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- From: sichase@csa2.lbl.gov (SCOTT I CHASE)
- Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.bio
- Subject: Re: Some physics questions
- Date: 9 Nov 1992 10:54 PST
- Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
- Lines: 33
- Distribution: na
- Message-ID: <9NOV199210541904@csa2.lbl.gov>
- References: <1992Nov6.175022.13136@galois.mit.edu> <6NOV199212364099@csa1.lbl.gov> <1detccINNkst@chnews.intel.com> <1992Nov7.192950.23136@galois.mit.edu>
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- In article <1992Nov7.192950.23136@galois.mit.edu>, jbaez@riesz.mit.edu (John C. Baez) writes...
- >In article <1detccINNkst@chnews.intel.com> bhoughto@sedona.intel.com (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
- >>
- >>Here's where I prove I slept through biology (and that I
- >>have the balls to take on the ideas of people like Lewis Thomas):
- >>
- >>Before the sperm enters the egg, it isn't you, and after
- >>it enters the egg, it's not a single cell, it's two cells,
- >>or something entirely different. Right or wrong?
- >
- >I'm sure Lewis Thomas wasn't identifying unduly with his dad's sperm.
- >As far as I can tell, he's referring to the continuity of life and the
- >fact that you can in theory trace all our cells back to single-celled
- >ancestors. Then the "so long ago" makes sense and the "I" is a grand
- >exaggeration.
-
- No. Though it obviously is a joke, Thomas was referring to his own
- early childhood as a fertilized egg. The quote if from one of the
- essays in _The Youngest Science_, in which he discusses the remarkable
- sophistication of single-celled organisms in being able to biochemically
- distinguish self from non-self.
-
- -Scott
- --------------------
- Scott I. Chase "It is not a simple life to be a single cell,
- SICHASE@CSA2.LBL.GOV although I have no right to say so, having
- been a single cell so long ago myself that I
- have no memory at all of that stage of my
- life." - Lewis Thomas
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