Earth Life and System

“A strikingly original . . . collection of essays which places the work and broad intellectual interests of Lynne Margulis in a variety of contexts.” —Stacy Alaimo author of Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman TimesExploring the broad implications of evolutionary theorist Lynn Margulis’s work this collection brings together specialists across a range of disciplines from paleontology molecular biology evolutionary theory and geobiology to developmental systems theory archaeology history of science cultural science studies and literature and science. Addressing the multiple themes that animated Margulis’s science the essays within take up variously astrobiology and the origin of life ecology and symbiosis from the microbial to the planetary scale the coupled interactions of earthly environments and evolving life in Gaia theory and earth system science and the connections of these newer scientific ideas to cultural and creative productions.“Altogether Earth Life and System offers a series of often fascinating always stimulating . . . invariably enriching essays in an incisive and unruly science and its existential repercussions. It is a fitting tribute to one of modern science’s most generative and productive independent spirits a gadfly like Socrates whose ultimate concern was to ensure that enquiry and debate were never stifled by received opinion and ‘normal’ expectations.” —The British Society for Literature and Science“A vital contribution to interdisciplinary knowledge about life evolution and the planetary imaginary.” —Tyler Volk award-winning author of Quarks to Culture“Contributors include biologists philosophers historians and even Margulis’s son a science writer who sets the tone for the rest of the text in an intimate first chapter about his mother. Clarke’s sought-after interdisciplinarity shines in the finished product.” —Isis Review