In the middle of the eighteenth century, Darwin published “On The Origin of Species” and the whole world changed. Quite literally, people’s comprehension of how the world worked was altered. What may seem like logical sense to most of us now was completely new and radical then.
This happens occasionally: a thinker or a scientist comes along with an idea that changes our whole outlook on ourselves and our place in the world. This is what is commonly referred to as a paradigm shift, an idea that originated from the historian of science Thomas Kuhn. While paradigm shifts normally refer to the practice of science, occasionally paradigm shifts in science will be so significant that they elicit a broader shift in the common way of thinking.
Now there are a few scientists and thinkers who are trying to shift our world view again to one that is radically different from the common conceptions about identity, death and nature. Most notable are the microbiologists and popular science writers Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan (the son and former wife of the popular astrophysicist Carl Sagan).
As microbiologists, Margulis and Sagan have a different conception of the world and of life: where we see whole beings, they see conglomerates of millions and billions of little organisms working in tandem to make complex beings. Their conception of life is one based on complex ecologies built from the bottom up through the most microscopic forms of life.
What are we? If we look at it on the microscopic scale, we are nothing more than a conglomerate of billions of cells, each carrying out individual processes. These cells come and go and are cycled throughout our lives so that we will not have any of the same physical matter that we had ten years ago.
These cells are interdependent, yes, but billions of little microbes that are not part of our cells also reside in us, and we cannot live without them. It is estimated that around 10 percent of our mass comes from such microbes and that if they were removed, we would die within a matter of a few weeks. These things we call “germs” are actually essential to our life.
With this outlook, we are forced to reconsider identity. When we say “I” what are we referring to? Are we referring to these cells? But they constantly cycle through, are shed and lost daily. Do we exclude these microbes that help keep us alive? Indeed, this “I” seems to be nothing more than a series of processes that derive their identity only through the fact that they are continuous.
What is death then? It may be the end of one process — what we call consciousness — but everything else about our bodies continues to move on; these cells begin to break down, our microbes thrive and move on and this matter that forms us is taken and used in new life, new processes. In this view, death becomes nothing but another step in a cycle, and our privileged position as separate entities begins to blur.
Why are we so different anyways? What separates us from nature? If we are merely a conglomerate of processes, how can we claim such separation, such uniqueness? Margulis and Sagan want to claim that everything humans do, even using technology, is completely natural. After all, beavers build dams, mollusks build shells and trees build protective shells around their acorns — they all are using the inanimate objects around them for their own purpose. We simply do the same: nothing we do can or does violate the laws of nature. With this idea, the distinction between natural and artificial melts away. When humans synthesize a new chemical, we have merely incorporated into ourselves, naturally, the processes that other forms of life use to produce the same chemicals. Margulis and Sagan, whose work is highly involved in evolutionary microbiology, point out that all forms of life create new processes — we just create more than any other has before. Even the creation of new elements is a natural trend that we have merely continued.
But this perspective also is tied up in the concept to of Gaia theory. If we view ourselves as complex systems and processes built up by billions of smaller components, we can also think of our whole planet as one being that self-regulates. Therefore, Margulis and Sagan declare that, despite the naturalness of our human technologies, if we throw the homeostasis (the balance) of the world off, we could destroy it just like a bacterium might throw off our balance and destroy us.
The implications of these thoughts are too much to capture in one article, but these are the thoughts of the future. They are gradually changing the way we view the world. If you have not heard them before, you will hear them again. This is the next paradigm of thought and life upon us. If any of this piqued your interest, feel free to pick up “Dazzle Gradually” by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan.
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