The Origins of Sociable

Life
Evolution After Science Studies

Myra J. Hird
The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science
Studies
Also by Myra J. Hird

SEX, GENDER AND SCIENCE

ENGENDERING VIOLENCE
SOCIOLOGY FOR THE ASKING (co-edited)
QUESTIONING SOCIOLOGY (co-edited)
QUEERING THE NON-HUMAN (co-edited)
The Origins of Sociable
Life: Evolution After
Science Studies
Myra J. Hird
Queen’s University, Canada
© Myra J. Hird 2009
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Contents

List of Figures and Tables vii

Preface and Acknowledgments ix

Chapter 1 After War 1
Introduction 1
Sokal’s long fuse 3
And now? 7
A nonmodern microontology 19
Chapter 2 Plenty of Room at the Bottom: Thinking Bacteria 21
‘Big like us’ 21
Domains Archaea and Bacteria 26
Ancient hyperthermophiles and thermophilic green 27
nonsulfurs
Green sulfur bacteria 28
Proteobacteria 28
Gram-positive bacteria 31
Cyanobacteria 32
Spirochetes 33
Archaea: methanogens, hyperthermophiles and halophiles 34
Forms of life 35
Thinking (with) microbes 41
Perception 41
Communication and self-engineering 42
Communities 46
Social intelligence 52
Meeting with bacteria 52
A difference which makes a difference 53
Natural, cultural, social 54
Chapter 3 Evolutionary Theory and Its Discontents 58
Introduction 58
Symbiogenesis theory 59
Symbiogenesis theory and neoDarwinism 62
A tangled web, or ‘On the Origins of Species by Means of 70
Natural Selection and All Sorts of Other Things’
Conclusions 74

v
vi Contents

Chapter 4 Microontologies of Self 77

Introduction 77
Corporeal gifting, or the economic self 78
The biological self 81
Symbiotic generosity 88

Chapter 5 Microontologies of Sex 91

Barnacle sex 91
Post-mature discoveries and evolutionary theory’s problem 93
An/Other glossary 96
Sexual diversity 103
Original frustrations, frozen accidents 105
Quiet revolutions 109
Chapter 6 Microontologies of Environment 116
Introduction 116
Gaia’s filthy lesson, symbiosis from space 119
Gaian meetings with science 122
Flagships and the rest of us 126
Toward an ecology of weakness 130

Chapter 7 Eating Well, Surviving Humanism 133

H’ordeuvre 133
Eating well with bacteria 137
Remembering and forgetting 140
Surviving humanism 142

Notes 144

Index 197
List of Figures and Tables

Figures

1.1 Particle-Wave Duality. Image courtesy of Anthony Krivan 8

2.2 ‘Big Like Us’ Centered Time Scale. Image courtesy
of Anthony Krivan 23
2.2 Prokayote Centered Time Scale. Image courtesy
of Anthony Krivan 24
2.3 Three Kingdom Tree of Life. Image courtesy of
Carl Woese 39
2.4 Communication amongst P. dendritiformis.
Images courtesy of Eshel Ben-Jacob, Herbert Levine
and the Royal Society 43
2.5 C-B Morphotype Transitions. Images courtesy of
Eshel Ben-Jacob, Herbert Levine and the Royal Society 44
2.6a,b ‘Busy’ Branching Morphology and Dendritic
Growth. Images courtesy of Eshel Ben-Jacob and
the Royal Society 45
2.7 Bacterial Self-Engineering. Images courtesy of
Eshel Ben-Jacob, Herbert Levine and the Royal Society 47
2.8 ‘Fruiting Body’ Morphogenesis in Myxococcus xanthus.
Images courtesy of Dale Kaiser and the American
Society of Microbiology 48
2.9 Hierarchical Colonial Organization. Images courtesy of
Eshel Ben-Jacob, Herbert Levine and the Royal
Society 50
2.10 Vortices’ Inheritable Self-identity. Images courtesy of
Eshel Ben-Jacob, Herbert Levine and the Royal
Society 51
3.1a,b Mixotricha paradoxa. Images courtesy of Lynn Margulis 60
3.2 Origin of Species through Symbiogenesis.
Drawing by Kathryn Delisle. Image courtesy of
Lynn Margulis 63
5.1 Trichonympha. Images produced by Dorion Sagan 96
5.2 Drawing of an Acrasia Cellular Slime Mold.
Image courtesy of Anthony Krivan 97
5.3 Actinoastrum engaged in Reproduction (mitosis).
Images courtesy of Lynn Margulis 99

vii
viii List of Figures and Tables

Tables

2.1 Nature-Culture-Social Schema. Table courtesy of

Garry Runciman 55
5.1 Levels of Sexual (and Para-Sexual) Unions.
Table courtesy of Lynn Margulis 98

All attempts have been made by the author and publisher to contact
copyright holders but please contact the publishers regarding any errors
and we would be pleased to correct any oversights.
Preface and Acknowledgments

Even philosophers will be inspired to learn about motility proteins.

Scientists and nonscientists will be motivated to learn enough chem-
istry, microbiology, evolutionary biology and paleontology to under-
stand the relevance of these fields to the deep questions they pose.1

I felt a cleavage in my mind.

As if my brain had split;
I tried to match it, seam by seam,
But could not make them fit.

The thought behind I strove to join

Unto the thought before,
But sequence ravelled out of reach
Like balls upon the floor.2

This book began in 1999 when I was on study leave at the University
of Manchester in the United Kingdom. Taking a break from my writing
on Freudian pycho-analytic theory, I went for a walk and happened
upon a used bookstore. There I found, for the sum of £1, Distinguished
University Professor Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan’s book What is
Sex?3 With full color pictures of bacteria, fungi, prokaryotes, inverte-
brates and vertebrates, this book initiated a sea-change in my intellec-
tual horizon. At the time, my research focused on the ontology of gender
difference, employing those theories so familiar to feminist social
sciences – performativity, psychoanalysis and so on – with increasing
frustration. Versed in feminist (and more broadly social theoretical)
calls to return to ‘the body’, I wanted to engage with the materiality of
bodies, and especially nonhuman bodies. And here it was, in a book
written by an evolutionary theorist whose research I soon began to
familiarize myself with. This interest culminated, eight years and many
diversions later, in a sabbatical in the Department of Geosciences,
University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I wrote the bulk of this
book.
I am forever grateful to Liz Stanley, who not only graciously arranged
my first sabbatical at the University of Manchester, and thus inadver-
tently started me on this path, but for giving me the idea of contacting

ix
x Preface and Acknowledgments

the Margulis Laboratory. I never would have had the nerve to do this with-
out Liz’s encouragement. I thank Celeste Asikainen, Research Fellow, PhD
student and Margulis Laboratory Assistant, for using great tact and polite-
ness in her attempt, for good reason, to dissuade me from pursuing my
research. As I later came to understand, Margulis’s research has been mis-
quoted, misconstrued and manipulated out of all context, as much by
social as natural scientists. I thank and greatly appreciate the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for awarding me a
generous grant with which to carry out the research contained in this
book, and to Queen’s University for supporting my sabbatical leave. I
thank my dedicated head of department, Rob Beamish, for keeping me
in the teaching and administrative loop, while also allowing me to
completely ignore it.
Above all, I thank Lynn Margulis, who, against her better judgment
I’m sure, graciously invited me to take her graduate course, Microbial
Communities in 2006 (which I ended up taking twice because I liked it
so much), and then to spend the 2007–2008 academic year in her labor-
atory. If her hundreds of books and articles have not inspired me,
Margulis’s dedication to science has irrevocably changed the course of
my life. She, like Horton who ‘hears a who!’, and more than anyone else
I know of, has helped microbes yell (after all, a person’s a microbe, no
matter how big). That most of us still don’t hear their vivid calling is our
own fault entirely.
The Margulis Laboratory is a place, to borrow from both Donna
Haraway and Karen Barad, where naturecultures intra-act: pictures of
Margulis amid rows of scientists at various meetings (she is typically the
only woman in these pictures); scores of honors tucked behind fridges
containing various microbial communities; scientists; cameras; termites;
Petri-dishes; theories; unwashed dishes; solar rays; janitorial staff; under-
grad and graduate students; runaway cockroaches escaping from neigh-
boring labs; a murky Miller/Urey-type vat; generous amounts of dust;
computers; music; pens and paper and so on. To all of these, I owe a debt
I am not asked to, nor could I, repay.
I thank Michael Dolan, Michael Chapman, Jim MacAllister, Sean
Faukner, Carolina Galen, Emily Case, Kendra Clark, Idalia Rodriguez and
Bruce Scofield for answering my horribly naïve questions about termite
hindgut symbionts, electron microscopes, earthworms, forams, nema-
toads, karyomastigonts, microtubule-organizing-centres (MTOCs),
and countless other subjects in the Garden of Microbial Delights. (I
apologize, Mike Chapman, for harshing your mellow several times in my
attempts to understand the microbial world.) Thank you Michael Dolan
 Preface and Acknowledgments xi

and Carolina for also letting me shadow you in your termite symbiont
experiments, all the while clogging your ears with my incessant ques-
tions. Thanks also Michael Dolan for letting me audit Social Biology
– a thought-provoking course indeed. I thank Dorion Sagan too, for
graciously putting up with my nagging company. I thank Professor
James Walker at UMass for allowing me to audit Cosmos to Humanity, a
course that most definitely changed my view of the universe. My regular
lunches with Jim, in which we discussed a gamut of topics from cells to
the solar system, were certainly a highlight of my sabbatical experience.
When I began my research in the Margulis Laboratory, I was aware of
Lynn’s eminent research career. I was unaware of her dedication to teach-
ing; that is, the unstinting enthusiasm with which Lynn routinely stimu-
lates epiphanic moments. I fear these ‘ah ha’ moments are uncommon in
the jaded academic’s life. Thanks to Lynn and her colleagues, I had several
such moments while at the University of Massachusetts. Nevertheless,
I am conscious of the fact that my job as a sociologist drew me to social
theories, to ways of thinking about symbiogenesis, evolutionary theory
and Gaia, that, for natural scientists, may well seem beside the point. And
so, as is custom, I take full responsibility for the connections I make in
this book between science and social theory, and I respect that much of
what I say here is what Lynn succinctly calls ‘he said, she said’. I thank
Michael Dolan for reading through this manuscript and correcting, at
least, my most obvious misreadings of microbiology.
I am assuming that much of what I present here will invoke disagree-
ment, debate and challenge (and rightly so). My aim is not to present this
material as either all-encompassing, or from a ‘magisterial viewpoint’.
What initially drew me to What is Sex? and over the years to Margulis’s
other publications, is that her research takes matter very seriously. For a
social theorist, this is refreshing in and of itself. My overall goal in writing
this book has been to harness theories and evidence from Margulis’s
research to think through themes familiar to social scientists: paradigms,
epistemic cultures, individuality and subjectivity. Although trying to
understand and then use this research on nature has required that I inter-
rogate my reliance upon particular configurations of realism, representa-
tionalism and social constructionism, I have come to appreciate that one
can understand philosophy of science issues such as paradigms and epis-
temic cultures, and also study and appreciate nonhuman matter. Indeed,
if we want to find out anything outside of culture, what other choice do
we have?
My overall goal is to begin to think about some of the issues that pre-
occupy social scientists – identity, selfhood, the environment, sexual
xii Preface and Acknowledgments

difference, consciousness – from nonanimal perspectives. I have tried, as

much as I can, to think with bacteria. The more I learn about the bio-
sphere, the more I understand that bacteria are clearly running the
show. We can only be grateful that they do not harbor the same ani-
mosity toward us that we, for the most part, offer them. My concern is
also with the modern synthesis, for the very self-serving reason that its
message obviates the need for sociology.
I thank my graduate team at Queen’s University: Martin French, Melissa
Houghtaling, Christopher Canning, Sandra Robinson, Rebecca Scott and
Lee Silver. Our lively reading group helped me to sort out my thoughts
on several of the topics included in this book. Moreover, this book would
not have been completed without Christopher Canning’s careful
referencing checks and overall proof-reading skills. I also thank friends and
colleagues whose encouragement I have depended on: Jane Kubke, Betsy
Donald, Doug Morrow, Alec Ross, Graeme Smith, Brian McKercher, Gail
and Billy Ows, Lucina Danielson, Mary Dudley, Liz Grier and Jay Piercy,
Dara and Walter Lloyd, Sonya Swift and Susan Phillips, Lois McCammond,
Brigita Stockinger, George Pavlich and Carla Spinola, Noreen Giffney, Jami
Weinstein, Barbara Marshall, Liz Frazer, Lynda Williams, Karen Weisbaum,
Deborah White, Momin Rahman, Ian Buchanan, John Protevi and Eugene
Holland, Bronislaw Szerszynski, John Urry, Celia Roberts, Lucy Suchman,
Donna Haraway and Karen Barad and Anna Tsing. During my beached
whale phase (heavily pregnant and with a broken ankle, thirteen screws
and two metal plates) a number of friends helped me out: I thank Annette
Burfoot for bringing me my mail and lattés even though it hurt her back
and took her away from her own hectic life; and Cathie Krull, Laureen
Snider and Roberta Hamilton for science magazines, novels and non-
obligating support. I thank Nigel Clark for being such an inspiring friend
and fellow traveler in nature and for commenting on chapters of this book.
I thank Peter VanWyck who also encouraged me in my research, asking just
the right questions at the right time. I am grateful to my editor, Philippa
Grand, editorial assistant, Olivia Middleton and copy editor Shirley Tan for
their enthusiasm in the book, their guidance, and unstinting support.
I thank my parents, Barbara and Brian, for understanding my distraction
over the past year, for doing overtime grandchild care on many occasions,
and for taking me seriously. I thank my sister Janet for believing in me. That
it has taken me this long to realize her inspiration is my own shortcoming
entirely. I thank Inis, Eshe and Anth whose corporeal generosity fills me
with wonder. Their lives may not be symbiotic with mine, but it sure feels
that way. Finally, I dedicate this book to my Mum. With a nod to Ian
Falconer, I thank my Mum who, for better or for worse, always encouraged
me.
1
After War

Oh God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself

King of infinite space.1

Introduction

This book is about microontologies. Microontologies describes my interest

in beginning to think through the parameters of bringing the micro-
cosmos to bear on our approach to social scientific topics. Micro-
ontologies refers to a microbial ethics, or, if you will, an ethics that
engages seriously with the microcosmos. This book considers micro-
ontologies using an interdisciplinary nonmodern epistemology. Along
this path I have some excellent company within biophilosophy: Keith
Ansell Pearson’s germinal and viroid life, Bruno Latour’s pasteurization of
France, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s creative involution; Donna
Haraway’s species-meeting, Karen Barad’s meetings with the universe, Vicki
Kirby’s telling flesh, Manuel De Landa’s nonlinear history, Elizabeth
Wilson’s neural geographies, Alphonso Lingis’s foreign bodies, Elizabeth
Grosz’s time travels, Rosalyn Diprose’s corporeal generosity, and more
besides.2 Within the fields of earth systems science and microbiology,
the researchers at the Lynn Margulis Laboratory where I spent a year
introduced me to laboratory techniques, samples and literature con-
cerned with various forms of microbial life. And, of course, the unfath-
omable numbers of microbes with which I affiliate contribute to my
story. (I do not exaggerate to say that my microbial companions in
some ways write this story).
The basic premise from which this book proceeds is that social scien-
tists must find ways to begin to theorize an ethics of the microbial
– particularly outside pathogen histories and characterizations – and

1
2 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

that this is fundamental to our future disciplinary enterprise. I believe

this is a tall order: considering an ethics of human-animal relations
already seems to confront implicit and enduring humanist founda-
tional assumptions. Given that humans are animals, this says some-
thing important about the vast expanse of life (and nonlife) that
exceeds our current theoretical horizon.
To situate my efforts, this preliminary chapter considers familiar philo-
sophy of science terrain that seeks answers to fundamental questions
about the constitution of matter and of knowledge, and the relationship
between observer and observed. These are unsettling questions for me.
On one hand, I have delighted in observing and identifying symbionts
under an electron microscope. On the other hand, I have attended to the
ways in which scientific and political models co-mingle in reductive
ways. Even though I recognize that I only see symbionts with the aid of a
classification scheme, electron microscope, air, solution, pincers, nervous
system, light, eyes, research grant, fingers, human instruction, brain and
slides – not to mention the symbiont itself, let’s say a termite with thou-
sands of different microbes within its gut – I do not want to argue that
prokaryotes and eukaryotes exist only through my social and/or techno-
logical construction of them, or that my entanglement with microbes is
more important than (or worse, determines) their entanglements with
each other.
Philosophers from Plato onwards have offered escapes from this
epistemological conundrum. Moreover, the scientists in whose company
I engage with these questions are well versed in Kuhnian paradigms,
Fleckian social construction of scientific facts, the science wars and the
entanglement of science and politics. They know about Cetina-Knorrian
scientific epistemic cultures, Bloorian symmetry, and Latourian laboratory
life: indeed, in important ways, they live these concepts and approaches
through their scientific work. They also take the biosphere seriously as an
entangled actant. These scientists study matter that existed before
animals (human or otherwise). In this laboratory, matter has its own
ontology apart from human observation and intervention (indeed, given
the current environmental crisis, there is a sense born of frustration that
the sooner human extinction occurs, the better for planet earth.) For
these scientists, the biosphere has its own agency, its own liveliness,
which far exceeds any human purview: bacterial inventions and inter-
ventions defy the healthiest human imagination.3
I belabor these points because they continuously re-occur in evolution-
ary theory and studies of the microbial. A handful of scientists (whose
work is the focus of Chapter 3) lay claim to both expositing contem-
 After War 3

porary evolutionary theory and its valid interpretation for public diges-
tion. Each scientist makes claims about the use of evidence (fossil
records for example) and theory in ways that are dependent on socio-
political ideas that are obscured precisely because the subject matter
– evolution – is assumed to be natural.

Sokal’s long fuse

Alan Sokal’s 1996 hoax re-ignited a long fuse of unresolved debates

within and between social and natural scientific disciplines about the
ontology and epistemology of matter. The two extreme positions –
dichotomized presumably to erect those straw assertions we are so fond
of philosophically dismantling – are realism and social constructivism.
Sokal and Bricmont stake their flag to realism:

There is a real world; its properties are not merely social con-
structions; facts and evidence do matter. What sane person
would contend otherwise? And yet, much contemporary acad-
emic theorizing consists precisely of attempts to blur these obvious
truths.4

Philosophers of science tend to be more circumspect, states Evelyn Fox

Keller: ‘scholars in science studies who have turned to post-modernism
have done so out of a real need: Truth and objectivity turn out to be
vastly more problematic concepts than we used to think, and neither
can be measured simply by the weight of scientific authority, nor even
by demonstrations of efficacy’.5
Plato’s Dialogues defined this debate as a battle between the gods and
the earth giants.6 Plato’s gods were on the side of certain knowledge,
truth, reason and reality. That is, knowledge as Certain, Universal,
Necessary and True. The work of the philosopher and contemporary
scientist is, paraphrasing Einstein, to ‘lift a corner of the veil’. For Plato,
this kind of knowledge is exemplified by mathematics because it fol-
lows a strictly deductive form of reasoning. Against these gods of certain
knowledge, Plato pitted the earth giants (Sophists), who understood
knowledge as a certain type of belief.
Science is replete with larger-than-life figures firmly on the side of
Plato’s gods. Galileo Galilei’s equation for a freely falling body, s=1/2gt2,
where the distance covered by a freely falling body and the time is
directly proportional to the time squared, exemplified the orderly
nature of reality revealed through mathematics. Galileo’s telescope
4 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

observations of the moons of Jupiter and his numerous gedankens

were directed at discovering true knowledge of reality.7 Isaac Newton,
born the year Galileo died, is, next to Plato, most securely associated
with the side of the Gods. As Alexander Pope once remarked ‘And
God said, “Let Newton be”, and there was light’.8 Newton’s equa-
tion for gravity began with a set of principles from which could
be derived universal, certain, necessary and true knowledge. For
instance, Newton defined space and time as uniform and infinite in
all directions.9
Kant’s Idealism was an attempt to philosophically corroborate Newton-
ian physics in the face of skepticism born of the earth giants (in the form
of David Hume’s empiricism). At the core of Kant’s tome Critique of Pure
Reason is the idea that while absolutely true knowledge might be imposs-
ible to ascertain, we may come as close as possible (as close as we would
ever practically need) by recognizing that experience is constructed by the
mind, and the mind conforms to certain universal, uniform and con-
sistent rules. Time and space are examples of such rules, and they are, as
one philosopher once described it to me, ‘hard-wired’ (Kant called this
intuition) in our brains. Intuition produces our judgment of the truth
of knowledge prior to experience. In other words, we do not acquire
our knowledge through experience per se, because our experience is
always already created through our intuition. With Kant, we get know-
ledge that is certain, universal, necessary and true – knowledge of things-
in-themselves – because our intuition is based on time and space that are
not invented by us. But we forego absolute knowledge, knowledge that
is independent of our response to it. As Goldman puts it ‘the mind
originates its own activity.’10 I like Cavell’s summation:

To settle with skepticism…to assure us that we do know the exist-

ence of the world, or rather, that what we understand as knowledge
is of the world, the price Kant asks us to pay is to cede any claim to
know the thing in itself, to grant that human knowledge is not
of things as they are in themselves. You don’t – do you? – have to be
a romantic to feel sometimes about that settlement: Thanks for
nothing.11

Which bring us full swing to the side of the earth giants. The Sophists
argued that knowledge is a form of belief, and a position of skepticism
concerning the impossibility of True knowledge has filtered down through
philosophy ever since. George Berkeley, David Hume and John Locke
championed empiricism, the theory that all knowledge derives from our
 After War 5

senses that formulate our experiences and knowledge of the world onto
the mind. We achieve knowledge about nature by applying reason to
‘primary sensations’ such as size and shape that belong to things-in-
themselves. Our knowledge is a derived one, based on the accumulation
of experiences, and thus can never be certain, universal, necessary and
true.
Francis Bacon’s The New Organon argued that knowledge is best
achieved through meticulous, thorough and detailed observation of the
natural world – a very practical ‘hands on’ method distinct from know-
ledge through esoteric reasoning. Bacon believed that knowledge was dis-
cerned by the ‘quieting of the mind’.12 Bacon’s idols – of the tribe, cave,
marketplace and theatre – all describe ways in which knowledge is con-
taminated through prejudices of the mind. Hume exposed this problem
through his focus on causality, which he argued did not define certainty
and truth, but rather ‘uniformities in our experience’ that we ‘project into
the future and…expect those patterns to exist in the future.’13 For Hume,
empiricism is on the slippery slope to skepticism: not surprisingly Kant
said that Hume had roused him from his ‘dogmatic slumbers’.
Moreover, the earth giants have at their disposal a social scientific
critique focused on the premise that all natural sciences depend upon
one or more initial propositions, and that, contra Plato and Socrates,
these propositions are born of the social enterprise that is science itself.
Two well-known examples from the history and philosophy of science
illustrate one of the major enterprises of contemporary science studies.
The Copernican revolution required the adoption of Copernicus’s
system of the planets and rejecting Ptolemy’s. It required a leap of,
however rationally guised, faith:

Copernicus’s theory requires us to believe contrary to all experience

that the Earth is rotating on its axis at approximately 1,000 miles
per hour. The Earth’s circumference is about 24,000 miles, so in a
24 hour period, we have to cover 24,000 miles. If you throw a ball
up in the air, how come it isn’t blown backwards? If a bird takes off
at the equator, why doesn’t a 1,000 mile-an-hour wind blow it back-
wards? Why don’t we see any evidence of this motion? If the Earth
circles the Sun, then it means that in June and December, the Earth
is on opposite sides of the Sun. Then how do two stars that are lined
up in a row in June still line up in December?14

Tycho Brahe, a Danish astronomer (whose research Kepler was purported

to have stolen after Brahe’s death), came up with a theory of the heavens
6 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

in which the earth rotates on its axis but is stationary and the sun
orbits the earth, Mercury and Venus, the inner planets orbit the sun as
it orbits the earth, and Mars, Jupiter and Saturn orbit both the sun and
the earth. History being on the side of the winners, we take Newton’s
vindication of the Copernican system (which he ironically substant-
iated by using Kepler’s ideas that were based on Brahe’s research). How-
ever, Galileo did not (nor could he have) come up with an experi-
ment that would have disproved Brahe’s system while substantiating
Copernicus’s. Although Galileo knew of both Brahe’s theory and
Kepler’s idea that the planets orbit the sun in ellipses, he ignored
both. Galileo’s Dialogue on the Two Great World Systems (1632) is a
conversation between Ptolemy and Copernicus, with Copernicus in
the clear lead. In fact, we now accept Kepler’s theory that, not only do
the planets orbit in ellipses, but that they do not move at uniform
speeds.
Retrospectively, we can reasonably say that Galileo, Newton and
Descartes were all wrong and that they did not really have a
purchase on the Truth, even though they all thought, and we
maintain today, that they engendered knowledge. So the scien-
tific enterprise is more complicated than we typically allow. Galileo
deleted some information, emphasized other ideas and based his
work on a combination of theoretical speculation, creative gedankens
and witty argument. Just as we now agree that a great deal of the
science during this period, including that of Galileo and Newton, is
erroneous, it is reasonable to assume that what we now hold to be
scientifically substantiated will, 400 years from now, be considered
incorrect.
The second example concerns the invention of the airpump. Robert
Boyle and Robert Hooke developed a series of experiments on air using
an air pump invented in the seventeenth century.15 These experiments
were widely acclaimed and caught the critical attention of Thomas
Hobbes. Hobbes argued that experiments could not reveal causes
because it is impossible to separate facts of nature from any given arti-
fact produced by the machine/experiment itself. As Goldman points
out, it is one thing to agree that an x-ray is a valid and accurate depic-
tion of a bone; it is another to agree that a particular shadow represents
an aneurysm.16 To agree on the latter requires specialized training with
the measuring instrument, which necessarily introduces a social
dimension (classification scheme and so on) into the determination of
truth. While Hobbes is usually regarded as the loser in the ‘air pump
debate’, in fact he had a rather good point. Since machines necessarily
 After War 7

already embody the theories used to build them (x-ray machines are
built to provide x-ray images; air pumps were invented to create
vacuums), how can we with any certainty differentiate between the
measuring instrument and the theory? In other words, ‘the expectation
of what the machine is going to show you is already there. How can
you use that as a confirmation of the expectation?’17 And how can we
know, with certainty, that the data collected from measuring instru-
ments are a faithful, exact and consistent reflection of the object of
study? Norman Campbell notes that the fundamental laws of nature
do not correspond to the world we discern (we are moving at a rate of
24,000 miles every 24 hours).18 What we have is a network of theories
and an understanding of how the measuring instruments we have
created work.19 For this reason, Ian Hacking argues that phenomena
are created in the laboratory, and Steve Fuller writes, ‘discovery favors
the prepared mind’.20

And now?

A contemporary form of the gods versus earth giants debate is distilled

in the famous discussions that took place at the genesis of particle
physics between Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, Albert Einstein and
several other physicists. I have been intrigued by the way in which
philosophy of science and physics have coalesced in various forms:
the Uncertainty Principle, Schrödinger’s Cat, quantum theory and
so on.
The wave-particle duality sets the stage.21 Particles are material
objects insofar as each particle occupies a particular point in space
and time. Waves, on the other hand, are not things per se, but ‘dis-
turbances (which cannot be localized to a point) that propagate in a
medium (like water) or as oscillating fields (like electromagnetic waves
such as light)’.22 Waves, under the right conditions, produce diffraction
patterns when they combine, overlap and/or encounter an obstruction.
Newtonian physics predicts that only waves will produce diffraction
patterns. But when Niels Bohr adapted Thomas Young’s ‘two-slit’
experiment in which particles are propelled through a series of gaps,
they display a diffraction pattern. Further: if we ‘track’ the particle with
a ‘which-path apparatus’ (i.e. to observe the electron to see where it
goes), the electron’s resulting pattern will appear as one that character-
izes particles. If we do not track the electron, the resulting pattern
appears in a diffraction (wave) pattern:
8 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

Figure 1.1 Particle-Wave Duality. Image courtesy of Anthony Krivan

This result has been observed with electrons, neutrons, atoms and
other matter, and even occurs when a single particle at a time is propelled
through the slits. So how does a single electron ‘interfere’ with itself, in a
wave sense? How can a single electron go through both slits at once?23
Classical Newtonian physics holds that electrons, atoms and so on
are either waves or particles, independent of their observation or other
experimental circumstances, and that experiments reveal objects in
themselves. One obvious way to try to explain these results is that they
only apply to really small things. But the Correspondence Principle
states that quantum and Newtonian mechanics must correspond – that
there cannot be two (macro and micro) conflicting realities.24 That is,
while a sense of ‘blurring’ (probability) makes sense at the microscopic
level, it makes no sense at the macroscopic level. Things measured
at the macroscopic level are not blurry or probabilistic; they produce
definite values.25
 After War 9

What we get, according to the more conservative interpretation (it con-

forms to Occam’s Razor), is an epistemological explanation. For Werner
Heisenberg, quantum theory distills an epistemological concern about
how we know what we know (known as the Heisenberg Uncertainty
Principle). The particle-wave duality empirically demonstrates that we
can only make probabilistic predictions about energy/time and position/
momentum. ‘Uncertainty’ here refers not to our lack of understanding so
much as ‘a precisely calculable theoretical minimum spread in the results
from repeated measurements, or predicted range of values from a single
measurement’.26 Thus, for Heisenberg, Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen and
others, quantum theory raises epistemological issues insofar as the mea-
surement of matter and matter itself co-produce results (our understand-
ing of the world), what Schrödinger refers to as the ‘entanglement of our
knowledge’. To the question ‘does the moon exist apart from human
observation?’ the answer here is that we can only make meaningful utter-
ances when someone has actually looked at the moon. As Heisenberg
wrote ‘we do not have a science of nature, we have a science of our
description of nature’.27
Bohr thought the situation was more complicated than this, and his
‘Copenhagen Interpretation’ interpreted the wave-particle duality para-
dox to mean that particles do not have simultaneously determinate pos-
ition and momentum values. That is, wave and particle behaviors are
complementary – exhibited in mutually exclusive circumstances. Bohr
argues:

…the fundamental difference with respect to the analysis of phe-

nomena in classical and in quantum physics is that in the former
the interaction between the objects and the measuring instruments
may be neglected or compensated for, while in the latter this inter-
action forms an integral part of the phenomena. The essential
wholeness of the proper quantum phenomenon finds indeed logical
expression in the circumstance that any attempt at its well-defined
subdivision would require a change in the experimental arrange-
ment incompatible with the appearance of the phenomenon itself.28

We can either find out which path an individual electron goes through
(in which case the resulting pattern will resemble that of particles)
or we can not know which path the electron takes, and end up with a
wave pattern. What Bohr is arguing, contra Heisenberg, is that this is
not a measurement problem to be resolved with greater technologically
precise instrumentation or more objective observation procedures.
10 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

As Hooker puts it, ‘Descriptively, there is a single situation, no part

of which can be abstracted out without running into conflict with
other such descriptions… The object cannot be ascribed an “independ-
ent reality in the ordinary physical sense”’.29 For Bohr, this is not an
epistemological problem: it is an ontological one. Put another way, it is
the difference between uncertainty and indeterminacy.30
Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen’s 1935 article ‘Can Quantum-Mechanical
Descriptions of Physical Reality be Considered Complete’ distills Einstein’s
concern that quantum theory points to the inseparability of objects (as
though objects ‘communicate’ with each other instantaneously), thus
violating the theory of special relativity. What Einstein is concerned
about is, indeed, what counts as reality:

I just want to explain what I mean when I say that we should try to
hold onto physical reality… That which we conceive as existing
(‘actual’) should somehow be localized in time and space. That is,
the real in one part of space, A, should (in theory) somehow ‘exist’
independently of that which is thought of as real in another part of
space, B… What is actually present in B should thus not depend
upon the type of measurement carried out in the part of space, A; it
should also be independent of whether or not, after all, a measure-
ment is made in A… If one renounces the assumption that what is
present in different parts of space has an independent, real exist-
ence, then I do not at all see what physics is supposed to describe.
For what is thought to be a ‘system’ is, after all, just conventional,
and I do not see how one is supposed to divide up the world objec-
tively so that one can make statements about its parts.31

The crux of Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen’s argument is this: ‘If, without
in any way disturbing a system, we can predict with certainty (i.e., with
probability equal to unity) the value of a physical quantity, then there
exists an element of physical reality corresponding to this physical quan-
tity’.32 If, in other words, we can control a system such that it is either
not disturbed at all, or its total disturbance can be measured and
accounted for, we can retain a notion of causality, and thus reality, as
defined by classical physics. Put another way, quantum theory presents
an epistemological issue that could, theoretically, be overcome by tech-
nological developments in measuring instruments.
Bohr recognized Einstein’s disquiet and responded in ‘Discussion
with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics’ by first
recognizing the apparent disjuncture between causality at the macro
 After War 11

and micro levels of observation: ‘…causal description is upheld in relativ-

ity theory within any given frame of reference, but in quantum theory
the uncontrollable interaction between the objects and the measuring
instruments forces us to a renunciation even in such respect’.33 He then
points out that the remark ‘without in any way disturbing a system’ con-
tains ‘a criterion of reality … however cautious its formulation may
appear – an essential ambiguity when it is applied to the actual problems
with which we are here concerned’ (ibid). Bohr writes:

