"In the arithmetic of life, One is always Many."

Lynn

Margulis, biologist and Distinguished Professor of Geosciences, composed a

grand and powerful view of the living and the non-living. Integrating the work of obscure Russian

scientists, DNA pulled from cell organelles, computer-generated daisies, and

the hindguts of termites, her vision was wider in scope and more profound in

depth than any other coherent scientific world view. At the time of her death on November 22nd, 2011, it is a

vision that remains misunderstood and misconstrued by many scientists.

Much

of this view came from her uncanny ability to first lean forward and see the

smallest inhabitants of the Earth; to hover there, and then to leap back at the

speed of thought to conceptualize the entire planet. Lean forward, then stand

back. This inner movement, this seeing

from soil to space, marked a unique scientific endeavor.

This

perspective was earned only through walking through diverse areas of study —

geology, genetics, biology, chemistry, literature, embryology,

paleontology. Those fields, are

sometimes separated by an untraversed distance at universities: they are housed

in separate buildings which may as well be different worlds. In Margulis, they found agreement and

discussion with each other; they were reconnected, just as they are

intrinsically connected in nature.

This

journey led her to emphasize in all her scientific work two phenomena — the

fusing of distinct beings into a single being: symbiosis; and the interaction

of organisms and their environments to create relational "loops" that led to

regulation of many Earth systems: Gaia Theory.

Taken

separately these concepts have the ability to redefine, respectively, how we understand

organisms and the environment.

Taken

together, they can redefine our consciousness.

*

* *

After

the Earth was born, give or take a few hundred million years, there were

bacteria. Bacteria were here first

and are with us still, comprising a major part of the biosphere. They are unseen with the naked eye,

they lack nuclei (for this reason, they are called prokaryotes — "pro" =

before, "karyon" = nucleus). Their

forms were legion and their metabolisms were (and continue to be) strange.

Where

life could exist, it did exist in these tiny forms. One of these forms,

thermoplasma, was an amorphous blob. It enjoyed heat and sulfur. The stuff we now associate with the

devil, this bacterium was quite fond of.

Another bacterium was the spirochete. Familiar to us now as the type of bacteria that cause

syphilis and Lyme disease, the spirochete is a curl of an organism; a tremulous

and crooked line with no front or back.

Margulis studied these strange beings through literature and

microscope. From some corner of

her intellect, they called to her.

The

thermoplasmid and spirochete of early Earth were neighbors and, in a sense,

enemies. Each one would try, when

it encountered the other, to consume it.

This was a popular notion at the time: meet and consume. Soon enough,

encounter after encounter between the two beings led to an unprecedented event:

The beings came together to eat each other and decided on marriage instead.

Just what changes happened to cause this friendly ingestion is still unknown. What is known is that the

spirochete didn't digest the thermoplasmid and the thermoplasmid did not digest

the spirochete. As Margulis was

fond of saying, "1 + 1 = 1." There

was a union of the two, resulting in an entirely new being. They were inseparable, literally. The thermoplasmid had a rotor now, and

the spirochete had a "head". A

head and a tail: for the first time, beings had direction. Cultural philosopher William Irwin

Thompson examines this emergence in his book, Coming into Being. It

isn't that spirochetes couldn't pursue a coordinate before — but the

asymmetricality of the new, combined entity, resulted in a new way of being, completely

without reference in the history of life: One end, distinct in form, ingested the food; the other end

did the rowing. Both absorbed the

nutrition. This was a giant step

in the evolution of consciousness, and is echoed by all true evolutions in

consciousness: the rise of a new

way of being, inconceivable to the world that came before.

And

soon, other mergers were taking place.

Soon, oxygen-breathing bacteria were incorporated by endosymbiosis into

this being. Where once oxygen was

poison, now it flowed through without harm.

Cyanobacteria,

green and photosynthetic, were incorporated in some of these cells as

well. Both these symbioses remain

visible today — as the mitochondria in all cells (the oxygen-breathing bacteria

that became mitochondria) and chloroplasts in plant and some animal cells (the

cyanobacteria that led to chloroplasts).

These are ancient partnerships that have never dissolved, and which

continue to pulse with rhythm, and our existence depends upon them. Human cells reflect these unions, and

we breathe plant-respired oxygen.

Margulis,

inspired by the work of little-known biologists, revealed and proved these

mergers for us. At first, her

worked was rejected and scoffed at.

