As Above, So Below: The Worldview of Lynn Margulis | Reality Sandwich - 2 views
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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.
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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.
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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".
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" 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. "