But even at this stage there is essentially the question of an influence

on the very conditions which define the possible types of predictions
regarding the future behavior of the system. Since these conditions con-
stitute an inherent element of the description of any phenomenon to
which the term ‘physical reality’ can be properly attached, we see that
the argumentation of the mentioned authors [Einstein, Podolsky and
Rosen] does not justify their conclusions that quantum-mechanical
description is essentially incomplete. On the contrary, this description,
as appears from the preceding discussion, may be characterized as a
rational utilization of all possibilities of unambiguous interpretation of
measurements, compatible with the finite and uncontrollable inter-
action between the objects and the measuring instruments in the field
of quantum theory. In fact, it is only the mutual exclusion of any
two experimental procedures, permitting the unambiguous definition
of complementary physical quantities, which provides room for new
physical laws, the coexistence of which might at first sight appear
irreconcilable with the basic principles of science. It is just this entirely
new situation as regards the description of physical phenomena that
the notion of complementarity aims at characterizing.34

To answer Einstein’s concern about ‘what physics describes’, Bohr

argues that natural (and presumably social) scientists, study phenomena,
defined as ‘the observations obtained under specified circumstances,
including an account of the whole experimental arrangement’, what
Barad refers to as ‘entangled material agencies’.35 In other words, reality is
defined as things-in-phenomena rather than things-in-themselves.36
Objectivity becomes what Bohr defines as ‘permanent marks – such as a
spot on a photographic plate, caused by the impact of an electron – left
on bodies which define the experimental condition’.37 Objectivity, then,
does not depend upon the separability of observer from observed (in clas-
sical accounts). Indeed, for Bohr, to evacuate the human from the uni-
verse would be to accord the human with a privileged position.
12 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

My reading of these discussions is aided by Karen Barad’s compre-

hensive account of the development of quantum mechanics in Meeting
the Universe Halfway.38 Barad’s term ‘intra-action’ refers to the ontological
inseparability (in the Bohrian sense) of all ‘words’ (culture) and all ‘things’
(nature), contrasted against the term ‘interaction’ predicated upon (onto-
logically) individuated entities that subsequently interact. By considering
‘words’ and ‘things’ as ontologically (as opposed to only epistemologi-
cally) entangled, Barad’s theory avoids the problem that representation
seeks analogies and homologies between separate entities.39 As such,
Barad defines realism as ‘not about representations of an independent
reality but about the real consequences, interventions, creative possibili-
ties, and responsibilities of intra-acting within and as part of our world’.40
What I like about Bohr’s interpretation of quantum theory, Barad’s
adaptation, and Latour’s metaphysics, is that they highlight all matter
and all interactions as entangled, beyond an epistemological approach
that would retain a notion of individual entities (whether defined as
material objects or cultural artifacts such as conversations, normative
conventions and so on) whose interaction cannot be ultimately deter-
mined through measurement. At its heart, Bohr’s interpretation chal-
lenges the concept of individualism. For Bohr, ‘the incessant exchange of
matter which is inseparably connected with life will even imply the
impossibility of regarding an organism as a well-defined system of mater-
ial particles like the systems considered in any account of the ordinary
physical and chemical properties of matter’.41 This ‘incessant exchange’
takes place with or without observation and sentience; it is not created or
sustained by a measuring process or observer. Moreover, observer and
observed are not inherently static in time or space (to make them so is to
exact an agential cut) – they are always already previously intra-acting
physical systems.
For Bohr, complementarity leads to a notion of volition as ‘entan-
gled’, and he eschewed interpretations claiming that quantum theory
supports a notion of free will:

I…emphasize that it is just this impossibility of distinguishing, in

introspection, sharply between subject and object which provides
the necessary latitude for the manifestation of volition. To connect
free will more directly with limitation of causality in atomic physics,
as it is often suggested, is, however, entirely foreign to the tendency
underlying the remarks here made about biological problems.42

In concert with Barad’s ‘agential realism’, a number of contemporary

scholars endeavor to deflate the philosophical space between matter and
 After War 13

culture, and have coined terms aimed at, if not completely rejecting then
at the very least significantly narrowing, the matter-culture bifurcation,
for instance: Latour’s ‘parliament of things’, ‘co-production’ and ‘infra-
physics’; Callon’s ‘actor network’; Stenger’s ‘cosmopolitics’; Law’s ‘rela-
tional materialism’; Pickering’s ‘noncorrespondence realism’; Serres’s
‘quasi-object’; Kearnes’s ‘relational intersubjectivity’; Fuller’s ‘social epi-
stemology’; Bergson’s ‘to vary with’ matter itself and ‘image’; Braidotti’s
‘new materialism’ and ‘transpositions’; Irwin’s ‘co-constructions’; Fox
Keller’s ‘dynamic objectivity’; and Haraway’s ‘naturecultures’.43 In what
follows, I conduct a preliminary sketch of the elements of several of these
approaches and leave their further elaboration to subsequent chapters.
The Sociology of Scientific Knowledge’s (SSK) ‘strong program’s’ ‘sym-
metry postulate’ argues that all ideas (whether rational, irrational, true
or false) are social ‘through and through’ as opposed to the Kantian idea
that true (rational) beliefs are based on reality while false (irrational)
beliefs are based on societal influences.44 For Kant, the true belief that the
earth revolves around the sun is based on rational science (employing
the scientific method) whereas the false belief that the stars and planets
revolve around the earth was based on Christian church influences. SSK is
able to hold both true and false beliefs (as in the example above) on equal
footing because the ‘correspondence’ of beliefs to reality is itself based
on subjective assertion, imputation or acceptance. Thompson provides a
flavor of this perspective:

It seems ironic that human experiences known by artists and saints

and yogis in different cultures over the millennia, and repeated over
and over again in quite different situations, are dismissed as super-
stition and illusion, but an elementary particle that only exists as a
nanosecond impulse on a screen seen only by a handful of high
priests at CERN at a cost greater than the construction bill for the
Great Pyramids is considered to be ‘scientifically real’. Elementary
particles are no more real than angels or garden dwarves; they are,
in Varela’s words, ‘brought forth’. Elementary particles are brought
forth by linear or ring accelerators, just as angels or bodhisattvas are
brought forth by meditation. Physics … is a language.45

The strong program tackles the observer-observed problem by arguing

that subject and object are not ontologically separate because society is
part of nature, and knowledge itself is a natural phenomenon. For SSK:

We can assume that observation will always enable us to uncover a

reality, which is more complicated than we can assimilate into our
14 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

current conceptual schemes and theoretical systems. Experience and

practical involvement with the world will endlessly generate anomaly.
Nature will always have to be filtered, simplified, selectively sampled,
and cleverly interpreted to bring it within our grasp. It is because com-
plexity must be reduced to relative simplicity that different ways
of representing nature are always possible. How we simplify it, how
we cho[o]se to make approximations and selections, is not dictated by
(non-social) nature itself. These processes, which are collective achieve-
ments, must ultimately be referred to properties of the knowing sub-
ject. This is where the sociologist comes into the picture (my
emphasis).46

For the strong program, nature is more complex than observers’ attempts
to explain it: we come to understand parts of nature through an endless
refining process of observation and interpretation, and it is this contin-
uous refining process sociologists of science analyze.47 Reality possesses
causal agency, not least in its ability to stimulate the sense organs, and by
extension, the sentient analytic process itself. In order to analyze these
refining processes, sociologists must ascertain detailed knowledge about
what scientists are responding to – their stimuli – whether neutrinos,
genes or protoctists. In other words, nature centrally impacts on our beliefs
about how nature is experienced, but it does not causally explain how it
is then described (although in a strict sense and given Bloor’s assertion
that the human mind is necessarily part of nature, the description itself
must at least be, partially, causally explained by nature). As such, Bloor
describes the strong program as relativist in the sense that it is concerned
to evaluate theories and beliefs in terms of their credibility, which necess-
arily engages with the social aspects of science, consisting of the context
in which any given theories or beliefs are found (including classification,
rules, principles and so on). Interestingly, Bloor does not characterize the
subject-object as a zero-sum game in which the more we know as fact, the
less it is based on subjectivity (in the phenomenological sense), because
for Bloor, ‘all knowledge always depends on society’ and is thus necess-
arily provisional.48 Adherents argue that SSK provides a ‘third method’
that solves the problem of relying upon scientific descriptions and
explanations of nonhuman matter. However, my unease with the strong
program is that, in practice, it aims to ‘explain shared beliefs about
nature’ and nature seems to remain effectively silent.49 SSK depends upon
a knowing human subject that, as Maturala and Varela put it, ‘brings
forth a world’. Microbes, in SSK, do not bring forth a world. What Collins
and Yearley identify as a strength of SSK, to ‘…show that the appar-
 After War 15

ent individual power of the natural world is granted by human beings

in social negotiation’, to my mind provides a partial account precisely
because it requires a human-centered universe.50
Actor network theory (ANT) has garnered enthusiastic adherents and
dogged criticisms, the latter coming not least from the strong program.51 At
its heart, ANT seeks to place ‘things-in-themselves’ at the analytic center:

Things-in-themselves? But they’re fine, thank you very much. And

how are you? You complain about things that have not been
honored by your vision? You feel that these things are lacking the
illumination of your consciousness? But if you missed the galloping
freedom of the zebras in the savannah this morning, then so much
the worse for you; the zebras will not be sorry that you were not
there, and in any case you would have tamed them, killed, photo-
graphed, or studied them. Things in themselves lack nothing, just as
Africa did not lack whites before their arrival (my emphasis).52

My affinity with Latour’s work is greatly facilitated by Graham

Harman’s close reading. Here, Latour’s metaphysics emerges as a truly
novel response – that neither analytic nor continental philosophies
offer – to Kant’s Faustian bargain to produce a ‘philosophy of access’
where a chasm is figured between human and cosmos.53
Latour charges that Western society is predicated on an artificial bifur-
cation between nature and culture in which knowledge about nature’s
order of things is sui generis or self referential (that is, knowledge entirely
contained within that defined as sociality): a bifurcation that never
actually eventuated, leading Latour to conclude that We Have Never
Been Modern. Latour’s main point is that the separation between culture
and nature is an artificial, philosophical enterprise: ‘forces cannot be
divided into the “human” and “nonhuman”… It is not a question of
nature… Natures mingle with one another and with “us” so thoroughly
we cannot hope to separate them and discover clear, unique origins to
their powers’.54 Latour deploys the term ‘collective’ to describe human-
nonhuman associations and relegates ‘society’ to one particular part
of the collective, ‘the divide invented by the social sciences’.55 This
artificial divide – a divide that never succeeded – is itself a discursive
repertoire. Part of ANT’s criticism of SSK is that the latter ‘depends on
an antithesis to natural realism in favor of social realism’:56

… [T]here are two and only two known and fixed repertoires of
agencies which are stocked at the two extremities – brute material
16 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

objects, on the one hand, and intentional social human subjects, on

the other. Every other entity – gravitational waves, scallops, inscrip-
tions, or door closers, to name a few – will be read as a combination
or mixture of these two pure repertoires.57

According to ANT, the world is made up of actants, defined as any-

thing that relates to other actants: ‘atoms and molecules are actants,
as are children, raindrops, bullet trains, politicians, and numerals… An
atom is no more real than [the] Deutsche Bank or the 1976 Winter
Olympics, even if one is likely to endure much longer than the others’.58
Actants, then, are entirely concrete and in a specific place in the world,
and with specific relations with other actants at any given moment.
Actants are not powerful through some inner essence, but rather attain
force through assembling allies. This process is temporal and always
subject to disintegration: ‘it is never an actant in naked purity that pos-
sesses force, but only the actant involved in its ramshackle associations
with others, all of which collapse if these associations are not lovingly
or brutally maintained’, in what Latour refers to as a ‘tiered array of
weaknesses’ in which the ‘winner has stronger alliances’.59 In short,
realism is resistance:60

What makes the atom more real [than a ghost] is that it has more
allies, and these allies stretch well beyond humans. Experiments
testify to the atom’s existence; instruments stabilize it and make
it indirectly visible; generations of children learn of it and pass
the word along; Brownian motion shows that particles of water are
moved by it. The ghost, by contrast, has only a paltry number of
allies bearing witness to its reality. But the atom’s allies may one day
desert it too.61

The problem with the strong program, for Latour, is that it under-
determines the ability of objects to effect our understandings (beliefs,
theories) about them. Contrasting SSK’s advancement of symmetry
with regard to valid and invalid science, Woolgar refers to ANT’s
‘radical symmetry with regard to agency’.62 Indeed ANT proponents
reverse what they see as SSK’s desire to ‘strip science of its extravagant
claim to authority’ by asserting that ‘nature settles controversies’.63 Put
another way, ‘the belief system has to register the world without the
world introducing any significant difference, apart from its mute pres-
ence and insistence’.64 For ANT, the ‘things themselves are actants, not
signifieds, phenomena, or tools for human praxis’.65 Callon and Latour
 After War 17

argue that ANT escapes the difficulties that natural realism and social
realism present:

Nonhumans are party to all our disputes, but instead of being those
closed, frozen, and estranged things-in-themselves whose part has
been either exaggerated or downplayed, they are actants – open or
closed, active or passive, wild or domesticated, far away or near,
depending on the result of the interactions. When they enter the
scene they are endowed with all the nonhuman powers that ratio-
nalists like them to have, as well as the warmth and uncertainty
that social realists recognize in humans.66

In other words, reality for Latour, is relations. Latour’s metaphysics

rejects any realism that purports an ultimate independent substance,
and delights in granting status to objects-in-themselves while crit-
icizing the atomistic view of objects: ‘…a piece of rock may be a sub-
stance, but not a yellow taxi. A soldier may be a substance, but not
an army. An emerald: yes; three emeralds glued together: no’ (4).
For Latour, it is all about relations, with no relations more real than
others:

No actant is so weak that it cannot enlist another. Then the two

join together and become one for a third actant, which they can
therefore move more easily. An eddy is formed, and it grows by
becoming many others.67

Harman summarizes Latour’s distinct metaphysics thus:

[ANT] has nothing to do with old-fashioned realism, since it places

physical mass on the same level as puppet shows and courtroom hear-
ings. It has nothing to do with social constructionism: after all, it is not
limited to human society, which is pounded by the demands of non-
human actants as if by waves of the ocean. It is not deconstruction,
because even if we falsely sneer at ‘those who claim that Derrida
reduces the world to a text’ it will still be admitted that there are not
inanimate objects in Derrida. It is not phenomenology, because an elec-
tric drill or vein of silver are not appearances for human consciousness,
but actants that undermine whatever humans encounter of them.68

What I find most promising in Latour’s metaphysics is that it explic-

itly acknowledges that actants and relations between actants need not
18 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

have anything to do with humans. That is, objects do not require

human mediation in order to act: ‘What makes a hybrid a hybrid is not
its combination of nature and human civilization, but more generally
its fusion of substance and network.’69 I am especially drawn to
formulations that proceed from an imagination in which humans are
not always and indelibly directing the (only) flow of communication,
interpretation and meaning. My attraction is, of course, augmented by
Latour’s specific invocation of microbes:

We do not know who are the agents who make up our world. We
must begin with this uncertainty if we are to understand how, little
by little, the agents defined one another, summoning other agents
and attributing to them intentions and strategies… There are not
only ‘social’ relations, relations between man [sic] and man. Society
is not made up just of men, for everywhere microbes intervene and
act… We cannot form society with the social alone. We have to add
the action of microbes.70

My encounters with the microbial strongly suggest that bacteria

are the biosphere’s most prevalent and prolific actants, and that,
through colonies, they assemble an almost countless array of allies.
Most of these assemblages have nothing to do with humans; humans
are not even aware of the vast array of microbial assemblages on
earth. Given that my primary goal in formulating a microontology
is to somehow attend to this alliance-making in the absence of
either human representation or mediaton, Latour’s work is obviously
attractive.
My frustration, and Harman’s much closer reading corroborates this
concern, is two-fold. First, relations, as Harman puts it, ‘do not exhaust’
the things that relate.71 In other words, objects do not seem to have any
status outside of the events in which they relate: alliances seem not only
to articulate objects but to create them as well. Second, while ANT cham-
pions an approach that takes actants seriously in their own right, its
empiricism resembles the kind familiar to the strong program and often
science studies; that is, studies that focus much more on definably social
actors (paradigms and politics for instance) than material objects.72 That
is, in practice, when empirical studies emanating from the strong
program and ANT are compared, they appear similar in their focus on
sociologically familiar objects of study such as norms, paradigms
and dissemination rituals. 73 Even laboratory devices are described and
interpreted more in terms of their human invention and attribution of
 After War 19

meaning than in their material composition and operation: scientists in

action as it were. As Harman observes:

… [Latour’s] examples are drawn from the human realm, not from
general cosmology. And in this way, the more difficult cases are
left in shadow. With a bit of work, it is not difficult to see why all
objects that enter human awareness must be hybrids, why the
ozone hole or dolphins or rivers cannot be viewed as pure pieces of
nature aloof from any hybridizing networks. The harder cases involve
those distant objects in which human awareness is currently not a
factor at all. Where are the hybrids in distant galaxies? If they are
not present, then the purifying discourse of nature wins the war,
and the rule of hybrids can be viewed to some extent as a local effect
of human perception.

For this reason, Ian Hacking writes of ‘the death that follows laboratory
life and the cumulative inaction that follows science in action’.74

A nonmodern microontology

Adrian Mackenzie and Andrew Murphie argue that the social sciences
approach science in one of three ways: critique, extraction or engage-
ment.75 I hope this book participates in all three of these activities.
Critiques of science, write Mackenzie and Murphie, include the critical
theory analyses of scientific rationality (Adorno, Agamben, Popper, Kuhn
and so on) as well as social constructionist analyses of the processes
of scientific knowledge and objects. Extraction is interested in using
scientific concepts within philosophy (Deleuze, Whitehead, DeLanda
and so on). The direction of these moves is almost always from science
to social science. Finally, engagement attempts dialogue, conversation
and collaboration with science (Stengers, Haraway, Barad and so on):
‘it engages with science-in-the-making and it has had to formulate
questions about how to live in or with science collectively.’76
This microontology engages in critiques of science: those epistemic cul-
tures, gender relations, changing orders and so on that build and rebuild
the fabric of the scientific and technological enterprises. Chapter 3 pro-
vides a critique of symbiogenesis theory within evolutionary theory.
I also extract a number of concepts from science: self, other, symbiosis,
Gaia and so on, in order to contribute to the social sciences’ long-standing
theorization of these concepts within the fabric of social relations. How-
ever, my main objective is to engage with science. Microontologies requires
20 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

a world of actants building and destroying allies in messy relational pro-

cesses. I proceed from the premise that phenomena are always already
intra-acting and an inherent suspicion towards individualism. I try hard
to resist the anthropomorphic tendency to ‘grant’ agency to objects,
recognizing that this is simply beyond my (human) abilities. The non-
human (whether biotic or not) has agency regardless of what I think (and
nor does entanglement care that this reality might cause me disquiet).
As such, I try to move toward a sort of nonhumanism, although my
affliction (being human) may well foreclose anything more than a post-
human theory. Indeed, engagement has the feel of a perfect storm:
wondrous but next to impossible.
2
Plenty of Room at the Bottom:
Thinking Bacteria

Each living creature must be looked at as a microcosm –

a little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms,
inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars in heaven.1

Any good biologist finds it intellectually distressing to devote

his [sic] life to the study of a group that cannot be readily and
satisfactorily defined in biological terms; and the abiding intel-
lectual scandal of bacteriology has been the absence of a clear
concept of a bacterium.2

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called

research, would it?3

‘Big like us’

Numerous calls for conference papers, articles and book chapters con-
cerned with various iterations of human-animal relations circulate the
listserv highway. What invitations to consider human-animal relations
do, in effect, is adopt what Margulis calls a ‘big like us’ approach; con-
centrating on creatures that easily bear human ocular scrutiny – crea-
tures we can see unaided by the technology of microscopes, as though
creatures ‘big like us’ resemble the majority of life. Perhaps we could
imagine, as no doubt science fiction writers have already, our eyes to
have microscopic vision, enabling us to focus immediately upon the
microbial world unimpeded by what must then be unfathomably over-
sized species. Perhaps we might then overcome the myopia that defines
our natureculture border to be with animals.4

21
22 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

To entertain this other-centrism at even the most superficial level

(which is perhaps our limit) offers some interesting comparisons.
Referring to the ‘unseen majority’, William Whitman, David Coleman,
and William Wiebe estimate that there are about 5 × 1030 bacterial cells
on earth: that’s 5000000000000000000000000000000 bacterial cells.
Another estimated 1018 – 1000000000000000000 – bacteria circulate in
the atmosphere attached to dust. Betsey Dexter Dyer argues that there
must be something enduringly advantageous about being small: most
organisms are minute bacteria, evince the greatest organismal diversity,
and have dominated evolutionary history.5 Because of their size, bacte-
ria enjoy a much more intimate relationship with the environment
than their sluggish lumbering animal offspring: ‘a little moisture or
dryness, slightly more concentrated salt, an elevated temperature or pH
are all sensed directly by single cells.’6 In comparison with bacteria,
then, human beings are scarce, decidedly big, and strangely multicellu-
lar (most organisms are unicellular). We suffer from a very limited
metabolism (oxygen respiration) and it takes us months to reproduce:
creating a new organism every twenty minutes or so, bacterial repro-
duction is much more efficient. R.A. Lafferty’s scifi short story ‘Slow
Tuesday Night’ imagines a human world at microbial speed: fortunes
of titanic proportion are made and lost within minutes, transportation
and manufacturing are practically instantaneous, people meet, fall in
love, marry, have children and divorce in a matter of hours.7
Stephen J. Gould once remarked ‘With respect to the old belief
in steady progress nothing could be stranger than the early evolu-
tion of life – for nothing much happened for ever so long… The
oldest fossils are some 3.5 billion years old… but multicellular animals
appeared just before the Cambrian explosion some 570 million years
ago’.8 Gould’s just-so story of time figures creatures ‘big like us’
prominently (see Figure 2.1).
Yet, the extraordinary time-line of bacterial liveliness compared with
that of animals, plants and fungi invites a different conception of time, a
time in which Margulis argues ‘everything happened’ (see Figure 2.2). The
‘everything’ to which Margulis refers is all major forms of metabolism,
multicellularity, nanotechnology, metallurgy, sensory and locomotive
apparatuses (such as the wheel), reproductive strategies and community
organization, light detection, alcohol, gas and mineral conversion, hyper-
sex and death. Bacteria are vonHelmholtz’s ‘less glamorous backstage
machinery that actually produces the show’.9
It is difficult to comprehend the prevalence and diversity of bacterial
inventions: to do so circumscribes the domain of human purview. For
 Plenty of Room at the Bottom: Thinking Bacteria 23

Eons Eras Periods Epochs

Quanternary Holocene

Now
11,000

Billions of
years
Pleistocene
1.8

Neogene
Tertiary Pliocene 5
Cenozoic Miocene 23

Oligocene

Paleogene
38

Eocene
54

Paleocene 65
Phanerozoic Eon

Cretaceous Upper (late)

Lower (early)
Mesozoic

146

Jurasic Late
middle
208 Early
Late
Triasic Middle
245 Early

Permian 286
Carbon-

Pennsylvanian 325
iferous

mississippian 360
Paleozoic

Devonian 410

Silurian 440

Ordovician
505
Cambrian 544
.544

NeoProterozoic 900

Mesoproterozoic
Proterozoic

1600

Palioproterozoic

2500
2.5
PreCambrian Eon

Late
Archaean
2900
Archaean

Middle
Archaean
3300

Early
Ar chaean
3800
3.8
Hadean

4.5

Figure 2.1 ‘Big Like Us’ Centered Time Scale. Image courtesy of Anthony Krivan
24 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

Eons Eras Periods Epochs

Holocene

Now
11,000
Quanternary Pleistocene 1.8

Cenozoic

Billions of
years
Paleogene Neogene
Pliocene 5
Tertiary Miocene 23
Oligocene 38
Eocene 54
Paleocene 65
Phanerozoic Eon

Upper (late)
Cretaceous 146
Lower (early)
Mesozoic

Late
Jurasic Middle
208
Early
Late
Triasic Middle
245
Early
Permian 286
Carbon-
Paleozoic

Pennsylvanian 325
iferous

mississippian 360
Devonian 410
Silurian 440
Ordovician 505

.544
Cambrian 544

NeoProterozoic

900

Mesoproterozoic
Proterozoic

1600

Palioproterozoic

2500
2.5

Late
Archaean
PreCambrian Eon

2900

Middle
Archaean
Archaean

3300

Early
Archaean

3800
3.8
Hadean

4.5

Figure 2.2 Prokaryote Centered Time Scale. Image courtesy of Anthony Krivan
 Plenty of Room at the Bottom: Thinking Bacteria 25

instance, asserting that human sexual reproduction ‘is by now techno-

logically assisted to a very large extent’ Rosi Braidotti writes:

Cloning as a non-linear form of reproduction is a new technique,

practiced on a regular basis since the mid-1990s, whereas sexual
intercourse is an established practice, which has been around for
500 million years, but we are not to let this small time factor inter-
fere with our desire to experiment. It is only a matter of time.10

Braidotti refers to ‘reproduction’, but must actually mean mixis rather

than reproduction (this is an important distinction. See Chapter 5). All
living organisms continually reproduce as a fundamental condition of
living; only a minority of organisms practice mixis, and then typically
only for very short periods of their lifespan. (And as far as replication
goes, I cannot think of anything as linear as cloning). Moreover, if it is
only a ‘matter of time’, then bacteria and other nonsexually reproduc-
ing organisms easily trump a mere 500 million years. Bacteria invented
cloning some 3.8 billion years ago and continue to reproduce through
binary fission and other means. As Arthur C. Clarke writes, ‘we never
invent anything that nature hasn’t tried out millions of years earlier’.11
Much of the ‘brave new world’ of reproductive technologies is human
mimicry of well-worn, millions of year old bacterial practices.
Our tendency to distinguish ourselves as a species – and no more so
than from the microbial – permeates even theories of the unconscious.
‘[O]ccupying a large share of Freud’s sparse references to animals, the
single-celled organism both is and is not “human”; its difference from
humanity is and is not a positive function’, writes Judith Roof, who
argues that Freud deployed protist (single cell eukaryote) reproduction
to reassure humanity of its evolutionary ascendancy.12 And yet, as Roof
points out, protists ‘are both the common denominators of and the
exception to evolution’s rule. In effect, protists are the remainder,
those organisms that “have succeeded in remaining up to the present
time at their lowly level”, which already, always, and seemingly
eternally represent the very dynamic that higher organisms only arrive
at later.’13 Because protists practice uniparental reproduction, they defy
death in a way that troubled Freud’s pleasure principle and death drive.
Freud only recovers humans/animals from this fall from evolutionary
grace by latching on to one empirical finding suggesting that repeated
fission weakens organisms.14
Despite our all too human self-assurances, Sagan is right to argue
that ‘bacteria are biochemically and metabolically far more diverse
26 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

than all plants and animals put together’.15 And as Chapters 3 and 4
will detail, animals are, both ancestrally and currently, literally made
up of bacteria. Thus my encounter with bacteria must somehow recog-
nize that bacteria do precede my relating with them. It must also
somehow recognize that ‘I’ am bacteria, that bacteria are us. It must
also somehow take on board that bacteria are not easily separated –
they are notoriously ungracious when scientists attempt to culture
them (i.e. isolate them from their communities in petri dishes) – and
that our symbiotic and symbiogenetic ancestry means, as Haraway rec-
ognizes, that it is symbionts all-the-way-down.16 The animal cell, typi-
cally understood as the smallest unit of structure and function, is
already a symbiont. And, at the same time, I must recognize the rub
that the vast majority of microbial intra-actions have nothing to do
with humans. Humans do not even know about the vast majority of
intra-actions that take place on earth. Putting this in larger evolution-
ary perspective, Carl Woese et al. remark, ‘if you wiped out all multicel-
lur life forms off the face of the earth, microbial life might shift a tiny
bit… If microbial life were to disappear, that would be it – instant
death for the planet’.17
Notwithstanding recent advertisements about ‘good’ bacteria in
yoghurt, I am schooled in recognizing my meetings with bacteria as
military encounters – invasion and defense – between my (nonbacter-
ial) individual self and disease (bacteria). That is, the pathogen matrix
overwhelmingly defines the parameters of animal meetings-with bac-
teria. Thus my not-species meeting-with must begin by exploring bac-
teria excessive to pathogen characterization.

Domains Archaea and Bacteria18

Within the domains Bacteria and Archaea, multicellular assemblages

and complex life cycles with several developmental stages are common.
While knowledge accumulated so far suggests a staggering diversity
within these domains, the majority of bacteria are yet to be discerned,
suggesting much further diversity to come. And given that bacteria
exchange genes so readily, thereby creating a new ‘mix’ each time, we
might reasonably argue that there are as many kinds of bacteria as there
are bacteria. The quick survey provided below falls far short of express-
ing the wide range of bacteria: I provide here merely a glimpse into this
majority world.
Scientists distinguish between organisms on the basis of several
factors, such as metabolism, motility, and reproduction. Metabolism is
 Plenty of Room at the Bottom: Thinking Bacteria 27

crucial. All organisms on earth rely upon only two sources of energy:
light energy from the sun or energy derived from chemicals. One of
the major differences between bacteria and animals is that many bac-
teria do not ‘eat’ in the sense that we mean it: they convert light and/or
chemical energy. All animals and fungi by contrast are heterotrophs –
‘living off others’, relying upon the ingestion of other organisms and
their products (more on this in Chapter 7). Photoautotrophs (such as
plants, algae and cyanobacteria) use light, carbon dioxide and water to
produce their own food:

Light energy + CO2 + H2O ⇒ sugar + O2 (waste)

Photoautrophic waste is what animals use to breathe. Plants use carbon

dioxide, combine it with hydrogen (from water) to make carbon-
hydrogen compounds such as wood, starch, and sugar.19 Purple sulfur
bacteria use carbon dioxide combined with the hydrogen from hydro-
gen sulfide to make carbon compounds. Purple nonsulfur bacteria use
carbon dioxide from the air and hydrogen gas or organic molecules like
lactate. Together, photosynthetic organisms deplete the atmosphere of
about 250 billion tons of carbon annually. Photosynthetic metabolism
‘really runs the entire biosphere’.20
Chemolithotrophy occurs in a few groups of bacteria. These organ-
isms manufacture their own food (they are not consumers) by using
chemicals (rather than light) as a source of energy, and specifically,
minerals found in rocks, soils and dissolved in water. Methanogen
metabolism looks like this:

Chemical bond energy + CO2 + H2 ⇒ sugar + CH4 (waste)

Another organizing feature of organisms is their motility. Many bac-

teria do not move of their own volition – although all expand their
cells through morphogenetic (reproductive) movement – but rather are
moved by air or water currents. Bacteria may also glide (by using a kind
of slime substance) or swim using flagella. Flagella are whips or tails
attached to the bacterial cell in which there is a rotating wheel that
turns by internal electricity (a flow of hydrogen ions). The third and
fourth organizing features are reproduction and sex (genetic recom-
bination), and this is the subject of Chapter 5.

Ancient hyperthermophiles and thermophilic green nonsulfurs

Compared with today, in the first 500 million years of life the earth
had shorter days, more violent storms, larger and more frequent tides,
and more frequent bolide bombardments.21 The atmosphere was dense
28 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

with carbon dioxide and contained little oxygen. One hypothesis

is that life originated with thermophiles (literally, ‘heat lovers’) that
thrived at boiling or near boiling temperatures. Anaerobic hyper-
thermophiles (including the genera Thermatoga, Hydrogenobacter,
Thermus and Aquifex, and hyperthermophilic archaea) exist today,
thriving at temperatures of 80 degrees Celsius in such places as the
United States’ Yellowstone National Park, New Zealand, Iceland and
eastern Russia. (Humans define thermophiles as such because they
thrive in temperatures that kill eukaryotes: rather than acknowledge
our inability to exist in these temperatures, we tend to say these Bac-
teria and Archaea lack the ability to live in lower temperatures). A fork
in the tangled web of life occurred with the evolution of green non-
sulfurs, descendants of the first photosynthetic bacteria. Green non-
sulfurs photosynthesize light energy through a version of the green
pigment chlorophyll. However, and as their name suggests, these green
nonsulfurs do not require sulfur compounds (such as H2S) or water as a
source of hydrogen. Instead, green nonsulfurs use organic compounds.

