Sky and Telescope - June 2015 - 18

Cosmic Relief
David Grinspoon

Sidewalk Wisdom
Musing on a long-lost Asimov gem.
I live on capitol hill, a short walk from

All but the simplest reproduce sexually and therefore
my oﬃce in the Library of Congress. It's a gentriﬁed
need a mate. Many are dependent for their survival on
neighborhood of old Victorian houses, and you can often more complex social arrangements: a herd, a school, a
ﬁnd all manner of valuable items left on the sidewalk.
ﬂock, or, in our case, a tribe or society. Some, such as the
Usually I don't ﬁnd anything particusocial insects, have such tight interdelarly enlightening, but one day recently I
pendence with other individuals that they
"It is as though we are at
unearthed a treasure. In a mostly forgetform what might be called superorgansome stage of evolution
table box of paperback novels and obsolete
isms, and one may legitimately question
between the multicellular
travel guides lay a textbook that caught
whether individuality resides in the
and [the] multiorganismic."
my eye: Psychology Today: An Introduction,
organism or the hive.
- Isaac Asimov
Second Edition, from 1972. Reﬂexively,
Just as we, as individual multicelI glanced at the front inside cover. At the
lular organisms, are each an exquisite
bottom of a long list of contributing consultants, it read: arrangement of 37 trillion cells, with the whole being
"Chapter Introductions written by Isaac Asimov."
greater than the sum of its parts, so we cannot fully
Say what? Are you kidding me? No, the book was not
manifest our humanity, or survive for long, without
kidding. I took that one home.
forming larger associations, much as we might like to
Each of the 34 chapters opens with a short, informal
think we can. Asimov:
essay of roughly 500 words by the great science-ﬁction
As individual multicellular organisms ... we would be less willmaster and science writer. They are playful, irrevering to agree that a complex society or state is greater than the
ent, personal, often humorous, sometimes only loosely
sum of the individual organisms making it up. We would be
bound to the subject of the chapter, and always insightless ready to judge that it is a cheap price to give up our indiful. Asimov riﬀs on free will, the nature of consciousvidualism to become part of a society. ... Yet the tug is there.
ness, intelligence, morality, history, science ﬁction, and
It is as though we are at some stage of evolution between the
his famous three "laws of robotics" and how they relate
multicellular and [the] multiorganismic.
to the questions of human psychology raised in the text.
In one of these micro-essays, Asimov brilliantly sums
It strikes me that the tension Asimov identiﬁes here
up one aspect of human existence. He is describing the
lies at the heart of many of our political, economic, and
diﬀerent levels of biological organization and where we
spiritual struggles. We are trying to work out how to
ourselves ﬁt into the continuum of complexity. He starts
thrive as individuals who also cannot exist without some
with the viruses, which depend on living cells in order
larger cooperative order. But we're not insects, and we
to function. Then there are the simplest cells, such as
cannot subsume ourselves into the hive, the matrix, or
bacteria, and more complex cells with nuclei and varithe Borg. We need our individual freedom and creativity.
ous component parts. These complex cells can exist as
But now, in the Anthropocene as never before, we are
free-ﬂoating individuals or loosely bound with others in
confronted with the need to make smart, coherent, colvarious colonial arrangements. "Finally," says Asimov,
lective technological choices on a planetary scale in order
to survive. It would not surprise me if someday we learn
cells can drown their individuality and abandon their free-livthat intelligent technological species on other planets
ing abilities in order to form a multicellular organism, which
- if they exist - also have had to struggle with some
may be as simple as a ﬂatworm, or as complicated as a giant
version of this same evolutionary dilemma. ✦
sequoia, a whale, or a man.

But, he points out, the hierarchy doesn't end there. A
multicellular organism, by itself, is generally as useless
as a cell by itself. Such organisms need others to survive.
18

June 2015 sky & telescope

David Grinspoon is an astrobiologist and author at the
Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Follow him on
Twitter at @DrFunkySpoon.

Sky and Telescope - June 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky and Telescope - June 2015