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Living Systems in Evolution PDF

238 Pages·1999·0.76 MB·English
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EARTHDANCE: Living Systems in Evolution Elisabet Sahtouris Copyright © 1999 by Elisabet Sahtouris To my planet and its people Dancing is surely the most basic and relevant of all forms of expression. Nothing else can so effectively give outward form to an inner experience. Poetry and music exist in time. Painting and architecture are a part of space But only the dance lives at once in both space and time In it the creator and the thing created, the artist and the expression, are one. Each participant is completely in the other. There could be no better metaphor for an understanding of the...cosmos. We begin to realize that our universe is in a sense brought into being by the participation of those involved in it. It is a dance, for participation is its organizing principle. This is the important new concept of quantum mechanics. It takes the place in our understanding of the old notion of observation, of watching without getting involved. Quantum theory says it can’t be done. That spectators can sit in their rigid row as long as they like, but there will never be a performance unless at least one of them takes part And conversely, that it needs only one participant, because that one is the essence of all people and the quintessence of the cosmos. -Lyall Watson, Gifts of Unknown Things Thank you. Special thanks to Jim Lovelock and Lynn Margulis for the original inspiration to write this book and for their encouragement over the years, also to Teddy Goldsmith for creating the Gaia Seminars in Cornwall. My deep appreciation to Dave Ratcliffe and Rebecca Lord for putting the book on the Web while it was out of print, and to Bruce Bigenho for his tireless efforts with the second edition. My gratitude extends as well to Nancy Larson for the original cover photo and to my son, Philip LaVere, for the cover design. Lastly, but certainly not least, I thank with a smile my sometimes enigmatic but wonderful editor at Praeger, Jeremy Geelan, for his great enthusiasm and effort to get EarthDance out there! Contents FOREWORD BY JAMES E. LOVELOCK A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR 1. A TWICE-TOLD TALE 2. COSMIC BEGINNINGS 3. THE YOUNG EARTH 4. PROBLEMS FOR EARTHLIFE 5. THE DANCE OF LIFE 6. A GREAT LEAP 7. EVIDENCE OF EVOLUTION 8. FROM PROTISTS TO POLYPS 9. FROM POLYPS TO POSSUMS 10. FROM POSSUMS TO PEOPLE 11. THE BIG BRAIN EXPERIMENT 12. WHAT THE PLAY IS ALL ABOUT 13. WORLDVIEWS FROM THE PLEISTOCENE TO PLATO 14. WORLDVIEWS FROM PLATO TO THE PRESENT 15. LESS THAN PERFECT, MORE THAN MACHINE 16. THE BODY OF HUMANITY 17. A MATTER OF MATURATION 18. ECOLOGICAL ETHICS 19. THE INDIGENOUS WAY 20. SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY 21. COSMIC CONTINUATION BIBLIOGRAPHY Foreword The Gaia hypothesis, now accorded the status of Gaia theory, is maturing with experience and the tests of time, not unlike the humans of this book. It is spurring a great deal of scientific research into the geophysiology of our living planet. It is also spurring philosophic conceptions of what it means to our species to be part of a living planet. Some of these conceptions stay carefully within the accepted limits of science; others have a religious bent. Most, especially environmentalist conceptions, advocate for humanity, being primarily concerned with human survival. A few, taking a clue from my partner Lynn Margulis and myself, advocate for the planet and the much maligned microbes with which the Gaian system originated and which continue to do its basic work. Elisabet Sahtouris’ conception integrates scientific Gaian evolution with the human search to connect with our roots, inspiring us to learn from billions of years of Gaian experience in the self-organization of workable living systems. It is well balanced between advocacy for the planet and advocacy for humans, placing the onus on humans to recognize the lack of maturity involved in believing we can manage the planet, and to learn instead to follow its lead in organizing ourselves. Elisabet gives us valuable insights as she draws parallels between the evolution of cells and the evolution of human society, pointing out the contrast between the healthy organization of cells, bodies, and biosystems on the one hand and the unhealthy organization of economics and politics in human society on the other. While she argues that our social evolution is not as much under our control as we like to think, she warns us that our survival depends on our meeting the evolutionary demand to transform competitive exploitation into cooperative synergy. On the whole, her advice makes sense because she herself has taken the trouble to learn directly from nature as well as from the growing store of scientific knowledge about nature. I began the preface to my own book The Ages of Gaia by saying that the place in which it was written was relevant to its