It did not fit the still-dominant neo-Darwinian paradigm that tells us all

evolutionary novelty comes from natural selection acting on genes and the

gradual accumulation of random genetic mutation. But eventually these symbioses were accepted because they

could not be ignored. In a

stunning display of reluctance, despite mounting evidence, the spirochetal

origin of the undulipodium (sometimes incorrectly called or mistaken for the

"flagellum" — though the undulipodium and flagellum are not similar either

chemically or structurally) is still contested and sometimes dismissed.

What

is unquestionable: bacteria make up the living architecture of our bodies.

They evolved into our cells, and also remain "free-living" in our

digestive system. Their spiraling

remnants are in our gums, our brains.

This means our physical selves are universes composed of the movemenst,

biological agreements, and interactions of these beings.

What

can this mean for the individual?

What happens when we are simultaneously songs and compositions of

notes? "Identity is not an object;

it is a process with addresses for all the different directions and dimensions

in which it moves…" Margulis once stated, with her colleague Ricardo

Guerrero.

And

what happens when we are notes, songs, and the notes again? What happens when we shift our

perspective and see that we are cells made out of cells?

* * *

As

above, so below and as below so above.

Margulis, somewhere in the middle, decided to thoughtfully occupy both

positions. "Why does everybody

agree that atmospheric oxygen…comes from life, but no one speaks about the

other atmospheric gasses coming from life?" she asked. Bacteria created a whole other host of

these gasses, as Margulis knew well from her work. After she found James Lovelock, they worked on making those

processes known. Their collaboration

resulted in Gaia Theory, which was a disciplinary symbiosis — the theoretical

expression of Margulis's interdisciplinary life.

Gaia

is the work of the relational loops of push and pull between bacteria, other

organisms, and the environment. The clouds, the atmospheric gasses, the pH and

salinity of the ocean, and other Earth systems express the "dialogue" between

the organisms and the Earth. This

dialogue is Gaia Theory.

Particularly relevant to these relational (often called "feedback")

loops are the smallest living beings, the bacteria. In this dialogue, the information yielded from and received

by the bacteria and environment is absolutely crucial to the existence of life

on this planet. Remove the bacteria and everything dies. The world becomes a Mars or a Venus,

overtaken by harshness or billowing clouds so thick that everything is

obscured. No direction-creating

spirochetes and thermoplasma; no respiring green cyanobacteria; no purpose or

breath; and there is no biosphere, for they are its regulators.

The

science behind Gaia, particularly that found in Lovelock's formulations, is

complex and detailed, not guesswork.

But Lovelock came up with an understandable and accesible metaphor in

the form of a computer program called Daisyworld. Daisyworld is not the "proof" of Gaia: Lovelock and his

colleague Andrew Watson devised the program to see if living and environmental

factors could theoretically interact without intention. This was a rebuff to the many

criticisms that Gaia had to act through some sort of new age benevolence. This view might be acceptable in

spiritual circles, but is damning in scientific ones, and so: Lovelock's little

model.

In

Daisyworld, there are black daisies, which absorb the sun's heat, and white

daisies, which reflect heat. Both

flowers grow and produce offspring, and both have the same thresholds for life

and growth — they cannot grow at a low temperature and die at too high a

temperature. The black daisies,

which absorb heat, grow faster in cooler conditions; since the heat accumulates

in their petals. White daisies,

which reflect the heat, need warmer conditions to produce more offspring and

thrive. The sun that shines on

Daisyworld is dynamic. It grows in

luminosity over millions of years.

Here

is Margulis, quoted at length to make clear the results.

"Without

any extraneous assumptions, without sex or evolution, without mystical

presuppositions of planetary consciousness, the daisies of Daisyworld cool

their world despite their warming sun," Margulis writes. "As the sun increases

in luminosity, the black daisies grow, expanding their surface area, absorbing

heat, and heating up their surroundings.

As the black daisies heat up more of the surrounding land surface, the

surface itself warms, permitting even more population growth. The positive feedback continues until

daisy growth has so heated the surroundings that white daisies began to crowd

out the black ones. Being less

absorbent and more reflective, the white daisies begin to cool down the

planet…Despite the ever-hotter sun, the planet maintains a long plateau of

stable temperatures."

Many

additional factors have been added into subsequent Daisyworld models. The little world has always displayed a

deep relationship between species selection and planetary temperature

regulation.

