Twenty-odd years before anyone had conceived of blogging, much less blogging about science, Lewis Thomas was publishing a handful of books that were on science, creative and pithy, and little more than a collection of loosely-connected essays. Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher, is one of his more popular collections, and is a favorite among a number of biologists (so I’ve heard) for light reading.
So two things have occurred to me after having read Thomas’ writings: (1) why are creative science writing books so few and far between (I can’t think of anything remotely like this), and (2) why not me, with my own flair, of course?