understanding. Living and working in the Devonshire countryside, far from universities and large research organizations, makes me an eccentric as a scientist, but, as I said, it is the only way to work on an unconventional topic such as Gaia. When I met Elisabet, having accepted her invitation to trace Gaia’s roots in Greece, I recognized her as a kindred spirit. She had abandoned academia for a simple lifestyle in the kind of natural setting that brings one closer to understanding what our planet and our species are all about; she was free to develop her own conception of Gaia through a synthesis of scientific knowledge and personal experience of nature. To my surprise, she expressed some concern, some guilt, at having abandoned her profession of science for a pleasant existence in a forest overlooking the sea, the kind of forest that had been home to her in childhood, where she could work out the meaning of things for herself. As I read her work in progress, I was able to assure her she could never have done anything comparable in a constrained academic setting. In the intervening years, even in the short time since I wrote my own words about Gaia being an unconventional topic, less eccentric scientists than I have declared Gaia more conventional, meaning that Gaia theory is now recognized as a legitimate and fruitful basis for scientific investigation and is thus being brought into the scientific fold. In our first account of Gaia as a system neither Lynn Margulis nor I fully understood what it was we were describing. Our language tended to be anthropomorphic and, especially in my first book, Gaia, poetic. Not surprisingly, some scientists misunderstood our intentions, but over time we developed a clearer version, which became Gaia theory. This theory sees the evolution of the material environment and the evolution of organisms as tightly coupled into a single and indivisible process or domain. Gaia, with its capacity for homeostasis, is an emergent property of this domain. As the title of one article in Science put it, "No Longer Willful, Gaia Becomes Respectable." This means that Gaia scientists are constrained by bureaucratic forces, by the pressures of tenure, and by the tribal divisions and rules of scientific disciplines. That, in turn, means we need some antidote to the inevitable separations and constraints. We need independent synthesizers and visionaries who can make sense of the data produced by the scientific establishment and present it to us in ways that make our living planet real to us within the Gaian context and thus give meaning to our own lives and those of our children and grandchildren. This is what Elisabet Sahtouris’ work means to me, for she comfortably integrates the traditionally separated domains of biology, geology, and atmospheric science to show us the evolution of our living planet and our own roots within it. She then inspires us on ethical grounds to learn from this planetary organism of which we are part, showing us how we can mature as a species well integrated into the larger dance of life. Elisabet uses the metaphor of dance effectively for its concepts of improvisation and evolution, the creation of order from chaos, the myriad patterns that can be created from a few basic steps. I am myself an inventor of scientific instruments, and so it is second nature to me to think in terms of mechanical and mathematical models. Cybernetic models have proved especially useful in my work of demonstrating how Gaian homeostasis, such as maintaining the Earth’s temperature, might work. Yet I quite agree with Elisabet that any model we make of nature is at heart metaphorical in that it begins with some image or formula familiar to us humans and used to represent the complexities of nature in simple, understandable, and useful ways. No metaphor should be mistaken for reality, and perhaps a variety of metaphors is insurance against the temptation to do so. I am increasingly impressed by scientists and philosophers who find non-mechanical metaphors for natural systems useful in interpreting Gaia theory. Elisabet’s analysis of science reflects a trend that may well make science in the near future as unrecognizable as today’s science would be to the ancients. She does well to remind us that science is a human activity that evolves, a living system in which conservatism should be balanced by healthy controversy. After all, as she so well describes, all Gaian systems are forever busy working out their cooperation through conflicting interests, their unities through diversity. The optimistic view this book radiates, that despite our errors and immaturities we can still become a healthy species within a healthy planet, is much needed in this age of doomsday predictions. Though time is growing short in our continued destruction of forests, atmospheres, and other critical Gaian systems, nothing would make me happier personally than to see Gaia theory useful in bringing about a better world for Gaia and her people. -James E. Lovelock