The

environment could no longer be seen as a tyrant, lording over selection; it was

now a co-evolving field. And all

the organisms on the planet are connected by this vast system of regulation and

dynamism. "Gaia," Margulis's former

student Greg Hinkle said, "is just symbiosis as seen from space."

Nothing

20 kilometers up or down on the Earth escapes the pulse of collectivity. Indeed, no action or process is

untouched by it, even the action of evolution itself.

* * *

Margulis's

answer to evolution was a logical extension of her work: Evolution happened

through symbioses and Gaia.

That

symbiosis caused evolutionary innovation was readily observable in

microorganisms, in large part because of Margulis's work. But neo-Darwinists such as Richard

Dawkins still refused to accept it as true in the case of multicellular

organisms, and thus tried and continue to try to discredit the theory.

Unfortunately

for them, it's not so simple: Gaia processes are real and observable (and

sometimes referred to as "biogeochemistry", a term more acceptable to

mainstream science). Furthermore,

the five kingdoms (bacteria, protoctists, fungi, plants, animals) of life are

all touched by symbiosis. The

bacteria are the symbionts. The protoctists (mistakenly called

"protozoa" — but they are not animals, so the "zoo" in the word is a misnomer)

readily display symbioses. Indeed,

symbiogenesis has been observed in the lab. An amoeba population, accidentally infected with bacteria

was observed over long periods of time, and soon enough, the infecting bacteria

could not be removed from the infected amoeba without killing the

organism.

Since

99.9% of all organisms on the planet are microbial beings, if we're talking

about evolution, we must be talking about microbes. Richard Dawkins himself admitted as much in a recent debate

with Margulis at Oxford, when he said he could not claim to know much about

life, since he knew very little about bacteria. Animals, plants and fungi readily display symbiotic mergers

as well. It's not just that all

eukaryotic (nucleated) cells are the products of symbiosis. All animals have

symbiotic partners in their guts.

Remove these symbionts and the animals die. Because of the disparity in size, we have trouble thinking of

a rabbit as a symbiont with bacteria, but it is.

Margulis,

this time with son and co-author, Dorion Sagan, presents it this way in their

book of strange, otherworldly brilliance, Acquiring Genomes:

"Darwin's

question about how species originate may be rephrased as: What is passed from

parent to descendant that we detect as evolutionary novelty?' A straightforward answer is,

Populations and communities of microbes.'"

I

call the book's brilliance "strange" and "otherworldly" because in it, a new

view of the world rises to the surface.

Acquiring Genomes, along with another of Margulis and Sagan's

books, Microcosmos show us a bacterial view of the world. Bacteria exchange their genes laterally. This means they don't pass their

genomic information only when they reproduce (though this can happen), but

also through their simple

existence. Bits of their genomes

float in and out of their bodies and into other bacteria. This was — and is — happening all the

time. The web of life created by

such gene transfers is unbelievably complex and can even be baffling.

Along

with the many detailed examples of bacterial mergers at varying levels of

cellular complexity, the world revealed by Acquiring Genomes is also a

world of mating between distinct phyla (a classification just below "kingdom" —

e.g. creatures of different phyla vary wildly from one another). This phenomenon, which should not be

possible according to scientific orthodoxy, has been shown by UK scientist Don

Williamson. Again, Margulis's work

has been contested, but she and Williamson have collected vast amounts of data

and evidence, including live examples demonstrated in physician and writer

Frank Ryan's The Mystery of Metamorphosis. Many people dismissed Margulis for this large-scale sexual

symbiosis, through which genomes are transmitted from one totally different

being to another; but most of them have not looked deeply into Williamson's

work, and certainly not his live samples, preferring instead to dismiss without

real investigation. Margulis was

working on this project at the time of her death, and it remains to be seen

whether or not other scientists will champion WIlliamson. Like much of Margulis's work, it

requires the uncommon ability to question basic assumptions to even understand

the phenomena.

* * *

All

her efforts and ideas, those accepted and those still controversial, led

Margulis to sharply criticize the standard neo-Darwinist theory of

evolution.

It's

not that she didn't understand it, as some of her critics liked to claim. Margulis has examined natural selection

and genetic mutation carefully. In

fact, Gaia theory is an intense examination of natural selection, since Gaia's

processes of regulation are the "natural selectors." The push and pull of the biota (the

total sum of all organisms) and the inorganic — their weaving and separations,

their gestures of relationship — set the framework of regulation. There is no need to be vague about

"fitness" and just what the environment "selects" with Gaia in the

picture. Instead, there is

something to aim for — exploring Gaia's processes of regulations.

