Paru le 01/03/2007 | Broché 240 pages
Tout public
The intelligent microbe
This scientific thriller puts forth a revolutionary idea : microbes are intelligent. They live in highly-developed communities, and are capable of innovation, anticipation and learning. Together, they created the planet's original World Wide Web - cooperating altruistically at times, vying fiercely at others, and even reacting with emotion on occasion. Invisible yet powerful in numbers, they paint the clouds in our skies, and are responsible for inventing the wheel, solar batteries, sex, genes and heredity. Microbes provide most of the oxygen we breathe, and all of the energy we consume. Without them, our planet would be bleak and lifeless. Microbes are also beautiful, as can be seen in the lavish colour illustrations found throughout the book. Readers may also find, through an uncanny mirror effect, that learning about the world of microbes renews and enhances their own view of humanity. All living things - from the simple to the complex, from the primordial soup to modern technological societies - are part of a continuous chain of life held together by a common ethos from which humans often try to escape, often at the risk of losing themselves. In the end, we are all microbial beings on a microbial planet.
Professor Emeritus Jean-Claude Pechère was born in Belgium and was educated in France and the United States. A practicing doctor, he has taught microbiology and infectious diseases at universities in Paris, Quebec, Geneva, Tunis, Marrakech and Vientiane, and has delivered lectures in more than 60 countries on five continents. The notion of the intelligent microbe grew out of 30 years of internationally recognized research into the mechanisms of bacterial resistance. He is also involved in education and development projects in emerging regions of Asia and Africa.