A Note from the Author This book is a work of philosophy in the original sense of a search for wisdom, for practical guidance in human affairs through understanding the natural order of the cosmos to which we belong. It bears little resemblance to what we have come to call philosophy since that effort was separated from natural science and became more an intellectual exercise in understanding than a practical guide for living. To find meaning and guidance in nature, I integrated my personal experience of it with those scientific accounts that seemed to best fit it. From this synthesis, meaning and lessons for humanity emerged freely. I wrote the original version in the peaceful, natural setting of a tiny old village on a small pine-forested Greek island, where I could consider the research and debates of scientists, historians, and philosophers, then test them against the natural world I was trying to understand. Putting into simple words the specialized technical language of scientists and winding my way through labyrinths of philosophic prose, I gradually simplified the story of the origins and nature of our planet within the larger cosmos, and of our human origins, nature, and history within the larger being of this planet. The Gaia hypothesis, now Gaia theory, of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis -- the theory that our planet and its creatures constitute a single self-regulating system that is in fact a great living being -- is the conception of physical reality in which my philosophy is rooted. Quite simply, it makes more sense on all levels -- intuitive, experiential, scientific, philosophical, spiritual and even aesthetic and ethical -- than any other conception I know. And I have come to believe, in the course of this work, that this conception contains profound and pressing implications for all humanity. To ensure that my vision of evolution and history would stay simple and in clear focus, I kept telling its essence and more than a few of its particulars in something of the style of an ancient storyteller during many social evenings among my Greek village friends. I also wrote the story for children before I set about an adult version. To my surprise, these deliberate exercises in simplicity proved more difficult than writing for professional audiences, for in stripping our intellectual language to the essence of what is being said, we must be very sure that essence is really there, really coherent. Science has been a process of differentiating our knowledge into an incredible wealth of precise details, but these details become ever more disconnected from one another and cry out for integration into coherent wholes. I have no doubt I will be accused of oversimplification, and perhaps rightly so, as one pays for scope in lack of detail and precision. Friends and colleagues have asked me now and then why I insist on dealing with all evolution, even all the cosmos, to discuss human matters; why I don’t narrow my scope to workable proportions. My answer is that context is what gives meaning, and a serious search of context is an ever-expanding process leading inevitably to the grandest context of all: the whole cosmos. As the nested contexts for the human story -- especially the context of evolution -- became clearer to me, they revealed a simple but elegant biological vision of just why our human condition has become so critical and what we might do to improve it. Other people ask why I’m so eager to save humanity when it is proving such a social and ecological disaster. To this I can only answer that, as far as I can see, every healthy living being or system in nature has evolved survival oriented behavior, and I do not exclude myself from this natural health scheme. Of course my purpose is to show how we are straying from this course, so that we may correct the deviations. I can no more proclaim the worldview arising from my work "reality" than can any particular philosopher working at creating a meaningful worldview in any particular place and time, drawing on the scientific and historical knowledge of that place and time. Philosophy is an intensely personal search that one hopes will have relevance to others, will be validated by their experience, will offer them some insight and guidance, or will at least stimulate them in their disagreement to search further on their own. Yet a work of philosophy also reflects the broader context and search of a culture at a particular stage, and the biological evolutionary viewpoint of this book reflects a broadly emerging pattern of search for our origins and direction in nature -- a reawakening of that search begun by the original pre-Socratic philosophers, indeed that goes further back to the roots of religion -- the search for re-ligio, for "reconnection" with our origins in the nature or cosmos that gave rise to us and within which we continue our co-creation. Paradoxically, our self-imposed separation from nature by way of an ‘objective’ mechanical worldview during the