Green sulfur bacteria

Green sulfur bacteria are so named because they photosynthesize using
bacteriochlorophyll and hydrogen sulfide (H2S) as a source of hydro-
gen. Instead of using hydrogen from water, in other words, green
sulfur bacteria use hydrogen from hydrogen sulfide:

Green sulfur bacteria

CO2 + H2S + light ⇒ C6H12O6 (sugar) + S0 (sulfur)

Cyanobacteria and all plants and algae

CO2 + H2O + light ⇒ C6H12O6 (sugar) + O2 (oxygen)

Cyanobacteria, green plants and algae produce almost all of the bio-
sphere’s oxygen, as a waste product of photosynthesis. The sulfur that
green sulfur bacteria produce is not wasted: sulfate-reducing bacteria
‘breathe’ sulfate. Some green sulfur bacteria live in symbioses with
sulfate-reducing bacteria, and this symbiosis is found, for example, in
Chlorochromatium and Pelochromatium.

Proteobacteria
Sometimes called purple bacteria, these organisms are all gram-negative
(meaning they do not become stained with Gram’s (crystal violet) stain).
All proteobacteria are named by Greek letters based on their DNA
 Plenty of Room at the Bottom: Thinking Bacteria 29

sequences. Alpha proteobacteria proliferate, and are probably best known

through their association with what scientists calls the Oxygen Holo-
caust. About 3.5 billion years ago, cyanobacteria evolved and began
to release oxygen as a waste product. Billions of anaerobic bacteria died,
others retreated to anoxic environments such as deep sediments, some
adapted metabolic mechanisms to fix oxygen to one molecule thereby
removing it from contact with its other molecules, while still others
evolved oxygen respiration. Chemically, respiration looks like this:

Food molecule (for instance sugar) + O2 ⇒ CO2 + H2O + ATP

(energy-carrying molecule)

Mitochondria were once free-living independent alpha proteobacteria.

They provide animals like us with Adenosine-5'-triphosphate (ATP) – our
energy source. Margulis hypothesizes that about 2.5 billion years
ago, hyperthermophilic archaea and alpha proteobacteria joined sym-
biotically to form a new type of cell that was very good at acquiring
energy and respiring with oxygen (more on this in Chapter 3). Because
of our human cells’ symbioses with once free-living mitochondrial bac-
teria, we are able to survive the ravages of the poisonous gas oxygen (of
course, mitochondria are also responsible for programmed cell death, so
this particular symbiosis comes with an immutable and catastrophic
caveat for animals). Many nitrogen-fixers are alpha proteobacteria, and
they form symbiotic relationships with plants such as legumes. Plants
require nitrogen to build proteins, RNA, DNA and other molecules
(soil fertilizers contain nitrogen, which provides temporary nitrogen
replenishment to the soil). The waste product from nitrogen fixation is
ammonia.
Beta proteobacteria such as the genera Leptothrix, Sphaerotilus and
Gallionella are mainly known as iron and manganese oxidizers for their
ability to corrode stone monuments and buildings with their acidic
waste, their utility in maintaining fish aquaria, and, in the case of
Neisseria as the cause of gonorrhea. Bacterial cell walls are negatively
charged, and so they pick up positively charged ions, including metals
in solutions. ‘Betas’ (as well as other kinds of bacteria) are able to alter
their environmental conditions to put metals into solution or other-
wise precipitate them.22 Humans use these bacteria to ‘leach’ copper
sulfate from ore deposits to make metallic copper. Gold may well have
bacterial origins as well: ‘Thiobacillus leaches the gold into solution
from sulfide-rich rocks, and mats of cyanobacteria absorb it into their
sheaths’, producing ancient (about 2.5 billion years ago) deposits like
those found in Southern Africa.23
30 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

Gamma and delta proteobacteria in nonsulfur-rich environments are

best known for their bioluminescent, snow, ice and tree-like structure
formation abilities. ‘Gammas’ such as Photobacter and Vibrio produce a
higher than average number of photons and are hypothesized to have
persisted because they detoxify oxygen (and thus the ravages of oxygen
damage to cells). Bioluminescence in fireflies, dinoflagellates and some
marine animals provides a means of communication, and while indi-
vidual bioluminous bacteria are too small for their light to signal to
each other, when swarming together on, say, a dead fish, their com-
bined luminescence might well attract other fish that, by eating the
dead fish, will establish bioluminescent bacteria in the freely available
nourishment provided in animal digestive tracts.24 Some bacteria form
symbioses with marine animals whose organs glow and help with mate
selection and finding food. Marine, river, lake and aerial (the kind we
see in sunbeams) ‘snow’ consists of the bioluminescent fecal matter of
animals such as fish. Erwinia and Pseudomonas, two ‘gamma’ genera,
are able to form centers for ice crystals at just above freezing tempera-
tures. Buchnera form symbiotic relationships with all aphids, supple-
menting the aphids’ diet while being passed from mother to daughter
through uni-parental reproduction. Gammas also include Escherichia
coli. These bacteria are comparatively easy to isolate and culture, thus
making them the most studied of all bacteria. Myxobacteria are distin-
guished because during part of their developmental cycle they change
from rod-like appearance to form a stalk-like structure with spores at
the top.
Gamma and delta proteobacteria in sulfur-rich environments are
well-known for the symbiotic relationships they form with marine
organisms such as bivalve mollusks as well as nematode worms, flat-
worms and other organisms. The famous ‘deep sea vents’ in which
mollusks and worms have been found three miles below the ocean
surface in dark icy water survive via symbioses with bacteria (and owe
their ‘fame’ to their enormous ‘big like us’ size compared with their
shallow-water counterparts).25
Bacteroides and gliders are rod-shaped gram-negative bacteria, but are
distinguished from proteobacteria. Bacteroides are found in animal
intestines – about 10 trillion in the colon and one order of magnitude
away from the densest possible packing together of bacteria – ferment-
ing foods like carbohydrates and producing various acidic waste products
(about 20% of our feces weight is bacteroides). These and the gram-
positive bacteria prevent the reproduction of pathogens in our intes-
tines. Bacteroides also frequent the tiny crevices between gums and
 Plenty of Room at the Bottom: Thinking Bacteria 31

teeth, living with the abundant gram-positive mouth bacteria. Their

acidic waste products promote tooth decay. These bacteria, combined
with those of all the other bacteria that inhabit our bodies, means that
the normal human is ‘composed of over 1014 cells, of which only about
10% are animal cells’.26
Gliders are distinguished because they do not have flagella, but
rather ‘skate’ along surfaces (including each other) and specialize in
breaking down large molecules. Humans and gliders form symbiotic
relationships in the form of ‘retting’ whereby gliders enable humans to
derive natural fibers such as linen and hemp from the tough fibrous
material of plant stems.

Gram-positive bacteria
Gram-positive bacteria derive their name from the blue color they
produce when dyed by Gram’s stain. They live in every possible envir-
onmental niche from fresh and salt water, soils and sediments, to the
surfaces and insides of other organisms, and they take on a variety of
shapes and sizes from rods and long filaments to helical shapes. Gram-
positive bacteria are divided into two groups: ‘high-GC’ that have pro-
portionally more guanine and cytosine than ‘low-GC’. Gram-positive
bacteria are responsible for the many diverse fermentations that change
the odor, flavor and texture of food and drink. Fermentation is actually
bacterial heterotrophic metabolism, and the flavors we love are the
bacteria’s waste products, such as lactic acid, cheese, some forms of
alcohol, monosodium glutamate, and the flavor enhancement processes
used in making chocolate, vanilla, (black and oolong) tea and coffee.
Indonesian luwak coffee is made from the beans fermented by the
gram-positive bacteria Paradoxurus hermaphroditus in the intestines of
civet cats who are fed the beans and then defecate them, to be har-
vested by humans as a drink.
Soil itself is, essentially, a microbial product: there are over a million
or more bacteria per gram of soil. Many gram-positive bacteria form
symbiotic relationships with fungi and animals. For instance, Strepto-
myces form pale crusty patches on Attine ants and secrete antibiotics
and antifungals to discourage the growth of unwanted microbes in the
gardens of fungi that these some 200 species of ants cultivate. The blue
color distilled from the blue-producing plants indigo and woad comes
from a process of fermentation using bacteria. Tobacco is also produced
by ‘sweating’ the leaves, which employs bacterial fermentation.
Human bodies are the habitat of indigenous microbes, and most are
gram-positive bacteria. As Dexter Dyer points out, from a microbial
32 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

perspective this habitat is hazardous for these bacteria: huge rafts of

dead cells flake off and those bacteria not carried away must scramble
to reestablish themselves: ‘it is like living in a zone of constant earth-
quakes and avalanches.’27 To make matters worse, we wash ourselves
with soaps, which disintegrate bacterial cell membranes. Fortunately
for our bacterial companions, washing of the nonsurgery preparation
kind that we most often practice accomplishes more of a bacterial
rearrangement than genocide. Bacteria produce the characteristic
smells that humans effuse (Propionibacterium is associated with human
acne and also with the holes in swiss cheese). Cellulose digesting
animals (giraffes, moose, cows and so on) are also dependent on gram-
positive bacteria. (This symbiosis is the subject of the final chapter of
this book.)

Cyanobacteria
Cyanobacteria invented oxygeneic photosynthesis, which has come to
dominate metabolism for producing fixed carbon from carbon dioxide.
Cyanobacteria use hydrogen and electrons from water (before this
photosynthetic organisms used hydrogen sulfide) for converting carbon
dioxide into sugar, and produce oxygen as a waste product (that
animals breathe to sustain life):

Light energy + CO2 + H2O ⇒ sugars (food) + O2 (waste)

Cyanobacteria profoundly altered the earth’s atmosphere by filling it

with their waste: oxygen. Some cyanobacteria are able to fix atmo-
spheric nitrogen as well, making them perhaps the best-adapted organ-
isms on earth. They were the first to resettle on the volcanic ash and
tuff created by the Krakatao volcanic eruption and first to resettle on
the Bikini coral island after the nuclear tests conducted there by the
United States.28
Cyanobacteria are also prevalent in microbial mats and are respons-
ible for the massive banded iron formations found in the fossil record.
Stromatolites are the lithified remains of layered cyanobacterial com-
munities. Humans use cyanobacteria to clean up fossil fuel spills.
Cyanobacteria form a number of diverse symbioses with protists,
plants, fungi and animals. One of the most well-known of these
symbioses, about 2.5 billion years ago, led to the symbiogenetic merger
of cyanobacteria in the form of chloroplasts in algae and plants.
Lichens are a symbiotic association between fungi and either green
algae or (less commonly) cyanobacteria. Bryophytes such as mosses,
liverworts and hornworts can form symbiotic relationships with
 Plenty of Room at the Bottom: Thinking Bacteria 33

nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria, the latter enabling life in boggy or

swampy soils as well as arid, nutrient-poor soils such as sand dunes
where nitrogen is less abundant. Flamingos get their distinctive pink
color directly from carotenoids, a pigment derived from cyanobacteria
and algae (or indirectly from the crustaceans they consume that are
themselves cyanobacteria-eating). Nostoc is a cyanobacterium consumed
by humans in several Asian, Central and South American cuisines. The
health drink Spirulina is also cyanobacterial. The cyanobacteria
Trichophilus and Cyanoderma grow on three-toed sloth fur, providing a
yellow and dull green color, which camouflages these sedentary
animals. Cyanobacteria also proliferate in marine sponges, ascidians
(marine invertebrate animals), byozoans (moss animals), eshiuran
worms, lobsters and crabs.

Spirochetes
Spirochetes have distinctive elongated cells with which they burrow –
in corkscrew motion – into dense substances such as mud, intestinal
contents, and animal and plant tissue. Humans are most familiar with
spirochetes as syphilis and Lyme disease. Spirochetes thrive in anoxic,
cellulose-rich environments as well as places like human teeth plaque.
Treponema pallidum (we know this bacterium as the cause of syphilis)
flagella are inside the cell: they have two cell membranes separated by
a space inside which the flagella rotate. The most famous T. pallidum
may well have been those that inhabited the brain of Friedrich
Wilhelm Nietzsche. Deborah Hayden’s account of Nietzsche’s attempt
to save a flogged horse from further beating, his subsequent frenzied
post-card writing, urine drinking and incoherent rambling is a lesson
in spirochete abilities.29 Doctors were familiar with syphilis, and
Nietzsche progressed through the well-documented primary stage
immediately after infection; the pain of secondary syphilis; and finally
the intellectual impairment, personality disturbances, reflex hyper-
activity, sensory changes, slurred speech and affect changes of tertiary
syphilis.30 Research demonstrates that T. pallidum is able to rest dor-
mant in animal tissue for many years: scientists often mistook this as
evidence that antibiotics such as penicillin cured syphilis. As Margulis
notes, while spirochetes do not suddenly activate from brain-inhabit-
ing slumber but rather work over many years, Nietzsche’s record of
writing might well indicate that his spirochetes did indeed ‘awake’ on
the 3rd of January 1889, quickly proliferating in his brain. In a less
common reversal of the typical direction of infection from colonizer to
34 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

colonized, it appears that T. pallidum was a gift of the American

indigenous peoples to Europeans: Christopher Columbus and his
compatriots returned to Spain with a new set of symptoms that quickly
spread across Europe, largely via soldiers and the sex workers they
infected, eventually infecting between 5–20 percent of the entire
European population. Spirochetes, according to Margulis’s theory
of symbiogenesis, also merged with eukaryotic cells, providing the
great advantage of cell motility. (I review the evidence for this in
Chapter 3.)

Archaea: methanogens, hyperthermophiles and halophiles

As already noted, having diverged from eubacteria over three billion

years ago, Archaea now comprise their own domain. Methanogens get
their name because they produce the green house gas methane as a
metabolic product.31 Some methanogens are autotrophs, which means
they metabolize without the need of complex food molecules. While
most autotrophs are photoautotrophs (they use light as an energy
source), autotrophic methanogens are chemoautotrophs, using carbon
dioxide and hydrogen (gases considered waste products by most organ-
isms). This is an example of what Tyler Volk calls the ‘waste world’ of
the biosphere; organisms using each other’s waste products in their
metabolism (see Chapter 6).32 The methane produced by bacteria is
crucial to the biosphere in that it removes carbon from the ground and
oxygen from the air that would otherwise accumulate in huge quant-
ities produced by cyanobacteria, algae and plants, and create a highly
flammable atmosphere.
Looking a little more closely at the bacteria in human guts, we find
that methanogens are unevenly distributed within the human popula-
tion. In so-called developed countries, 30–50 percent of people have
colon-dwelling methanogens, whereas in developing countries, it is
much higher. Hyperthermophilic archaea thrive in temperatures greater
than 80 degrees Celsius and pH less than 3 (very acidic compared with
human ambient alkalinity). Finally, Halophiles (salt lovers) thrive in
extreme (only for animals) concentrations of salt; for instance ten times
salt water salinity. Archaeal halophilic metabolism is remarkable. It
combines heterotrophy and photosynthesis. Instead of using chloro-
phyll, archaeal halophiles use bacteriorhodopsin (a pink-red carotenoid
pigment) that when light-stimulated, the pigments ‘pump’ hydrogen
ions across the membrane to be stored as an auxiliary energy source to
supplement their usual respiratory metabolism (heterotrophy).
 Plenty of Room at the Bottom: Thinking Bacteria 35

Forms of life

We lack an exact accounting of what we already know.33

‘We are now nine billion because of Pasteur’, writes Bruno Latour.34
What transforms, for Latour, ‘useless matter’ (bacteria) into ‘full-blown
substance’ are taxonomy and phylogeny (122). In other words, what
made the bacteria with which Pasteur worked into actants, according
to Latour, was the series of laboratory trials that Pasteur devised to
study – to meet with – bacteria. As such, ‘Pasteur transformed our rela-
tionship with microbes’, defining these relationships as either patho-
genic or domesticated.35 I like Latour’s description of the intra-action
between Pasteur and the microbes he worked with: ‘Pasteur and the
ferment mutually exchange and enhance their properties, Pasteur
helping the ferment show its mettle, the ferment “helping” Pasteur
win one of his many medals.’36 In other words, actants (Alfred North
Whitehead’s propositions – Pasteur, lactic acid ferment, laboratory,
microscope and so on – ‘occasions given to different entities to enter
into contact’) gain and modify their definitions through the event
of the experiment.37 Of course, these relations with humans will have
been preceded by countless relations between and amongst bacteria
and other things, making ‘Pasteur’s useless matter’ already fully-fledged
actants.
Astrid Schrader’s excellent work on scientific interest in Pfiesteria
piscicida (a dinoflagellate protist thought to kill billions of fish in U.S.
mid-atlantic estuaries) is a wonderful example of the kind of actant rela-
tions of which Latour writes.38 As Schrader puts it, ‘how you get to
know a species experimentally cannot be separated from the ontological
question of what they are’. Distinguishing between what is ‘naturally’
P. piscicida and what is environmentally induced during their life cycle
is no easy task (defining the life cycle itself requires either classificatory
exclusions or nearly limitless environmental interaction, not least of
which is with symbiotic bacteria), and separating P. piscicida from their
various metabolic and reproductive transformations (i.e. through cul-
turing) produces nontoxic P. piscicida. In effect, in classifying the organ-
ism, scientists create an organism that is not the object of their study.
It is not that P. piscicida’s indeterminacy cannot be resolved. Rather, the
condition of resolvability is predicated on ‘a complete specification of
the material-discursive practices that enact [Karen Barad’s] “agential
cut”. Different “cuts” between “object” and “measurement agencies”
establish different phenomena.’39
36 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

Throughout the vicissitudes of taxonomy, bacteria have always occu-

pied abject status – mainly as pathogens – and more generally in their
classification as dissimilar to cells from organisms ‘big like us’, a point I
return to in Chapter 7. The prokaryote-eukaryote distinction which
preoccupied microbiology until Carl Woese et al.’s ribosomal work, is
predicated on bacteria’s absence of nuclei, absence of sexual repro-
duction, and absence of plastids (ironic, given that plastids were once
free-living bacteria). The shifting classification of bacteria, as well as
arguments that bacteria cannot be classified as species, is an interesting
foray into disciplinary epistemic cultures. While animal and plant
classification was based on comparative anatomy and embryology, bac-
teria’s physiological diversity led the editorial board of the first edition
of Bergey’s Manual of Determinative Bacteriology to agree to a classi-
fication based on utility rather than phylogeny (whether physiological
or morphological).40 Roger Stanier and C.B. van Niel’s much-cited 1962
article ‘The Concept of a Bacterium’ vacillated between accepting and
eschewing bacterial phylogenetics. Stanier, Doudoroff and Adelberg’s
first edition of The Microbial World (1957) reiterated the impossibility
of bacterial phylogeny at the same time that they asserted bacteria’s
monophylogeny within Prokaryota.
Aristotelian classification bifurcated all organisms as Plantae or
Animalia, and the trend since then has been to increase the number of
classificatory categories. Since Carl von Linné’s Systema Naturae (1735),
successive disciplines – naturalists to biologists to microbiologists to
molecular phylogenists – have attempted to classify all organisms
according to species, genera, families, orders, classes and kingdoms.
Curtis, Sloan and Scannell and Woese and Fox favor three kingdoms
(Protista, Plantae and Animalia); Woese, Kandler and Wheelis then
argued for Bacteria, Archaea and Eukarya; Copeland suggests four king-
doms (Monera, Protoctista, Plantae and Animalia; Whittaker and then
Whittaker and Margulis argue for five kingdoms (Monera, Protoctists,
Fungi, Plantae and Animalia); Edwards asserts there are eight kingdoms
(Cyanochlorobionta, Erythrobionta, Chlorobionta, Myxobionta, Fungi
1, Fungi 2, Chromobionta and Animalia); and Leedale stretches this to
13 kingdoms (Monera, Red Algae, Plantae, Euglenoids, Myxomycetes,
Fungi, Heterokonts, Eustigmatophyta, Haptophyta, Cryptomonads,
Dinoflagellates, Mesozoans and Animalia).41 Woese et al.’s classification
scheme has had the largest impact, and is widely accepted today.
Actants always exceed their meditated understanding, and phylo-
genetics is no less implicated in defining meetings-with bacteria than
naturalist or any other scientific enterprise. In other words, phylo-
 Plenty of Room at the Bottom: Thinking Bacteria 37

genetic classification is understood through particular intra-actions of

organisms and science: cuts that establish meetings-with. Scientists
make these cuts through the kinds of things we are familiar with (epis-
temic cultures, phylogeny and so on), as do technologies (eyes, micro-
scopes, gel electrophoresis and so on) and microbes.
Based on bacterial phylogenetics, Woese and his colleagues studied
ribosomal RNA because rRNA is ‘of ancient origin, universally distrib-
uted, and functionally equivalent in all cells, making it the ideal
organelle for following the course of evolution’.42 The 16S is a specific
genomic sequence of bases (adenine, cytosine, thymine and guanine)
that can be used to compare organisms). It provides a veritable explo-
sion of classificatory possibilities: 16,000 base pairs x four possible
combinations = 416,000 possible kinds of bacteria.43 16S rRNA sequenc-
ing’s main justification is that it provides a much more exact class-
ification. To wit, a research team in Berlin found that only about
1 percent of the bacteria in the human drinking water they sampled
can be cultured. Ninety-nine percent of the bacteria are VBNC: ‘viable
but not culturable’.44
Woese et al.’s results suggest that, at the molecular level, there are
significant genealogical (monophyletic) differences between bacteria
that had been classified together based on morphological similarities.
As such, and according to Woese and his colleagues, there is no
prokaryote in the sense that no single phylogenetic line led from bacte-
ria to eukaryotes. Woese et al.’s research suggests that there are funda-
mental differences between Bacteria and Archaea. At first, Archaea were
thought to be rare and confined to extreme (from an animal perspec-
tive) environments such as hot springs. Now they are known to be both
abundant and distributed throughout the planet. I am drawn to Woese
et al.’s classification scheme, not so much because it adheres to a kind of
gene-centric classification logic, but rather because it groups animals
(humans) together with ciliates, green plants, fungi, flagellates and
microsporidia within a single kingdom. As such it is one of the few
schemas that does not reserve a separate classificatory place for animals.
In other words, I like it precisely because it puts us in our place: idio-
syncratic late-comers to a diverse and sophisticated cacophony of living
organisms that compose the bulk of biota.
Woese et al.’s schema is not without critics. Margulis argues that
molecular phylogeny is reductive because it is based on only one marker
(rRNA) rather than important differences in physiology, morphology,
metabolism and so on.45 Margulis argues from a position reminiscent
of a Darwinian naturalist approach to organisms: ‘no substitute exists
38 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

for knowing the live organism in question, its life history and habitat.46
Natural history, life cycle details, morphology including ultrastructure,
the history of environmental change as documented in the rock
record, and good sense are all crucial elements in reconstructing the
ancient lineages on Earth’.47 There may be 416,000 possibilities, but do
these differences tell us anything practical about the bacteria under
study? Further, and as Jan Sapp notes, the question of difference has
surfaced within molecular characterization, which is based on a few
‘representative’ bacteria such as E. coli, that simultaneously (and iron-
ically) argues that prokaryotes are not monophyletic.48
With some exceptions, the majority of schemas accept Bacteria as
both base and trunk of the Tree of Life (TOL).49 Which leads to the
question of trees. Stephen Jay Gould’s Wonderful Life provides a history
and critique of the arboreal metaphor within evolutionary theory,
from the pre-arboreal Great Chain of Being, Charles Darwin’s ‘great
Tree of Life’, Ernest Haeckel’s blooming tree, Willi Hennig’s single-
branch emphasis, and computational method developments, to mole-
cular sequencing – and I need not rehearse the details here. Assembling
this TOL, as Joel Cracraft and Michael Donoghue note, has been mas-
sively facilitated (and complicated) by molecular data and increasing
computational power, producing phylogenetic studies at the rate of
nearly 15 per day.50 What bacteria essentially do is complicate the
metaphor (a metaphor based on replication and vertical inheritance),
morphing the tree into more of a tangled web, or a ring of life as some
have suggested.51 W. Ford Doolittle’s depiction of the differences
between organismal, genome, and gene phylogenies helps to illustrate
this complication (see Figure 2.3).
The complication stems from the finding that different genes yield
different family trees because genes are transmitted horizontally as well
as vertically, known as Lateral Gene Transfer (LGT).52 Essentially, this
means that the base of the Bacterial tree is a polytomy.53 Marla Rivera
and James Lake, for instance, argue that two prokaryotes fused their
genomes, closed the ring of life, and created the first eukaryote. Put
another way, ‘eliminating a fusion organism, which necessarily con-
tacts two nodes of a ring, will delete the leaf, open the ring and con-
vert it to a tree’.54 It also means that some eukaryote genes will be
related to Bacteria while others will be related to Archaea.
As I noted, the general consensus is that the Last Universal Common
Ancestor (LUCA) is bacterial. One corollary is that Eukaryotes and
Archaea shared a common ancestry separated from bacterial descend-
ants. This said, attempts to reveal a stable Archaean or Bacterial core
 Bacteria Archaea Eucarya

Green Animals
non-sulfur Entamoebae Slime
bacteria molds
Euryarchaeota Fungi
Cren-
Methanosarcina Plants
Gram archaeota Methano- Halophiles
Purple positives bacterium Ciliates
bacteria Methan-
Thermoproteus ococcus
Cyanobacteria T. celer
Pyrodicticum Flagellates
Flavobacteria
Trichomonads

Thermotogales

Microsporidia
Diplomonads

Figure 2.3 Three Kingdom Tree of Life. Image courtesy of Carl Woese
39
40 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

reveal a lot of phylogenetic sequencing noise.55 For instance, Hervé

Philippe and his colleagues, recognizing that the individual trees of
45 bacterial species constructed for 57 translational proteins mostly
disagree, tried stringing all the gene sequences together. This mani-
pulation produced a statistically robust tree with 44 of the 57 genes.56
Still, 44 is only a few percent of a typical bacterial genome. And Brown
and collaborators derived a stable core of only 14 genes when they
included members of the Archaean.57 ‘Absence of evidence is not evid-
ence of absence’ as Doolittle points out, and given that the scientific
enterprise is based upon the supposition that life on earth began from
microbial beginnings (derived from molecular beginnings, derived
from chemical beginnings), the search for phylogeny has only really
just gotten started.58 Nonetheless, even at this early date, the tree of
life has morphed into a reticulated tangled web, complicating the
neoDarwinian premise that adaptation results from selection among
mutations and that speciation occurs as a result of diverging adapt-
ations that become fixed in different populations, a point I discuss in
further detail in Chapter 3.
As we saw, LGT makes tangled webs of trees. So do artifacts. Philippe
studies phylogenetic artifacts, which are signals, remainders really, of
mutations that have been fixed in an ancestral species.59 If only one
substitution occurred in a phylogenetic tree, this would provide a
pretty unambiguous signal; a clear artifact. In actual sequences how-
ever, single substitutions are extremely rare. For example, a base pos-
ition that has undergone 25 substitutions across a tree connecting
50 species will produce a lot of noise and not a very good signal: it will
be ‘saturated’ in phylogeneticist language. Complicating this, any
given position will be fast- or slow-evolving, and this evolution is het-
erotachic: the evolutionary rate of movement of any given position
changes over time (i.e. slow in one part of the tree and fast in another
part).60 Phylogeny is based primarily on these fast- and slow-evolving
changes: fast-evolving sites are major contributors to change, but
produce more noise whereas slow-evolving sites contribute fewer
changes, but produce more reliable signals. Complicate this still further
by long-branch attraction (LBA) artifacts in which two fast-evolving
species will be grouped together (appear together on the phylogentic
TOL) as a result of the increased noise created by two slow-evolving
species because they share many ancestral characters.61 The result of
all this is that ‘early-emerging lineages are often fast-evolving ones
misplaced by the LBA artifact’.62 On the universal tree based on rRNA
[such as Woese et al.’s], all the basal branches are thus potentially
 Plenty of Room at the Bottom: Thinking Bacteria 41

erroneous. This is no small thing: it means that the original root, the
first two (of the eight) major branches of the bacterial line (Aquificales
and Thermotogales) as well as the first six (of the ten) branches of
Eukaryotes (Diplomonads, Microsporidia, Trichomonads, Flagellates,
Entamoebae and Slime molds) might well be wrong.63

Thinking (with) microbes

I am interested in various efforts to meet-with bacteria that circumvent

typical bacterial characterizations – as passive, pathogenic and the like –
as well as think through current formulations of sociality that are
defined as human (and, if we are generous, a few other animals) facul-
ties. Schrödinger’s What is Life? may well have indirectly foreshadowed
the kind of generous openness to bacterial self-organization, cognition
and communication described in works such as Sonea and Mathieu’s
Prokaryotology: A Coherent View and Dixon’s Power Unseen: How Microbes
Rule the World.64 A number of empirical studies, such as those of Ben-
Jacob and his colleagues, meet-with bacteria who are organized,
complex, adaptable, communicative, socially intelligent and conscious.
These studies evince Latour’s prescient observation that ‘microbiology
laboratories are one of the few places where the very composition
of the social context has been metamorphosed’.65 I am especially
inspired by the ways in which Ben-Jacob meets with bacterial actants.
He and his colleagues have developed a number of experiments in
which various kinds of bacteria engage with changing environmental
conditions.66

Perception
Setting the stage for empirical studies concerned with bacterial
perception, Antonio Lazcano, Arturo Becerra and Luis Delaye’s research
suggests that the bacterial ancestors of eukaryote cells had fully
developed sensitivity-response systems, called alarmones.67 Far from
passive microbes that cannot perceive their surroundings, bacteria
monitor and respond to internal and external stimuli. Stress, defined
by environmental insults such as lack of food, temperature change,
excess salt and so on, are detected by alarmones, which are small
signal metabolities that rapidly synthesize in times of stress.68
Alarmones seem to have evolved in RNA and protein cells before
the evolution of DNA genomes. The researchers posit that LUCA had
alarmones, and therefore had an already elaborate complex sensory
system.69
42 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

Communication and self-engineering

From elaborated sensory systems, bacteria developed complex commun-
ication including individual bacterial interpretation of information
provided by other bacteria (micro-level), leading to complex patterns
of (macro-level) behavior. Bacteria form communities of millions and
sometimes billions of bacteria that are capable of complex commun-
ication strategies in which differing environments are perceived, ana-
lyzed and described to members of the community in order to formulate
the best adaptive response.70 While any single bacterium can sense
only a small portion of its environment, a colony forms a kind of
superorganism that can sense much more of its environment through
communication.71
For instance, Paenibacillus dendritiformis can, under conditions of
environmental stress, select their identity from two distinct branching
or chiral morphotype cell types. Through communication, the bac-
teria collectively decide when to move between C and B patterns (see
Figure 2.5). Up close, these different morphologies look like this (see
Figures 2.6a and b).
Bacteria take advantage of inheritable memory in the form of cell dif-
ferentiation and inherited gene expression. They also make ‘colonial-
aided self-executed genetic changes, especially in the noncoding part of
the DNA’, for additional long-term memory. Bacterial communities,
then, ‘perform collective sensing, distributed information processing,
and gene-regulation of individual bacteria by the group’.72 Ben-Jacob
refers to two types of communication: ‘inductive communication
whereby a chemical signal from a bacterium is absorbed by another bac-
terium and triggers a specific predetermined pathway within the receiv-
ing cell’; and ‘informative communication’ whereby a signal ‘initiates
an intracellular response that involves internal restructuring – reorgan-
ization of the intracellular media, the gene-network or even parts of the
genome itself.’73
In other words, bacteria make use of a collective epigenetic memory
that can, for instance, track previous encounters with antibiotics: ‘they
collectively glean information from the environment, “talk” with each
other, distribute tasks, and convert their colonies into a massive “brain”
that processes information, learns from past experience, and, we sus-
pect, creates new genes to better cope with novel challenges’ (forthcom-
ing). In other words, by forming colonies, bacteria provide themselves
with more time to experiment with genetic variation to resist anti-
biotics. Recent research suggests that bacteria modify their colony struc-
ture in the presence of antibiotics.74 Bacteria can also stimulate the
 Plenty of Room at the Bottom: Thinking Bacteria 43

Figure 2.4 Communication amongst P. dendritiformis to transform themselves into

different cell types. They become chiral (a) by elongating themselves through cell
division suppression (b) and then the bacteria collectively alter their movement
from ‘run-and-tumble’ to a coordinated forward-backward movement, which
creates the branch twists with specified handedness (c). Image (d) is a computer sim-
ulated model. Images courtesy of Eshel Ben-Jacob, Herbert Levine and the Royal
Society. See Eshel Ben-Jacob and H. Levine, ‘Self-engineering Capabilities of
Bacteria,’ Journal of the Royal Society Interface (Published online, 2005): 1–18, 6.
44 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

Figure 2.5 C-B Morphotype Transitions. (a) is a B to C transition; (b) a stress-

induced morphotype transition caused by an encounter with fungi (the bright
spot); (c) a B-C dialogue. Images courtesy of Eshel Ben-Jacob, Herbert Levine
and the Royal Society. See Eshel Ben-Jacob and Herbert Levine, ‘Self-engineering
Capabilities of Bacteria,’ Journal of the Royal Society Interface (Published online,
2005): 1–18, 7.

expression of genes in other cells of the same type.75 As such, bacterial

learning within communities is Lamarckian: the bacteria that form
these superorganisms generate new traits and behaviors not explicitly
stored in any given individual’s genes (forthcoming).
Some bacteria communicate in a process known as quorum sensing,
a kind of long-range chemical signaling, which takes place only when
bacteria reach high densities.76 Quorum sensing regulates biolumin-
escence, virulence factor expression, biofilm formation, sporulation
and mating.77 Significantly, this communication not only takes place
between the same kinds of bacteria, but also between different kinds of
bacteria, and even between bacteria and animals. For instance, in the
 Plenty of Room at the Bottom: Thinking Bacteria 45

(a)

(b)
Figures 2.6a and b The first image is of the ‘bushy’ branching morphology. The sec-
ond image shows the dendritic growth. Images courtesy of Eshel Ben-Jacob and the
Royal Society. See Eshel Ben-Jacob, ‘Bacterial Self-organization: Co-enhancement of
Complexification and Adaptability in a Dynamic Environment,’ Philosophical Tran-
sactions – Royal Society. Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 361, no. 1807
(2003): 1287.
46 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

case of bioluminescence, bacteria within fish communicate with the

light organ in which they live, spurring growth to maturation.
Hatchling squid raised in sterile seawater, for instance, fail to enlarge
their pouches without the presence of bacteria. With the presence of
bacteria, these pouches develop into organs.78 Human gut bacteria
communicate with our guts by sensing human hormones and adjust-
ing themselves accordingly.79
Bacteria have further developed complex engineering capabilities as
an adaptation to conflicting environmental constraints. For instance,
when faced with the need for high bacterial density for movement and
the lack of food needed to support that high bacterial density, P. dendri-
tiformis excrete specialized chemicals that form a layer of lubricant
within which the bacteria can move, allowing the colony to expand.80
P. dendritiformis must first extract the fluid from the substrate and then
regulate the surface tension and lubrication’s viscosity. As the bacteria
move forward, they push the lubrication forward with them, ‘paving
their own way’ (2) (see Figure 2.7).

