Chimeras and Consciousness: Evolution of the Sensory Self

by Lynn Margulis, Celeste A. Asikainen, Wolfgang E. Krumbein, Frank P. Ryan, William Day

Overview

Scientists elucidate the astounding collective sensory capacity of Earth and its evolution through time.

Chimeras and Consciousness begins the inquiry into the evolution of the collective sensitivities of life. Scientist-scholars from a range of fields—including biochemistry, cell biology, history of science, family therapy, genetics, microbial ecology, and primatology—trace the emergence and evolution of consciousness. Complex behaviors and the social imperatives of bacteria and other life forms during 3,000 million years of Earth history gave rise to mammalian cognition. Awareness and sensation led to astounding activities; millions of species incessantly interacted to form our planet's complex conscious system. Our planetmates, all of them conscious to some degree, were joined only recently by us, the aggressive modern humans.

From social bacteria to urban citizens, all living beings participate in community life. Nested inside families within communities inside ecosystems, each metabolizes, takes in matter, expends energy, and excretes. Each of the members of our own and other species, in groups with incessantly shifting alliances, receives and processes information. Mergers of radically different life forms with myriad purposes—the "chimeras" of the title—underlie dramatic metamorphosis and other positive evolutionary change. Since early bacteria avoided, produced, and eventually used oxygen, Earth's sensory systems have expanded and complexified. The provocative essays in this book, going far beyond science but undergirded by the finest science, serve to put sensitive, sensible life in its cosmic context.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262515832
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	04/22/2011
Series:	The MIT Press
Pages:	344
Sales rank:	689,649
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) was Distinguished Professor of Botany at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. An evolutionary theorist and biologist, science author, and educator, Margulis was the modern originator of the symbiotic theory of cell evolution. Once considered heresy, her ideas are now part of the microbiological revolution.

Celeste A. Asikainen, a geologist, is the administrator of the Margulis Laboratory and a doctoral student.

Wolfgang E. Krumbein, formerly at Oldenburg University in Germany, is counted among the founders of geomicrobiology and biogeochemistry, new scientific fields especially relevant to global climate and planetary biology.

Alfred I. Tauber is the Zoltan Kohn Professor of Medicine, Professor of Philosophy, and Director of the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University.

Wolfgang E. Krumbein, formerly at Oldenburg University in Germany, is counted among the founders of geomicrobiology and biogeochemistry, new scientific fields especially relevant to global climate and planetary biology.

Celeste A. Asikainen, a geologist, is the administrator of the Margulis Laboratory and a doctoral student.

Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) was Distinguished Professor of Botany at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. An evolutionary theorist and biologist, science author, and educator, Margulis was the modern originator of the symbiotic theory of cell evolution. Once considered heresy, her ideas are now part of the microbiological revolution.

