈欢呼，并荣获了当年的“美国国家图书奖”。该书收文29篇，展示了一位医学家、生物学家对生命、人生、社会乃至宇宙的思考。 　　下文选自该书第一章《细胞生命的礼赞》。 　　精彩片段 　　We are told that the trouble with Modern Man is that he has been trying to detach1） himself from nature. He sits in the topmost tiers2） of polymer3）， glass， and steel， dangling his pulsing legs， surveying at a distance the writhing4） life of the planet. In this scenario， Man comes on as a stupendous5） lethal6） force， and the earth is pictured as something delicate， like rising bubbles at the surface of a country pond， or flights of fragile birds. 　　But it is illusion to think that there is anything fragile about the life of the earth； surely this is the toughest membrane7） imaginable in the universe， opaque8） to probability， impermeable9） to death. We are the delicate part， transient and vulnerable as cilia10）. Nor is it a new thing for man to invent an existence that he imagines to be above the rest of life； this has been his most consistent intellectual exertion11） down the millennia12）. As illusion， it has never worked out to his satisfaction in the past， any more than it does today. Man is embedded in nature. 　　The biologic science of recent years has been making this a more urgent fact of life. The new， hard problem will be to cope with the dawning， intensifying realization of just how interlocked we are. The old， clung-to notions most of us have held about our special lordship are being deeply undermined. 　　Item. A good case can be made for our nonexistence as entities. We are not made up， as we had always supposed， of successively enriched packets of our own parts. We are shared， rented， occupied. At the interior of our cells