{"id":369,"date":"2022-12-22T20:14:29","date_gmt":"2022-12-23T00:14:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/evolutionary-biologist-lynn-margulis-on-how-interbeing-shapes-life-on-earth-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2022-12-23T09:28:38","modified_gmt":"2022-12-23T13:28:38","slug":"evolutionary-biologist-lynn-margulis-on-how-interbeing-shapes-life-on-earth-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/evolutionary-biologist-lynn-margulis-on-how-interbeing-shapes-life-on-earth-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"Evolutionary Biologist Lynn Margulis on How Interbeing Shapes Life on Earth \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/hop.clickbank.net\/?affiliate=infohatch&amp;vendor=J1R2C\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10614 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png\" alt=\"Profit Gen\" width=\"400\" height=\"217\" srcset=\"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png 400w, http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px-300x163.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Symbiotic-Planet-New-Look-Evolution\/dp\/0465072720\/?tag=braipick-20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"313\" height=\"500\" class=\"cover alignright size-medium jetpack-lazy-image\" alt=\"Symbiosis and the Unself: Evolutionary Biologist Lynn Margulis on How Interbeing Shapes Life on Earth\" decoding=\"async\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/lynnmargulis_symbioticplanet.jpg?w=313&amp;ssl=1 313w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/lynnmargulis_symbioticplanet.jpg?resize=240%2C383&amp;ssl=1 240w\" data-lazy-sizes=\"(max-width: 313px) 100vw, 313px\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/lynnmargulis_symbioticplanet.jpg?fit=313%2C500&amp;ssl=1&amp;is-pending-load=1\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It bears remembering that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/2018\/11\/01\/figuring\/\">we spend our lives trying to discern where we end and the rest of the world begins<\/a>. The puzzlement is so immense precisely because the boundary between us and not-us is profoundly permeable \u2014 we become ourselves through communion and conviviality with what is not us. This is as true existentially as it is evolutionarily, for symbiosis \u2014 not competition \u2014 is the mightiest propulsive force of evolution. <\/p>\n<p>To this truth the visionary evolutionary biologist <strong>Lynn Margulis<\/strong> (March 5, 1938\u2013November 22, 2011) devoted her life, crystalized in her influential Gaia hypothesis \u2014 the notion that organisms interact with their environment to make of Earth a synergistic, self-regulating crucible of life. <\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_64304\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Symbiotic-Planet-New-Look-Evolution\/dp\/0465072720\/?tag=braipick-20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" width=\"680\" height=\"523\" class=\"size-full wp-image-64304 jetpack-lazy-image\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/LynnMargulis.jpg?w=1200&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/LynnMargulis.jpg?resize=240%2C185&amp;ssl=1 240w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/LynnMargulis.jpg?resize=320%2C246&amp;ssl=1 320w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/LynnMargulis.jpg?resize=768%2C591&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/LynnMargulis.jpg?resize=600%2C462&amp;ssl=1 600w\" data-lazy-sizes=\"(max-width: 680px) 100vw, 680px\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/LynnMargulis.jpg?resize=680%2C523&amp;is-pending-load=1#038;ssl=1\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" data-lazy-fallback=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/LynnMargulis.jpg?resize=680%2C523&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"680\" height=\"523\" class=\"size-full wp-image-64304\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/LynnMargulis.jpg?w=1200&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/LynnMargulis.jpg?resize=240%2C185&amp;ssl=1 240w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/LynnMargulis.jpg?resize=320%2C246&amp;ssl=1 320w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/LynnMargulis.jpg?resize=768%2C591&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/LynnMargulis.jpg?resize=600%2C462&amp;ssl=1 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 680px) 100vw, 680px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lynn Margulis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In her book <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Symbiotic-Planet-New-Look-Evolution\/dp\/0465072720\/?tag=braipick-20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong><em>Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.worldcat.org\/title\/39700477\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>public library<\/em><\/a>), Margulis \u2014 who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/2018\/04\/19\/lynn-margulis-talking-on-the-water\/\">understood uniquely the spirituality of science<\/a> \u2014 writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Living beings defy neat definition. They fight, they feed, they dance, they mate, they die. At the base of the creativity of all large familiar forms of life, symbiosis generates novelty. It brings together different life-forms, always for a reason. Often, hunger unites the predator with the prey or the mouth with the photosynthetic bacterium or algal victim. Symbiogenesis brings together unlike individuals to make large, more complex entities. Symbiogenetic life-forms are even more unlike than their unlikely \u201cparents.