I had lunch yesterday with a nomadic woman who brought up the subject of Biophilia and the author Edward O. Wilson. In looking into his work, I quickly came across Lynn Margulis who was influenced by Konstantin Mereschkowski's work. This led to (excerpt from Wiki): "Russian botanist Boris Kozo-Polyansky brilliantly outlined the concept of symbiogenesis, the symbiotic origin of cells with nuclei. " which led to
this book, a translation Dr. Margulis was instrumental in getting published.
In reading about Wilson in Wiki, note #6 gives this: a CNN.com article that quotes Wilson as having written, "the organism does not live for itself. Its primary function is not even to reproduce other organisms; it reproduces genes, and it serves as their temporary carrier."
This corroboration of Margulis's work adds to her interesting stick-in-the-spokes of the wheel of Survival of the Fittest (who gets to fuck the most) that networking is a fundamental basis of evolution. (see below)
Furthermore (also from Wiki article),
Margulis' work on symbiosis and her endosymbiotic theory had important predecessors, going back to the mid-19th century – notably Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper, Konstantin Mereschkowski, Boris Kozo-Polyansky (1890-
But her statement that I've felt was more fundamental to life in general was: (in the wiki section on Personal Life): She argued that "Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn't create", and maintained that symbiosis was the major driver of evolutionary change."
A MAN telling You
(There's mention in the article of research by a biology couple who found that birds on an island in the Galapagos went extinct when the species of plant they lived on died off during a drought. They postulated that extinctions occur frequently and evolutionary mutations take much longer. This can transmutate into skepticism around Darwinism.)
Then there's this from this great interview in Discover Magazine....
Don’t spirochetes cause syphilis?
Yes, and Lyme disease. There are many kinds of spirochetes, and if I’m right, some of them are ancestors to the cilia in our cells. Spirochete bacteria are already optimized for sensitivity to motion, light, and chemicals. All eukaryotic cells have an internal transport system. If I’m right, the whole system—called the cytoskeletal system—came from the incorporation of ancestral spirochetes. Mitosis, or cell division, is a kind of internal motility system that came from these free-living, symbiotic, swimming bacteria. Here [she shows a video] we compare isolated swimming sperm tails to free-swimming spirochetes. Is that clear enough?
Yes, and Lyme disease. There are many kinds of spirochetes, and if I’m right, some of them are ancestors to the cilia in our cells. Spirochete bacteria are already optimized for sensitivity to motion, light, and chemicals. All eukaryotic cells have an internal transport system. If I’m right, the whole system—called the cytoskeletal system—came from the incorporation of ancestral spirochetes. Mitosis, or cell division, is a kind of internal motility system that came from these free-living, symbiotic, swimming bacteria. Here [she shows a video] we compare isolated swimming sperm tails to free-swimming spirochetes. Is that clear enough?
And yet these ideas are not generally accepted. Why?
Do you want to believe that your sperm tails come from some spirochetes? Most men, most evolutionary biologists, don’t. When they understand what I’m saying, they don’t like it.
Do you want to believe that your sperm tails come from some spirochetes? Most men, most evolutionary biologists, don’t. When they understand what I’m saying, they don’t like it.
And I read a statistic the other day that said 60% of law school students are female.
Things could get interesting.
