Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-5xszh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T11:18:41.120Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Individuals and Biology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Robert A. Wilson
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
Get access

Summary

INDIVIDUALS AND THE LIVING WORLD

What are the agents of life? This book is a partial answer to this simple-sounding, yet puzzling, question. In this first chapter, I shall unpack what is built into this question and introduce some of the issues that answering it will lead us to explore.

The living world not only surrounds us physically, but its denizens also occupy much of the content of human thought and action. These agents of life range from the plants and animals that fill our homes and domestic lives, to those we consume as part of our ecological regime, to organisms of all types: blue whales, dolphins, chimpanzees, dogs, fungi, flowering plants, rainforests, bacteria, viruses, sponges, tapeworms, and so on.

The living world and the agents of life that constitute it excite the full range of our passions – love, wonder, joy, fear, and disgust. Our interactions with them have inspired human artistic expression from the earliest cave drawings to late-twentieth century experiments in bio-art.

Part of what impresses us, what leaves a mental mark, is the fact that we are not simply immersed in the living world but part of it. We are each subject to its vicissitudes, such as disease and death, and each of us owes our own existence to the activities of members of the living world most like us: other human beings.

Type
Chapter
Information
Genes and the Agents of Life
The Individual in the Fragile Sciences Biology
, pp. 3 - 22
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×