Communities

Bacterial communities contain 109 to 1012 organisms and behave in

multicellular fashion: they differentiate, divide their labor, and even in
some cases ‘reproductive organs’ in which some differentiated groups
of cells reproduce themselves within the community. Bacteria also emit
pheromone-like peptides to signal their willingness to have sex (transfer
DNA) with other bacteria. The peptides, indeed, modify the partner’s
membrane such that the signaling bacteria can penetrate it. We have seen
already that bacteria form spores under environmental stress (starvation).
Sporulation occurs only after a consultative process during which:

A collective assessment of colonial stress as a whole is determined

by cooperative perception. Starved cells emit chemical messages that
convey stress. The other colony members use the information for
contextual interpretation of the state of the colony relative to its
own individual situation. Accordingly, each bacterium ‘votes’ – it
sends a message for or against sporulation. Once each member has
sent its preferences and read the other messages, sporulation is
initiated if the ‘majority vote’ is in favor (forthcoming).

This is, indeed, a parliament of things. For myxobacteria (motile, rod-

shaped bacteria that live in cultivated soils), a majority vote in favor
 Plenty of Room at the Bottom: Thinking Bacteria 47

Figure 2.7 Bacterial Self-Engineering. Branching colonial pattern: (a) typical

branched colonial pattern formed by P. dendritiformis when grown on hard and
food-depleted substrate; (b) a closer look at the branches through a microscope to
show the lubricant layer produced collectively by the bacteria; (c) snap-shot of
a video clip showing bacteria swimming. The video reveals bacteria alternately
swimming and directed tumbling; (d) scanning electron microscope picture noting
the phenotypic diversity of the bacteria, a feature that is collectively regulated.
Images courtesy of Eshel Ben-Jacob, Herbert Levine and the Royal Society. See
Eshel Ben-Jacob and Herbert Levine, ‘Self-engineering Capabilities of Bacteria,’
Journal of the Royal Society Interface (Published online, 2005): 1–18, p. 3.

results in the usually individual cells congregating together – many

hundreds of them – to pile on top of each other in order to form what
are described as ‘fruiting bodies’ (see Figure 2.8).81
Ben-Jacob and his colleagues propose that this bacterial signaling con-
stitutes linguistic communication as the meaning-exchange function of
language in which context-dependent meaning is assigned to words,
sentences and paragraphs.82 Thus, any given (bacterial) reader has the
48 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

Figure 2.8 ‘Fruiting Body’ Morphogenesis in Submerged Cultures of Myxococcus

xanthus. Image courtesy of Dale Kaiser and the American Society of Microbiology.
See J.M. Kuner and D. Kaiser, ‘Fruiting Body Morphogenesis in Submerged
Cultures of Myxococcus xanthus,’ Journal of Bacteriology 151, no. 2 (1982): 4459.

cognitive flexibility to assign meaning to the text, to alter this meaning

upon re-readings and so on. Dialogues based on shared meanings can
also be created between (bacterial) conversers. Informative communica-
tion entails bacterial freedom to select a non pre-determined response.
Thus, bacteria respond within a preferred, not strictly defined, range of
possible responses.
Bacterial colonies, in other words, enable multicellular coordination
beyond the purview of any given bacterium, and this is why bacteria
are typically found in films, chains, mats and colonies.83 E. coli colonies,
 Plenty of Room at the Bottom: Thinking Bacteria 49

for instance, consist of nonclonal populations of differentiated bacteria

that undergo complex morphogenesis.84 The colony itself regulates
bacterial physiology such as DNA rearrangement systems.
Yet bacteria do not, in scifi Borg tradition, forego their own auto-
nomy. Each bacterium constitutes ‘a biotic autonomous system with its
own internal cellular gel that possesses informatic capabilities (storage,
processing and interpretation of information)’.85 Rather, they cooperate.
That is, bacteria have learned to cope with varying environmental con-
ditions by practicing large-scale cooperative systems: millions of bac-
teria cooperate, within and between bacterial communities. This kind
of bacterial organization is inherently malleable because each ‘unit’ or
building block is itself a living organism ‘each with internal degrees of
freedom, internally stored information and internal assessment of
external chemical messages’.86 Commenting on the usual juxtaposition
of cooperation against individual freedom (and the related altruism and
free-rider ‘problems’ within evolutionary theory), Ben-Jacob’s research
suggests that:

The ‘smart’ bacteria have ‘realized’ (over evolution) that increasing

informative communication between individuals results in increased
freedom and cooperation of the individuals. As the individuals increase
their adaptability to the group, the colony elevates its adaptability and
endurability by increasing its complexity. The essential new lesson
that has been learned from bacteria is that colonial higher complexity
provides the degree of plasticity and flexibility required for better
adaptability and endurability of the colony, as a whole, to a dynamic
environment.87

Myxobacteria, for instance, employ various strategies when faced with

‘cheaters’ – those individuals who try to take advantage of the colony’s
cooperative effort. Myxobacteria can isolate defectors by collectively
altering their identity through a new gene expression state. This creates
a new ‘dialect’ that the defector finds difficult to imitate, and it helps
the cooperating myxobacteria to ‘improve their social skills for better
cooperation.’88 Bacteria also cooperate between colonies of different
kinds of bacteria. For example, sub-gingival plaque bacterial colonies
(the ones found inhabiting our mouths) divide their labor to develop
specialized tasks (one such specialized task is storing valuable informa-
tion that is both costly and hazardous to store and maintain). This is
no small accomplishment. Each of the 20 genera of sub-gingival plaque
bacteria is a colony of about 1010 bacteria: together a single human
50 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

Figure 2.9 Hierarchical colonial organization. Each vortex (condensed group of

bacteria) is composed of a number of cells that swarm around their common
center. The vortexes contain from ten to millions of bacteria. The vortexes rotate
clockwise and anticlockwise in non-random patterns. The vortex cells reproduce,
expanding the vortex and moving outward in a unit, leaving behind a branch-like
structure. Pictures (e) and (f) are video stills showing the formation of a new
vortex. Images courtesy of Eshel Ben-Jacob, Herbert Levine and the Royal Society.
See Eshel Ben-Jacob and Herbert Levine, ‘Self-engineering Capabilities of Bacteria,’
Journal of the Royal Society Interface (Published Online 2005): 1–18, 8.
 Plenty of Room at the Bottom: Thinking Bacteria 51

mouth contains about a thousand times the number of bacteria as the

human population on earth. All of these bacteria must communicate
with each other by developing shared languages, and then must work
out ways of cooperating.
Figures 2.9 and 2.10 are examples of hierarchical colonial organ-
ization. The pictures show a whole colony adapting to different envi-
ronmental conditions. The bacterial populations of these colonies are
larger than the total number of people on earth. Each vortex rotates
either clockwise or anticlockwise as the bacterial cells within repro-
duce. Figure 2.10 shows images of vortexes displaying inheritable self-

Figure 2.10 Vortices’ inheritable self-identity. Images courtesy of Eshel Ben-

Jacob, Herbert Levine and the Royal Society. See Eshel Ben-Jacob and Herbert
Levine, ‘Self-engineering Capabilities of Bacteria,’ Journal of the Royal Society
Interface (Published Online 2005): 1–18, 13.
52 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

identity. The ‘mother colony’ in picture (a) was used as the source of
bacteria for plates (b) and (d). They have distinctive patterns compared
to those of (c), which were taken from large vortices at the front of the
mother colony.

Social intelligence

Taken together, this research suggests that bacteria ‘develop collective

memory, use and generate common knowledge, develop group identity,
recognize the identity of other colonies, learn from experience to im-
prove themselves, and engage in group decision-making, an additional
surprising social conduct that amounts to what should most appro-
priately be dubbed as social intelligence’.89 Until recently, this kind of
characterization has been the stuff of science fiction, for instance Greg
Bear’s Blood Music.90 Ben-Jacob and his colleagues posit that bacteria
have developed a kind of genome cybernetics, whereby the genome is
able to perform information processing and alter itself.91 Established
research has shown that other organisms use both transposable ele-
ments and (revealingly defined) ‘junk DNA’ to reconstruct a new coding
nucleus. In yeast and ciliates, for instance, transposable elements effec-
tively re-program genome activity between replications.92 Rather than
rely upon random mutations, cells actively engender genetic variation
through transposons and other means (for instance, bacteriophages and
plasmids). Research on bacteria suggests they perform these same
abilities through their extensive, complex communication skills. For
instance, bacteria employ plasmids that transfer mutations from cell to
cell.93 This ‘acquisition of genomic learning’ is non neoDarwinian, and
for Ben-Jacob, it means that the genome is self-aware.94 Most of the
genome changes described here constitute horizontal changes, but
genomic networks such as those found in sporulating bacteria such as
Myxobacteria, make vertical genomic leaps as well.95 Again, this compli-
cates the traditional emphasis that neoDarwinism places on vertical
inheritance produced through random variation, and is discussed
further in Chapter 3.

Meeting with bacteria

What might we do with these images of complex bacterial communica-

tion and organization? Of myriad issues, three themes are especially
implicated in human meetings-with bacteria. These themes offer prom-
ising ways to set different, more generous, parameters for meetings-with.
 Plenty of Room at the Bottom: Thinking Bacteria 53

A difference which makes a difference96

Reading through scientific reports of bacterial communication, it is
clear microbiologists struggle between a strong eschewal of anthropo-
morphizing bacterial processes and a commitment to acknowledging
the sophistication of bacterial organization. Developed from Charles
Sanders Peirce’s original theory of semiotics, biosemiotics might prove
useful here, not least in its attempt to collapse the Cartesian dualism
separating body and mind.97 Constituting a theoretical approach or
frame, biosemiotics ‘is concerned with the sign aspects of the processes
of life itself’ gleaned through the relationships between sign, object
and interpretant.98 According to biosemiotics, what organisms sense
also has a meaning (food, predator, escape, sexual mate and so on). All
organisms are born into a system of signs – a semiosphere – consisting
of the totality of movements, odors, colors, chemical signals, touch
and so on.99 Organisms co-produce semiotic niches which refer to
the set of signs that an organism must master in order to survive.
‘Each living organism builds its own world, its own reality’.100 Bacteria
are a great evolutionary success story, literally building their own
(and our) world: they constantly co-produce hospitable niches in
the face of antibiotic cat and mouse games, and more generally through
the development of photosynthesis and so on. Jesper Hoffmeyer
distinguishes between endosemiotics – sign processes that take place
inside organisms – and exosemiotics – sign processes between organ-
isms. Compared with exosemiotics, our knowledge of endosemiotics
is impoverished, as is our understanding of bacterial biosemiotics
generally. Alexei Sharov’s passing remark ‘bacteria are not able to
build mental models of objects but they can build material models
of themselves i.e. their offspring’ certainly deserves more careful con-
sideration. Like Karen Barad’s brittlestar, whose blindness is rethought
as ‘all-eyes’, perhaps we might come to understand bacteria as all-
cognition rather than automata making unreflexive responses to
stimuli.101
The research of Ben-Jacob and other bacteriologists is particularly
helpful here, as it provides a picture of the sophistication of bacterial
sign systems, both within any given bacterium, and within bacterial
communities. Studying how information is stored and processed
among bacteria will also help us to better understand what Hoffmeyer
calls vertical semiotics, concerned with the temporal, genealogical or
hereditary aspects of biosemiotics.102 Again, horizontal and vertical
(including epigenetic) bacterial memory provides important insights
into ‘semiotic survival.’103 If, as Sebeok prophesized ‘a full understand-
54 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

ing of the dynamics of semiosis may in the last analysis turn out to be
no less than the definition of life’, then bacterial biosemiotics provides
a treasure trove of clues to both the origins of the life of signs, as well
as their diversity and sophistication: bacteria are capable of biosemiotic
processes that remain elusive to humans.104

Natural, cultural, social

It seems to me that one of the key challenges of meeting-with bacteria,
or at least meeting microbes halfway as Karen Barad might say, consists
in the opening up of nature, culture and sociality. In the 1930s, Robert
Park wrote two articles on ‘human ecology’ in which he refers speci-
fically to the microbial world to argue that social scientists must take
into account the interconnectedness of living (organisms) and non-
living (environment) biota.105 For Park, ‘competitive cooperation’ is a
sociological insight that Darwin used in his early forays into the
mechanics of evolution: ‘He [Darwin] projected on organic life a socio-
logical idea’ and ‘thus vindicated the relevancy and utility of a socio-
logical idea within the biological realm.’106 Park recognizes ‘symbiotic
societies’ are organized in complex interdependent assemblages, but
quickly distinguishes ‘society’ as that which has surpassed biotic inter-
dependence. ‘Man’ is distinguished from animal as less environmen-
tally dependent: humans make and remake their world rather than
simply respond to it, and this remaking involves institutional struc-
tures, customs and traditions. He writes, ‘The fact seems to be, then,
that human society, as distinguished from plant and animal society, is
organized on two levels, the biotic and the cultural. There is a symbi-
otic society based on competition and a cultural society based on com-
munication and consensus.’107
In the end, culture and sociality remain resolutely human productions.
Much more recently, Garry Runciman’s thoughtful talk on the natural,
cultural and social selection at the 2008 British Sociological Association
annual conference revisited these issues. Runciman’s main argument is
that natural, cultural and social selections are three different, sequential
and mutually interacting processes.108 Runciman provided the following
examples of these semiautonomous fields (see Table 2.1).
Various flying creatures are subject to natural selection pressures.
A process of cultural selection determines the human classification of
some of these creatures as ‘game birds’, suitable for human hunting
and consumption according to particular culturally derived rituals. This
cultural selection then leads eventually to a social selection process in
which poaching laws are created, instituted, enforced and broken by
 Plenty of Room at the Bottom: Thinking Bacteria 55

Table 2.1 Nature-Culture-Social Schema. Table courtesy of Garry Runciman

Nature Culture Social

Animal Flying creatures ‘game’ birds Poaching laws

Vegetable Edible grains ‘dietary’ habits Arable estates
Mineral Gold, silver Precious jewelry Minted coins

humans. Social selection pressures then act back on natural selection. If

a particular species of bird killed by sanctioned and unsanctioned
gaming reaches a particular level, this species may become extinct and
its environmental niche will alter.
What strikes me about this formulation is that nonhuman matter
seems only to occupy a place in natural selection. The birds, grains and
metals do not define themselves as game birds, diets or jewelry, and
they certainly do not seem to define themselves in terms of laws, prop-
erty and commerce. As well, the actors in all of these selections seem to
be distinctly human. Everything besides the humans seem to wait
passively to be interpolated into this schema. For me, Latour’s parlia-
ment of things is one of proportional representation: microbes, fungi,
flora and nonhuman animals occupy the bulk of the biospheric parlia-
ment. As Harman puts it ‘all reality is political, but not all politics is
human.’109
Might we think of these selective pressures as not only more involved
with each other, more enmeshed, but as involving the intra-action of
humans and nonhumans? The previous section exposes bacteria as
organized, complex, communicative and communal. As such, perhaps
we might think more in terms of ‘webs of domestication in which we
humans have entangled ourselves’.110 Anna Tsing points out that we typ-
ically understand domestication as human control over other species,
mostly unaware of how such relations entangle humans in domes-
tication as well as in relations of interdependence: ‘we live in symbiosis
with rice, wheat and corn fields, with berry thickets and vegetable
patches, and also with the nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the soil that
their rootlets enter into symbiosis with, in order to grow and feed the
stalk, leaves, and seeds or fruit’.111 We know that seedless grapes, oranges,
bananas and corn have lost their sexuality but reproduce in abund-
ance through their symbiotic relationship with humans (farmers). We
think that we select the plants, but who is to say that the plants are not
selecting themselves?112 Who is to say, indeed, that bacteria are not
selecting modes of human cultural and social selection that enhance
56 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

bacterial thriving? Given the dependence of all life on bacteria, perhaps

bacterial activities (bacterial doing) differentially sustains the greater sur-
vival of some organisms over others – perhaps termites that create and
sustain particular colonies, and humans who create and sustain parti-
cular farming practices – as a means of increasing their own capabilities.
As animals, our position as heterotrophic omnivores (we can only sustain
our own lives through already-made organic compounds) makes us par-
ticularly vulnerable to plant and animal life, which is in turn completely
dependent upon microbes: this is the exact opposite understanding to
Park’s modern formulation in which humans stand outside of, or at least
control, the web of life. A microontology would understand humans to
be enmeshed in a complex web of co-domestications, as Tsing describes,
such that natural, social and cultural selection may not be so definitively
distinguished. Taking research on bacterial self-organization, communi-
cation, complexity, division of labor, and communities seriously suggests
that bacteria are not only social in and of themselves, but also – through
symbioses – weave all organisms into cultural and social co-constructions
and co-evolutions. Shifting our focus to a bacterial perspective, we can
think about how much European colonization of the Americas, the
Antipodes and Africa was precipitated through bacterial organization,
communication and general liveliness: that bacteria colonized at least as
much as humans ever did. As we know, at least in the case of syphilis,
bacterial trafficking crossed the oceans in the opposite direction, colon-
izing already so-called developed nations, and inciting Europeans to
engage in already-enmeshed cultural and social selections when they
encountered T. pallidum and other microbes: isolating patients, killing
sex workers, developing medical treatments such as silver nitrate eye
drops and so on. What I am getting at here is a kind of ongoing mixed
natural-cultural-social history with bacteria. This history extends back to
LUCA and enmeshes natural, cultural and social domains. Bacteria are,
as Lingis so wonderfully wrote, ‘spreadings of duration’.113
Joost Van Loon’s ‘parasite politics’ steers toward the kind of nature-
culture-social enmeshment that characterizes this kind of meetings-
with bacteria. Van Loon argues for an understanding of community
formation from a symbiotic perspective that emphasizes ‘difference-
within’ identity politics, as opposed to the familiar emphasis on ‘differ-
ence-without’ (sameness) in community formation.114 Following the
path of some symbiotic relationships that begin as microbial parasites
and go on to form lasting, mutually beneficial long-term relationships,
Van Loon argues ‘communities are formed on the basis of endemic
parasitism.’115 Through the concept of ‘epidemic space’ – consisting of
 Plenty of Room at the Bottom: Thinking Bacteria 57

vector (mode of passing on), index (first identified case) and vortex
(the coming together of seemingly unconnected events that ‘leads to a
more or less volatile intensification of speed or flows’) forces – Van
Loon argues that viruses and epidemics such as Ebola and HIV/AIDS
require a re-consideration of the traditional separation between ‘the
subject, the social and the public sphere’.116 For instance, Van Loon
argues ‘the more aggressive and virulent a virus, the more it will rely
on cultural vectors for its survival.’117 This resembles the kind of
Latourian actant relations I am interested in. Eschewing as tautological
and reductionist the argument that self-replication is the viruses’
primary motivator, Van Loon argues instead that viruses are primed for
symbiosis because they can never exist in isolation. As vectors of sym-
biosis, viruses are not dysfunctional, but rather an integral part of the
synthesizing process of life.118 Van Loon argues that parasite politics
figures a particular ethical relation to otherness, which is the subject of
the final chapter of this book.
3
Evolutionary Theory and Its
Discontents

Unarguable is another key word. Of course, biologists have

never been at a loss for theories about how one type of living
thing might be evolutionarily related to another, and what fea-
tures might be important for deciding this.1

It might have happened thus; but we shall surely never know

with certainty. Evolutionary speculation constitutes a kind
of metascience, which has the same intellectual fascination
for some biologists that metaphysical speculation possessed
for some medieval scholastics. It can be considered a relatively
harmless habit, like eating peanuts, unless it assumes the form
of an obsession; then it becomes a vice.2

Within any important issue, there are always aspects no one

wishes to discuss.3

Introduction

This chapter concerns symbiogenesis theory, and its speculative role in

evolution. Symbiosis refers to the living together of two or more differ-
ently named organisms for most of the life of at least one of the part-
ners.4 The association may be optional or obligate for one or both of the
organisms. Symbiogenesis refers to the appearance of a new phenotype,
trait, tissue, organelle, organ, or organism formed through a symbiotic
relationship. Symbiosis and symbiogenesis have long been recognized
within biology (particularly microbiology) and ecology, and I will detail
different forms that symbiosis takes, and its implications for expanding

58
 Evolutionary Theory and Its Discontents 59

our understanding of life processes such as coevolution. Lynn Margulis,

symbiogenesis theory’s most well-known and ardent contemporary sup-
porter, has dedicated her career to arguing that symbiogenesis is the
primary creative force in evolution.5 This assertion is controversial, and
evolutionary theorists tend to either ignore symbiogenesis theory or
assimilate it into neoDarwinism.6 This chapter considers symbiogenesis
within the context of other biological phenomena such as epigenetics
and lateral gene transfer, that, when taken together, challenge our
understandings of evolution itself.
Symbiogenesis theory’s ambivalent status within evolutionary theory
offers insights into themes familiar to social scientists such as the gen-
esis and development of scientific facts, and scientific epistemic cul-
tures.7 Throughout this chapter, I will argue that a number of agential
cuts have occurred through scientific (including measurement, techno-
logy and objects), political, social and cultural processes, to define living
and nonliving organisms, and more generally, evolutionary theory
itself.8 My aim is not to pronounce the validity or invalidity of symbio-
genesis theory per se (evolution is, after all, truly Latourian science in
action, and thus forever open to revision in light of new findings), but
rather to contemplate questions about how science processes theory
and data, as well as some of the more germane implications of symbio-
genesis theory for the social sciences. Most social scientists do not
contend with theories of evolution or the origins of life, yet do con-
tend with the persistent societal belief that competition, selfishness,
altruism, fitness, selection, ‘lower’ and ‘higher’ organisms, parental
investment and the like are indigenous to nature. Indeed, from Spencer
to E.O. Wilson to Dawkins, evolutionary theory has maintained that
evolution works as much at the cultural level as at the biological. For
this reason, social scientists need to be curious about competing claims
within evolutionary theory, as they point toward potentially alternate
accounts of the origins of sociable life.

Symbiogenesis theory

I will turn to research detailing the diversity of symbioses later in the

chapter. For now, here are two examples often used to illustrate this
phenomenon. Lichen is a symbiosis of algae or cyanobacteria and
fungi. The cyanobacteria or algae provide the photosynthetic metabo-
lism while the fungus can reorganize its membranes to sustain the
lichen in extreme weather changes such as frozen tundra and desert
rocks.9 Another oft-cited example is Mixotricha paradoxa:
60 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

Figure 3.1a Mixotricha paradoxa. Image courtesy of Lynn Margulis

Figure 3.1b Mixotricha paradoxa. Image courtesy of Lynn Margulis

 Evolutionary Theory and Its Discontents 61

Hundreds of these microscopic protists live in the hindguts of the

Australian termite Mastotermes darwiniensis, digesting the wood that
the termite eats. Not only do these protists live in symbiotic relation-
ship with the termites; other microorganisms – small and large spiro-
chetes – cover their surfaces enabling motility and attach to the
protists via specific attachment sites.10 Moreover, M. paradoxa with its
symbionts have five genomes, and their DNA is transferred horizon-
tally when protists are transferred between termites.11
Symbiogenesis was originally identified by Russian botanist
K.S. Mereschkowski in 1909 within the context of a growing disciplinary
split between botany and zoology. Botanists studying the abundant
lichens on the Siberian tundra and marine biologists studying micro
and macro organisms in fresh and sea water, were developing a critical
attitude toward natural selection ‘which translated into the struggle
for existence as the primary force of evolution’.12 They observed different
forces in nature such as co-evolution, and cooperation. Zoologists study-
ing animals were, not surprisingly, more accepting of the principle of
vertical inheritance, individuated organisms and random mutation.
Fellow Russian botanist B.M. Kozo-Polyansky concurred with Meresch-
kowski as to the abundance and evolutionary importance of symbiogen-
esis, and attempted to integrate symbiogenesis into Darwinism through
the proposition that symbiotic associations were selected for in the strug-
gle for survival. So within the former Soviet Union, emerging discipli-
nary silos, their attendant epistemic cultures (including emerging and
shifting organism classification schemes with a preference for ‘big like us’
organisms) and the technologies developed within particular disciplines
(the electron microscope and genomic imaging for instance) go some
way to explain how symbiogenesis theory emerged as an anomaly
derived from plant and microorganism observation in nature and how it
remained, if not unknown, then marginalized as evolutionary theory
increasingly focused on animals (first in nature and then in laboratory
settings).13 Moreover, translation issues (English Darwinian texts trans-
lated into Russian for instance) may have had an impact on the Russian
reception of Darwinian ideas. The very recent translation of Russian
work on symbiogenesis into English, the developing iron curtain and the
cold war certainly account for the historical and contemporary absence
of Mereschkowski and Kozo-Polyansky’s theories and numerous Russian
empirical studies of symbiosis from North American and European
accounts of evolution.
But the Russians were not alone. In Germany, Andreas Schimper
(1885), Richard Altmann (1890) and Anton De Bary (1887) all proposed
62 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

versions of symbiogenesis theory, as did Paul Portier (1918) in France.

American anatomist Ivan E. Wallin independently developed the term
‘symbionticism’ to account for both speciation and cell organelle origin,
and we might speculate about the more positive reception his work
may have received had his Russian, German and French contemporaries’
research been more widely known.14 It is clear, then, that symbiogenesis
theory emerged soon after Darwinism in a number of countries from
scientists working in a diversity of disciplines. Nonetheless, these ideas
did not permeate Western mainstream zoocentric science.15
Lynn Margulis is contemporary biology’s best known and ardent
supporter of symbiogenesis theory.16 She compiled evidence demon-
strating the bacterial origins of eukaryotic cell parts.17 Against the pre-
vailing scientific consensus up until the 1960s, Margulis argued that
mitochondria and chloroplasts in eukaryotic cells (cells with mem-
brane-bounded nuclei) are the product of a symbiotic merger of
oxygen-breathing and photosynthesizing bacterial ancestors (mergers
two and three in the figure below).18 Amassing a diverse collection of
both historical and contemporary empirical research from a range of
scientific sub-disciplines, Margulis is currently attempting – against the
current consensus of scientific data – to argue that eukaryotic cells also
resulted from a bacterial merger of wall-less archaebacteria and eubac-
teria to produce a cell that contains a karyomastigont (an intracellular
organelle system – merger one in the figure below), whose ‘whip tails’
were once free-living spirochetes.

Symbiogenesis theory and neoDarwinism

Ernst Mayr, the twentieth century’s Darwin, summarizes Darwin’s five

major theories of evolution as: (1) The nonconstancy of species (the
basic theory of evolution); (2) The descent of all organisms from com-
mon ancestors (branching evolution); (3) The gradualness of evolution
(no saltations, no discontinuities); (4) The multiplication of species (the
origin of diversity); and (5) Natural selection.19 The modern synthesis,
or neoDarwinism as it is sometimes called, is predicated on the follow-
ing propositions:

1. Heredity is through the transmission of germ-line genes, which are

discrete units located on chromosomes in the nucleus. Genes carry
information about characters;
2. Variation is the consequence of the many random combinations of
alleles that are generated by the sexual processes, with each allele
 Evolutionary Theory and Its Discontents 63

Figure 3.2 Origin of Species through Symbiogenesis. Drawing by Kathryn Delisle.

