Of Lewis Thomas and Eternal Progression

So, since all we do around our house is read, I thought I might experiment with short book reviews. First up? I just finished Lewis Thomas's The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974).

My ah-ha! moment came when I made a link between what he was saying and the Mormon belief in eternal progression. Speaking of the brain, Thomas writes:

It is hard to see how we could be in possession of an organ so complex and intricate and, as it occasionally reveals itself, so powerful, and be using it on such a scale, just for the production of a kind of background noise. Somewhere, obscured by the snatches of conversation, pages of old letters, bits of book and magazines, memories of old movies, and the disorder of radio and television, there ought to be more intelligible signals. . . .

The mechanism is there, and there is no doubt that it is already capable of functioning, even though the total yield thus far seems to consist largely of bits. After all, it has to be said that we've been at it [having complex, meaningful thought] for only the briefest time in evolutionary terms, a few thousand years out of billions. . . . There may be some laws about this kind of communication, mandating a critical density and mass before it can function with efficiency.

He's talking specifically about minds working together to solve problems, etc., but I couldn't help but apply this to Joseph Smith's teaching that "whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection" (D&C 130:18). I've often thought about how incredibly powerful the brain is, and how ridiculously underutilized. I'm far more likely to be regurgitating the thoughts of others or replaying horrible '80s music in my head than doing anything productive up there. But part of life is to learn to channel our thought processes, let the river of pointless thoughts flow by somewhere in the background, and practice creation. Not only the earth is billions of years old; our intelligence is, too. I haven't gotten very far toward working my brain in an efficient way, but give me another billion years.

General Review
This little (252 pp.) book has aged extraordinarily well for a scientific book. Sure, there are dated references to technology and medical progress, but overall, his opinions (from what's wrong with health care to how societies mimic anthills or vice versa) are engaging here in the 21st century. And although his scientific vocab was often far beyond my freshman biology experience (what's a eukaryote again?), his prose is engaging, and I appreciated his allusions to classical music (at one point, he calls Beethoven's late string quartets the pinnacle of human progress).

Two overall themes I caught were that our cells, organs, and systems are basically an array of symbiotic relationships between independent organisms. This I admit may have come about in a godless universe, but the second theme is that even Thomas admits that life on earth "violate[s] probability," and that "to have sustained the effort successfully for the several billion years of our existence, without drifting back into randomness, was nearly a mathematical impossibility"(141). I suspect the author would chastise my simple-minded reductionism, but his book made me re-realize that I do indeed believe in a Creator. I don't know all the answers, like how the age of the earth and evolution fit in with the Garden of Eden and created species, but there it is.