But

Gaia, the natural selector, does not create from the top-down alone. While natural selection can refine all

beings, no new species have been shown to arise from the natural selection plus

random genetic mutation model. The

difference between refinement and speciation is one that confounds and also

confuses neo-Darwinists, who cart out example after example of refinement as

proof of their theories, not realizing that they are still not indicating true

speciation. Darwin himself did this by using dog breeding as evidence for his

theory. Alfred Russell Wallace, who co-discovered evolution and whose view

differs from Darwin's in significant ways, referred to this as "unnatural

selection" and was keen to note that it could not represent real evolutionary

change.

Symbiogenesis

may not prove to be the beginning and end of evolution. After all, it does not explain why forms

are expressed in the way that they are (e.g. Why should similar gene sets

express themselves in one creature as feathers and in another as spores?). These laws of nature remain to be

revealed, but have been pursued in innovative ways by thinkers as disparate in

time and field as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (who thought of certain forms as

having a "blueprint" of archetypal reality which bloomed into specific forms)

and Brian Goodwin (who looked at evolution as a movement of physical and

mathematical laws). What is

definite is that the merging of beings is key, and symbiogenesis offers a clearly

observable alternative to the consistent but woefully incomplete

neo-Darwinian paradigm.

* * *

The

neo-Darwinists were equally critical of Margulis's work, some going so far as

to say she was "corrupted by fame" — presumably the slight fame she achieved

after she popularized the endosymbiotic origin of cell organelles. Anyone who knew Margulis laughed

at such accusations. She worked in

a small lab with a few dedicated graduate students: The lab was small in part

because she resisted funding from corporate and governmental agencies that she

thought would damage the integrity of her work. Once she dismissed a potential funder for wanting her to do

work whose content could not be disclosed to the public. "If it's not public, it's not science,"

she said, and hung up the phone on tens of thousands, possibly millions, of

dollars. The graduate students

were dedicated because she practiced science for science's sake, and was fond

of quoting quantum physicist and philosopher David Bohm, who said, "Science is

the search for truth…whether we like it or not." The truth was Margulis's concern, not popularity, not big

money, and certainly not fame.

Many

neo-Darwinist concerns circled nervously around words like "Gaia" and

"cooperation" (which Margulis did not like to use). They were, perhaps rightly, concerned that these terms were

ripe for religious appropriation.

But Margulis herself was outspoken against such mishandling of her

research.

Some

new agers love to grasp symbiosis as signifying "altruism" between

organisms. But it's much more

complex than that — there is something "in it" for every symbiont, just as a

state beneficial in some way arises out of each symbiosis. Terms like "altruism" had no scientific

value, because they are too single-minded to describe the phenomenon.

New

age thinkers also use Gaia as a blanket term. They've appropriated it to mean that the Earth is a living

organism. Or they refer to Gaia as

a "goddess". This turns Gaia into

a sort of Stepford planet by containing its complexity in a simple and

inadequate metaphor. This no more

grasps reality than "selfishness" does our genes.

Margulis expressed her solution to the error once by saying, "Gaia

is not merely an organism."

The Earth is beyond stale conception. It is more magnificent and active than we can

imagine. Gaia is object and process.

Gaia houses volcanos and every book, every word on volcanos ever written, and

at the same time is those volcanos. It is where our greatest loves live, and where every human

heartbeat has ever rhythmically pulsed.

In this new understanding; that something can pulse with life and yet be

beyond our concepts of living, those concepts begin to change.

If

Gaia is conscious, it possesses a consciousness of a different magnitude,

probably of a different order all together.

Richard

Dawkins and his pre-cursors like John Maynard Smith, as well as other misguided

neo-Darwinist thinkers could not and cannot understand this lesson: this

complexity is impossible to incorporate in a linear and reductive

understanding.

Part

of their failure lies in a misunderstood version of cause and effect that

plagues science. At a certain

level of complexity, somewhere just above a billiard ball clanking into a

another billiard ball, cause and effect begins to change its shape. This change may be real — that is, it

may actually shift in its laws and patterns in nature — or it may be imagined —

in other words, it may demand a different sort of thinking. Effectively it doesn't matter, since we

need to contend with the shift in our thinking. To encompass complex systems

with our thinking, we must imagine a model that is less like

"cause-effect" more like "being-manifestation." That is, multiple layers and numerous agents of forces

unconsciously conspire together, and their conspiring is so intermingled, that it

is simultaneously cause and effect, and thus beyond both. For example, the being, or

process of Gaia manifests itself as an unstable, constantly correcting

level of oceanic salinity. One

cannot be said to cause the other, since the oceanic salinity interacts so

deeply with the beings and environs from which it arises. Symbiosis and biological forms demand

the same sort of thought.

