Living Systems in Evolution

238 Pages·1999·0.76 MB·English

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