Extraordinary thinking. On Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 9:45 AM, farmela...@juno.com <farmela...@juno.com> wrote: > > http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/25/science/lynn-margulis-trailblazing-theorist-on-evolution-dies-at-73.html?_r=1 > > November 24, 2011 > Lynn Margulis, Evolution Theorist, Dies at 73 > By BRUCE WEBER > Lynn Margulis, a biologist whose work on the origin of cells helped transform > the study of evolution, died on Tuesday at her home in Amherst, Mass. She was > 73. > > She died five days after suffering a hemorrhagic stroke, said Dorion Sagan, a > son she had with her first husband, the cosmologist Carl Sagan. > > Dr. Margulis, who had the title of distinguished university professor of > geosciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, since 1988, drew > upon earlier, ridiculed ideas when she first promulgated her theory, in the > late 1960s, that cells with nuclei, which are known as eukaryotes and include > all the cells in the human body, evolved as a result of symbiotic > relationships among bacteria. > > The hypothesis was a direct challenge to the prevailing neo-Darwinist belief > that the primary evolutionary mechanism was random mutation. > > Rather, Dr. Margulis argued that a more important mechanism was symbiosis; > that is, evolution is a function of organisms that are mutually beneficial > growing together to become one and reproducing. The theory undermined > significant precepts of the study of evolution, underscoring the idea that > evolution began at the level of micro-organisms long before it would be > visible at the level of species. > > “She talked a lot about the importance of micro-organisms,” said her > daughter, Jennifer Margulis. “She called herself a spokesperson for the > microcosm.” > > The manuscript in which Dr. Margulis first presented her findings was > rejected by 15 journals before being published in 1967 by the Journal of > Theoretical Biology. An expanded version, with additional evidence to support > the theory — which was known as the serial endosymbiotic theory — became her > first book, “Origin of Eukaryotic Cells.” > > A revised version, “Symbiosis in Cell Evolution,” followed in 1981, and > though it challenged the presumptions of many prominent scientists, it has > since become accepted evolutionary doctrine. > > “Evolutionists have been preoccupied with the history of animal life in the > last 500 million years,” Dr. Margulis wrote in 1995. “But we now know that > life itself evolved much earlier than that. The fossil record begins nearly > 4,000 million years ago! Until the 1960s, scientists ignored fossil evidence > for the evolution of life, because it was uninterpretable. > > “I work in evolutionary biology, but with cells and micro-organisms. Richard > Dawkins, John Maynard Smith, George Williams, Richard Lewontin, Niles > Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould all come out of the zoological tradition, > which suggests to me that, in the words of our colleague Simon Robson, they > deal with a data set some three billion years out of date.” > > Lynn Petra Alexander was born on March 5, 1938, in Chicago, where she grew up > in a tough neighborhood on the South Side. Her father was a lawyer and a > businessman. Precocious, she graduated at 18 from the University of Chicago, > where she met Dr. Sagan as they passed each other on a stairway. > > She earned a master’s degree in genetics and zoology from the University of > Wisconsin and a Ph.D. in genetics from the University of California, > Berkeley. Before joining the faculty at Massachusetts, she taught for 22 > years at Boston University. > > Dr. Margulis was also known, somewhat controversially, as a collaborator with > and supporter of James E. Lovelock, whose Gaia theory states that Earth > itself — its atmosphere, the geology and the organisms that inhabit it — is a > self-regulating system, maintaining the conditions that allow its > perpetuation. In other words, it is something of a living organism in and of > itself. > > Dr. Margulis’s marriage to Dr. Sagan ended in divorce, as did a marriage to > Thomas N. Margulis, a chemist. Dr. Sagan died in 1996. > > In addition to her daughter and her son Dorion, a science writer with whom > she sometimes collaborated, she is survived by two other sons, Jeremy Sagan > and Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma; three sisters, Joan Glashow, Sharon Kleitman and > Diane Alexander; two half-brothers, Robert and Mark Alexander; a half-sister, > Sara Alexander; and nine grandchildren. > > “More than 99.99 percent of the species that have ever existed have become > extinct,” Dr. Margulis and Dorion Sagan wrote in “Microcosmos,” a 1986 book > that traced, in readable language, the history of evolution over four billion > years, “but the planetary patina, with its army of cells, has continued for > more than three billion years. And the basis of the patina, past, present and > future, is the microcosm — trillions of communicating, evolving microbes.” > > > Jim Farmelant > http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant > > ____________________________________________________________ > Leaked Black Friday Ads > Sign Up & Get Leaked Black Friday Ads Delivered Daily! > http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/4ecfaa4f1ce4a491e76st02vuc > > _______________________________________________ > Marxism-Thaxis mailing list > Marxism-Thaxis@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu > To change your options or unsubscribe go to: > http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
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