This chapter is about the misunderstood topic of pathogens. Organisms that cause disease affect all living things, sometimes causing death. Many have argued that their ability to cause disease is uniquely defining and somehow sui generis. We must continue to treat all living things including humans as self-organizing physical systems that dissipate entropy. This enables them to grow, interact, and robustly actuate biological functions in changing environments. Thus, human pathogens are the physical vehicles of our interactions with our environment. They are viruses, bacteria, protists, fungi, and other animals that gain access to our bodies. Our waste is their food. Our disease is their growth. We need to relate the evolutionary history of organisms that cause disease to the physical processes by which they come to interact with their hosts.
Pathogens.
Pathogens.
Pathogens.
This chapter is about the misunderstood topic of pathogens. Organisms that cause disease affect all living things, sometimes causing death. Many have argued that their ability to cause disease is uniquely defining and somehow sui generis. We must continue to treat all living things including humans as self-organizing physical systems that dissipate entropy. This enables them to grow, interact, and robustly actuate biological functions in changing environments. Thus, human pathogens are the physical vehicles of our interactions with our environment. They are viruses, bacteria, protists, fungi, and other animals that gain access to our bodies. Our waste is their food. Our disease is their growth. We need to relate the evolutionary history of organisms that cause disease to the physical processes by which they come to interact with their hosts.