Slanted Truths

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-1

   PDF

2. Memoirs

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 3-3

      PDF

   2. Sunday with J. Robert Oppenheimer

      • Lynn Margulis

      Pages 5-28

   3. The Red Shoe Dilemma

      • Lynn Margulis

      Pages 29-32

3. Symbiosis and Individuality

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 33-33

      PDF

   2. Marriage of Convenience

      • Lynn Margulis, Mark McMenamin

      Pages 35-46

   3. Swimming Against the Current

      • Lynn Margulis, Michael F. Dolan

      Pages 47-58

   4. The Uncut Self

      • Dorion Sagan, Lynn Margulis

      Pages 59-73

   5. Power to the Protoctists

      • Lynn Margulis

      Pages 75-82

   6. From Kefir to Death

      • Lynn Margulis

      Pages 83-90

   7. Kingdom Animalia: The Zoological Malaise from A Microbial Perspective

      • Lynn Margulis

      Pages 91-111

   8. Speculation on Speculation

      • Lynn Margulis

      Pages 113-123

4. Gaia

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 125-125

      PDF

   2. The Atmosphere as Circulatory System of the Biosphere— The Gaia Hypothesis

      • Lynn Margulis, James E. Lovelock

      Pages 127-143

   3. Gaia and Philosophy

      • Dorion Sagan, Lynn Margulis

      Pages 145-157

   4. The Global Sulfur Cycle And Emiliania Huxleyi

      • Dorion Sagan

      Pages 159-169

   5. Descartes, Dualism, and Beyond

      • Dorion Sagan, Lynn Margulis, Ricardo Guerrero

      Pages 171-183

   6. What Narcissus Saw: The Oceanic “Eye”

      • Dorion Sagan

      Pages 185-200

   7. A Good Four-Letter Word

      • Dorion Sagan, Lynn Margulis

      Pages 201-206

   8. The Biota and Gaia

      • Lynn Margulis, Gregory Hinkle

      Pages 207-220

This enticing collection is as devoted to the profound power of figures of speech as any oration of old Hellas. Metaphor reigns as we encounter the identification of our Earth as a Single, integrative organism, a tale told in image and passion. The discoveries and conjectures upon which this grand view rest are here as well. I have enjoyed these two dozen pieces hugely. No family tree of animal life but must somewhere disclose a cousinly infolding. We are compact of life past, and the looped handing down is more complex than the Mendel-Morgan dance of chromosomes and genes. That dance is essential, certainly, but it is the vital editing of an epic and many-rooted work, a book more like the Bible than like one great artists Remembrance of Things Past. We follow a few old shelves of bound DNA, not just a single book. Our major biochemical package for oxidative metabolism was de­ scribed in a small DNA manual, somehow engulfed to become an or­ ganelle within a lucky ancient ancestral anaerobe, and passed ever since viii FOREWORD from mother to offspring outside of the chromosome shuffie. The sperm do carry half the compact genetic message of the human DNA, but they are too small to transfer this equally essential symbiotic one that comes down from the mothers, within roomy egg after roomy egg.

• Animalia
• biology
• chromosome
• DNA
• evolution
• genes
• membrane
• metabolism
• oxidative metabolism

"Although admitting that many predictions of the Gaia Hypothesis remain unproven, Slanted Truths charts the rise of Gaia from obscurity to the pages of the world's leading scientific journals." Trends in Ecology and Evolution "Twenty-four reprinted essays ... ranging from a memoir of J. Robert Oppenheimer through ... to some reflections on science education." Science

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