Fort's 1906 short story "A Radical Corpuscle" was about a white blood cell that preached no leucocyte was an individual--but each part of a vaster whole: a human. And humans, too, were part of something vaster--as the body's pulse was to the corpuscles so was the moon's pull on the tides.
So, Fort would have appreciated recent research--discussed here in Scientific American--which uncovers an ecosystem completely ignored (and completely fouled up) over the last century: the microbes that live inside us.
We are not individuals, but collections of other things. Indeed, there are ten times as many bacteria living in us as cells that make us up.
Are we human?
More to the point, Fort asked, Are we property?
Maybe. And maybe the owners do not live out there, in space, above the Super-Sargasso Sea, but in our guts.
So, Fort would have appreciated recent research--discussed here in Scientific American--which uncovers an ecosystem completely ignored (and completely fouled up) over the last century: the microbes that live inside us.
We are not individuals, but collections of other things. Indeed, there are ten times as many bacteria living in us as cells that make us up.
Are we human?
More to the point, Fort asked, Are we property?
Maybe. And maybe the owners do not live out there, in space, above the Super-Sargasso Sea, but in our guts.
