Still haven’t finished chapter 1, but I’ve been really interested to learn about Lynn Margulis. She’s the reason Blaise talks about Symbiosis (and also is perhaps the reason the book is called ‘What is Intelligence’ (she wrote ‘What is Life‘).
To recap: in the book ‘What is Intelligence’ Blaise Agüera y Arcas writes about the role of Symbiosis in Evolution. Symbiosis in Evolution means: two organisms find a way to cooperate to the benefit of both. The implication is that instead of progress by random mutation, organisms can suddenly leap forward.
To me, this is pretty mind blowing. But what’s more mind blowing is: this concept came from a renounced scientist I’ve not heard of: Lynn Margulis.
I’m pretty early in my Lynn Margulis journey, but so far: revolutionized contemporary evolution, married to Carl Sagan, co-authored a number of books with her son, and was apparently a kind of a stubborn bad ass.
In 1995, English evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins had this to say about Lynn Margulis and her work:
I greatly admire Lynn Margulis’s sheer courage and stamina in sticking by the endosymbiosis theory, and carrying it through from being an unorthodoxy to an orthodoxy. I’m referring to the theory that the eukaryotic cell is a symbiotic union of primitive prokaryotic cells. This is one of the great achievements of twentieth-century evolutionary biology, and I greatly admire her for it.[3]
I’m a little ashamed this is news to me, but greatful to Blaise to shining a light.
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