\u201d \u201cIndividuals\u201d permanently merge and regulate their reproduction. They generate new populations that become multiunit symbiotic new individuals. These become \u201cnew individuals\u201d at larger, more inclusive levels of integration. Symbiosis is not a marginal or rare phenomenon. It is natural and common. We abide in a symbiotic world.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Properly understood, the biology of symbiosis undermines our most tightly held intuitions about the nature of the self as a distinct entity separate from other selves \u2014 an illusory separation dissolved in the biological reality of all living beings, but rendered most clearly visible in some of the simplest. A generation after Lewis Thomas wrote so lyrically about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/2018\/10\/25\/lewis-thomas-the-medusa-and-the-snail-self\/\">the symbiotic life of a jellyfish and a sea slug<\/a> \u2014 which remains the finest thing I have ever read on the paradoxes and mysteries of the self \u2014 Margulis details another living antidote to what Pablo Neruda <a href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/2018\/08\/30\/pablo-neruda-nobel-lecture\/\">rightly indicted<\/a> as our illusion of separateness:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>In Brittany, on the northwest coast of France, and along beaches bordering the English Channel is found a strange sort of \u201cseaweed\u201d that is not seaweed at all. From a distance it is a bright green patch on the sand. The patches slosh around, shimmering in shallow puddles. When you pick up the green water and let it slip through your fingers you notice gooey ribbons much like seaweed. A small hand lens or low-power microscope reveals that what looked like seaweed are really green worms. These masses of sunbathing green worms, unlike any seaweed, burrow into the sand and effectively disappear. They were first described in the 1920s by an Englishman, J. Keeble, who spent his summers at Roscoff. Keeble called them \u201cplant-animals\u201d and diagrammed them splendidly in the color frontispiece of his book, <em>Plant-Animals<\/em>. The flatworms of the species <em>Convoluta roscoffensis<\/em> are all green because their tissues are packed with <em>Platymonas<\/em> cells; as the worms are translucent, the green color of <em>Platymonas<\/em>, photosynthesizing algae, shows through. Although lovely, the green algae are not merely decorative: they live and grow, die and reproduce, inside the bodies of the worms. Indeed they produce the food that the worms \u201ceat.\u201d The mouths of the worms become superfluous and do not function after the worm larvae hatch. Sunlight reaches the algae inside their mobile greenhouses and allows them to grow and feed themselves as they leak photosynthetic products and feed their hosts from the inside. The symbiotic algae even do the worm a waste management favor: they recycle the worm\u2019s uric acid waste into nutrients for themselves. Algae and worm make a miniature ecosystem swimming in the sun. Indeed, these two beings are so intimate that it is difficult, without very high-power microscopy, to say where the animal ends and the algae begin.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<figure class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/2017\/04\/27\/margaret-gatty-seaweed\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/margaretgatty_algae0.jpg?is-pending-load=1\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/data:image\/gif;base64,https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP\/\/\/yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7\" class=\" jetpack-lazy-image\"\/><noscript><img data-lazy-fallback=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/margaretgatty_algae0.jpg\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Art from Margaret Gatty\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/2017\/04\/27\/margaret-gatty-seaweed\/\">Victorian guide to British algae<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The living world, Margulis observes, is rife with such symbiotic bonds that challenge the notion of where one self ends and another begins. There is the <em>Plachobranchus<\/em> snail, inside which is an inner garden of green symbionts so perfectly arranged in neat rows that they appear planted by an invisible hand; there is the <em>Mastigias<\/em> jellyfish with its tiny green umbrellas animated by single-celled zooxanthellae; there is the giant clam, <em>Tridacna gigas<\/em>, which orients ints entire colossal body toward the light for the benefit of the greenhouse of algae living inside it. <\/p>\n<p>Then there are, of course, we \u2014 we who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/2016\/08\/10\/i-contain-multitudes-ed-yong\/\">contain multitudes<\/a>, our microbiome living as a portable universe within us. \u201cMasses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence,\u201d Emerson <a href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/2017\/05\/04\/emerson-masses\/\">inveighed<\/a>. \u201cI wish\u2026 to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.