Lynn Margulis: Earth

Lynn Margulis was American evolutionary biologist. Explore interesting quotes on earth.

Lynn Margulis: 48 quotes21 likes

“Evolution is no linear family tree, but change in the single multidimensional being that has grown to cover the entire surface of Earth.”

Source: What Is Life?

“Life is a planetary level phenomonon and the Earth has been alive for at least 3000 million years. To me the human move to take responsibility for the living Earth is laughable - the rhethoric 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 a sick planet is evidence of our immense capacity for self-delusion. Rather, we need to protect us from ourselves.”

Source: Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution

“The question "What is Life?" is… a linguistic trap. To answer according to the rules of grammar, we must supply a noun, a thing. But life on Earth is more like a verb. It repairs, maintains, re-creates, and outdoes itself.”

What is Life? (1995)

“There is little doubt that the planetary patina—including ourselves—is autopoietic. Life at the surface of the Earth seems to regulate itself in the face of external perturbation, and does so without regard for the individuals and species that compose it. More than 99.99 percent of the species that have ever existed have become extinct, but the planetary patina, with its army of cells, have continued for more than three billion years. …trillions of communicating, evolving microbes. The visible world is a late-arriving, overgrown portion of the microcosm, and it functions only because of its well-developed connection with the microcosm's activities.”

Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Evolution from Our Microbial Ancestors (1986)

“The fundamental division of forms of life on Earth is not that between plants and animals, as is commonly assumed, but between prokaryotes—organisms composed of cells with no nucleus, that is, bacteria—and eukaryotes—all other life forms.”

Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Evolution from Our Microbial Ancestors (1986)

“Not only did life originate on earth very early in its history as a planet, but for the first two billion years, Earth was inhabited solely by bacteria.”

Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Evolution from Our Microbial Ancestors (1986)