We call them diseases, but they are really the failure of a vast system of regulations that enable us to function as organisms as well as we do.
Some biologists count viruses as organisms.
So organisms must be explained as organisms, and not as a summation of genes.
A species, furthermore, is composed of individuals, single functioning units identifiable as organisms.
As organisms become adapted to their environments through their habits, modifications occur.
Under its expanded mandate, it would also regulate genetic engineering that could threaten livestock, the environment and public health, as well as organisms intended to control pests.
And it was there in Jane Jacobs's descriptions of cities as organisms, capable of adaptive change from the street level on up.
As organisms adapt to ecological niches, so do new bits of language.What are the long-term effects of all this?
The approach gained prominence in the works of 19th-century sociologists, particularly those who viewed societies as organisms.
And gradually an underlying theme began to emerge, of plants as organisms that were autonomous and intelligent and the creative tension that had long existed between this revelatory idea and the tradition of plants as inanimate goods.
As the Oakland Nada yoga (yoga of sound) expert Ann Dyer put it in a recent phone interview: "Fundamentally, chanting and listening are not that different in terms of how we respond as organisms.
