From fun guy Merlin Sheldrake’s new book, Entangled Life:
Among the biggest implications of [Lynn Margulis’] endosymbiotic theory is that whole suites of abilities have been acquired in a flash, in evolutionary terms, ready-evolved, from organisms that are no one’s parents, nor one’s species, kingdom or even domain. [Joshua] Lederberg demonstrated that bacteria can horizontally acquire genes. The endosymbiotic theory proposed that single-celled organisms had horizontally acquired entire bacteria. Horizontal gene transfer transformed bacterial genomes into cosmopolitan places; endosymbiosis transformed cells into cosmopolitan places.
Oblique strategy #1: swap time and space axes (Lederberg)
Oblique strategy #2: consider a whole as part of a bigger whole (Margulis)
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