Image courtesy of Lynn Margulis

usually having a small phenotypic effect. New variations in genes

– mutations – are the result of accidental changes; genes are not
affected by the developmental history of the individual;
3. Selection occurs among individuals. Gradually, through the selection
of individuals with phenotypes that make them more adapted to their
environment than others, some alleles become more numerous in the
population.20
64 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

In sum, neoDarwinism pivots on the proposition that genes produce

small variations through random mutation over long periods of time.
What distinguishes Margulis’s theory is that it argues against the pre-
vailing consensus within evolutionary theory that random mutation is
natural selection’s primary engine of change. Margulis contends that
symbiogenesis constitutes the major mode of evolutionary innovation on
which random mutation then makes slow, minor changes. In other
words, Margulis argues that the accumulation of random mutations played
a minor, modulating-only role in evolution. As Sapp puts it, symbiotic asso-
ciations ‘brought together genetic material from very distantly related
organisms, and thus the changes arising from them are far greater in
magnitude than those which result from the gradual accumulation of
differences within species such as gene mutation, combination and so
on’.21 A number of corollaries follow from Margulis’s theory, including
the implication that organisms acquire characteristics through horizon-
tal – Lamarckian – inheritance of the kind found in symbiotic mergers,
an issue I discuss later in the chapter.22
For natural selection to be the major creative force in generating or
modifying evolutionary forms, it must, according to Stephen J. Gould,
meet two conditions: ‘(1) if nothing about the provision of the raw
materials – that is, the sources of variation – imparts direction to evolu-
tionary change; and (2) if change occurs by a long and insensible series
of intermediary steps, each superintended by natural selection – so that
“creativity” or “direction” can arise by the summation of the incre-
ments’. Gould continues:

Variation must exist in sufficient amount, for natural selection can

make nothing, and must rely upon the bounty thus provided (by
natural variation)…. Variation in short must be copious, small in
extent, and undirected… If the variations that yielded evolutionary
change were large – producing new major features, or even new taxa
in a single step then natural selection… would perish…. This is why
saltational and macromutational theories have always been viewed
within the evolutionary community as anti-Darwinian.23

In other words, ‘natural selection can only be the major creative

agency in evolution if all or most of the adaptive complexity manifest
in living organisms is built up over many generations by the cumula-
tive selection of naturally occurring small, random mutations or variants,
i.e., additive, incremental steps over an extended period of time’.24
Again, Margulis posits that symbiogenesis, not natural selection, is the
 Evolutionary Theory and Its Discontents 65

major creative force in evolution, producing relatively large changes in

organisms over short periods of time with the adaptive advantage of
generating complexity relatively quickly. Evolutionary theorists term
‘non-Darwinian’ (or anti-Darwinian in Gould’s quote above) any com-
plexity derived from sources other than ‘by brute, mechanical…climb-
ing from the base already built by the efforts of earlier climbing’.25
Complexity achieved through symbiogenesis, what Dawkins calls
‘single-step selection’ ‘denies the very heart of [Darwin’s] evolution
theory’.26 Indeed, for Dawkins, ‘generating adaptive complexity [by
symbiogenesis] is climbing mount improbable in one saltational
step’.27
A second departure concerns the evolutionary ‘unit of selection’.
NeoDarwinism defines the gene or individual organism as the unit of
natural selection and contemporary research is largely informed by a
vertical, nonreticulated conception of phylogeny, isolating mecha-
nisms through which cells differentiate and (through the genome)
struggle for survival.28 Symbiosis, as the ‘the formation of associations,
that is, the breakdown of genetic, physiological and spatial isolation
between organisms’, invites a reconsideration of genes (organisms and
species) as the fundamental unit of selection.29 Margulis writes:

… of all the organisms on Earth today, only prokaryotes (bacteria)

are individuals. All other live beings (‘organisms’ – such as animals,
plants and fungi) are metabolically complex communities of a mul-
titude of tightly organized beings. That is, what we generally accept
as an individual animal, such as a cow, is recognizable as a collec-
tion of various numbers and kinds of autopoietic entities that, func-
tioning together, form an emergent entity – the cow. ‘Individuals’
are all diversities of co-evolving associates. Said succinctly, all organ-
isms larger than bacteria are intrinsically communities… Individual
animals and plants are not selected by natural selection because
there are no literal ‘individual’ animals or plants; ‘natural selection’
just refers to the fact that biotic potential is not reached; the ability
of populations of cells and organisms to maximally grow is always
limited by the growth of different cells and organisms and their
associated surroundings.30

Consider the life cycle of Dictyostelium discoideum. It not only

points to the co-evolutionary history of any organism, but also ques-
tions the phylogenic division between organisms.31 This ‘social
amoeba’ consisting of a hundred or so species belonging to the
66 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

Amoebozoa, emerges from spores that release amoebas who feed on

bacteria.32 When the food supply is exhausted, the amoebas spon-
taneously aggregate to form a multicellular organism that in turn
releases the next generation of spores. Margulis and Schwartz remark
that D. discoideum ‘…have features that are animal (they move, they
ingest whole food by phagocytosis, and they metamorphose), plant
(they form spores on upright reproductive bodies), and fungal (their
spores have tough cell walls and they germinate into colorless cells
having absorptive nutrition – they live on dung and decaying plant
material)’.33 Zoologists classify D. discoideum as an animal; to mycolo-
gists it is a fungus and to a botanist, a plant. Again, what counts as an
individual? – are lichens parasitic fungi; is D. discoideum a plant-animal
on its way to becoming a fungi?34
Disagreement over the unit of selection reveals significant details
about the development of scientific facts and epistemic cultures. At the
heart of the conflict between evolutionary and symbiogenesis theories
is the epistemic privileging of animals. Zoology (and evolutionary
theory generally) privileges animals ‘big like us’.35 Proponents of
symbiogenesis theory argue that a differential focus on animals has
limited most research to the Phanerozoic, leaving the 3,000 million
years of living organism activity in the Proterozoic and Archean under-
researched. This effects a double privileging of organisms as auto-
nomous individuals and of sexual reproduction.
Concomitant to the epistemic ‘big like us’ approach is the class-
ification of bacteria as parasites. ‘To a hammer everything is a nail’ (to
a biologist, every bacterium is a pathogen) might best describe the his-
torical development of bacteriology. For instance, technological
advances in microscopy mainly served to improve the prevention and
treatment of bacteria considered parasitic to humans.36 Oyama argues
that the popularity of parasitism over symbiosis as the characterization
of evolution (and life itself) lends itself ‘with grisly effectiveness to
Dawkins’s manipulative gene language’.37 As a consequence, Keith
Ansell Pearson argues that ‘in biology…symbiosis has had a curiously
awkward history which reveals much about the anthropocentric deter-
mination of the subject and about hominid fears of contamination.
It has played, and continues to play, a subversive role in biology since
it challenges the boundaries of the organism’.38
Part of the containment of bacteria as pathogens, according to sym-
biogenesis theory, has to do with the continued anthropomorphic pref-
erence for vertical genetic filiations through sexual reproduction. This
preference obscures the degree to which DNA (as well as RNA and cyto-
 Evolutionary Theory and Its Discontents 67

plasmic material, bacteria and viruses) is shared horizontally between

organisms, by ‘contamination rather than linear filiation’.39 As Parisi
argues ‘…the classical evolutionary understanding of the development
of life, based on differences of degree (increasing complexity) and types
(species) and on random mutation (Darwin’s theory of natural selec-
tion), dismisses the symbiotic processes of inheritance that explain the
continual modifications of cellular and genetic transmission. [Symbio-
genesis] challenges the “zoocentrism” of the theories of evolution
(based on linear evolution from the simple to the complex)’.40 Put
another way, when ‘heredity is defined as the sexual transmission of
genes from one generation to the next…anything else, transmitted
sexually or not, is by definition foreign, disease, retrogressive’.41
The counter-epistemic privileging of bacteria found in symbiogenesis
theory leads to a preferencing of DNA and RNA exchanges without
reproduction, the collapse of the autonomous individual organism in
favor of organisms as assemblages, and an understanding of evolution-
ary novelty produced primarily through a series of single-step monu-
mental symbiogenetic mergers. Symbiogenesis theory suggests the
symbiotic system – the interactions – is what generates both species
diversity and evolutionary adaptation.42 Thus, for symbiogenesis theory,
the ‘unit of selection’ is the symbiont.43 Put another way, it shifts the
focus of natural selection to ‘reciprocal actions between organisms and
the environment, rather than competition among individuals’.44
At the same time, we need to exercise caution in characterizing
symbiogenesis theory as advocating a cooperative or ‘mutualistic’ rela-
tionship between symbionts found in a number of social analyses such
as Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, published in 1902.
In their recent article in Nature, Goldenfeld and Woese take up the
conception of bacteria as cooperative because bacteria form commun-
ities that appear to act collectively to ‘invade biochemical niches and
interact in biogeochemical cycles’.45 Commenting on the symbiogenic
merger of mitochondria and chloroplasts into the eukaryotic cell,
Lewis Thomas similarly writes:

There is something intrinsically good natured about all symbiotic

relations, necessarily, but this one [mitochondria and the eukaryotic
cell] which is probably the most ancient and most firmly established
of all, seems especially equable. There is nothing resembling preda-
tion, and no pretense of an adversary stance on either side. If you
were looking for something like natural law to take the place of the
‘social Darwinism’ of a century ago, you would have a hard time
68 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

drawing lessons from the sense of life alluded to by chloroplasts and

mitochondria, but there it is.46

By contrast, Margulis argues that ‘symbiosis has nothing to do with

cost or benefit. The benefit/cost people have perverted the science with
invidious economic analogies’.47 Symbiosis and the creation of new
species through symbiogenesis, may be anything but cooperative: we
might just as easily characterize these phenomona as violent. A fungus
attacking an alga for nutrients, after say 25,000 times, led to the sym-
biotic emergence of lichen. Moreover, certain associations may be
defined as both parasitic and mutualistic under different environmen-
tal conditions and/or during different stages.48
The contemporary reception to symbiogenesis theory is mixed, con-
stituting by some accounts Latourian science in action, and by other
accounts an anomalous curiosity. On one hand, there are certainly
indications that more scientists are interested in researching symbiosis,
and that the implications of symbiogenesis theory are being seriously
considered.49 Lead articles in Science and Nature go so far as to foretell a
paradigm shift in evolution and the natural sciences generally precip-
itated by symbiogenesis theory.50 For instance, Goldenfeld and Woese
foresee the gene-dominated molecular reductionism of the twentieth
century supplanted by ‘an interdisciplinary approach that embraces
collective phenomena’.51 Referring to the ability of microorganisms to
reconstruct their genomes in response to environmental stress, the
authors ask ‘how valid is the very concept of an organism in isolation?’
(369). Citing dynamical systems theory, the authors write: ‘This is an
extraordinary time for biology, because the perspective we have indi-
cated places biology within a context that must necessarily engage
with other disciplines more strongly aware of the importance of collec-
tive phenomena’ (369). Symbiosis (the journal of the International
Symbiosis Society) is dedicated to research on symbiosis and other
journals such as Applied and Environmental Microbiology, Environmental
Microbiology and International Microbiology regularly publish research on
symbiosis. An increasing amount of research is dedicated to better
understanding symbiosis within Homo sapiens as well as exploring the
potential to harness bacteria for producing biofuels and agricultural
innovations.52 Moreover, other phenomena that challenge natural
selection such as biological self-organization are gaining scientific
interest.
This said, most scientists maintain that symbiogenesis is an anomaly,
that it rarely occurs in evolution and does not account for evolutionary
 Evolutionary Theory and Its Discontents 69

novelty on the scale argued by its proponents, and thus does not consti-
tute anywhere near a revolution in evolutionary theory.53 Other scien-
tists have attempted to assimilate symbiogenesis into evolutionary
theory. For instance, in The Selfish Gene, Dawkins acknowledges the
recognition of the bacterial origins of mitochondria in eukaryotic cells
was ‘one of those revolutionary ideas…whose time had come’.54 He
then redefines symbiosis as associations between members of the same
species in order to incorporate symbiosis as a strategy through which
individuals might maximize the preservation of their ‘selfish genes’ over
time. Axelrod and Hamilton attempt to assimilate symbiosis into
neoDarwinism by reasoning that while tit-for-tat game strategies rely
upon individuals’ ability to recognize each other, microorganisms (who
were thought to lack this ability) would maintain continuous contact
with one ‘player’.
Some responses also seem to be normative in character; that is, they
involve the sanction and censure of scientists themselves.55 Thomas
Cavalier-Smith’s review of Margulis and Sagan’s Acquiring Genomes:
A Theory of the Origin of Species distills the major criticism that symbio-
genesis plays a minor role in evolution. His review does more than
this however; it employs rhetorical devices to minimize, contain and
otherwise dismiss Margulis’s research. Cavalier-Smith argues that:
(1) Margulis was not the first person to generate symbiogenesis theory;
(2) Margulis has never fully appreciated his own work on symbio-
genesis; (3) Margulis’s former supervisor Hans Ris actually revived
Mereschkowski’s symbiogenesis theory; and (4) that Margulis’s books
directed at a public audience are ‘chattily written in the fashionable
mode of pop-science journalism’.56 Cavalier-Smith’s attempt to dis-
place the credit for symbiogenesis research on to other – male – scien-
tists (Mereschkowski, Ris and himself) and the derogation of that
portion of Margulis’s research written for public consumption might
certainly occupy feminist science studies scholars interested in
women’s continued struggle within science as well as science studies
scholars concerned with continued ‘top-down’ scientific approaches to
public understandings of science.57
Cavalier-Smith notwithstanding, Margulis’s recognition within the
scientific academy through honors such as the National Medal of Science
make most scientists wary of direct attacks. The majority of scientists
acknowledge the validity of Margulis’s compilation of evidence concern-
ing the symbiogenic mergers of mitochondria and chloroplasts while at
the same time denying its greater implications (and perhaps hedging their
bets in case future research tips the scales in favor of more widespread
70 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

acceptance of symbiogenesis theory). Referring to symbiogenesis theory

and the Gaia hypothesis, Ernst Mayr states: ‘The evolution of the
eukaryotic cell was the single most important event in the history of
the organic world and Margulis’s contribution to our understanding
the symbiotic factors was of enormous importance. But what she is
saying now…it’s startling to find a reputable scientist arguing such fan-
tasies’.58 Referring to Margulis, W. Ford Doolittle states ‘There’s a role
in science for iconoclasts. It would be a great mistake to jump on her
with both feet. They raise questions even when they’re wrong. And, of
course, they’re occasionally right, as she was’.59 John Maynard Smith
similarly states: ‘I think she’s often wrong, but most of the people I
know think it’s important to have her around, because she’s wrong in
such fruitful ways. I’m sure she’s mistaken about Gaia too. But I must
say, she was crashingly right once, and many of us thought she was
wrong then too’.60 These responses from leading figures in evolution-
ary theory provide a flavor of the normative character of science when
faced with competing theories and evidence.61

A tangled web, or ‘On the Origins of Species by Means of

Natural Selection and All Sorts of Other Things’62

Kuhn’s characterization of normal science occasionally subjected to

catastrophic challenges that devastate the current paradigm has given
way to interest in the myriad complex ways in which the cacophony of
new findings in science and new developments in technology circulate
in the production of knowledge in largely distinct disciplines. Several
analyses have detailed, for instance, the steady movement within gen-
etics and molecular biology away from the central dogma that at one
time defined new sub-disciplines and determined research agendas.63
A recent article in The New York Times quotes Sonja Prohaska, a bio-
informatician at the University of Leipzig critiquing the central dogma:
‘It cannot work that way’ says Prohaska, ‘there are simply too many
exceptions to the conventional rules for genes’.64 Similarly, there is no
short supply of critiques of neoDarwinism.65 Given that hypothesis
testing, new ideas and critique are built into the very fabric of science,
I see symbiogenesis theory as one of several biological phenomena
pushing our insights concerning evolution.66 Space constraints pre-
cluded an exhaustive review of this literature: what I will do here is
gesture toward recent developments in evolution and development
research that move us further from the sole emphasis on random
mutation, the individual organism as the unit of selection, and ‘slow’
 Evolutionary Theory and Its Discontents 71

evolution, and toward research that explores co-evolution, epigenetics,

lateral gene transfer and other biological phenomena.
Bacteria participate in different agential cuts when disciplines and
sub-disciplines draw from each other to produce interdisciplinary
research agendas. Margaret McFall-Ngai traces the impact of recogniz-
ing bacterial-animal symbioses within evolutionary and development
theory:

Several decades ago, ecologists realized that bacteria have in the geo-
logical past, as well as in the present day, dominated material and
energy flow in the world’s ecosystems. Subsequently, with the advent
of molecular phylogenetic analyses, evolutionary biologists have
come to recognize that bacteria are the most diverse of all organisms.
In recent years an integration of bacterial genetics and physiology
into host cell biology has produced a remarkable insight into the bio-
chemical mechanisms that sustain the eukaryotic cell… Now is the
time for the fields of microbiology and developmental biology to
embrace a similar integration of thinking (11).

Animal development, writes McFall-Ngai, proceeded from an ‘implicit

assumption…that only “self” cells (i.e. those containing the host
genome) communicate to induce developmental pathways’ (1). How-
ever, growing evidence suggests that co-evolution between bacteria and
animals is ubiquitous and that these symbiotic associations are main-
tained across generations.67 Recognizing that the ongoing evolutionary
presence of bacterial genomes means that animal (including human)
genomes are actually genomic communities, Relman and Falkow call
for a ‘second human genome project’ to characterize these microbial
partners.68
McFall-Ngai details two methods for maintaining bacteria-animal
symbioses across generations: environmental and transovarian trans-
mission. In the former, only the sperm cells do not have symbionts:
bacterial partners are transmitted either through or on the female
gametes. Bacteria are also passed from parent to offspring during birth.
During embryogenesis, tissues that develop specifically interact with
co-evolved microbial species. In the case of environmental transmis-
sion, the larvae or juvenile organism acquires bacterial symbionts from
its environment.69 (4). This is the case for symbionts in the termite
hindgut for instance. In some cases, such as in tube worms, intracellular
symbioses also exhibit environmental transmission; that is, some asso-
ciations use both transovarian and environmental transmission. Further,
72 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

some bacterial transmissions are obligate for the animal. For instance
Asobara tabida wasps have an obligate relationship with Wolbachia
bacteria: without Wolbachia, the wasp cannot reproduce offspring.
Researchers have also found that co-evolved bacteria induce genes associ-
ated with mucosal immunity, intestine maturation and nutrient process-
ing.70 Moreover, many environmentally transmitted symbioses remain
open to the environment throughout the life of the nonbacterial sym-
biont.71 This can, for instance, help the animal to differentiate between
indigenous microbiota (that is, bacteria transmitted environmentally and
transovarianally) and ‘tourist’ bacteria, which in turn aids in immunity.72
Conrad Waddington differentiates between ‘normative’ natural selection
(based on competition) and ‘epigenetic’ natural selection based on com-
plementary cell-cell interactions during development.73 Studies of the
ubiquity of developmental symbioses suggest a need to acknowledge
epigenetic selection as systemic functioning between organisms.74
Epigenetics is gaining increasing attention within evolutionary and
development (‘evo-devo’) theory.75 Epigenetics refers to the vertical trans-
mission of information through non-DNA means. While there is no
change in the underlying DNA sequences (from this process alone;
changes occur through other means), nongenetic factors determine
gene expression. Epigenetics challenges the central dogma of genetics,
which maintains the centrality of DNA in both genetic inheritance and
organismal development. The central dogma, simplified, looks like this:

1. In the nucleus, two strands of DNA pull apart;

2. Through a process known as transcription, an RNA polymerase
enzyme copies one of the DNA strands into a strand of mRNA;
3. the mRNA strand is transported out of the nucleus and into the
cytoplasm;
4. Through a process known as translation, transfer RNA (tRNA) binds
to the mRNA;
5. The tRNA adds an amino acid monomer to the polymer chain;
6. The protein chain then moves into the cell to direct activity there.76

Numerous findings now complicate this equation. Increasing evid-

ence suggests the importance of proteins, the cytoplasm and the envir-
onment in determining which genes are activated, transported, copied,
spliced and so on (indeed, these developments are leading geneticists
to coin a new central dogma, ‘one protein – many functions’). As
Jablonka and Lamb write, ‘the gene cannot be seen as an autonomous
unit…a “gene” has meaning only within the system as a whole’.77
 Evolutionary Theory and Its Discontents 73

Alternative splicing involving introns (formerly known as ‘junk DNA’

– only about 1.5 percent of DNA codes for proteins) and exons; cross-
ing over (gene recombination through the exchange of DNA segments
during meiosis – it can produce nearly limitless variation in the gametes
because it can occur at different sites and in different germ cells); post-
transcriptional editing of mRNA; repair mechanisms that sacrifice fidelity
(i.e. nonerror) for the continuation of replication; enzyme-mediated
modification of protein composition; chromatin diminution (when large
pieces of chromosome are eliminated from cell lineages that go on
to form body cells); polyploidy; polyteny (with or without under-
replication); amplification; rearrangement; homeotic genes (that turn
on and off transcription factors); lateral gene transfer; enzyme reverse
transcriptase; and other phenomena observed during mitosis and meiosis
complicate the gene-centric view of evolution.78
Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb analyze the impact of epigenetics on
evolutionary theory.79 Researchers have known for some time that identi-
cal genes can lead to very different phenotypes, and that disabling genes
known to influence particular developmental pathways can make no dif-
ference to the final phenotype. Now we know that most specialized cells
are epigenetic, and acquire information that they pass to their daughter
cells through epigenetic inheritance systems (EISs). Epigenetics considers
the genome as an organized system (rather than the autonomous gene of
the central dogma scenario), suggesting that genetic variation is not
entirely random. In other words, epigenetics suggests that ‘soft inherit-
ance’ from the environment is also at play in natural selection.80 Jablonka
and Lamb detail the influence that August Weismann’s theory of vertical
inheritance through sexual reproduction had on the rejection of Lamarck’s
theory of the inheritance of characteristics acquired during an organism’s
lifetime.81 Weismann, however, did not completely expunge Lamarckism
from evolutionary theories. Nor did the idea of gradual evolution of small
variations meet without opposition: a number of evolutionary theorists
(for instance, Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton, and much later Stephen
J. Gould) propagated the idea of saltatory jumps in evolution – an idea
that resonates with symbiogenesis theory.82
Moreover, Margulis’s research, and those of others working on the cyto-
plasm and embryogenesis, showed that genes are not exclusive to the
nucleus: they are also found in mitochondria and chloroplasts. Bacterio-
logy also confirms that bacteria do not have membrane-bounded nuclei:
so for the majority of organisms on earth, Mendel’s laws do not apply.83
Research shows that bacteria produce mutations in response to envir-
onmental conditions. Mutations, therefore, are not generated through an
74 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

entirely random process: they are ‘directed’.84 Moreover, mutation rates

in bacteria increase during stressful environmental conditions. These
mutations can be global such that mutations increase throughout the
genome; local such that mutations increase only in certain regions of the
genome; induced local mutations that occur in direct response to changing
environmental conditions; or induced regional increased mutations which
are nonrandom increases in the rates of mutation in a specific set of
genes.85
As James Shapiro writes, ‘These molecular insights lead to new con-
cepts of how genomes are organized and reorganized, opening a range of
possibilities for thinking about evolution. Rather than being restricted to
contemplating a slow process depending on random (i.e. blind) genetic
variation and gradual phenotypic change, we are now free to think of
realistic molecular ways about rapid genome restructuring guided by
biological feedback networks’.86

Conclusions

While researchers are actively pursuing research on symbiosis, they tend

to agree that future research is unlikely to reveal a symbiogenetic origin of
other components of the eukaryotic cell.87 It is one thing for micro-
biologists and prokaryotologists to study horizontal genome acquisition
in bacteria. However, the implications of ‘such horizontal gene transfer
between prokaryotes and eukaryotes, and between eukaryotes of different
species’ – the interdependence of species for genetic novelty, for evolu-
tion itself – remain marginal to neoDarwinism.88 Certainly the acceptance
of symbiogenesis theory pivots to a degree on the weight of empirical evid-
ence that can be harnessed in its support. But it also depends upon other
factors, which science studies has elucidated through analyses of epis-
temic cultures and their inherent normative sanctions. Those scientists
who, for instance, judge symbiogenesis to be an anomaly to be dismissed
may have a lower threshold ‘with respect to what counts as a revolution’
while those scientists who attempt to assimilate symbiogenesis may have
a higher threshold for defining when a theory reaches a crisis point.89
Certainly, as it stands, each side of this debate employs its own paradigm
to argue in that paradigm’s defense:

The resulting circularity does not, of course, make the arguments

wrong or even ineffectual. The man (sic) who premises a paradigm
when arguing in its defense can nonetheless provide a clear exhibit of
what scientific practice will be like for those who adopt the new view
 Evolutionary Theory and Its Discontents 75

of nature. That exhibit can be immensely persuasive, often compel-

lingly so. Yet, whatever its force, the status of the circular argument is
only that of persuasion. It cannot be made logically or even probab-
ilistically compelling for those who refuse to step into the circle.90

Science in action indeed.91

Evolutionary theory is responding to developing research and ideas
that complicate Darwin’s original theories. Referring to the traditional
division between evolution and development, and ‘evo-devo’s commit-
ment to research both in tandem, Jablonka and Lamb write:

As we see it, the dichotomy between physiology/development and

evolution, and between proximate and ultimate causes, is not as
absolute as we have been led to believe. They grade into one another.
At one extreme there are purely selective processes, acting on chance
variation, while at the other there are purely instructive processes,
which are totally physiological or developmental and do not involve
any selection. Between these extremes we find the majority of processes in
the real world, which are to varying degrees both instructive and selec-
tive…. In other words, Darwinian evolution can include Lamarckian
processes, because the heritable variation on which selection acts is
not entirely blind to function; some of it is induced or ‘acquired’ in
response to the conditions of life.92

Richard Dawkins talks of ‘misfirings’ and writes of ‘outlaws’, ‘modifiers’,

‘a motley riff-raff of DNA and RNA fragments…: plasmids, episomes, inser-
tion sequences, plasmons, virions, transposons, replicons, viruses’, ‘muta-
tion[s] [that] include more radical changes in the genetic system, minor
ones such as inversions, and major ones such as changes in chromosome
number or ploidy, and changes from sexuality to asexuality and vice
versa’, emphasizes that ‘mutations are just as likely to initiate genetic
change during growth-mitosis as during reproduction-meiosis’ and an
‘interactive view of gene action’ in which ‘a phenotypic effect of a gene is
the joint product of itself and its environment, an environment which
includes the rest of the genome’.93 Interestingly, Daniel Dennett, whose
Afterword appears at the end of The Extended Phenotype, seems to open
the door for analyses that recognize symbiosis and symbiogenesis:

Each of us walks around each day carrying the DNA of several thou-
sand lineages (our parasites, our intestinal flora) in addition to our
nuclear (and mitochondrial) DNA, and all these genomes get along
76 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

pretty well under most circumstances. They are all in the same boat
after all. A herd of antelope, a termite colony, a mating pair of birds
and their clutch of eggs, a human society – these groupish entities are
no more groupish, in the end, than an individual human being, with
its trillion-plus cells, each a descendant of the ma-cell and pa-cell
union that started the group’s voyage. ‘At any level, if a vehicle is
destroyed, all the replicators inside it will be destroyed. Natural selec-
tion will therefore, at least to some extent, favour replicators that cause
their vehicles to resist being destroyed. In principle this could apply
to groups of organisms as well as to single organisms, for if a group
is destroyed all the genes inside it are destroyed too’ ([Dawkins]
p. 114). So are genes all that matter? Not at all.

To be sure, Dennetts’ commentary does not undermine the selfish

gene theory of selection, but it does beg unit of selection, and identity
questions more generally.
Darwin’s legacy for shaping social science will surely continue as we
work out ways to make sense of symbiosis and symbiogenesis theory
from a social perspective. Grosz argues that Darwin’s refusal to restrict
the structure and processes of evolution to biological activities may
prove to be its strength and value for social theory.94 Focusing on evolu-
tionary theory is important because it speaks directly to the foundations
of social theory. We need to learn more about how the social sciences
developed in tandem with the concept of the individual organism as
the unit of selection and evolution as the struggle for survival, and look
in turn at how these primary assumptions underwrite understandings of
social, group and societal collective action, political affinities and other
macro processes such as risk, consumerism, neoliberalism, surveillance
and globalization. Some feminist science studies scholars have already
engaged symbiogenesis theory to argue for a different understanding of
what it means to have co-evolved with nonhumans as well as critique
assumptions about the ontology of sexual difference.95 The remainder
of this book attempts to imagine identity, gender difference, the envir-
onment and ethics from a microbial perspective.
4
Microontologies of Self

Introduction

Marcel Mauss’s influential work on gifting outlines a system of exchange,

of giving and taking, which depends upon a strong notion of human
selfhood.1 Mauss’s gifting is concerned both with what traffics between
people (human and nonhuman animals, objects, souls and identities)
and the structure of this trafficking (its largely implicit social norms).
Mauss argues that gifting is a way of forming and maintaining com-
munity identity, and through this process, individual identity. The
system of gifting, and the relationship between ‘self’ and ‘nonself’, is
understood as a closed economy in which gifts are given and received
– calculated in a complex system of exchange predicated on a paradox:
gifting requires that ‘exchangers’ be individuated selves capable of
giving ‘freely’; at the same time, individual autonomy is necessarily
compromised through the obligatory structure of giving.
It is this excess of the gift – a compromising of the self – that interests
me. Drawing upon Rosalyn Diprose’s notion of ‘corporeal generosity’,
I argue that there is much in gifting that circumvents descriptions of
the ‘self’/‘nonself’ dichotomy in terms of a closed economy in which
resources are exchanged without excess or remainder.2 Diprose’s ‘notion
of an embodied generosity is intended to draw attention to the unavoid-
able yet generally overlooked debt that any body owes to other bodies’.3
At the same time, this embodied gifting is both unpredictable and
intrusive – there is as much possibility of threatening the integrity of
bodies as there is of opening up new possibilities. It is this complexity
of the ‘self’/‘nonself’ relation that is contemplated in recent analyses
of the biological literature on immunity. This literature is interested in
the complex ways in which organisms, through the immune sub-system,

77
78 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

distinguish between ‘self’ and ‘nonself’ for the purpose of maintaining

immunological integrity. While immunology initially favored a closed
economy approach, it now increasingly recognizes the permeable
borders of the ‘self’ and ‘nonself’ as well as the sense of unpredictability
and openness to change over time.
My interest is to bring together these two literatures, the former con-
cerned with the philosophical and the latter with the biological. This
bringing together attempts an analogy between the biological and the
economical self. To do this, I will suggest that the models of self pro-
duced by each discipline have developed in directions that suggest an
appreciation of the self’s excess produced through intra-action. I argue
this excess (especially in terms of its unpredictability and unintended
consequences) may be usefully illustrated by the bioevolutionary
phenomenon of symbiogenesis.
To some degree, the task of linking these ‘selves’ together has been
accomplished with respect to human-animal relationships.4 However,
these relationships concern, for the most part, ‘self’/‘nonself’ debates
at the macro-level.5 Like Feynman, I want to think small – I am interested
in the human-bacterial relationship, which I argue provides perhaps
the most forceful arguments for Diprose’s challenge to ‘self’/‘nonself’
models.6 In so doing, I hope to contribute to Maureen O’Malley and John
Dupré’s recent call for a ‘more inclusive philosophy of biology’ that pays
attention to the micro-level of life.7 O’Malley and Dupré presciently argue
that attention to microbes ‘will transform some of the philosophy of
biology’s standard ideas on ontology, evolution, taxonomy and bio-
diversity.’8 To this end, I will argue that microbes render the human ‘self’/
‘nonself’ distinction partial at best, suggesting the efficacy of drawing
upon biological theories and evidence to further consider philosophical
debates about selfhood. I will conclude with some thoughts on how
a theory of corporeal generosity might contribute to ongoing efforts to
theorize the social, for instance in Levinas and Derrida’s encounters with
the Other as an ‘ethical moment par excellence’, a conversation I revisit
in Chapter 7.9

Corporeal gifting, or the economic self

The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, provides
the outline for contemporary debates concerned with the constitution
and limits of gifting as a fundamental cross-cultural practice.10 Mauss
begins by outlining the explicit features of gifting as the free, voluntary
giving of resources without any expectation of return. However, Mauss
 Microontologies of Self 79

centrally argues that this fundamentally misconstrues the life of the

gift: gifts are given only upon the requirement of obligatory return.
As Mary Douglas writes ‘there are no free gifts; gift cycles engage
persons in permanent commitments that articulate the dominant
institutions’.11 Mauss argues that the purpose of gifting is to build
ongoing connections of obligation and reciprocity between individuals
and communities. Drawing upon several anthropological studies, Mauss
identifies gifting as a universal feature of organized societies, between
all members of society, and entailing a wide range of property, wealth,
movable and immovable goods and services, and individuals. And yet
these material gifts to a certain extent mask the central commodity of
exchange, which consists of an individual or community’s soul (self-
hood, autonomy): ‘in this system of ideas one clearly and logically
realizes that one must give back to another person what is really part
and parcel of his [sic] nature and substance, because to accept some-
thing from somebody is to accept some part of his spiritual essence,
of his soul.’12 In short, gifting defines a two-fold obligation: the oblig-
ation to give, and the obligation to receive in a continuous process the
function of which is to secure the cohesion of the social.
This cyclical, continuous process suggests a particular relation of
ownership between any individual and gifted objects. Specifically,
because a gift received must be continually returned, ownership can
only be partial and temporary: it is ‘a pledge and something hired
out…and at the same time deposited, mandated, and bequeathed in
order to be passed on to another. For it is only given to you on condi-
tion that you make use of it for another or pass it on to a third person,
the “distant partner.”’13 Moreover, since we do not return to the giver
the gift that s/he gives, we must estimate the value of the gift (the soul
of the giver) in both passing on this gift, and returning another.
Finally, the process of gifting is its own purpose, insofar as it is the
process itself that is important, rather than the outcomes (which them-
selves only occur as corollaries of the process). And as long as the oblig-
ations to give and receive are met (and the obligation to do so is
sufficiently strong as to obviate nonparticipation), there is a sense in
which, beyond the obligation to reciprocate, gifting entails the poten-
tial for unanticipated consequences, outcomes that are produced from
the process itself.
The Gift has incited the critical imagination of a number of scholars
who variously critique or extend Mauss’s characterization. For instance,
Morna Joy points out that Mauss’s interpretation bears little relation to
the anthropological ethnographies he cites, which are already distortions
80 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

based on Western cultural and colonial perspectives.14 Nigel Clark notes

that Western interpretations tend to emphasize gifting as a closed econ-
omic system in which objects are resources that circulate without
excess; in which, in Alphonso Lingis’s terms ‘what goes around comes
around’ and ‘there is no such thing as a free lunch’.15 As such, Clark
notes that setting the terms of gifting within an economic paradigm
effects a mobilization of emphasis on the negative, destructive aspects
of gifting, which creates what Diprose refers to as ‘a parsimonious
relation to the world’.16
Lingis, Diprose and Clark challenge this economy-driven focus on
gifting as a closed system in which calculable commodities are exchanged
in an effort to maximize power. Lingis argues ‘a gift is truly a gift only to
the extent that… there is an element of impetuousness, reckless-ness
in it’.17 For this reason, Jacques Derrida argues that giving is impossible
since a gift is recognized as such and becomes a commodity, thus bestow-
ing a debt on the recipient.18 As such, a gift is only possible if it goes
unrecognized and if the giver and receiver both forget the gift.19
Diprose’s concept of ‘corporeal generosity’ takes up the notion of the
gift as debt. She wants to draw attention to the debt that a body owes to
other bodies, reminding us that every life is dependent upon a whole
range of openings to other lives. For Diprose the corporeal gift is gen-
erous in as much as it is the ‘nonvolitional, intercorporeal production
of identity and difference that precedes and exceeds both contractual
relations between individuals and the practices of self-transformation’.20
Corporeal gifting, between bodies (human or otherwise) and within
bodies, thus engages an open, undetermined play of forces, a ‘network
of unknowable and immeasurable outcomes’.21
This adaptation of gifting theory retains a number of key ideas from
Mauss’s original theory, such as the conviction that gifting involves
the obligatory giving of our selves, that the processes take precedent
over outcomes,22 and that the outcomes themselves can neither be
anticipated nor calculated. As such, Diprose, Clark and Derrida refer to
gifting as a violent act insofar as it involves a radical opening up to
unknowable events and outcomes. That is, generosity carries with it
the potential threat of harm through unanticipated possibilities.23
A number of scholars have extended the gifting literature beyond
human-human interactions, to argue for the sort of corporeal generosity
of which Diprose writes. In When Species Meet, Donna Haraway makes a
deep kinship claim between animals (dogs) and humans predicated on
‘multidirectional flows of bodies and values’.24 Kara Kendall provides a
close reading of Emmanuel Levinas’s human-dog/Other relation that, she
 Microontologies of Self 81

argues, complicates Levinas’s traditionally read humanism.25 Describing

relations between humans and other animals, Clark argues that ‘to enter
into a close relationship with another species is not to enter a circle of
calculable effects of equivalent exchanges, but to open a network of
unknowable and immeasurable outcomes’.26 These relationships are
at once foreign and familiar: on one hand ‘our very identities as indi-
viduated or discernibly different beings arises out of exchanges with those
who differ from us’ (7); on the other hand, corporeal generosity ensures
that there is something definitively familiar in the relationship, in the
‘letting go of customary precautions and boundary maintenance on
the part of each participating being’ (8). And further, this corporeal
generosity effects bodily transformations that are neither anticipated nor
intended.
With Robert Wilson’s observation that ‘our paradigm for an indi-
vidual is a human being’, I want to both extend and bring closer to
home these readings of corporeal generosity by focusing on bacteria
and their symbiotic relations within human bodies.27 Residing inside
the body (but not contained by it), bacteria-human relations do not
enjoy the attention of animal-human companions, but are nonetheless
crucial to the survival of humans. As such, O’Malley and Dupré argue
that the major focus on macroorganisms such as animals actually
‘distorts our philosophical view of the biological world’.28 In order to
make this argument, I first turn to the human immunology literature
which specifically addresses the ‘self’/‘nonself’ relation at the biological
level.

