I can say, if I like, that social insects behave like the working parts of an immense central nervous system: the termite colony is an enormous brain on millions of legs; the individual termite is a mobile neurone.
Lewis ThomasRead
The earliest sensation at the onset of illness, often preceding the recognition of identifiable symptoms, is apprehension. Something has gone wrong, and a glimpse of mortality shifts somewhere deep in the mind. It is the most ancient of our fears.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Illness often brings an initial feeling of fear and uncertainty, signifying our awareness of mortality.
In this quote, Lewis Thomas reflects on the profound human experience of apprehension when faced with the possibility of illness. He suggests that before we even recognize specific symptoms, there exists a deep-seated feeling of something being amiss, which ties back to our fundamental fear of mortality. This apprehension serves as a reminder of our vulnerability and the fragility of life, linking our physical state to existential awareness.
Themes
IllnessApprehensionMortalityFearHealth
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about coping with health crises, one might quote this to emphasize our initial reactions to illness.
More from Lewis Thomas
All quotes →I suggest that the introductory courses in science, at all levels from grade school through college, be radically revised. Leave the fundamentals, the so-called basics, aside for a while, and concentrate the attention of all students on the things that are not known.
Lewis ThomasRead
I maintain, despite the moment's evidence against the claim, that we are born and grow up with a fondness for each other, and we have genes for that. We can be talked out of it, for the genetic message is like a distant music, and some of us are hard-of-hearing. Societies are noisy affairs, drowning out the sound of ourselves and our connection.
Lewis ThomasRead
Science is founded on uncertainty. Each time we learn something new and surprising, the astonishment comes with the realization that we were wrong before.
Lewis ThomasRead
It is the very strangeness of nature that makes science engrossing. That ought to be at the center of science teaching. There are more than seven-times-seven types of ambiguity in science, awaiting analysis. The poetry of Wallace Stevens is crystal-clear alongside the genetic code.
Lewis ThomasRead
In the fields I know best, among the life sciences, it is required that the most expert and sophisticated minds be capable of changing course - often with a great lurch - every few years.
Lewis ThomasRead
Similar quotes
We do not live in several different, or even two different, worlds, a mental world and a physical world, a scientific world and a world of common sense. Rather, there is just one world; it is the world we all live in, and we need to account for how we exist as part of it.
John SearleRead
America's founding Ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more - and nothing less.
Ayn RandRead
But thy strong Hours indignant work’d their wills, And beat me down and marr’d and wasted me, And tho’ they could not end me, left me maim’d To dwell in presence of immortal youth, Immortal age beside immortal youth, And all I was, in ashes. - Tithonus
Alfred Lord TennysonRead
A myth is an image in terms of which we try to make sense of the world.
Alan WattsRead
Please... tell me who you are and what you want. And if you think those are simple questions, keep in mind that most people live their entire lives without arriving at an answer.
Gary ZukavRead
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara.
Richard DawkinsRead