The Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Catholicism What is Life?
Type
Book
Authors
Category
Biology
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Publication Year
1959
Publisher
Volume
32
Pages
96
Description
What is life? What is man? And what is the mysterious power by virtue of which we say that we are alive?
These are questions posed and in large measure answered in this medical-scholastic volume by Dr. Rene Biot, doctor of medicine and student of the chemical and spiritual enigma of living matter.
Treating his subject with care and patience of the scientist, Dr. Biot also writes from the point of view of the philosopher and the man of religion. Man, he feels, is more than living dust, indeed "the essential characteristic of life is a ceaseless striving to build up its specific substance from materials which, lest to themselves, tend only to revert to the inanimate state. Thus life," he says, "while maintaining itself by physical and chemical processes, belongs to a realm transcending both physics and chemistry."
"The animal with hands who stands upright" . . . is also "dust quickened by mind." Human love extends beyond mere animal mating and as a kind of sacrament of a body quickened by an immaterial soul, is a rite in which the author believes the "uncreated Spirit must itself be the author and creator of the new human cell, culminating in the birth of a child." In parental love he sees a profound metaphysical meaning embracing both body and soul.
The author, Rene Biot, who lives in Lyons, France, was born in Macon in 1889, the son of a doctor. After completing his studies at the Faculty of Medicine at Lyons, he worked closely with Dr. Alexis Carrel, at his hospital in Compiegne. He has practiced medicine in Lyons since 1914, and is the author of many books, including The Body and the Spirit and Human Health. He married in 1920 and had thirteen children, of whom twelve are still living. One of his sons is a Dominican, another a seminarist, and one of his daughters is at Dakar, a Franciscan missionary. From 1914 to 1918, Dr. Biot served as a voluntary doctor with the hospitals of the Red Cross. He is a Commander of the Order of St. Gregory the Great.
The translator, Eric Earnshaw Smith, born in 1893, and educated at University College, Oxford, was attached to the War Trade Intelligence Department and later the British Foreign Office for more than twenty-seven years.
This is Volume 32 under section III, The Nature of Man.
Taken from the inside flaps.
These are questions posed and in large measure answered in this medical-scholastic volume by Dr. Rene Biot, doctor of medicine and student of the chemical and spiritual enigma of living matter.
Treating his subject with care and patience of the scientist, Dr. Biot also writes from the point of view of the philosopher and the man of religion. Man, he feels, is more than living dust, indeed "the essential characteristic of life is a ceaseless striving to build up its specific substance from materials which, lest to themselves, tend only to revert to the inanimate state. Thus life," he says, "while maintaining itself by physical and chemical processes, belongs to a realm transcending both physics and chemistry."
"The animal with hands who stands upright" . . . is also "dust quickened by mind." Human love extends beyond mere animal mating and as a kind of sacrament of a body quickened by an immaterial soul, is a rite in which the author believes the "uncreated Spirit must itself be the author and creator of the new human cell, culminating in the birth of a child." In parental love he sees a profound metaphysical meaning embracing both body and soul.
The author, Rene Biot, who lives in Lyons, France, was born in Macon in 1889, the son of a doctor. After completing his studies at the Faculty of Medicine at Lyons, he worked closely with Dr. Alexis Carrel, at his hospital in Compiegne. He has practiced medicine in Lyons since 1914, and is the author of many books, including The Body and the Spirit and Human Health. He married in 1920 and had thirteen children, of whom twelve are still living. One of his sons is a Dominican, another a seminarist, and one of his daughters is at Dakar, a Franciscan missionary. From 1914 to 1918, Dr. Biot served as a voluntary doctor with the hospitals of the Red Cross. He is a Commander of the Order of St. Gregory the Great.
The translator, Eric Earnshaw Smith, born in 1893, and educated at University College, Oxford, was attached to the War Trade Intelligence Department and later the British Foreign Office for more than twenty-seven years.
This is Volume 32 under section III, The Nature of Man.
Taken from the inside flaps.
Number of Copies
1