The biological self

The self model has enjoyed a long history in evolutionary theory.

‘Individuality’ notes Scott Gilbert, ‘was assumed by evolutionary bio-
logy, and it was not a problem to be solved’.29 Distinguishing between
germ and soma lines, Weismann’s theory of ‘genetic individuality’
defined the organism at three different levels: genetic (the assumption
that each individual has one genotype), embryonic (how parts become
a single whole) and organism as a whole (individual entities that com-
pete).30 Frank Burnet’s definition of immunity – ‘any element which
is foreign (nonself) to an organism will trigger an immune reaction if
introduced to it, whereas endogenous elements (self) do not, in normal
circumstances, induce an immune reaction’ – characterized immuno-
logical individualism.31 That is, Burnet’s self/nonself model offered a
way of understanding biological relations between organisms while
82 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

simultaneously maintaining the organism sui generis. The immune self

that emerged in the biological literature ‘expressed… the… image of
competitive struggle between organisms and infectious agents (such as
bacteria and viruses); and intentional acts of identification – parti-
cularly of “recognition” of the foreign – underlie the division and rela-
tion between self and nonself’, effecting what Diprose describes as a
‘parsimonious relation’ with respect to bacteria and the human body.32
For instance, referring to this approach, Tauber notes that ‘antibodies
were first described in the context of repelling pathogenic invaders or
neutralizing their toxins’.33 This agential cut – bacteria as distinctly
separate and constantly threatening to devastate the integrity of the
(human) self – has animated the logic of immunology for decades. It is
not the only possible agential cut, however, and I am interested in
emerging formulations that suggest symbiotic and co-evolutionary
understandings of self.
Indeed, with regard to microbiota, the immunological literature sug-
gests selfhood in more-than predation terms; in other words, the inter-
face between an organism’s exogenous and endogenous boundaries
constitutes the (unpredictable) excess of selfhood. Taking ingestion as
an example, Crist and Tauber argue that:

the nutritive act enables the continued existence of the living

entity; yet it also places the organism in jeopardy, for to engulf a
foreign entity is potentially a dangerous, even lethal, action. The
typical outcome of the amoeba-bacterium encounter is the disinte-
gration of the bacterium by digestion.34

The rub, that an activity necessary to life (ingestion) may also lead to
such a catastrophic ending (death of the self) is the one most often
assumed to characterize relations between humans and microorganisms
– predation.35 Yet, Crist and Tauber note ‘another possible twist to the
story’ which anticipates my argument, that the bacterium (although it
would more accurately be an already entangled community of bacteria
with complex genomic lineage) may develop the ability to resist being
digested, and indeed, may further develop the ability to live within the
organism, thus developing a sort of ‘truce rather than war’.36 Again
resembling the philosophical literature’s discussion of gifting relation-
ships between people and their excess, the authors characterize micro-
biotic and animal relationships as ‘a tense proximity between self
and nonself’; a characterization that fits well with symbiosis and
symbiogenesis.37
 Microontologies of Self 83

To start, Pradeu and Carosella identify a number of circumstances in

which the traditional immunity model does not hold, such as the body’s
tolerance of bacteria, parasites, skin grafts (from identical twins), foeto-
maternal tolerance and chimerism.38 These phenomena, events if you
will, are social – they depend upon complex ongoing intra-actions – and
invoke different senses of self, since skin grafting between identical twins
is tolerated and immunity is acquired rather than innate.39
On this latter point, it turns out that immunity is co-extensive with
microbes that are inherited both vertically and horizontally. In a com-
prehensive review of the development of microbiological research on
interspecies epigenesis, Scott Gilbert notes that ‘microbes direct the
development’ of immune responses by the lymphocytes in our lymph
nodes.40 Bacteria also activate genes that produce generalized defensive
substances. For example, the expression of the enzyme matrilysin used
to digest proteins and kill harmful bacteria is induced by the bacteria
themselves.41 Co-evolved microbiota also induce genes associated with
mucosal immunity. Here the body responds ‘to overtures made by the
specific co-evolved community’ which includes the differentiation
between resident microbiota and ‘tourist’ bacteria passing through the
body.42 Accumulating evidence also suggests that allergies, asthma and
inflammatory bowel disease may be due in part by the lack of normal
development between indigenous microbiota and body tissues.43 In
short, and as Chapter 3 noted, organismal development is predicated
upon symbioses: ‘all development is co-development’ as McFall-Ngai
concludes.44 Whereas evolutionary theory has traditionally focused on
‘isolating mechanisms’ through which cells differentiate into indi-
viduals, symbiosis entails ‘the formation of associations, that is, the
breakdown of genetic, physiological and spatial isolation between
organisms’.45 Species mergence rather than differentiation best charac-
terizes evolution produced through symbiogenesis.46 Thus, human
immunology embodies a history of bacterial origins.
All eukaryotic cells are heterogenomic (their genomes have more
than a single type of ancestor). That is, eukaryotic cells are commun-
ities rather than individual entities. Of all the cells in a human body,
10 percent are eukaryotic (derived from bacteria) and 90 percent are
bacteria.47 As Sagan notes ‘the human body…is an architectonic
compilation of millions of agencies of chimerical cells’.48 For Lewis
Thomas, any definition of Homo sapiens must take into account the
‘provisional configuration of elements… [A] good case can be made for
our nonexistence as entities. We are not made up, as we had always
supposed, of successively enriched packets of our own parts’.49
84 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

Symbionts all the way down means that we are, ancestrally, made
up of bacteria. It also means that any given human body is also a
symbiont: 600 species of bacteria in our mouths and 400 species of
bacteria in our guts, and the countless more bacteria that inhabit our
eyes, anuses, and skin. Indeed, the number of bacteria in our mouths
is comparable to the total number of human beings that have ever
lived on earth.50 The number of microbes in our bodies exceeds the
number of cells in our bodies by 100 fold. The human distal gut con-
tains more than 100 times as many genes as our human genome
(which has 2.85 billion base pairs). That is:

‘… human animals live in symbiosis with thousands of species of

anaerobic bacteria, six hundred species in our mouths, which neu-
tralize the toxins all plants produce to ward off their enemies, four
hundred species in our intestines, without which we could not
digest and absorb the food we ingest’. The number of microbes that
colonize our bodies exceeds the number of cells in our bodies by up
to a hundredfold.51

Every living thing that exists now, or has ever lived, is a bacterium.52
Asking what bacteria have to do with humans is, in Gould’s terms,
asking the wrong question, or as Cary Wolfe puts it referring to
humanism, ‘the “human” that we know now, is not now, and never
was, itself’.53
The incalculable interactions between bacteria and human guts,
mouths, anuses, eyelids and so on certainly exceed traditional closed-
economy, pathogen characterization. Indeed, Kitano and Oda point
out that the myriad symbiotic relationships within the human intestines
actually function to optimize robustness against pathogen attacks.54
Tauber reminds us that it is the bacteria in our colons that produce
vitamin K, an essential co-factor in producing clotting proteins.55 A
recent genomic study found that intestinal bacterial flora can mani-
pulate ‘host’ gene expression.56 The study found that the symbiotic
relationship works both ways: the ‘host’s’ genotype and immunology
reciprocally affect the bacterial flora life.
The concentration on competitive individuality, most recently arti-
culated through the genome, has been fruitfully critiqued.57 At cellular
and multicellular levels, the continued image of the go-it-alone gene/
organism/human makes little sense. To paraphrase Gilbert, the formation
of an ‘individual is actually the formation and continuity of a collegial
assemblage of organisms’ (my emphasis). Schneider and Sagan refer to
 Microontologies of Self 85

selfhood as the ‘stumbling block’ of modern biology insofar as the

gene (or perhaps more recently the cell, and at most the organism), is
researched as an autonomous entity: ‘Organisms (let alone genes) are
not isolated Platonic abstractions, but centres of flux messily inter-
acting in evolving populations. Selfhood, over time, is not stable’.58
Indeed, O’Malley and Dupré argue that prokaryotes cannot be mean-
ingfully studied in isolation, that is, as individual selves. The authors
argue that an individual microbe is not the fundamental ontological
unit in microbiology – rather the community is the smallest ‘self’.59
Taking on board our growing knowledge of human-bacterial relations,
and cognizant of the gifting and immunology literatures, our under-
standing of humankind as composed of autonomous individuals is
partial at best. As symbionts, we are gifted into heterogeneous assem-
blages unrestricted by sexual reproduction: assemblages proliferated
by ‘contamination rather than linear filiation’.60 Assemblages con-
ceive variation in evolution not in terms of the natural selection of
individual autonomous organisms struggling through scarcity and
propelled by gratification, but as the ever-transitioning networks of
relations within already filiated populations.61 Tauber captures the
implication:

The lesson to be gleaned is not that our body has learned in the
course of evolutionary history what is beneficial to it and what is
not, but rather that the boundaries of self and nonself become indi-
vidually tailored and may be blurred. What is becoming increasingly
evident is that the immune system ignores much of what it sees. It
allows the organism to engage its environment…: the self/nonself
border is ever-changing (590).

Molecular biology, notes Scott Gilbert, shows that animal-bacterial

co-evolution is the rule not exception.62 And Doolittle argues that
within-species genomic variation cannot be explained by intense host-
parasite conflict, but rather as evidence of the hitherto unimagined
diversity of microbial life, a point I will return to later.63
Following the path of some symbiotic relationships that begin as
microbial parasites and go on to form long-term relationships, Van
Loon argues ‘communities are formed on the basis of endemic para-
sitism’64: as we have already seen Van Loon argues ‘the more aggressive
and virulent a virus, the more it will rely on cultural vectors for its sur-
vival.’65 This resembles the kind of actant relations I am interested in.
As vectors of symbiosis, viruses are not dysfunctional, but rather an
86 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

integral part of the synthesizing process of life.66 Van Loon argues that
parasite politics figures a particular ethical relation to otherness.
Van Loon characterizes viruses as (poisonous) gifts insofar as infec-
tion consists of the ‘flow of pathogen information between hosts’.67
‘The “gift” of infection’ writes Van Loon ‘is an event whose conse-
quences are ambivalent, contingent and open and hence socially and
sociologically significant…immunity of populations [is] an inherently
social phenomenon.’68 Phenomena such as parasitism, infection
and tolerance suggest the interface between an organism’s outside
(exogenous) and inside (endogenous) boundaries constitutes the
(unpredictable) excess of selfhood. Julie Theriot’s research, and
advances in immunology generally, bespeak of this corporeal generos-
ity: ‘disease… is becoming intimate with the cells of our body’, or as
Haraway writes, ‘disease is a relationship’.69 Indeed, cells actively work
with bacteria. As such, ‘disease usually results from inconclusive nego-
tiations for symbiosis, an overstepping of the line by one side or the
other, a biological misinterpretation of borders’.70
To summarize, then, we might say that there is contagion, patho-
genicity, and parasitism at work in the organism, but that it is a rather
more complicated relationship than we tend to assume. Contagion
is co-implicated: it signifies as much debility and death as it does
the possibility of flourishing. As such, bacterial gifting, especially in
symbiotic form, is certainly excessive to traditional economic para-
digms that require autonomous uncorrupted invidualism. Further-
more, failed digestion – symbiogenesis – defines not only an epistemo-
logy (symbionts all the way down) but an ontology of primordial
entanglement.
While an extended discussion of a symbiogenetic approach to envir-
onments occupies Chapter 6, it is worth noting here Margulis’s adoption
of Maturana and Varela’s concept of autopoiesis.71 Autopoiesis refers
to the ‘autonomous organization of dynamic processes occurring within
a closed operational whole’.72 Initially deployed in tandem with James
Lovelock’s term ‘geophysiology’ to describe Gaia’s biospheric self-
regulation, Margulis adapted autopoiesis – self-making – to describe life
as other-than replication. That is, Margulis argues that autopoiesis, not
vertical inheritance, defines life. In two main texts, Autopoiesis and Cog-
nition and The Tree of Knowledge, Maturana and Varela developed auto-
poiesis in response to the epistemological problem of representation.73
For Maturana and Varela, ‘everything said is said by an observer’.74 There
may be a reality ‘out there’, but it exists ‘only through interactive pro-
cesses determined solely by the organism’s own organization’.75 In other
 Microontologies of Self 87

words, the organism’s own autopoietic organization ‘brings forth a

world’: ‘the living organization is a circular organization which secures
the production or maintenance of the components that specify it in
such a manner that the product of their functioning is the very same
organization that produces them’.76 Organisms interact with their envi-
ronments through ‘structural couplings’ that take place in the present:
‘past, future and time exist only for the observer’ (x, 18). What clearly
appeals to Margulis in her formulation of symbiogenesis theory is the
absence of replication as life’s defining teleology. ‘A living system’
write Maturana and Varela ‘is not a goal-directed system: It is, like the
nervous system, a stable state-determined and strictly deterministic
system closed on itself and modulated by interactions not specified by
its conduct’ (50).77 Gaia, for Margulis, is autopoietic insofar as it is a
system that produces the components that produce its own organ-
ization. Maturana and Varela developed the term ‘allopoietic’ to recog-
nize the way that systems work within systems such that the smaller
system (such as a cell) contained within the larger system (such as
an organism) functions are subordinated to the goals of the larger
system.78 As Chapter 7 will detail, one of the objections that evolution-
ary theorists make to Gaia theory is that it characterizes the biosphere
as a kind of evolved superorganism, which, evolutionary theorists
argue, is impossible since evolution would require the planet to have
evolved within an environment shared by at least one other living
planet.
My own concern with autopoiesis is that although I chorus Margulis’s
extraction of life from the teleology of replication (life simply has, in
Dawkins’s terms, too many ‘misfirings’), autopoiesis paradoxically under-
mines symbiosis and symbiogenesis, both of which pivot on a contagic
rather than autonomous self: to wit, the bacterial symbionts in what we
term the human body. As we have seen, each human body is a product
of symbiogenetic mergers (countless bacterial and viral mergers) and
symbioses with diverse kinds and uncalculable numbers of bacteria in
our mouths, anuses, guts and so on. Without the bacteria in our guts,
our digestion is severely compromised, inviting questions about the
autonomy of the human body. We might say that the bacteria are
allopoietic within the autopoietic human body, but this seems distinctly
‘big like us’. ‘Autopoietic machines’, write Maturana and Varela, ‘have
individuality; that is, by keeping their organization as an invariant
through its continuous production they actively maintain an identity
which is independent of their interactions with an observer’.79 As Hayles
points out, for autopoiesis theory, a system’s boundary disintegration is
88 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

equivalent to death: put another way, ‘closure and recursivity…play a

foundational role in autopoietic theory’.80 By contrast, boundary dis-
integration is integral to symbiogenesis. It is what accounts for dramatic
symbiogenetic transformation. Hayles’s insightful critique reveals ano-
ther dilemma concerning the conservation of autopoiesis/organization
on the one hand, and transformation on the other. Considering the com-
parison of an amoeba and a human, Hayles writes: ‘either an amoeba and
a human have the same organization, which would make them members
of the same class, in which case evolutionary lineages disappear because
all living systems have the same organization; or, else an amoeba and a
human have different organizations, in which case organization – and
hence autopoiesis – must not have been conserved somewhere (or in
many places) along the line’.81

Symbiotic generosity

Is it possible to understand gifting outside of the zero-sum game of

economic theory? Through the analogy of the ‘biological self’ and the
‘economic self’, I have argued in this chapter that the human body, far
from exemplifying individuality, is an excellent illustration of the cor-
poreal generosity of gifting. Gifting involves the literal and metaphoric
giving of our selves. We are more materially immersed in the lived
(and unlived in the case of DNA, bacteria, viruses, dust and so on)
bodies of others’ identities than we typically think, and we are cer-
tainly more immersed than contemporary economic exchange theory
allows.82 What we give we never entirely own; possession is only ever
partial and temporary. The value of any gift is always estimated, and
depends entirely upon whether or not, and on what terms, gifts are
acknowledged. Indeed, from a material perspective, it is virtually
impossible to calculate the debts our bodies owe – we circulate nucleic
and mitochondrial DNA, blood, nutrients, flesh, antibodies, pathogens,
microbes, bacteria and viruses in a process that is constitutive of life (as
replication and process) itself.
Corporeal generosity escapes neoliberal notions of a closed economy,
and reminds us that, whatever cultural notions of autonomy and free
will to which we might aspire, we are all corporeally inter-dependent.
The necessary symbiotic relationships and their constant gifting invites
fundamental questions about the individual autonomy of all people
specifically, and living and nonliving matter more generally. That is,
we are not autonomous individuals who subsequently interact: we
intra-act, gifting things calculable and incalculable, and this ongoing
 Microontologies of Self 89

process creates something that we call individuality, to be re-created

with every encounter. Tauber draws attention to the paucity of our
(human) language to grasp the self concept at the microbial level: ‘the
self is neither subject nor object, but is actualized in action; the self
becomes in this view, a subjectless verb’.83 Insofar as Western societies
are dependent upon a notion of freedom prior to constraint, and in as
much as the human body is ‘assumed as clearly and cleanly demar-
cated from others’, then human biology will continue to uncover
uncomfortable anomalies to human subjectivity.84
In a critique of Nikolas Rose’s analysis of ‘life itself’, Bruce Braun
argues that biopolitics is recoding molecular life as inherently un-
predictable and wayward.85 In chorus with the traditional pathogenic
approach to bacteria, new ‘emerging infectious disease’ discourses char-
acterize the human body as ‘radically open to the world, thrown into
the flux of an inherently mutable molecular life where reassortment is
not what we control, but what we fear.’86 By bringing together gifting
theory and critiques of selfhood emerging from biology, I have tried
to provide some balance to this familiar yet heightened rendition of
humanity’s relationship with its world by an exploration of bacterial
symbiogenesis. By focusing on socio-cultural aspects alone, we risk not
recognizing just how corporeal our gifting (and the gifting of others),
and thus the transformative process, actually is. Indeed, I argue this
very corporeal gifting materially enables the transformative process in
the first place. While Diprose focuses her discussion on relationships
between people, gifting also takes place within and between bodies
(between microorganisms, bacteria, viruses and so on). Recognition
of this corporeal gifting enables further exploration of this distinctly
corporeally generous notion of self.
There are a number of spaces within which corporeal gifting might be
explored. For instance, a material notion of becoming as corporeal gifting
may usefully connect the concept of selfhood to the ethical projects
outlined in Levinas, Derrida, Caputo and Esposito’s philosophical works
on friendship and community.87 From the root munus meaning oblig-
ation, office and gift, Esposito notes that immunitas refers to someone
who is or becomes autonomous.88 Esposito argues for a nonimmunized
life, insofar as civil and political rights are attempts to attain immunity
from society. Timothy Campbell’s introduction to Esposito’s work notes
the importance of symbiosis for thinking about community:

some forms of immunity do not necessarily close off access to an

authentically political form of life. Indeed, reading the immunitary
90 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

system as only self-destructive fails to see other interpretive perspec-

tives in which immunity doesn’t protect by attacking an authentic
bios grounded in a common munus, but rather augments its members’
capacity to interact with their environment, so that community can
actually be fortified by immunity.89

This in itself does not dictate the political intent of any given com-
munity. Nazi Germany, notes Esposito, likened Jews to microbes.90
Resonating with the arguments made throughout this paper, Jean-
Luc Nancy argues that ‘Being cannot be anything but being-with-one-
another, circulating in the with as the with of this singularly plural
coexistence’.91 Nick Bingham distinguishes Nancy’s ‘being with’ on
two points: first ‘it is concerned with what is always a multitude of
others rather than a singular other…and second…it is radically non-
athropocentric’.92 Levinas and Derrida contemplate this ‘being with’
relation between humans and nonhumans in terms of an ‘other friend-
ship’. John Caputo describes Derrida’s question thus: ‘Is there a gift of
friendship outside or beyond the economy of equality and reciprocity
that we have always demanded of friendship?… To what extent is the
main Western canon on friendship itself already disturbed and inter-
rupted from within by an understanding, or at least an intimation,
of this other friendship’?93 For Bingham, this ‘other friendship’ is
not characterized by what is linked together (humans and bacteria for
instance) but rather by ‘a certain quality of being open to and with
others’ – a violent openness as Derrida and Diprose remind us.94 In
other words, we push our concept of ethics to the limit when we extend
our unconditional hospitality to the radical nonhuman Other – the
‘other friend’. I return to these questions in the final chapter.
5
Microontologies of Sex

Not that it really matters whether or not he [sic] ever knows

about the vast populations of inorganic life, the ‘thousand tiny
sexes’ which are coursing through his veins with a promiscuity
of which he cannot conceive. He’s the one who misses out. Fails
to adapt. Can’t see the point of his sexuality. Those who believe
in their own organic integrity are all too human for the future
[to come].1

Barnacle sex

In The Origin of Species, Darwin urged scientists to ‘study the oddities of

nature’. Perhaps Darwin had in mind Anelasma ibla or any other of the
sub-class of cirripeds he studied in his exhaustive attempt to under-
stand the structures and processes of nature. Darwin’s ‘barnacle work’
took years to accomplish, involved international correspondence with
scientists and naturalists, and the dissection of hundreds of specimens.
I am instructed by Elizabeth Wilson’s fine analysis of Darwin’s
research on barnacles.2 Through dissection, Darwin discovered that
most species of barnacles are what we would now term intersex:
each barnacle has both female and male organs. Other barnacles first
appeared to be sex dimorphic, but closer inspection led to an interesting
discovery. What Darwin initially discarded as tiny barnacle-infesting
parasites actually turned out to be male barnacles. Completely different
in bodily shape and microscopically small, the male barnacles live,
embedded, inside the body of the female. This is not ‘simply’ the case of
one sex living inside the other; multiple (sometimes thousands) of males
live inside single females. So barnacles can be intersex but they can also
be something else – something we do not yet have a common term for.

91
92 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

Wilson points out that ‘these females and hermaphrodites with many
husbands are not simply the intermediary stages in the evolution of
barnacle form; they are also evidence of the somatic diversity that
nature produces’ (284).
From a human perspective, barnacle sex and reproduction seem
peculiar indeed. A perusal of the social scientific literature suggests that
gender, sex, reproduction, replication, sexual difference and mixis are
defined from an entirely ‘big like us’ vantage point. What might we
learn from thinking about sex, reproduction, sexuality and sexual dif-
ference as the majority of the earth’s biota practice these processes?
Sharon Kinsman presciently asks:

Because most of us are not familiar with the species, and with the
diverse patterns of DNA mixing and reproduction they embody, our
struggles to understand humans (and especially human dilemmas
about ‘sex’, ‘gender’ and ‘sexual orientation’) are impoverished…
Shouldn’t a fish whose gonads can be first male, then female, help us
to determine what constitutes ‘male’ and ‘female’? Should an aphid
fundatrix (‘stem mother’) inform our ideas about ‘mother’? There on
the rose bush, she neatly copies herself, depositing minuscule, sap-
siphoning, genetically identical daughters. Aphids might lead us to
ask not ‘why do they clone?’ but ‘why don’t we?’ Shouldn’t the long-
term female homosexual pair bonding in certain species of gulls help
define our views of successful parenting, and help [us] reflect on the
intersection of social norms and biology?3

The variety of animal, plant, fungal and protoctist sex and reproduc-
tion that Kinsman refers to is diverse indeed: slime molds can produce
more than 500 different kinds of sex cells; the average male blanket
octopus is 2.5 centimeters long compared with his 1.8 meter and
40,000 times heavier female mate; green spoon worm larva become
female in the absence of other female spoon worms; male angler fish
attach to female bodies where they degenerate until their death; male
seahorses fertilize eggs inside their bodies where they are gestated until
birth; gray whale mating rituals involve two males and one female;
mangrove fish have ovo-testes and fertilize themselves; male slipper
limpets become female as they mature; star-shaped sea squirts meet on
the ocean floor and send cells (including DNA) to each other through
the blood supply they come to share; some kinds of whiptail lizards are
all female, hatching unfertilized eggs that produce more females;
female bronze-winged jacanas mate with up to four males and the males
 Microontologies of Sex 93

build nests, incubate the eggs and feed the chicks when they hatch;
male sticklebacks also care for their fertilized eggs and offspring until
they are independent; male Darwin frogs keep their tadpoles inside
their vocal sacs until they develop into froglets; naked mole rat daugh-
ters help their queen mother stay infertile by smearing her with their
urine; a hatchling turtle’s sex depends on its temperature while it was
in the egg; and leopard slugs are intergender (female and male) but
fertilize each other’s eggs.4
With Kinsman, I want to attend to the diversity of sex, gender, repro-
duction, sexuality and sexual difference within the kingdoms Animalia,
Plantae, Fungi and Protoctista. But I also want to appreciate these issues
from the perspective of Monera, a vast assemblage of organisms rarely
included in discussions of the evolution and current practices of sex. We
know especially little about bacterial sex and reproduction: yet within
Monera, diversity meets its biological and human imaginative limits.

Post-mature discoveries and evolutionary theory’s problem

The kind of generation of offspring with which humans are most famil-
iar, mixis, has been studied since the end of the nineteenth century, by
botanists studying plant fertilization and zoologists studying the fertil-
ization of eggs with sperm. For Zuckerman and Lederberg, humans’ dis-
covery of bacterial sex was ‘post-mature’. Scientists were surprised that it
was not discovered earlier since: (1) the techniques used were available;
(2) it was understandable at the time; and (3) its implications must have
been capable of having been appreciated.5 That discoveries can be post-
mature necessarily speaks of the context of assumptions, beliefs and
values in which the questions answered by the discovery are not viewed
as important or relevant. ‘Why’, ask Zuckerman and Lederberg, ‘was
recombination in bacteria not perceived as a problem before 1946?’6
Part of the answer lies in the fact that bacteria were first assumed to be
tiny primitive plants: Ferdinand Cohen called them Schizomycetes or
‘fission fungi’. Humans also find bacteria to be difficult experimental
subjects: we might say, after Haraway, that the laboratory is not a set-
ting within which we ‘meet well’ with bacteria. Observations of bacteria
require humans to adopt the prosthetic aid of a microscope, and bac-
teria act differently in laboratory conditions than elsewhere: they are
different actants in relation to the microscope, as Latour might say.
Additionally, humans have traditionally conceived of bacteria as patho-
gens, of little interest and importance otherwise. Thus, it was not until
March 1946 that Tatum and Lederberg observed sex in E. coli.
94 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

These first inauspicious meetings have had unexpected yet significant

material and rhetorical effects. First and foremost, our attention has been
focused on sexually reproducing species, and further, on identifying
gender differences within species. For instance, Carl von Linné, the
‘father of taxonomy’, based his classification scheme on what he under-
stood at the time to be gender differences between plants (of course,
he did not use this term). The famous Linnean Systema Naturae was
widely adopted and provided the blueprint for further animal and plant
taxonomies, well into the twentieth century.7 Social scientists, and fem-
inist scholars in particular, are well aware that gender difference com-
prises one of the major axes (along with race, ethnicity, social class, age
and disability) that humans use to make intra-differentiations amongst
humans. Indeed, in public discourse, (some) women’s ability to produce
offspring through sexual reproduction has long counted as one of the
most obvious signifiers of gender difference. Whatever social, political
and economic changes might take place to alter women’s position in
society, sexual reproduction is seen as both immutable ‘fact’ and cause of
structural differences between women and men. Of the almost countless
references to female ‘materiality’ as sexual reproduction, my training as a
sociologist secures Emile Durkheim’s rendition as a particularly sharp
thorn in my side. He writes, ‘…society is less necessary to her because she
is less impregnated with sociability…Man is actively involved in it whilst
woman does little more than look on from a distance’.8 Not only does
Durkheim remind his readers that it is female bodies that can be (pas-
sively) impregnated, but this impregnation is limited to fleshy materiality
(babies). If male bodies are (actively) impregnated, it is with decidedly
nonmaterial sociality.9
It is within this social, political and historical context that the recog-
nition that uniparentally reproducing organisms have an evolutionary
advantage over sexually reproducing organisms became what is known
as the defining problem of evolutionary theory. John Maynard Smith
referred to sexual selection as one of the ‘greatest challenges in evolu-
tionary theory’, Darwin wrote The Descent of Man: And Selection in
Relation to Sex concerned with sexual selection, Ernst Mayr deliberated
on the relative evolutionary merits of uniparental versus sexual repro-
duction and so on.10 After an extensive search of the biological litera-
ture on sex, Mackay concluded:

The most intriguing aspect of my research was why we have sex at

all. After all, sexual reproduction in animals started only 300 million
years ago. Life on earth got on pretty well for 3000 million years
 Microontologies of Sex 95

before that with uniparental reproduction… [Sexual reproduction]

takes more time, it uses more energy, and mates may be scarce or
uncooperative.11

Sexual reproduction is a problem for the modern synthesis because its

starting point is the production of offspring – those selfish genes deter-
mined to replicate themselves – characterized as a cost-benefit relation
in the context of individual competition.12 According to evolutionary
theory, sexual reproduction requires greater energy and time invest-
ment and is risky because it may cause injury and/or death, and it may
not be successful. Maynard Smith describes a ‘two-fold cost’ of sex
whereby uniparental individuals avoid producing costly males and
overproduce females. Organisms that produce uniparentally are viewed,
from this perspective, as having greater survival potential because they
produce more offspring (typically in less time, using less energy, and
with greater success defined as producing more live offspring).
This affects an apparent disjuncture between the ‘better’ adaptation
of uniparentally reproducing organisms and the classification of
sexually reproducing species as ‘more complex’, ‘higher’ and so on.
NeoDarwinism explains this disjuncture by proposing a number of
benefits to sexual reproduction, including greater genetic novelty
through the recombination of two heritable genomes, greater ability to
evade parasites, eliminate deleterious mutations, and promote adapt-
ations to new environments.13 These factors all increase organisms’
‘per locus heterozygosity’, which means that the greater genetic vari-
ation of any given allele the better its chances of withstanding environ-
mental change. Sexual reproduction, in other words, is an out-crossing
mechanism that increases hybrid vigor. Sexual reproduction, according
to this theory, functions to increase heritable variance, thereby acceler-
ating evolution. However, we would actually expect increased additive
genetic variance to slow down evolution: ‘if the immense genetic vari-
ation of natural populations is maintained by selection, then sex must
represent an advantage because it slows down evolution’.14 So, impli-
citly, organisms that reproduce sexually (significantly including
animals) turn out to be superior after all. Margulis and Sagan are more
acerbic, calling this rhetorical maneuver ‘bio-economic “just so” stories
that rationalize the existence of present-day life forms and their adapta-
tions by thinly veiled comparisons with the profit motive’.15
Symbiogenesis theory presents an entirely different theory about
contemporary forms of sex and reproduction. Its central argument is
that sex arrived late on the evolutionary scene, as an effect of various
96 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

symbiogenetic mergers and niche constructions. From this perspective,

the kind of sex practiced by some animals (including humans) is a result
of the failure of organisms to exchange DNA through other means. As
such, sexual reproduction is an outcome of contingent circumstances
rather than evidence of greater ‘complexity’ or hybrid vigor. In order
to examine the details of this argument, we first need a nonzoocentric
– moneric if you will – glossary of terms.