Table of Contents

Foreword John B. Cobb ix

Preface xiii

Acknowledgments xvii

Introduction: Life's Sensibilities 1

I Selves

1 Valuable Viruses Frank P. Ryan 17

2 More Like a Waterfall William Day 23

3 Alarmones Antonio Lazcano Arturo Becerra Luis Delaye 35

4 Early Sensibilities Kenneth H. Nealson 45

II Groups

5 Smart Bacteria Eshel Ben-Jacob Yoash Shapira Alfred I. Tauber 55

6 Ancient Architects Wolfgang E. Krumbein Celeste A. Asikainen 63

7 Others Laurie Lassiter 71

8 Nested Communities James MacAllister 91

III Earth

9 Cosmic Rhythms of Life Bruce Scofield 109

10 Life's Tectonics Paul D. Lowman Nathan Currier 123

11 Evolutionary Illumination Peter Warshall 129

IV Chimeras

12 Symbiogenesis in Russia Victor Fet 153

13 From Movement to Sensation John L. Hall Lynn Margulis 159

14 Packaging DNA Andrew Maniotis 167

15 Lemurs and Split Chromosomes Robin Kolnicki 173

16 Interspecies Hybrids Sonya E. Vickers Donald I. Williamson 183

17 Origins of the Immune System Margaret J. McFall-Ngai 199

18 Medical Symbiotics Jessica Hope Whiteside Dorion Sagan 207

V Consciousness

19 Animal Consciousness Gerhard Roth 221

20 Brains and Symbols John Skoyles 233

21 Thermodynamics and Thought Dorion Sagan 241

22 "I Know Who You Are, I Know Where You Live" Judith Masters 251

23 Cultural Networks Luis Rico 259

Bibliography 267

Appendix A Major Groups of Living Organisms 281

Appendix B The International Geological Time Scale 289

Glossary 291

About the Authors 309

Index 315

What People are Saying About This

William Irwin Thompson

Chimeras and Consciousness is not just another conference book; it is a transformation of world-view. If you believe that the cell is an information-processing machine for reading the genetic code, if you think that evolution is a struggle of discrete units to survive long enough to reproduce, if you think the human world, like Maxwell's Demon, is a difference engine for sorting out creatures in a competitive market place of rational self-interest, if you think the immune system is a military force defending Self against Other, or if you think the nation-state is threatened by the infection of the Other in the form of alien immigrants, then you need this book, for everything you think is wrong. This is a book that, like Darwin's Origin, changes everything.

Bruce Rinker

The message from editors Margulis, Asikainen, and Krumbein is an important one for numerous disciplines, biology, environmental science, philosophy, and theology among them. Undoubtedly, this book will also make a significant contribution to the study of our own species. In a palpable sense, it will help re-define what it means to be human in the context of 30 million co-evolved organisms on an ancient Earth system.

John B. Cobb Jr.

I consider this to be an extremely important collection of papers that could change the nature of the currently unhealthy and unhelpful arguments about evolution...It is a rich introduction to a vast field of research still little known to the general public and insufficiently appreciated by mainstream scientists.

Endorsement

The message from editors Margulis, Asikainen, and Krumbein is an important one for numerous disciplines, biology, environmental science, philosophy, and theology among them. Undoubtedly, this book will also make a significant contribution to the study of our own species. In a palpable sense, it will help re-define what it means to be human in the context of 30 million co-evolved organisms on an ancient Earth system.

—Bruce Rinker, ecologist, science educator, and explorer; co-editor of Gaia in Turmoil

From the Publisher

Chimeras and Consciousness is not just another conference book; it is a transformation of world-view. If you believe that the cell is an information-processing machine for reading the genetic code, if you think that evolution is a struggle of discrete units to survive long enough to reproduce, if you think the human world, like Maxwell's Demon, is a difference engine for sorting out creatures in a competitive market place of rational self-interest, if you think the immune system is a military force defending Self against Other, or if you think the nation-state is threatened by the infection of the Other in the form of alien immigrants, then you need this book, for everything you think is wrong. This is a book that, like Darwin's Origin, changes everything.

—William Irwin Thompson, poet, cultural historian, and founder of the Lindisfarne Association

I consider this to be an extremely important collection of papers that could change the nature of the currently unhealthy and unhelpful arguments about evolution...It is a rich introduction to a vast field of research still little known to the general public and insufficiently appreciated by mainstream scientists.

—John B. Cobb Jr. , from the foreword

In this volume a group of bold and imaginative scholars probe the edges of the paradigm to investigate the 'hard problem' of consciousness by exploring its evolutionary roots from deep in the microbial world to its cultural embodiments. This is a new view of the biosphere, natural philosophy at its most challenging.

—Harold J. Morowitz, Robinson Professor of Biology and Natural Philosophy, George Mason University

The message from editors Margulis, Asikainen, and Krumbein is an important one for numerous disciplines, biology, environmental science, philosophy, and theology among them. Undoubtedly, this book will also make a significant contribution to the study of our own species. In a palpable sense, it will help re-define what it means to be human in the context of 30 million co-evolved organisms on an ancient Earth system.

—Bruce Rinker, ecologist, science educator, and explorer; co-editor of Gaia in Turmoil

Harold J. Morowitz

In this volume a group of bold and imaginative scholars probe the edges of the paradigm to investigate the 'hard problem' of consciousness by exploring its evolutionary roots from deep in the microbial world to its cultural embodiments. This is a new view of the biosphere, natural philosophy at its most challenging.