Word: multicellular
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...belabors it. Instead of preaching about interdependence, Janovy celebrates the simple delights of a naturalist: discovering a creek full of snails or a marsh full of flies, observing a colony of birds and musing that "the individual cliff swallow is the philosophical equivalent of a single cell of the multicellular colony-organism," realizing that every good biologist must also be a philosopher. "The biologist," he concludes, "approaches nature in the form of a plant or animal and immediately begins asking questions about the innermost soul, the innermost characteristics, the true spectrum as well as the immediate traits, of the living...
Keeley's skillful organization of the material enhances his thesis, for the essay progresses much as Keeley would have Cavafy's myth evolve--from the first tentative attempts to circumscribe a subject to the buildup of a multicellular organism in which each part functions to the betterment of the whole. Keeley first discusses the interplay between the literal city of Alexandria and Cavafy's mythical counterpart. He then treats each plane--the sensual (contemporary) and historical--separately, and finally unifies the two in a brief discussion of the poet's latest work, and the beginnings of a "universal mode," which...