An/Other glossary

Sex is ‘any process that recombines genes (DNA) in an individual cell

or organism from more than a single source…sex may occur at the
nucleic acid, nuclear, cytoplasmic, and other levels’.16 Many processes
besides sex alter the structure of DNA or add DNA to produce variation,
such as cosmic irradiation, virus and symbiont acquisition and expos-
ure to ambient chemicals.17 ‘Big Like Us’ creatures find this definition
challenging: while sex produces genetically new individuals, sex does
not need to (nor does it typically for most organisms) produce an
increase in the total number of individuals. Sex recombines DNA. There
are countless examples of organisms that give and/or share DNA with-
out producing a new individual. For instance, here is a picture of the

Figure 5.1 Trichonympha. A hypermastigote engaged in sex. Image produced by

Dorion Sagan. Image is a still from L.R. Cleveland’s 1963 film, ‘Sexuality and
other Features of the Flagellates of Cryptocersus’.
 Microontologies of Sex 97

hypermastigote Trichonympha (a uninucleate multiflagellate organism

that lives symbiotically in termite and wood-eating cockroach guts)
engaging in sex.
Reproduction is ‘the process that augments the number of cells or
organisms’.18 In other words, reproduction, not sex, increases the num-
ber of cells or organisms. As Margulis puts it ‘molecules, cells, organisms,
even communities…reproduce’.19 We find in nature many examples of
sex without reproduction, and reproduction without sex. Moreover,
reproduction occurs both horizontally and vertically. As Margulis and
Sagan observe:

Our own biologically parochial existence as sexually reproducing

beings does not mean…that there is only copulatory, genital-based
sex or that sex has anything necessarily to do with reproduction
….Sex is not equivalent to reproduction. On the one hand, any
organism can receive new genes – can indulge in sex – without
reproducing itself. On the other hand, plants bud, bacteria divide
and cells with nuclei reproduce all without any requirement for
sex.20

Human bodies are constantly engaged in the reproduction of cells as

a condition of living. For instance, we reproduce our own livers every
two months, our stomach linings every five days, new skin every six
weeks, and 98 percent of our atoms every year (ibid). Oyama refers to
this ‘mobile exchange’ of genetic, intra- and extra-cellular and envir-
onmental influences as a ‘choreography of ontogeny’.21
As an illustration of the difference between sex and reproduction,
recall the Acrasia cellular slime mold discussed in Chapter 4:

Figure 5.2 Drawing of an Acrasia Cellular Slime Mold. Image courtesy of

Anthony Krivan
98 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

When starved of nutrients, hundreds of individual cells living inde-

pendently, react to a chemical signal (a gender difference) and fuse.
These cells unite to form ‘slugs’ that can be seen by the (nonmicroscope-
aided) eye. Acrasia do not reproduce because there is no increase in the
number of live individuals (indeed, there is a decrease). Nevertheless, the
‘slug’ is a product of a sexual event among multiple parents.22 As Nick
Lane puts it, slime molds ‘have more than two sexes, while maintaining
uniparental inheritance’.23
Thus, we can think in terms of various levels of sexual union:

Table 5.1 Levels of Sexual (and Para-Sexual) Unions. Table courtesy of Lynn
Margulis

Levels of Sexual (and Para-Sexual) Unions

What Level? What Units? Example

Genophoric DNA recombines: small and bacteriophage (bacterial virus)

(bacteria) large replicons: integration enters an E. coli
into partner’s DNA
Chromosomal Crossing over female drosophila DNA
(eukaryotes) crossovers
Nuclear Fusion of nuclei: Karyogamy Paramecia or Formaniferi
nuclei
Cellular Cytoplasm fusion: syngamy, Animal sperm fertilizes egg
fertilization
Histological Transplantation of isolated Skin grafts, scion plant grafts,
(para-sexual) tissues, organs or blood organ transplants
fusion
Organismal Fusion of entire organisms, Geosciphon pyriforme, larval
mating, conjugation, hybridizat
gamontogamy

In evolutionary time, symbiogenesis is a form of reproduction in

which new organisms are created without meiotic sex. In the case of
the symbiogenetic merger of mitochondria and chloroplastids with
nucleated cells, 1 (mitochrondria) + 1 (chroloplast) + 1 (nucleated cell)
= 1 (new kind of organism). For Mixotricha paradoxa, 1 (insect) +
1000s (protists) + 1000s (bacteria) = 1 Mastotermes darwiniensis.
Mitosis is ‘cell division…consisting of a doubling of chromosomes
followed by their segregation and deployment to offspring cells’ as
illustrated in this image of the green algae Actinoastrum.24
 Microontologies of Sex 99

Figure 5.3 Actinoastrum engaged in Reproduction (mitosis). Image courtesy of

Lynn Margulis

Mitosis preserves diploid cells (cells with two sets of chromosomes).

It is responsible for the creation of all protists (unicellular eukaryotes).
Prokaryotes reproduce by binary fission, and plants, fungi and animals
grow through mitosis.25 In other words, plants, fungi and animals
develop via mitosis. Even the creation of a new human infant is pri-
marily the result of almost countless mitotic cell divisions (resulting in
growth). Meiosis is cellular activity whereby diploid cells reduce to
haploid (one set of chromosomes, as in eggs and sperm) cells.26 The
creation of a new human being requires meiosis followed by fertiliza-
tion (in which the nucleus of a haploid cell fuses with the nucleus of
another haploid cell). Animals, plants, fungi and gendered protoctists
today all cycle between the doubled (diploid) state of body cells and
the single (haploid) state of gender cells. Meiosis is not exclusive to
animals and plants. Protists, for instance, undergo more varieties of
meiotic sex than any other kind of organism.27
Mixis refers to the ‘production of a single individual from two
parents by way of fertilization occurring at the level of fused cells
or individuals’ and can be thought of as a very particular form of
reproduction.28 In humans, mixis occurs through meiosis and mitosis.
Many organisms practice meiosis without mixis – dandelions for
instance.
100 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

Thus, compared with the minimal amount of mixis that some human
beings engage in for a very short period of time, each of us engages
in recombination (cutting and patching of DNA strands as well as the
coming together of cytoplasm, entire cells, parts of organisms and
entire organisms), merging (fertilization of cells), meiosis and mitosis.
Our human bodies live in a permanently fertilized state, with only our
egg and sperm cells qualifying as haploid: the vast majority of our cells
are diploid. And 44 of our 46 chromosomes are completely unrelated to
what we tend to think of as sexual difference. The only thing that does
not exist is a pure (Y or YY) male.29
Donna Haraway highlights a key irony that in biological terms sex
precludes reproduction:

There is never any reproduction of the individual in sexually repro-

ducing species. Short of cloning…neither parent is continued in the
child, who is a randomly reassembled genetic package projected
into the next generation. To reproduce does not defeat death any
more than killing or other memorable deeds of words. Maternity
might be more certain than paternity, but neither secures the self
into the future. In short, where there is sex, literal reproduction is a
contradiction in terms…Sexual difference founded on compulsory
heterosexuality is itself the key technology for the production and
perpetuation of western Man and the assurance of this project as a
fantastic lie.30

When bacteria incorporate genes from other bacteria and then repro-
duce, their genes are passed on to their offspring without mixis. In
other words, bacteria, not humans, ‘breed true’.31 And lest we remain
sanguine about sexual forms of reproduction, we do well to remember,
with Haraway, that sexual reproduction brings death to the individual.
Since sex refers to the mixing of DNA, we need a term to describe
features that bring organisms together to share DNA and/or reproduce:
a term that describes mating types. The term I adopt here is gender.
Our human tendency to conflate sex and reproduction coupled with
our desire to accentuate difference encourages us to concentrate on
markers used to designate female and male in humans such as genitals,
chromosomes and gonads.32
For nonhumans, gender may well refer to other markers that have
nothing to do with genitals, female-to-male attraction, or male-to-female
attraction: gender is much more commonly things like H2, slime or hor-
mones. The mushroom Schizophyllum commune has 27,000 genders,
 Microontologies of Sex 101

encoded by ‘incompatibility genes’ that come in many versions (alleles)

on different chromosomes. Any given organism inherits one out of
over 300 possible alleles on one chromosome, and over 90 on the other
chromosome, giving a total of 27,000 possible combinations (300 × 90).
Two cells sharing the same allele on either chromosome cannot mate,
a way to encourage out-breeding according to evolutionary theory.
Even with this biological prohibition, Schizophyllum commune are
still able to mate with more than 99 percent of the population. Stentor
polymorphous has 58,000 genders. Moreover, many species are composed
of more than female and male. Many organisms are able to produce off-
spring that are both genders, multiple genders or no genders at all,
including intersex in animals, monoecism in plants and heterothallism
in fungi. For instance, a single fungal spore of a Saccharomyces cerevisiae
(baker’s yeast) may produce its own offspring, which then mate with
each other without sexual fusion. Gender can change with the time
of day, with temperature and, in the case of Ophryotrocha, organism
length. For these reasons, Margulis and Sagan define gender as an
epiphenomenon.
In sum, living organisms display sex, reproductive and gender diversity.
People with intersex conditions display a wide range of genomic gamete
configurations: XXY, XXXY, XXXXY, XXYY, XXXYY to name a few.
There is also great diversity in nonhuman animal chromosome structures:
male birds are homogametic with two Z chromosomes and females are
heterogametic with one Z and one W chromosome – thus female birds
determine the chromosome configuration of their offspring.33 Some
reptile and amphibian species have no sex chromosomes, and the chro-
mosome configuration of offspring is determined by the temperature of
egg incubation. The platypus has five X chromosomes and five Y chro-
mosomes. Many species also transgender. David Policansky documents
some of the widely distributed geographically and taxonomically gender-
changing species.34 Given the selective and reproductive advantages of
changing gender, Policansky questions why more species do not change
gender, rather than attempting to explain why some species do have this
ability. In other words, in some families of fish, transgender is so much
the norm that biologists have created a term for those ‘unusual’ fish that
do not change gender – gonochoristic. The coral goby, for instance, shifts
between female and male depending on environmental circumstances. As
further examples, earthworms and marine snails are male when young
and female when they grow older. Chaetopod annelids show a similar
development, but in certain environmental circumstances will change
back into males. For instance, when two females are confined together,
102 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

one female may kill the other female by biting her in half or eating all
the available food. When this female has had sex with a male, the male
might then turn into a female and bite her in two.35
Researchers have also found transvestism to be widespread amongst
nonhuman animals. Sometimes transvestism takes a physical form,
when animals physically resemble another gender of their species.36
Transvestism might also be behavioral, when an animal behaves in
ways associated with another mating type of their species. Some
entomologists, for instance, describe transvestism in various insect
species. For instance, the female Papilio phorcas (a type of butterfly)
takes on ‘male pattern’ wings of other male butterflies that fly faster
and are better able to avoid prey.37
Organismal meetings focused on gender often seem to obscure other
meetings-with our environments. For instance, more than 50 synthetic
chemicals flow into our bodies daily (including tinned vegetables,
cigarettes, chemical detergents, makeup, DDT) and alter our endocrine
systems.38 Endocrine-disrupting compounds have been found to be
responsible for a recently reported doubling in incidence of hypo-
spadias in the United States and Europe.39 Children are at risk of expos-
ure to over 15,000 high-production-volume synthetic chemicals; most
of them developed in the last 50 years. More than half have not yet
been tested for toxicity.40 The effects of DDT and DDE have been
studied on a diverse range of animals from Tiger Salamanders to
Cricket Frogs.41 A number of researchers are interested in the possible
causal relationship between exposure in utero to environmental chem-
icals and effects on human sexual reproduction including gender ratio,
disruption of androgen signaling, decreased sperm number and quality,
androgen insensitivity, testicular and breast cancer, decreased prostate
weight, endometriosis, decreased fertility, increased hypospadias and
undescended testes, as well as adverse effects on immune and thyroid
function.42 Again, each of these exchanges with the environment may
effect variations in gender and fertility without any recourse to sex or
mixis.
Amongst bacteria, fertilization does not occur and so bacteria have not
developed differences associated with gender. One might, indeed, stretch
this to say that bacteria defy gender altogether. Yet, it is testament to the
pervasiveness of the current paradigm of evolutionary theory that bacte-
ria, practicing sex without reproduction, have not escaped gendering
through human classification. Schiebinger shows how the history of the
study of bacteria was infused with a priori notions of sex and gender
from the outset.43 As we saw earlier, until the 1940s, bacteria were
 Microontologies of Sex 103

assumed to be uniparental. After that time, the ‘sex life’ of bacteria was
described in heteronormative terms. Specifically, bacteria were defined as
female or male based on the absence or presence (respectively) of a
‘fertility’ or F-factor (females designated F-; males designated F+):

To transfer genetic material, the ‘donor’ or ‘male’ extends its sex pili
to the ‘recipient’ or ‘female’. Unlike the case in higher organisms,
the chromosomal transfer is unidirectional from male to female and
the male, not the female, produces offspring. Further when the F+
cell transfers a copy of its F– factor to an F– partner, the recipient
becomes male or F+. Because the donor cell replicates its F– factor
during conjugation, it too remains F+. Thus all cells in mixed cul-
tures rapidly become male (F+) donor cells: the females change into
males, the males remain males, and everyone is happy. A recombi-
nant F– (female) cell results only from a ‘disrupted’ or failed transfer
of DNA…. (149–150).

Except that gender change within bacterial sex is rampant. All it takes
is for the F– factor to be transferred through viral infection, and a bac-
terium changes from F– to F+ and vice versa. Heat also changes gender
in bacteria. Yet, the infusion of heteronomative ideology into analyses
of bacteria persisted until the 1990s, decelerating the recognition of
bacterial sex without reproduction and reproduction without sex.

Sexual diversity44

Because sex, reproduction and sexuality are so firmly associated in our

understanding of the evolutionary basis of behavior, it is worth extend-
ing the discussion to sexuality. The diversity of sexual behavior amongst
(known) species typically exceeds human normative expectations. This
diversity confronts cultural ideas about the family, monogamy, fidelity,
parental care, heterosexuality, and perhaps most fundamentally, gender
difference. Edward Wilson notes that ‘monogamy, and especially
monogamy outside the breeding season, is the rare exception. Parent-
offspring bonds usually last only to the weaning period and are then
often terminated by a period of conflict’.45 Single parenting, or indeed
no parental investment at all, is the norm in the nonhuman living world
(only five percent of mammals form life-time heterosexual pair bonds).
Nonhuman organisms organize the care of young in diverse ways – what
we might recognize as day-care, fostering and adoption. Parents also eat,
and have sexual intercourse with their offspring.
104 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

Many animals do not engage in sexual behavior solely or primarily

in order to produce offspring. There is a general lack of acknowledge-
ment of pleasure as an organizing force in relations between non-
human animals. Male house flies remain copulating with female house
flies for a full hour after all of its sperm are transferred, despite the fact
that this prolonged copulation decreases its ability to sexually repro-
duce with other flies (and thus produce more offspring).46 Indeed,
some insects have sex for an entire day. Animals also derive pleasure
through masturbation. For instance, one ethologist recounts the fol-
lowing observation of stags:

He may masturbate several times during the day. I have seen a stag do
this three times in the morning at approximately hourly intervals,
even when he has had a harem of hinds. This act is accomplished by
lowering the head and gently drawing the tips of the antlers to and fro
through the herbage. Erection and extrusion of the penis…follow in
five to seven seconds…Ejaculation follows about five seconds later.47

Female animals engage in sexual intercourse when they are already

pregnant. Birth control is not restricted to humans; many animals
practice forms of birth control through vaginal plugs, defecation, abor-
tion through the ingestion of certain plants, ejection of sperm and, in
the case of chimpanzees, nipple stimulation. Embryos are also known
to kill other embryos.
Perhaps the single most popular debate about sexual diversity, how-
ever, is whether or not homosexual behavior is natural or unnatural.
Homosexual behavior is part of our evolutionary heritage: it can be
traced back at least 24–37 million years.48 Homosexual behavior occurs
in over 450 different species of animals, is found in every geographic
region of the world, in every major animal group, in all age groups,
and with equal frequency amongst females and males.49 Homosexual
behavior in animals is enormously diverse, and in some species is more
diverse than heterosexual behavior.50 Like heterosexual pair-bonding,
life-time homosexual pair-bonding is not prevalent in mammal spe-
cies. More than half of mammal and bird species engage in bisexual
activities. Nonhuman animal homosexual behavior varies in frequency
within and between species from nonexistence (that is, it has not been
reported by ethologists) to levels that meet or surpass heterosexual
behavior.
Whether homosexual behavior is still considered a deviation from
the heterosexual norm, there is a list of other sexual behaviors class-
 Microontologies of Sex 105

ified as abnormal that few people question. Sex between different species
is one of them. Yet findings are beginning to emerge suggesting that
sexual behavior amongst nonhumans is again much more plastic and
diverse than human culture recognizes. Sexual behavior between
flowers and various insects is so commonplace that it is rarely recog-
nized as transspecies sexual activity. And other examples have been
found. For instance, Krizek documented a sexual interaction between
two different orders of insects, a butterfly and a rove beetle. The rove
beetle was perched on a leaf with its abdomen elevated. The butterfly
approached and for several seconds explored the beetle’s anogenital
organs with its proboscis. Krizek notes that other such interactions,
between different orders of human and nonhuman animals, have been
observed. Dieter Mollenhaur and his team in Germany have amazing
footage of a Nostoc (cyanobacterium) mating with a zygomycete fungus
to produce Geosiphon pyriforme, a holobiont. This mating between
members of two different kingdoms is, indeed, ‘forbidden fertilization’.
In short ‘natural systems are driven as much by abundance and excess
as they are by limitation and practicality’ and are reflective of strong
ecosystems.51

Original frustrations, frozen accidents

I return now to the problem in evolutionary theory outlined at the

outset of this chapter: how to account for sexual reproduction when it
slows down evolution. From a Moneric perspective, mixis appears as a
curious artifact, an oddity and curiosity of evolution.52 Sex is ‘an almost
awkward adjunct to reproduction’.53 Addressing the commonly pro-
posed function of sexual reproduction as genetic variation, Margulis
argues that organisms that sexually reproduce do not evolve faster: they
sexually reproduce because the viscidities of evolution have linked
reproduction and tissue differentiation with sexuality. Put another way,
sexual reproduction persisted in evolution because those organisms
reproduced. Reproduction is obligatory; sexual reproduction is optional:

There are many other ways of generating genetic variability and per-
forming whatever other duties mixis itself performs. Mixis was never
selected for directly. An inordinate amount of data has been collected
in attempts to prove the selective advantage of mixis, especially in ani-
mals living in unstable environments (Bell 1982). No such conclusion
is available from the evidence: neither in constant nor in varying envi-
ronments can mixis be shown to confer selective advantage over
106 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

amictic (nonsexual) life cycles. Animals and plants that show no

mixis, which is to say organisms that have lost the capacity to form
offspring from different parents in sexual unions (such as apomictic
or self-fertilizing plants), nevertheless retain meiosis. We suggest they
do this to maintain differentiation. Outcrossing has never been
shown to confer a definitive advantage on organisms.54

Margulis’s symbiogenesis theory posits that sex evolved through

three contingent circumstances of environment-organism response.
The first was DNA repair. Before the ozone shield, around three billion
years ago, bacteria faced a problem: they needed to absorb energy from
the sun but were damaged and often killed by high levels of ultraviolet
light. Research shows that those mutations that lead to the loss of the
ability to survive ultraviolet light also lead to the total destruction of
the genetic recombination system. This suggests an association
between the ability to survive ultraviolet light and to genetically
recombine. As Margulis and Sagan put it, ‘ultraviolet repair pre-adapted
bacteria to sexuality’ (49, original emphasis). Margulis and Sagan specu-
late that, at first, genetic information was backed-up via extra copies of
DNA within the cell. DNA derived from multiple sources became possi-
ble when bacteria exchanged their DNA. Thus, ‘in evolutionary terms,
the appearance of excision-enzyme mechanisms to repair damaged
DNA is a pre-adaptation to bacterial sex in which an entirely different
DNA molecule is used for the source of the information to repair the
damage’ (58). As such, cell reproduction may have been an early form
of error correction.55
The second and third factors – multicellularity and differentiation – are
the outcomes of symbiogenetic mergings in response to environmental
pressures. To understand the symbiogenetic evolution of multicellularity,
we need to review the process of mitosis, keeping in mind that mitosis
preceded meiosis. Eukaryotic cells operate on a 24 hour cycle (pro-
karyotes operate on about a 20 minute cell cycle). Mitosis takes
place in approximately the first hour of the cycle. Mitosis consists
of four phases: (1) in the prophase, chromosomes condense and
become visible; (2) in the metaphase the chromosomes align on the
spindle at what’s called the cell’s equator; (3) in the anaphase the
centromeres divide and the chromosomes segregate into offspring cells;
(4) and in the telophase, offspring nuclei form and chromosomes relax
into the nucleoplasm. Towards the end of the cell cycle, cytokinesis
takes place in which the cytoplasm of a single cell divides into two
daughter cells.
 Microontologies of Sex 107

Mitosis involves two distinct structures: the mitotic apparatus (mitotic

spindle and often asters, centrioles and other microtubular structures)
and chromosomal DNA. Margulis’s symbiogenesis theory explains this
duality as the result of a double ancestry (spirochete derived micro-
tubule-motile complex and DNA from the nucleochromatin complex).56
In other words, mitosis is derived from symbiogenetic processes.
Chapter 3 outlined the theory that protists originally ate other protists
but did not digest them. This failed digestion would have mixed up
their genetic material: a process known as hypersex.
Margulis speculates that this doubled form would have been advan-
tageous because its smaller surface area per volume may have better
tolerated desiccation and/or starvation. Thus, the duplication of chro-
matin before mitosis was originally a symbiotic merger that eventually
produced a new type of organism through symbiogenesis. It would
have also doubled the number of chromosomes without fertilization.
So it was not advantageous to have sex; rather it was advantageous to
be smaller and to be able to move around because of the decreased
need for water: a ‘frozen accident’ as it were.57 Eventually, failed diges-
tion would have converted to fertilization: selection pressures to reduce
diploidy vied with environmental pressures (desiccation and starva-
tion) that encouraged diploidy. As Gorelick summarizes, ‘What started
as a meal, wound up being the origin of sex’.58
Retaining and exchanging the motile systems of their symbionts
came at a price for animals: they could no longer divide by mitosis (the
undulipodia of animal cells differentiate but do not further divide). In
order to retain both undulipodiated motility and genetic recombina-
tion, these symbionts had to reproduce by meiosis. Meiosis is an
evolved variation on mitosis. Put another way, sexual reproduction
was the price these symbionts paid for multicellularity and differentia-
tion.59 Margulis and Sagan describe this as the ‘trap of differentition’.60
Referring to the meiotic sex in eukaryotes, Margulis and Sagan write:

We believe it emerged from failure of cytokinesis [cytoplasm divides

to produce two daughter cells] after karyokinesis [process of nucleus
division during cell division] or from resistance to digestion in adult
protists after cannibalistic attack by fellow members of their populations.
Two adult nuclei, each with one set of chromosomes, fuse in the
karyogamic process, each offering identical amounts of chromatin.
In those lineages embellished by crossing over, DNA splicing and
recombining enzymes are put to use. Note, however, that DNA
recombination is not intrinsic to the meiotic sexual process. In meiotic
108 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

sex, recombination is on the level of cell and nuclear fusion. Fertilizations

bring chromosomes of different parental nuclei into a common nucleus,
and the DNA of chromosomes does not necessarily recombine.61

Since most symbioses did not involve differentiation and meiosis

(obligate sexuality), sexual reproduction appears as a peculiar evolu-
tionary development. During most of our evolutionary heritage, our
ancestors reproduced without sex. We are, indeed, ‘the offspring of
particular bombardments and interactions, of pre-sex mergings…’.62
Bacteria stumbled upon gene donation. In this symbiogenetic account,
sexual reproduction evolved by accident as a necessary by-product of
the evolution of multicellularity and cellular differentiation. In multi-
cellular organisms, cells begin to specialize and carry out different
functions: ‘mixis… becomes a consequence of the need to preserve
differentiation… mixis itself is dispensable and… was never selected for
directly’. Put another way, ‘multicellularity provided evolutionary
advantages and sex came along for the ride’.63 The creation of genders
is the outcome of a very long process of hypersex that formed our
nucleated ancestors the protoctists, followed by meiotic and fertiliza-
tion sex involving cell fusion. Genders and sexually maintained species
only began evolving about a billion years ago.64 Mammalian sex is a
very late variation on a general theme.
As Margulis points out, we need to distinguish between the origins of
sex, and how sex is maintained (that is, what keeps animals and plants
from having sex and reproducing ‘uniparentally’ or by nonmixis
means). Humans do not sexually reproduce because this is ‘better’
than the myriad other forms of sex and reproduction available. Sexual
recombination was only one of the methods adapted. As Kim Sterelny
and Paul Griffiths write, ‘obligatory sexual reproduction and invariable
uniparental reproduction are two ends of a continuum, not discrete
alternatives into which all organisms can be unambiguously sorted.’65
For instance, some organisms developed spores that enabled the organ-
ism to practice a form of ‘hibernation’ during hard environmental con-
ditions. When paramecia are faced with ageing and death without a
mate, they divide meiotically and then self-fertilize in a process known
as autogamy. Autogamy, according to neoDarwinism, should lead to
debilitation because it ‘unmasks’ genes (reverse epistasis). But for
paramecia, it is a means of survival. Autogamy illustrates that sexual
reproduction is not superior because it generates genetic variation.
Many successful and ancient organisms have remained uniparental.
For example, Glomales, mycorrhizal fungi whose symbioses with plants
 Microontologies of Sex 109

are helpful in securing mineral nutrients’ ecosystemic services, have

remained uniparental ever since they colonized the continents some
400 million years ago.66 And several parasitic protozoa have clonal
population structures with independently evolving lineages. Species of
animals, plants, fungi and protists, as well as all bacteria, can reproduce
without mixis.67 These species show no loss of evolutionary success or
of variation. And this is to say nothing of viral sex.
Humans sexually reproduce because of a series of evolutionary ‘give
and takes’, of ‘failures’ in Margulis’s terms, what Roos calls a ‘tortuous
path’.68 In other words, eukaryotes appear very ‘secluded’ compared
with the extreme openness toward foreign DNA exhibited by prokary-
otes.69 Mixis was not directly selected for, so the typical evolutionary
theorist’s question – the problem of sex – is not valid because sexually
reproducing animals have had ‘no way to opt out of the ancient cycles
of meeting, mating, and cell growth to make a body and return to in
the primordial single cell form’.70

Quiet revolutions

Margulis’s symbiogenesis theory is not unique in its attempt to

theorize the origin of sexual reproduction as other-than the selective
advantage of heritable variation. Matthew Meselson and his colleagues’
research, for instance, shows that bdelloid rotifers (a class of small fresh-
water invertebrates divided into four families, 19 genera and about 350
species) practice extensive horizontal gene transfer. Rotifers are animals
and yet there are no males and no meiosis: ‘instead eggs are produced by
two mitotic divisions with no chromosome pairing and no reduction in
chromosome number’: they have no form of genetic exchange.71 So far,
Meselson and his team have found that retrotransposons are absent in
bdelloid rotifers, when they would be expected to be abundant in eukary-
otes. They have also found that these rotifers have many genes that seem
to have originated in bacteria, fungi and plants concentrated in telomeric
gene regions while absent in proximal gene-rich regions. What all this
means is that bdelloid rotifers challenge evolutionary biology’s traditional
thinking: rotifers seem to have no form of genetic exchange, and yet they
have survived extinction.
Root Gorelick’s research on cytosine methylation and epigenetics
offers another interesting challenge to theories of sexual reproduction.
With Margulis, Gorelick questions the theory that the primary function
of sex is genetic mixing. For Gorelick, however, it is not symbiogenesis
that explains the origin of meiosis, but rather that sex ‘reduces additive
110 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

genetic variance of epigenetic signals, especially cytosine methylation,

and of ploidy levels’.72 Basically, Gorelick argues the opposite of neo-
Darwinism; that sexual reproduction is beneficial because it reduces addi-
tive variance – that while evolution only works at all because of heritable
variance, there can nevertheless be too much of a good thing. Gorelick
argues that in eukaryotes, meiosis resets epigenetic signatures once or
twice per generation – cytosine methylation being the most fundamental
epigenetic signature – that allow stable and conservative development.
Without this re-setting, developmental errors are thought to increase
until the species itself experiences senescence. As such, Gorelick adopts a
long-standing theory known as rejuvenesence.73 Cleveland reasoned that
the first meiotic organism must have been automictic – it had to have
had sex with itself – in which case no genetic mixing would have been
involved.74 This, of course, parts company with symbiogenesis theory. For
Margulis, Maynard Smith and Hickey and Rose, syngamy – through sym-
biotic contagion – preceded meiosis. Gorelick argues instead that the first
sex was self-sex and endoploidy: first, environmental stress led to a
decrease in maintenance methylation; second, meiosis and syngamy are
the only ways to reset lost cytosine methylation; starvation (or other
environmental stress) led to the selective advantage to taxa that could
undergo meiosis and/or syngamy. Meiosis had nothing to do with genetic
mixing if meiosis preceded syngamy and if the primary function of
meiosis is to correct environmentally-induced epimutations (8). The evi-
dence for this theory is that parasex (syngamy without meiosis) occurs
only in some fungi and protists such as the slime mold Acrasia that we
saw earlier in this chapter.
To some degree, symbiogenesis and cytosine methylation reset theo-
ries emphasize different things: Gorelick describes as ‘peculiar’ all
prokaryotic and eukaryotic exceptions to the rejuvenescence theory.
Examples such as Acrasia tend to be the very examples that Margulis
uses to support her theory of the origin of sex. What they share is a
curiosity about the origin of sexual reproduction and a willingness to
question the initial premise of evolutionary biology that sexual repro-
duction increases heritable variation. The neoDarwinian account res-
onates with its overarching narrative of individuality whereas
symbiogenesis theory emphasizes that associations between individuals
transform those individuals into something other – ongoing symbiotic
associations and mergings. In this regard, Fausto-Sterling’s diagnosis
leads to the right question: ‘why have Margulis and Sagan been
ignored while evolutionary biologists continue to produce volumes of
articles in their search for the evolutionary advantages of sex?75 For
 Microontologies of Sex 111

Fausto-Sterling, ‘whether sex itself is actually important, clearly

theorizing about sex is good for something’:

‘[Evolutionary biologists], Margulis and Sagan excepted, use narratives

of cellular and genetic evolution to create cultural accounts of gender,
and to provide narratives of human behavior that unquestioningly
justify stereotypes and provide ammunition for continuing inequal-
ities between men and women in educational, marital, civil, and
sexual arenas. More than scientific evidence or logic, it is the power of
this rhetoric that makes contemporary theorists blind to the strengths
of Margulis’s views and forecloses the possibilities of new theories of
multicellular evolution.76

Rather than unreflexively reject evolutionary biology, how might fem-

inist theory, as Vicki Kirby puts it, ‘generously engage’ with the myriad
implications for understanding the origin and maintenance of sexual
differences?77 As a first step, I find Elizabeth Grosz’s call for feminist
engagements with Darwin timely. Her work is particularly strong in its
elaboration of Darwin’s eschewal of teleology, and Grosz specifically con-
nects diversity (variation) with evolution: ‘evolution produces variation
for no reason; it values change for no particular outcome; it experiments,
but with no particular results in mind; it has prolific means but no ends’.78
Grosz’s own considered engagement brings to the fore feminist theory’s
struggle to engage with the material in ways that do not reinforce estab-
lished patriarchal and humanist epistemologies. Grosz writes that ‘subjec-
tivity, sexuality, intimate relations are in part structured not only by
institutions and social networks but also by impersonal or pre-personal,
subhuman, or inhuman forces, forces that may be construed as compet-
ing microagencies rather than as the conflict between singular, unified,
self-knowing subjects or well-defined social groups’.79 While Grosz is cog-
nizant of the historical and contemporary use of evolutionary theory to
maintain women’s exclusion from full participation in society, she never-
theless sees in Darwin something not available to feminist cultural and
political analyses alone: a detailed account of ‘the movements of differ-
ence, bifurcation, and becomings that characterize all forms of life.’80 If it
works at all, Darwin’s nonhumanist theory applies to all life and is
explanatory all the way down; that is, evolution as an explanatory model
refers equally to the biological and the cultural:

… culture is not different in kind from nature. Culture is not the

completion of inherently incomplete nature (that is to attribute to
112 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

Man, to the human, and to culture the position of destination of

evolution, its telos or fruition, when what Darwin makes clear is
that evolution is not directed toward any particular goal.81

