Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Acknowledgments
- PART ONE INDIVIDUALS, AGENCY, AND BIOLOGY
- 1 Individuals and Biology
- 2 Thinking about Biological Agents
- PART TWO SPECIES, ORGANISMS, AND BIOLOGICAL NATURAL KINDS
- PART THREE GENES AND ORGANISMIC DEVELOPMENT
- PART FOUR GROUPS AND NATURAL SELECTION
- Notes
- References
- Index
1 - Individuals and Biology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Acknowledgments
- PART ONE INDIVIDUALS, AGENCY, AND BIOLOGY
- 1 Individuals and Biology
- 2 Thinking about Biological Agents
- PART TWO SPECIES, ORGANISMS, AND BIOLOGICAL NATURAL KINDS
- PART THREE GENES AND ORGANISMIC DEVELOPMENT
- PART FOUR GROUPS AND NATURAL SELECTION
- Notes
- References
- Index
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 LifeThe Individual in the Fragile Sciences Biology, pp. 3 - 22Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004