I was taught over and over again that the accumulation of random mutations led to evolutionary change - led to new species. I believed it until I looked for evidence. Lynn Margulis More Quotes by Lynn Margulis More Quotes From Lynn Margulis The notion of saving the planet has nothing to do with intellectual honesty or science. The fact is that the planet was here long before us and will be here long after us. The planet is running fine. What people are talking about is saving themselves and saving their middle-class lifestyles and saving their cash flow. Lynn Margulis cash-flow honesty running We are all of us walking communities of bacteria. Lynn Margulis landscape community world The idea that we are "stewards of the earth" is another symptom of human arrogance. Imagine yourself with the task of overseeing your body's physical processes. Do you understand the way it works well enough to keep all its systems in operation? Can you make your kidneys function? Can you control the removal of waste? Are you conscious of the blood flow through your arteries, or the fact that you are losing a hundred thousand skin cells a minute? Lynn Margulis cells blood ideas To me, the human move to take responsibility for the living Earth is laughable - the rhetoric of the powerless. The planet takes care of us, not we of it. Our self-inflated moral imperative to guide a wayward Earth, or heal our sick planet, is evidence of our immense capacity for self delusion. Rather, we need to protect ourselves from ourselves. Lynn Margulis responsibility self moving All I ask is that we compare human consciousness with spirochete ecology. Lynn Margulis ecology compare consciousness Life on earth is more like a verb. It repairs, maintains, re-creates, and outdoes itself. Lynn Margulis verbs earth Politicians need a better understanding of global ecology. We need to be freed from our species-specific arrogance. No evidence exists that we are chosen, the unique species for which all the others were made. Nor are we the most important one because we are so numerous, powerful and dangerous. Lynn Margulis powerful understanding unique All scientists agree that evolution has occurred-that all life comes from a common ancestry, that there has been extinction, and that new taxa, new biological groups, have arisen. The question is, is natural selection enough to explain evolution? Is it the driver of evolution? Lynn Margulis extinction ancestry groups Everybody knows what a caterpillar is, and it doesn't look anything like a butterfly. Lynn Margulis caterpillars butterfly looks Neo-Darwinian language and conceptual structure itself ensures scientific failure: Major questions posed by zoologists cannot be answered from inside the neo-Darwinian straitjacket. Such questions include, for example, 'How do new structures arise in evolution?' 'Why, given so much environmental change, is stasis so prevalent in evolution as seen in the fossil record?' 'How did one group of organisms or set of macromolecules evolve from another?' The importance of these questions is not at issue; it is just that neo-Darwinians, restricted by their resuppositions, cannot answer them. Lynn Margulis environmental issues groups Body concentrates order. It continuously self-repairs. Every five days you get a new stomach lining. You get a new liver every two months. Your skin replaces itself every six weeks. Every year, 98 percent of the atoms of your body are replaced. This non-stop chemical replacement, metabolism, is a sure sign of life. Lynn Margulis self order years Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn't create. Lynn Margulis natural-selection selection natural We are unconscious of most of our body's processes, thank goodness, because we'd screw it up if we weren't. The human body is so complex, with so many parts...a system which is far more complex than we can fully imagine. The idea that we are consciously care-taking such a large and mysterious system is ludicrous. Lynn Margulis environmental body ideas The accumulation of genetic mutations were touted to be enough to change one species to another….No. It wasn’t dishonesty. I think it was wish fulfillment and social momentum. Assumptions, made but not verified, were taught as fact. Lynn Margulis mutation wish thinking Life learned early on to recognize itself. Lynn Margulis Although random mutations influenced the course of evolution, their influence was mainly by loss, alteration, and refinement... Never, however, did that one mutation make a wing, a fruit, a woody stem, or a claw appear. Mutations, in summary, tend to induce sickness, death, or deficiencies. No evidence in the vast literature of heredity changes shows unambiguous evidence that random mutation itself, even with geographical isolation of populations, leads to speciation. Lynn Margulis population loss wings All living beings, not just animals, but plants and microorganisms, perceive. To survive, an organic being must perceive - it must seek, or at least recognize, food and avoid environmental danger. Lynn Margulis environmental plant animal Evolution is no linear family tree, but change in the single multidimensional being that has grown to cover the entire surface of Earth. Lynn Margulis evolution earth tree Despite our very recent appearance on the planet, humanity combines arrogance with increasing material demands, even as we become more numerous. Our toughness is a delusion. Have we the intelligence and discipline to vigilantly guard against our tendency to grow without limit? Lynn Margulis discipline arrogance humanity The fewer species there are and the fewer species we know about, the fewer questions we even know to ask. Lynn Margulis fewer species knows
