Chapter IX: The Riddle of Life Summary and Analysis

We Are Made of Cells

What constitutes the differences between living and nonliving matter? Understanding an automobile, we must take it apart to learn about its functioning. Like the car, to understand a complex living organism like the human body, its parts and their functioning must first be understood before a conclusion can be drawn about the entire body. Various types of tissues are the building blocks of complex living organisms. A knowledge of the atoms which the tissue is comprised of is essential. The elementary structural units of every tissue of the body are cells which could also be called biological atoms. The average-sized human body is comprised of several hundred thousand billion separate cells. A fly or an ant has a few hundred million cells. There is also a...