Lewis Thomas writes about biology the way some people write about philosophy.

The Medusa and the Snail collects short essays that move from cells and DNA to hospitals, technology, illness and human behaviour, usually beginning with some small biological fact and then letting it quietly destabilise everything around it.

Thomas is especially good on the productive role of imperfection. To him, DNA matters because it can make mistakes; evolution depends on replication failing just enough. Elsewhere he turns that same suspicion toward medicine and the fantasy that human beings are permanently fragile systems requiring constant intervention. The science is serious but never sealed off from ordinary life: he is interested in what biology does to our ideas of progress, control, health and certainty.

A very good bit of science writing from the period before popular science largely became either TED Talk optimism or catastrophe pornography.

Edition & condition: Penguin paperback. Moderate shelf wear and rubbing to covers and edges; internally clean with general age-toning. Binding sound.