past few millennia has led to the scientific knowledge that makes it possible to understand and reintegrate ourselves into nature’s self-organization patterns. It has also brought us to a stage of technology that permits us to share our discoveries and our understanding planet-wide in no time at all, to work together as a body of humanity with hope of transcending our present crisis in a far healthier and happier future for ourselves and all the rest of Earthlife. Although the original version of this book was done in relative isolation and without funding, I am indebted and profoundly grateful to many teachers and friends, from the forest creatures with whom I spent my earliest years to Jim Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, who have not only informed and inspired me in this work, but who gave me invaluable encouragement, confidence, and opportunities in seeing the work through. As this edition goes to press, scientists have recognized that we are well into the sixth great extinction of species -- the first caused by a single species, and proceeding more rapidly even than the last one, which eliminated the great dinosaurs sixty million years ago because Earth’s climate changed dramatically under the impact of a huge meteor in the Caribbean basin. There is no doubt that we humans continue creating the chaos of ongoing disaster and denial. As I say in Chapter 19, Onondaga Chief Oren Lyons, at the Earth Summit known as Rio ’92, reminded us that the passengers of the Titanic refused to believe that marvel of modern technology could go down on its maiden voyage. It did, of course, go down, as its extremely popular and timely Hollywood version reminded us. We may be a true biological marvel as a hi-tech human species, but we have truly gotten ourselves into serious trouble. A healthy world for all cannot easily rise from total destruction; rather it must be formed now, in the midst of the chaos we create. Such a "new world order," I am again and again reminded by the indigenous elders I have listened to intently for their deep understanding of sustainability, must be based on a very old world order -- on the laws of nature as indigenous people understand them, on laws they have been trying to teach us for a very long time: laws of balance, harmony, of giving back in full measure for all you take; laws designed to insure survival at least seven generations into the future. The conclusion reached in this book, that we humans as a species must learn quickly to fit our lifestyles harmoniously into the rest of nature, is what led me to seek out indigenous knowledge between editions. Indigenous peoples never saw themselves as anything but an integral part of nature, and so they tend to know much more about that than do industrial peoples. Once, I listened to Jeannette Armstrong, a wise woman of the Okinakan nation, which still lives traditionally, speaking in detail about her peoples’ understanding of nature. It was precisely the understanding I had gained in the course of writing this book far off on a Greek island -- confirmation to me that I had gotten it right, for her people had the credibility of thousands of years of careful and scientific observation. The immense knowledge of nature, the coherent philosophies and the non-technological achievements of indigenous people impressed me deeply. They have observed us far more carefully than we them. Their conscious choice not to develop technological consumer societies gave me a more balanced view of human life and some valuable insights I have shared in several new chapters. One of these insights -- that there can no more be one true science than one true religion -- was difficult to share with fellow scientists of my industrial culture. Almost invariably, they responded, "You mean indigenous knowledge ; they don’t have science , there is only one science." I have therefore taken some care to show that indigenous people do indeed have science, by our own definitions, as a deep aspect of their cultures (see Chapter 19). The great effort of industrial culture to fragment our world, to separate science, religion, art, economics, politics and other social practices, has long seemed to me very costly in blinding us to their interrelations. Today this is expressed in such problems as the difficulty of integrating the economy with ecology , two words meaning, in their original Greek, the organizational design and the operating principles of a household. Clearly they should never have been separated! How could it have happened? As Janine Benyus pointed out in a speech at a Bioneers conference, we assigned one group of people -- biologists -- to study how other species make a living, and another unrelated group of people -- economists -- to determine how humans make a living. Only now do we see interest in living systems enter the world of business. Indigenous people have also taught me that good science can be done without tearing it out

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