SCIENCE IS A PROFESSION THAT CAN BE CHARACTERIZED AS A WHITE, upper-middle-class, primarily male preserve. As such, it is a highly competitive, macho profession in which territoriality, jealousy, and vested interest often cloud the vaunted receptiveness to new ideas. Nevertheless, women are bringing new attitudes and ideas to the preserve.
To the public, scientists seem open and receptive to unexpected data and radical ideas, which they assess objectively and rationally. But that folklore seldom holds up in reality because scientists cannot transcend their humanity. They get excited and become passionate about their work, but they can also become territorial, dogmatic, jealous, tunnel-visioned, and mean.
Lynn Margulis is a remarkable scientist who has experienced the full force of that dark, human side of science. Not only has she survived, but she continues to make waves in the scientific establishment. Outspoken, original, and fearless, the University of Massachusetts professor constantly challenges us to look at the world in new ways. Margulis became embroiled in controversy in the mid-1960s. She wondered how the earliest bacterialike cells could have evolved into more complex eukaryotes, which are defined as cells containing a nucleus, a membraned envelope enclosing chromosomes, and organelles, which are distinct structures that perform such functions as photosynthesis and energy production. All plants and animals and many microorganisms are eukaryotes.
Margulis resurrected a long-ignored idea that the organelles within eukaryotes were once free-living bacteria that long ago invaded other bacterial forms. First they were parasites, then they became symbionts, contributing services for their hosts in return for a protective environment, and finally they were fully integrated into their hosts’ biological makeup as organelles.
It was a radical but scientifically testable theory. However, Margulis became a pariah among her peers for her unorthodoxy. When I first met her in the late 1970s, she painfully recounted how an application for a research grant to continue her studies had been rejected. When she called to inquire why, she was told, “Your research is shit. Don’t ever bother to apply again.”
But she persisted, and now many studies have shown that organelles have DNA very similar to bacterial DNA. Today, the bacterial origin of organelles is found in most textbooks, and Margulis is an eminent member of the scientific establishment. She stresses the important evolutionary role of cooperation rather than competition, pointing out that at least 10 percent of our body weight is organelles that were once separate bacteria and are now part of the cells of which we are made. Each of us is actually an immense community of organisms.
Margulis continues to explore ideas at the very edge of scientific thought. Today, she focuses on the puzzling stability of the Earth’s atmosphere and ocean salinity throughout the 3.5 billion years since life began. She champions British chemist James Lovelock’s proposal in 1972 that there exists some kind of self-regulation by the sum of all life-forms on Earth and their physical and chemical environment. This living skin around the planet, according to Lovelock and Margulis, is like an immense organism that has compensatory mechanisms to handle changes over time. For example, the waning intensity of the sun could have been counteracted by the production of more greenhouse gases. Too much warming could have been redressed by the release of compounds that induce clouds and cool the planet.
Lovelock named the supra-organism Gaia after the Greek goddess of the Earth, and it has captured the lay public’s imagination. From a Gaian perspective, human beings are a small part of the global biosphere, and while we are changing the biological and physical properties of the planet, the survival or extinction of our species is of little consequence.
I recently talked to Margulis. As always, she was outspoken and provocative. In approaching the subject of Gaia, I suggested that we are special as the only life-forms on the planet with self-consciousness. “The dictionary,” she replied, “defines consciousness as being aware of the environment. By that definition, virtually all species have consciousness.” Margulis pointed out that most species of plants, animals, and microorganisms can “sense” and respond to gravity, light, temperature, chemicals, a different sex, or another species. In fact, she contends, people are far less sensitive to their environments than most other organisms, and perhaps that’s why we have created such a terrible environmental mess.
Lynn Margulis should be a model for scientists. Even while studying the smallest creatures, she keeps her mind on the big picture. It doesn’t matter whether or not she’s right. Her real value is in stimulating us to look at ourselves and the rest of the biological world in a different way. That’s science at its very best