This

complexity shames the metaphorical lack of nuance in "selfish genes". Neo-Darwinists, who so often speak

publicly about the erosion of sound scientific thought, have themselves

engendered ideas that represent a threat to clear scientific thinking. It's not merely that Dawkins's

metaphors are incorrect (and they are incorrect), but his whole idea of

evolution is too mystical (in the pejorative sense), too imagined, too

metaphorical to be correct.

Dawkins, who claims to be an atheist, relies on a host of selfish angels

within us and the possibility for meme-salvation to justify his theory. He substantiates his magical worldview

on a meager past of scientific work.

Margulis

on the other hand, worked constantly and tirelessly in her lab, always aiming

at and incorporating new pursuits.

At the time of her death, she — with her handful of graduate students

and a clutch of international scientists as collaborators — was researching

cures for Lyme disease and reassessing how treatable syphilis is (both Lyme and

syphilis come from spirochetes, which Margulis probably knew more about than

any other scientist); she was also writing a book on Emily Dickinson. Her

projects often had the unsettling side-effect of forcing us to reexamine our

most cherished presumptions. In

other words, she was a sort of investigative light where Dawkins is merely

polemical shadow: she was a true materialist whose work produced spiritual

effects.

Neo-Darwinism

is an evolution that people can and have build social theories (memes, for

example) out of. But symbiogenesis

and Gaia theory, truer versions of evolutionary motivators, require a new

philosophy and perspective to understand at all.

It requires the deepening of the capacity to understand.

These

concepts are not conveniently, like neo-Darwinism, mirror-images of the current

economic system (nor are they, as many confusedly think, a Kropotkian "mutual

aid" analogue for socialism) and so have enjoyed no real social metaphor. Perhaps as we — in the newly and

deeply connected world of the internet, social profiles, and globalization —

witness the dissolution of the cult of isolated individuality and embark on

understanding a clearer and more nuanced view of individuality, so to will we

ready ourselves for a clearer view of evolution and life.

"In the arithmetic of life, One is

always Many. Many often make one,

and one, when looked at more closely, can be seen to be composed of many," said Margulis and Guerrero. Being able to move from one

perspectival state to the next – this is a sort of mental phase transition that

is necessary to understand life, evolution, and the environment. It is the sort of thinking Goethe

advocated; a thinking whose movement mirrored the movement of life itself.

Margulis

grasped this before us. She has

done more than any other scientist in recent history to expand and explain

this. Presented in the essay is

only a small sample of her visionary works. It isn't always easy to grasp her thinking, nor to rise to

the challenges of it. It is much

easier to dismiss complexity and reduce ourselves to smaller ideas. Now that Margulis has died, it remains

our choice to catch up with what she and her life's work have set in

motion. To do so, we must bring

together the many fields of knowledge she embodied. Biologists must talk to physicists, virologists must talk to

geologists, cosmologists must talk to microbiologists, and scientists musty

talk to non-scientists. This

motion of meeting and exchanging ideas, if we act with it, will evolve our

thinking.

Sources



Asikainen, C. E. and Krumbein, W. E., edts., 2011, Chimeras and

Consciousness:

Evolution

of the Sensory Self. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Capra, F., 1996, The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding

of Living Systems.

New York: Doubleday.

Margulis, Lynn, 1998, Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at

Evolution.

New York: Basic Books.

Margulis, L. and Sagan, D., 2002, Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of

the Origin of Species.

New York: Basic Books.

Ryan, F., 2011. The

Mystery of Metamorphosis: A Scientific Detective Story. White

River Junction: Chelsea Green.

Sapp, J., 1994, Evolution by Association: A History of Symbiosis.

New York: Oxford University Press.

Thompson, W.I., 1998, Coming into Being: Artifacts and Texts in

the Evolution of Consciousness. New York: St. Martin's.

Thompson, W.I., edt., 1991, Gaia 2: Emergence: The New Science of

Becoming. Great Barrington: Lindisfarne.

Thanks to

the students of Margulis Lab.



Image courtesy of NASA Goddard Photo and Video.