title: The Vital Machine: A Study of Technology and Organic Life
author:  David F. Channell 
description: <br><em>About the Author:</em><br> <strong>David F. Channell</strong> is Professor of Historical Studies at the University of Texas, Dallas. He is the author of two previous books on the history of science as well as the forthcoming <em>Science and Postmodernism</em>.<br>
zlib_text: **Lysing Towards Bethlehem**
  
  F.Paul Wilson
  
  By most definitions of _alive_ , I am not.
  
  I have no ability to respond to my environment. I cannot absorb nutrients from
  that environment and convert them to energy and mass. For what purpose? I have
  no organs or even organelles to feed. I am not mobile and I cannot self-
  reproduce.
  
  But I am an integral part of the biosphere. I am organic. I consist of a
  single strand of nucleic acid wrapped in a snug protein coat. That is all. I
  am a model of efficiency. No part of me exists without a specific purpose.
  
  I am, in a word, elegant.
  
  The Maker fashioned me to be so. He designed my nucleic acid core and my
  protein coat with special characteristics, for a specific purpose. And then He
  placed me in this pressurized vial. The Maker seems to know all, but does He
  know that when I am massed like this, when uncounted millions of my polyhedron
  units are packed facet to facet to facet, I become aware? So strange to be so
  many and yet be...one.
  
  But w