\u201d But the patron saint of self-reliance was tragically antiscientific in his philosophy \u2014 in the living world, individuals as such simply don\u2019t exist. There are only masses, some of whom move about with the illusion of individuality. Margulis writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>We animals, all thirty million species of us, emanate from the microcosm. The microbial world, the source and well-spring of soil and air, informs our own survival. A major theme of the microbial drama is the emergence of individuality from the community interactions of once-independent actors.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<figure id=\"attachment_70261\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/society6.com\/product\/jellyfish-by-ernst-haeckel-from-his-monograph-of-deep-sea-medusae-18792714891_print?sku=s6-13584803p4a1v1?curator=brainpicker\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" width=\"680\" height=\"917\" class=\"size-full wp-image-70261 jetpack-lazy-image\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/haeckel_medusae3x.jpg?w=1200&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/haeckel_medusae3x.jpg?resize=240%2C324&amp;ssl=1 240w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/haeckel_medusae3x.jpg?resize=320%2C432&amp;ssl=1 320w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/haeckel_medusae3x.jpg?resize=768%2C1036&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/haeckel_medusae3x.jpg?resize=600%2C810&amp;ssl=1 600w\" data-lazy-sizes=\"(max-width: 680px) 100vw, 680px\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/haeckel_medusae3x.jpg?resize=680%2C917&amp;is-pending-load=1#038;ssl=1\"\/><noscript><img data-lazy-fallback=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/haeckel_medusae3x.jpg?resize=680%2C917&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"680\" height=\"917\" class=\"size-full wp-image-70261\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/haeckel_medusae3x.jpg?w=1200&amp;ssl=1 1200w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/haeckel_medusae3x.jpg?resize=240%2C324&amp;ssl=1 240w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/haeckel_medusae3x.jpg?resize=320%2C432&amp;ssl=1 320w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/haeckel_medusae3x.jpg?resize=768%2C1036&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.themarginalian.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/haeckel_medusae3x.jpg?resize=600%2C810&amp;ssl=1 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 680px) 100vw, 680px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">One of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/2020\/03\/26\/ernst-haeckel-medusae\/\">otherworldly drawings of jellyfish<\/a> by Ernst Haeckel, who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/2022\/02\/04\/universe-in-verse-bloom\/\">coined the term <em>ecology<\/em><\/a>. (Available <a href=\"https:\/\/society6.com\/product\/jellyfish-by-ernst-haeckel-from-his-monograph-of-deep-sea-medusae-18792714891_print?sku=s6-13584803p4a1v1?curator=brainpicker\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">as a print<\/a>.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>With an eye to our evolutionary future, itself a vista of tremendous humility, she adds:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The tendency of \u201cindependent\u201d life is to bind together and reemerge in a new wholeness at a higher, larger level of organization. I suspect that the near future of <em>Homo sapiens<\/em> as a species requires our reorientation toward the fusions and mergers of the planetmates that have preceded us in the microcosm.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Complement with Iris Murdoch on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/2019\/10\/21\/iris-murdoch-unselfing\/\">how art unselves us<\/a> and Helen Macdonald on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/2020\/09\/15\/helen-macdonald-vesper-flights-eclipse\/\">the total solar eclipse as an instrument of unselfing<\/a>, then revisit Margulis on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/2018\/04\/19\/lynn-margulis-talking-on-the-water\/\">the interconnectedness of life across time, space, and species<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/hop.clickbank.net\/?affiliate=infohatch&amp;vendor=J1R2C\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10614 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png\" alt=\"Profit Gen\" width=\"400\" height=\"217\" srcset=\"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png 400w, http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px-300x163.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.themarginalian.org\/2022\/12\/21\/lynn-margulis-symbiotic-planet\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It bears remembering that we spend our lives trying to discern where we end and the rest of the world begins. The puzzlement is so [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":391,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions\/391"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}