SYMBIOTIC EARTH

We get an insight into the life and ideas of scientist Lynn Margulis, who helped usher in a paradigm shift in biology. As a young researcher in the 1960s, Margulis was ridiculed when she suggested that symbiosis – organisms living and working together – was an important driver for evolution. Together with James Lovelock, she later developed the Gaia hypothesis, according to which all living things are interconnected and interdependent. To reflect this, Margulis often quoted Chief Seattle: “The Earth does not belong to man. Man belongs to the Earth.”