Evolution all the way down is nowhere more apparent than in the
concept of difference. Grosz also distinguishes between cultural and
evolutionary senses of the term origin and its relation to difference.
Culturally, ‘origin is a consequence of human, or rather, scientific
taxonomy, a function of language’ and that ‘individual differences form
continua, whose divisions remain relatively arbitrary, contingent on the
pragmatic purposes of the division’.82 Phenotypically, differences
between individuals exist on a continuum, yet these individual differ-
ences, over evolutionary time, become differences of kind rather than
degree through natural selection. It is here that my engagement with
symbiogenesis theory leads me in a different direction. For Grosz,
humans come in two nonreducible forms. She writes ‘there is an
irreducible difference between the sexes, and this difference is not only
irreducible to one of its terms, in the case of socio-biology, its repro-
ductive cells; it is also irreducible to any other level, whether cellular,
morphological, cultural or historical.’83 Grosz points to the irony of
agreement between socio-biological and feminist accounts on this
point. I see, rather, an agreement based upon an implicit endorsement,
by feminist theorists, of the neoDarwinian account of evolution, which
emphasizes species differentiation through competition. For instance,
Grosz adopts the typically neoDarwinian rhetoric of uniparental advan-
tage over sexual reproduction: ‘a large part of sexual bifurcation is the
consequence of natural selection and the evolutionary advantages that
sexual difference bestows on hermaphroditic or self-fertilizing modes of
reproduction.’84 Elsewhere Grosz writes: ‘those beings that reproduce
sexually have an evolutionary advantage over their hermaphroditic
counterparts in most but not all situations by virtue of the maximum
variation generated by sexual reproduction’.85
Symbiogenesis’s account of the haphazard and contingent develop-
ment of sexual reproduction as a by-product of multicellularity and cell
differentiation presents, to my mind, the kind of nonhuman perspec-
tive that Grosz seeks. Grosz’s detailed analyses of James, Bergson and
Nietzsche, while intending to illuminate creative ways of working
through evolution and nature eventually reduce to human agency.
I am interested in theories that help us to think about how matter
organizes itself, and how nonhuman organisms organize matter. In
other words, Darwin’s major insight that evolution is nonteleological
 Microontologies of Sex 113

is, to my mind, submerged in humanist approaches that think of

matter in terms of what it is ‘for’.
I steer toward other generous engagements with scientific research,
and my compass is Luciana Parisi’s wonderfully complex ‘abstract sex’.86
Parisi’s abstract sex is primarily an event, born of Moneric sensibilities
that defy organic-inorganic, nature-technology bifurcations as they
affiliate, infect, cannibalize and sometimes merge within and between
stratifications of particles, membranes, DNA, RNA, protein, cells and
organisms, what Deleuze and Guattari call ‘molecular sexes’ or ‘n-1 sexes’.
This biophysical strata of sex is co-extensive with other layers:

the biocultural (the anthropomorphic level of the human body-sex

defined by psychoanalysis, thermodynamics, evolutionary biology
and anatomy in industrial capitalism); and the biodigital (the engi-
neering level of the body-sex defined by information science and
technologies such as in vitro fertilization, mammal and embryo
cloning, transgenic manipulation and the human genome in cyber-
netic capitalism) layers of the virtual body-sex.87

Sex is stratified rather than signified or represented: ‘sex lies neither

before nor after discourse.’88 Sex is the ontogeny of affinities rather
than identities as molecular elements self-organized into molar
compounds. Hypersex extends Haraway’s insight that sex precludes
faithful reproduction as the contagion of others are ‘enfolded in
every cellular and multicellular body.’89 Mitochondria provide no
better contagion. The symbiogenetic merger of mitochondria within
eukaryotic cells became obligate some one to two thousand million
years ago: mitochondria convert chemicals such as oxygen and provide
energy in the form of adenosine 5’-triphosphate (ATP) for the cell.
These microscopic powerhouses are also involved in cellular signaling
and differentiation, control of the cell cycle and growth, and cell
death. Through mitochondria, eukaryotes remember their bacterial
beginnings: although far fewer in number, mitochondrial DNA repro-
duce by binary fission within the cytoplasm. Mitochondrial DNA
is a gift of matrilineal inheritance through hypersex. For Parisi, mito-
chondria exceed the germline (nuclear DNA) and somaline (cyto-
plasm) bifurcation, expressing more of a ‘threshold between parallel
networks of sex and reproduction.’90 In this way, Parisi describes a
Deleuzian rhizomatic phylum that exceeds linear hereditary transmis-
sion of nucleic DNA. This latter sex is overcodified in the anthropo-
morphic stratum that orders bodies into nucleic forms and functions of
114 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

reproduction.’91 The biophysical and biocultural strata are connected

via this overcodification – no more evident than in gender difference
– in which bodies are ordered (through the oedipal complex, signs
and symptoms and so on). In other words, the constant biocultural
production of gender difference matters. For this reason, I cannot travel
with Parisi in her association of the neoDarwinian filiation with the
masculine/sadistic and symbiogenetic contagion with the feminine/
masochistic. To do so invokes an overcodification, even if metaphorical,
of gender difference.
Nature, of course, provides the twist in every evolutionary theory’s
tale. It turns out that mitochondria do not mutate at a constant rate;
they can be inherited through the paternal line; and can recombine (à la
nuclear DNA). The numbers are stacked in favor of the maternal line:
there are some 100,000 mitochondria in human egg cells, compared
with fewer than 100 in sperm. Selfish gene theories suggest that mito-
chondrial genomes compete and so selection pressures favor mito-
chondria with identical genomes. For this reason, when mitochondria
from males get into the egg, they tend to be destroyed (in humans, for
instance, male mitochondria are tagged with ubiquitin, a protein that
identifies and marks these mitochondria for destruction). In this way,
organelles from more than one parent are not inherited in the off-
spring. The recombination of mitochondrial DNA in yeast and mussels
was thought to be an anomaly of ‘primitive’ eukaryotes until recombi-
nation of mitochondrial DNA was found to take place in the human
heart muscle. Because this recombination occurred from different
copies of the same chromosome (mitochondria store five to ten copies
of their chromosomes for free-radical damage control) it does not in
itself undermine the selfish gene theory that uniparental mitochondr-
ial is a response to natural selection pressures (i.e. it is favored by
natural selection and conforms to the neoDarwinian emphasis on
direct filiation).
But what if paternal mitochondrial DNA was able to survive destruc-
tion in the egg? What if it then recombined with maternal mitochon-
drial DNA (known as heteroplasmy)? In 2002, a 28 year old man was
reported to have a mixture of paternal and maternal mitochondrial
DNA.92 In 2004, Kraytsberg et al. reported that 0.7 percent of this
man’s mitochondrial DNA had recombined in his muscles.93 This is
not to say, however, that recombined mitochondrial DNA is inherit-
able, and so far, no evidence has been reported that this occurs. It does,
however, in yet another twist to the tale, show that paternal and
maternal mitochondrial populations can co-exist, suggesting that the
 Microontologies of Sex 115

neoDarwinist selfish gene approach overemphasizes competition in

evolution. Just to show that the tale twists continue, Nick Lane argues
for the dual-control theory whereby two mating types are advanta-
geous because the dual genome system (nuclear and mitochondrial
DNA) is needed to maximize respiration and decrease the risk of apop-
tosis (programmed cell death) and developmental abnormalities.94
Lane argues that one set of nuclear genes paired with one set of mito-
chondrial genes is the best way to ensure the fittest outcome. Again, we
see yet another example of the rationalization of gender difference
through fitness arguments.
Margulis’s symbiogenesis theory, as one particularly provocative tale-
twist, provides us with a way of understanding sex as an event, ‘a
mixture of the necessary and the abstract: the necessary production of
an effect by its cause or the contingent effective presence of those
causes at that particular moment’.95 Symbiogenesis is the quiet revolu-
tion that has been taking shape since the Archean: a revolution of con-
tagion, filiation and infection whereby new tissues and new organisms
are formed through symbiogenesis.96 Symbiogenesis theory’s account
of inhospitable environmental conditions, historical accidents, sym-
biogenetic mergers, diverse genders, sex, reproduction and sexuality
diverges from the neoDarwinian evolutionary landscape in which
sexual selection is indelibly associated with genetic codes, meiotic sex,
gender difference, sexual reproduction as function, causation, and
linear transmission. That is, abstract – symbiogenetic sex – exceeds
nucleic, reproductive levels. Contagion, via the assemblage of bacterial
ancestors and symbiotic inhabitants, is the lively undercurrent of a
genealogical economy, a linear transmission of nucleic genetic varia-
tion. It ‘delineates the potential becomings of matter: the power of
nature-matter-body to mutate, to be affected by new assemblages
of bodies (a bacterium, a human being, an egg cell, a microchip) that
in turn affect the organization of society, culture, economics and
politics.’97 Rather than see this formulation as a critique of feminist
theories of the body-politic, symbiogenetic sex presents a way to har-
ness all that feminist theory has learned about the machinations of
gender – precisely through the body-politic – that moves between and
within biophysical, biocultural and biodigital strata.
6
Microontologies of Environment

Introduction

A recent talk by John Urry on environmental issues and social theory

cited James Lovelock’s latest contribution to environmental debates,
The Revenge of Gaia in which Lovelock discusses (among other things)
positive feedback ‘tipping points’ that can lead to significant changes
in climate systems.1 As a sociologist researching symbiogenesis, I am
curious about the viscidities of favor that Gaia theory – which Margulis
calls symbiosis from space – attracts. Lovelock’s invocation in a socio-
logical venue surprised me: I had understood my current interest in
Gaia theory as a late-comer to social scientific discussions that have
long abandoned Gaia. And while Margulis believes that Gaia theory is
becoming more acceptable in ‘polite scientific society’, the two fore-
most scientific magazines, Nature and Science, have both labelled Gaia a
‘pseudo-science’ – the kiss of death in most academic communities.2
And in so far as social scientists associate Gaia with new-age goddess
worship and failed social and deep ecology movements, Gaia seems to
engender a ‘been-there, done-that’ reaction.3 Urry’s presentation
prompted me to consider whether social scientists are re-engaging with
Gaia theory beyond its significance as a truth-claim within modern
environmentalism discourse.
The direction of analysis tends to be from sociology to environmental
issues, rather than in terms of how environmental issues might usefully
inform social theory. In these latter analyses, sociology may be seen as
‘marginal to environmental discussions: able to criticize but not to act,
eager to deconstruct existing categories but not to engage or persuade,
unhappy with the role of “underlabourer” but unwilling to adopt a
position of intellectual leadership’.4 Clearly social scientists are no less

116
 Microontologies of Environment 117

concerned about the environment than any other disciplinary body.

Rather, the paucity of social scientific interest in grappling with the
science of environmental issues might largely be explained by the tra-
ditional disciplinary carving up of nature and culture, with culture
defined as the social scientists’ feast. We know that modern social theory
did much to bifurcate the natural from the social, no more so perhaps
than the Adelard of Bath’s dictum that natural phenomena may only
be explained by other natural phenomena (and Emile Durkheim’s later
addendum that social facts must be explained by other social facts).5
Thus, social scientists have been more interested in ‘explor[ing] the
processes whereby certain problems come to acquire “real” status at par-
ticular moments and in particular contexts’ than in determining how real
an environmental problem is and what sociologists might do about it.6
The impasse is further compounded by the fact that considering the envi-
ronment in anything other than social constructionist terms raises foun-
dational issues for social scientists with regard to our proper object and
domain of study – challenging definitions of nature necessarily challenge
the meanings of sociality – and that social science’s long history of scep-
ticism towards any recourse to ‘nature’ to justify cultural customs and
behavior is never far from the social scientist’s modus operandi.
Environmental issues provide a challenge to Urry’s forecast that
sociology will only survive if it ‘embodies the ambitions of one of more
social movements’.7 Indeed, focusing on nonenvironmental concerns
seems increasingly akin to rearranging deck chairs on the titanic. The
United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in June
1992 produced a ‘Warning to Humanity’ signed by 1,500 senior scien-
tists from 69 countries, stating that overpopulation and environmental
deterioration put the future of humanity at risk. Describing global
warming in his latest book, Lovelock gives humanity no more than
two decades to avert the biosphere’s shift to a new (much higher) tem-
perature steady state. The 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change Fourth Assessment Report gives us longer, but is no less sober
in its assessment of the impact of global heating on humans.
Global heating joins a cacophony of biospheric issues we have grown
accustomed to hearing about in tandem with homo ecophagus – ‘man who
devours the ecosystem’.8 Our human population of six billion is projected
to level off at a staggering ten billion by 2150; within 50 years we will
have killed 25 percent of all organisms on earth – 11 percent of birds,
18 percent of mammals, 7 percent of fish and 8 percent of plant species
are already extinct; we kill species at 1,000 times nonhuman induced
extinction rates (100 species per day); at the present rate of environmental
118 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

degradation one quarter of all existing plant and animal species will
become extinct within 30 years, and half by the end of the twenty-first
century; more than half of all wild habitat has been destroyed in 49 out
of 61 old world tropical countries; we devote almost 75 percent of the
earth’s fertile land to nearly exclusive mono-agriculture (corn and beef);
60 percent of what are anthropocentrically termed ecosystem ‘services’
have been degraded; a growing consensus acknowledges that we have
already surpassed the earth’s oil supply peak; biofuels require as much or
more energy to make than fossil fuels, and so on.9 Our ‘spaceship Earth’
faces a grim reality:

We humans are the only first-class passengers on the mixed meta-

phorical ‘spaceship Earth’. On gravitational autopilot, we circle the
Sun passively at that ‘just right’ distance. Our imaginary flight atten-
dant encourages us to ‘be fruitful and multiply’. As members of the
Mile High Club, we eat and drink like gluttons. The galley refrigera-
tors are defrosting and the frozen entrees have begun to spoil. Our
swelling human numbers force the remaining non-human passen-
gers into the last few seats left in coach. We are oblivious to the
plight of non-humans who are our life support system. Constant
fights over who merits a window or aisle seat have already trashed
the passenger compartment. The lavatory smoke detectors are dis-
abled. Our waste has overflown the toilets; now a fetid slurry of blue
chemical, urine and excrement spreads across the floor and down
the aisle. We just ran out of toilet paper and bottled water. We have
encountered turbulence, but no one pays attention to the illum-
inated ‘FASTEN SEAT BELT’ sign.10

A number of social analyses now proceed on the basis on an ‘enlivened

nature’, and what makes Gaia theory useful is its focus on the inescap-
able connection between all living and nonliving matter on earth, what
Keith Ansell Pearson – referring specifically to symbiosis – describes as the
‘filthy lesson’ of our human connection with the world.11 Bacteria’s
myriad ongoing symbiotic relationships connect living to nonliving
matter and sustain the biosphere. Margulis and Lovelock’s longstanding
research collaboration connects microcosmos (symbiosis at the micro-
scopic scale) to macrocosmos (symbiosis at the planetary scale), in order
to recognize the biosphere as a highly complex and responsive system
subject to irreversible change.12 They call for human responses to press-
ing environmental issues such as climate change that appreciate micro-
bial communities and depreciate humanity.
 Microontologies of Environment 119

The aim of this chapter is to consider the utility of engaging with Gaia
theory within the context of environmental crisis. I am not interested in
Gaia theory’s adoption within new age/spiritualist movements, but rather
Gaia theory within science. First, I outline the major principles of Gaia
theory, distil its major scientific criticisms and then précis’s how Gaia
theory defends itself against these criticisms. Following Karen Barad, I
attempt to provide an intra-active account of Gaia theory within science.
This intra-action is as much about the world before and with ‘man’ as it is
about scientific disciplinary boundaries and the carving up of space, time
and matter.13 It is also an account of epistemic cultures that define con-
cepts – the evolutionary ‘unit of selection’ for instance. I then attempt to
move the discussion forward toward a meaningful reformulation of
environmentalism within the context of present and future (animal)
environmental crises; in other words, toward ‘what then must be done’
initiatives. While I argue that Gaia theory provokes interesting ways to
regard naturecultures, it seems to get caught in the very problem of self-
hood that symbiogenesis theory challenges. As such, I argue that Gaia
theory sustains the same critique that undermines deep ecology theory,
which is the problem of difference. Taking my direction from the biophi-
losophy of difference and relation in the works of Duerr, Lingis, Deleuze,
Haraway and van Wyck, I am concerned with what Duerr refers to as two
sides of the ethical encounter: on one side nature and human are con-
nected through representation – thinking like/for microbes (sameness)
– while on the other side humans attempt to comprehend the strange,
the other – meeting/speaking with microbes (difference).14 Lingis
describes this as the difference between a ‘depth-perception’ of the other
and a ‘surface-sensitivity’ which recognizes that the other faces the same
imperative.15 With biophilosophy, I argue the former concerns what van
Wyck calls an ‘ecology of strength’ in which differences are foreclosed
through reduction to the Same, while the latter creates an ethics open to
differences within and between those who encounter each other, as well
as within the encounter itself, what van Wyck refers to as an ecology of
weakness. Here, my concern with Gaia theory’s ethical foreclosures come
to the fore. To anticipate my conclusion, I argue that Gaia theory fence-
sits between an ecology of strength and weakness, unclear as to its ethical
relation to the other.

Gaia’s filthy lesson, symbiosis from space

Coining the term ‘biosphere’ in 1875, Eduard Suess recognized the co-
dependencies of life and nonlife: ‘The plant, whose deep roots plunge
120 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

into the soil to feed, and which at the same time rises into the air to
breathe, is a good illustration of organic life in the region of interaction
between the upper sphere and the lithosphere, and on the surface of con-
tinents it is possible to single out an independent biosphere’.16 Russian sci-
entist Vladimir Vernadsky elaborated the concept of the biosphere.
Taking an explicitly holistic approach, Vernadsky identified the difficulty
of studying the biosphere as a whole through traditional disciplinary spe-
cialisms: ‘among numerous works on geology, none has adequately
treated the biosphere as a whole, and none has viewed it, as it will be
viewed here, as a single orderly manifestation of the mechanism of the
uppermost region of the planet – the Earth’s crust’.17 While the basic
ideas that formulated Gaia theory are found throughout the history of
science, it is indisputably associated today with James Lovelock.
Lovelock’s route to Gaia theory was rather circuitous. Employed by
NASA to develop life-detecting equipment for the 1975 Viking mission
to Mars, Lovelock and Dian Hitchcock determined, before the mission lit-
erally took off, that the atmospheres of both Mars and Venus precluded
life.18 Mars is a very cold planet (–53 degrees Celsius) and its atmosphere
is composed of 95 percent carbon dioxide, 2.7 percent nitrogen, 1.6 per-
cent argon, 0.13 percent oxygen and no methane. Venus is very hot
(459 degrees Celsius) and is composed of 96.5 percent carbon dioxide,
3.5 percent nitrogen, 70 parts per million of argon and only a trace of
oxygen. Currently, the earth’s temperature is about 15 degrees Celsius, and
its atmosphere is composed of 0.03 percent carbon dioxide, 79 percent
nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen, 1 percent argon and 1.7 parts per million of
methane. Lovelock and Hitchcock knew from geological and astronomical
research that the earth’s atmosphere initially resembled that of Mars and
Venus. They also knew that while the Sun’s solar radiation has increased
by 30 percent over the course of earth’s existence, the earth’s temperature
has decreased from 66 degrees four billion years ago to today’s
15 degrees, a significant overall cooling of 51 degrees. Lovelock and Hitch-
cock reasoned that what makes the difference between the earth’s atmos-
phere and that of Mars or Venus (or any other planet in our solar system)
is life.19
According to Margulis, Lovelock had three choices: either God created
the atmosphere for humans (and changed it dramatically over time), the
atmosphere has changed so dramatically to support life as a matter of
pure chance (the ‘Goldilocks theory’: Mars is too cold, Venus is too hot,
and earth is just right), or life itself produces the atmosphere in which it
survives. The original Gaia hypothesis involved the biotic regulation of
the earth’s temperature, its acidity-alkalinity, and the composition of its
reactive atmospheric gases, especially oxygen. Since these initial predic-
 Microontologies of Environment 121

tions, Gaia theory has undergone several definitional permutations, and

the ‘true’ definition remains a matter of some dispute. Lovelock currently
defines Gaia as:

… a biotic-planetary regulatory system. Over 30 million types of

extant organisms, descendant from common ancestors and embed-
ded in the biosphere, directly and indirectly interact with one
another and with the environment’s chemical constituents. They
produce and remove gases, ions, metals and organic compounds
through their metabolism, growth and reproduction. These inter-
actions in aqueous solution lead to modulation of the Earth’s
surface temperature, acidity-alkalinity and the chemically reactive
gases of the atmosphere and hydrosphere.20

In other words, Gaia theory proposes that the biota alters its physical
environment to maintain conditions conducive to life, despite destabiliz-
ing effects such as increasing solar energy.21 To say that the biosphere is
Gaian is to say that, since its formation, the evolution of the earth (and
all of its inhabitants) has been a consequence of a profound, immutable
and inextricable association between life and nonlife. It is also to say
that biota, oceans, atmosphere and soils – the biosphere – actually
(unconsciously) controls the chemical and thermal systems.22 As Margulis
puts it ‘one hundred percent of organisms…alter their surroundings
100 percent of the time’.23 Describing resource transfer in a way that
resonates with symbiotic and Gaian perspectives, Freese writes:

By the mere process of living, organisms change the very conditions

upon which they depend for subsistence. Their resource supply is
changed by the effects of their own interactions. The individual effects
may be small but the compound effects are large. Eventually they
change the ecosystem. As new effects are added over sufficient series
they eventually become interactive and there emerges a different
resource regime. In other words, augmentative interactions are cumu-
lative. As the resources of an ecosystem are developed, exploited,
depleted, and otherwise transformed because of its own organic activ-
ity, eventually the system becomes something it was not. As it does,
the probabilities that it can return to what it was decline. That’s
because some of the changes it will have endured will be irreversible.24

This is not co-evolution: according to Gaia theory, co-evolution limits the

biosphere to a series of responses between living organisms and their
environment, and does not view the earth as a living system that actively
122 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

self-regulates. Recall that in symbiogenesis, the environment becomes the

organism.
For this reason, scientists pursuing Gaian research (often under the
name Earth Systems Science) focus on life-nonlife interactions. For
instance, Schwarzmann and Volk have shown that microbes facilitate
rock weathering by as much as one thousand times.25 Lowman and
Armstrong’s research suggests that plate tectonics is a fundamentally
Gaian phenomenon. While the earth’s major concentric layers – the
liquid core, the convecting mantle and the outer crust – were formed
by the same kinds of processes found on other (silicate-rich) planets:

the broad aspects of the Earth’s geology as it is now – continents,

ocean basins, the oceans themselves, sea floor spreading and related
processes – are the product of fundamentally biogenic processes, acting
on a crustal dichotomy formed by several enormous impacts on the
primordial Earth. The fundamental structure of the Earth, not just its
exterior and outer layers, thus appears to have been dominated by
water-dependent – and thus life dependent – plate tectonic processes.26

Stephan Harding and Lynn Margulis, drawing on L.J. Henderson’s

original idea, argue that water is a biotic interaction in that micro-
organisms are responsible for the earth’s water retention: earth has
more than 104 times the quantity of water than a planet without life
would be expected to have.27 Tyler Volk’s research on cycling ratios
describes the biosphere as a ‘wasteland world’ – surely appreciated by
car-boot sale folks – in which one organism’s waste is another’s
treasure, to be used as food or any other ‘stuff’ of living (oxygen, for
instance, is bacterial waste). Volk writes:

[The Earth is] one big wasteworld… Regarding the atmosphere’s

CO2, more than 99 percent of the entire reservoir has recently
been ejected by a living respirer rather than a volcano. For nitrogen,
more than 99 percent has been discharged from living denitrifiers
rather than volcanoes. And for methane and many other trace
gases, more than 99 percent has been expelled from living prokaryotes
rather than volcanoes. The atmosphere is one giant waste dump.28

Gaian meetings with science

Two American Geophysical Union Chapman Conferences in 1988

and 2000 and the Amsterdam Declaration (issued by a joint meeting of
 Microontologies of Environment 123

the International Geosphere Biosphere Programme, the International

Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change, the
World Climate Research Programme, and the International Biodiversity
Programme on July 13, 2001) support the Gaian principle that the
earth’s biosphere is a product of biota interacting in ongoing complex
feedback systems. Scientists also agree that the earth’s climate is
affected by life in at least two major ways: life alters the composition of
the atmosphere, and life changes how solar energy heats up and is dis-
tributed around the earth’s surface, for instance in the ways in which
land plants (dependent upon microbes) improve the absorption and
distribution of the Sun’s energy, produce more water, and provide
greater leaf surfaces to evaporate rainwater.29
However, Gaia theory also sustains scientific criticism. The first criti-
cism is that Gaia is not science since it cannot be falsified. The overall
claim that the global biotic system tends toward long-term stability
cannot, indeed, be tested. Barlow and Volk argue that Gaia theory is
less a set of falsifiable hypotheses and more a Kuhnian-style paradigm
vying for a new research program. As such, according to Barlow and
Volk, Gaia is ‘a heuristic: not a hypothesis, but a hypothesis generator’,
akin to Maxwell’s Demon in physics.30 Proponents also argue that Gaia
theory offers smaller falsifiable predictions that are testable, and Love-
lock outlines several such predictions in Nature, and scientists are
clearly now testing falsifiable hypotheses.31
The second charge is that permutations of Gaia theory range from
banal to nonDarwinian. Kirchner argues that what he calls the ‘weak
version’ of Gaia theory (‘Coevolving Gaia’, ‘Optimizing Gaia’ and
‘Geophysiological Gaia’) – that living and nonliving matter affect each
other – provokes no controversy because it restates well-known and
accepted facts.32 These weak versions are not Gaia theory as proposed
by Lovelock, for whom co-evolutionary theory ‘accepts the dogma of
mainstream biology, which is that organisms simply adapt to changes
in their material environment modified by the organisms them-
selves’.33 Gaia, by contrast, insists that the biospheric system actively
regulates the earth’s chemical composition and climate.
Kirchner’s ‘strong version’ (‘Homeostatic Gaia’) consists of the restric-
tion of environmental conditions through biotic feedback. Homeostatic
Gaia might occur through luck (‘Lucky Gaia’) in which case the earth
would be highly improbable; or Gaia might be the statistically likely
outcome (‘Probable Gaia’). ‘Homeostatic Probable Gaia’ has been critic-
ized on a number of counts. Some scientists claim that ‘Homeostatic
Gaia’ is teleological and (therefore) non-Darwinian. In response to this
124 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

charge, Lovelock created Daisyworld, a computer program demon-

strating a nonteleological feedback cycle in which white (light reflect-
ing) and black (light absorbing) daisies regulate the temperature of planet
Daisy World, where regulation is defined as ‘the return of a variable to a
stable state after a perturbation’ and self-regulation includes both pos-
itive and negative feedback.34 Regulation occurs without daisy fore-
thought or ‘consciousness’ as to the optimal environment in which to
thrive.35
Another criticism concerns the ‘character’ of the feedback between
life and nonlife. Lenton differentiates between two types: feedback on
growth (in which traits selected for their individual fitness have bene-
ficial side-effects on the environment which in turn benefits life) and
feedback on selection (in which traits effect environmental variables
which then directly effect their selective advantage).36 In both types of
feedback, the effects on the environment are by-products rather than
adaptations. Free and Barton add feedback on adaptation to the mix;
effectively extended phenotypes selected for at the individual level.
A biosphere is required in order for life-environment feedback to con-
trol the earth’s environment. The biosphere requires a large energy
source (the Sun), which is somehow harnessed (photosynthesis) and
that nutrients be recycled in cycling ratios between different biochem-
ical guilds.37 Gaia scientists maintain that the earth resembles a ‘super-
organism’ by maintaining biological control through homeorrhesis as
an emergent property.38 By contrast, Dawkins argues that the earth
cannot be an evolving superorganism unless it has other superorgan-
isms (that is, other planets) to compete with in natural selection. In
other words, Dawkins argues that evolution cannot occur with a single
individual (even an individual as large as the earth). By taking the
gene/individual as the unit of evolutionary selection, Dawkins and
Doolittle argue that organisms cannot regulate anything beyond their
own phenotypes.39 A related point is that all known self-regulating
entities are alive (or in the case of mechanical self-regulating entities)
created by something alive. Saying that the biosphere self-regulates
effectively means that the biosphere is both alive, has a self, and was
created by another living entity – much to close to creationism for
scientific comfort.40
In response, Lenton argues that Gaia theory does conform to the
principles of Darwinian evolution. The important tenets of the theory,
according to Lenton, are that: ‘(1) life affects its environment;
(2) growth [occurs] (including reproduction); (3) the environment con-
strains life; and (4) nature selects: once a planet contains different
 Microontologies of Environment 125

types of life (phenotypes) with faithfully replicated, heritable variation

(genotypes) growing in an environment of finite resources, the types of
life that leave the most descendants come to dominate their environ-
ment’.41 According to Lenton, natural selection is not required for
global environmental feedback: the first three conditions are sufficient.
The supposition that regulation must be selected for through natural
selection fails to recognize that regulation is an emergent property in
many systems. As well, Lenton cautions that in emphasizing natural
selection as ‘red in tooth and claw’ we create the opposite problem of
assuming that natural selection never favors traits that enhance their
environments. Nitrogen-fixing bacteria, for instance, increase their
own supply of available nitrogen, and in so doing they increase the
amount of nitrogen in their environment to be used by other organ-
isms such as plants. The selective advantage reduces as more ‘leaked’
nitrogen is released, producing a homeostatic system of nitrogen-fixers
and nonfixers.
As Schneider and his colleagues put it ‘biologists, especially neo-
Darwinians, have argued that the Earth understood as a global eco-
system actively “managing” environmental parameters for the benefit
of life as a whole is incompatible with the view of living organisms as
competitively and selfishly inclined toward narrowly definable survival
and reproductive success’.42 For proponents of Gaia theory, species
that, in the process of maximizing their own survival and that of their
offspring, also benefit the environment have a selective advantage.
As Lovelock puts it:

… soon after its origin, life was adapting not to the geological world
of its birth but to an environment of its own making. There was not
purpose in this, but those organisms which made their environment
more comfortable for life left a better world for their progeny, and
those which worsened their environment spoiled the survival
chances of theirs. Natural selection then tended to favour the
improvers. If this view of evolution is correct, it is an extension of
Darwin’s great vision and makes neoDarwinism a part of Gaia
theory and Earth system science.43

Organisms do not consciously construct the environment for their

own benefit, according to Gaia theory, but rather those organisms that
benefit their environment will have a selective advantage. Daisyworld
and Robert Axelrod’s well-known ‘tit-for-tat’ research on altruism show
that cooperative behavior can evolve, even in the presence of ‘cheats’
126 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

(there is a significant difference between the existence of ‘cheats’ and

their survival). More generally, social evolution theory demonstrates
‘how collective behavior arises from individual self-interest’; a synthe-
sis of individualism and collectivism’ or what Sachs and his colleagues
call ‘by-product reciprocity’ and what microbial ecologists call ‘syntro-
phy’.44 Rather than restrict altruism to direct filiation arguments, Gaia
theory points to the symbiont – the unit of selection that exists only
because of a relational community – as an already merged entity.45
All this said, thorny questions remain about the status of Gaia as a
superorganism. The problem is that ‘self-regulation implies a self.46 The
related problem is autopoiesis, as discussed in Chapter 4. My issue is not
that we should continue to define life in terms of replication: in Chapter 5
I argue strenuously that life be understood as a verb in which life gets on
with the messy processes of living through repair, contagion, affiliation
and the like.47 Rather, my concern is that symbiosis and symbiogenesis so
nicely indict the concept of the individual that Gaia theory then seems to
recuperate. Astrid Schrader makes another compelling criticism that Gaia
theory posits the human as something both within and (as observer)
outside of Gaia.48 Which brings us back, full-circle, to the problem with
autopoiesis and its assumption of self-making organisms that ‘generate the
components that produce its own organization’.49 Part of the issue here is
the organism-environment relationship. Rather than see organisms as
individuated selves that produce the environment outright, I conceptual-
ize a kind of life-comes-at-us ontology in which it is messy entangled rela-
tions – symbionts all the way down – rather than self-maintenance that is
the ultimate commonality of life. To wit, in the case of symbiogenesis, the
environment becomes the (becoming) organism.

Flagships and the rest of us

Contemporary social theory increasingly recognizes the importance

of human and animal relationships: ethics, animal rights, companion
species, xenotransplantation, vegetarianism and agriculture are all on the
social scientists’ menu. While this burgeoning interest is surely a positive
indication that the social sciences are moving away from an exclusive
interest in humans, for Gaia theory, studying animals is essentially
another way of studying ourselves (humans are animals): humanocentric
business-as-usual.50 Humans tend to focus (through the bulk of research
funding, publications and lay interest) on the shortest and most recent
evolutionary timeline in which animals appear (the Phanerozoic began
only 541 million years ago) because that’s when we appear (actually,
 Microontologies of Environment 127

humans do not appear until the Neogene, 0.01 million years ago).51 On a
Gaian timeline, the most important eon is the Archaean.52 Trying to
effect an analytic orientation, Lovelock writes ‘the cuddly animals, the
wild flowers, and the people are all to be revered, but they would be
nothing were it not for the vast infrastructure of the microbes’.53 Latour
delineates the challenge: ‘…the nature whole into which politics and
human society would supposedly have to merge transcends the hori-
zons of ordinary citizens. For this Whole is not human, as is readily
seen in the Gaia hypothesis’.54
The earth is about 4.5 billion years old. Life began in the Archaean
soon after, about 3.8 billion years ago (give or take a few million years).
Before life, the planet’s atmosphere was rich in carbon dioxide, con-
tained nitrogen, traces of hydrogen, hydrogen sulfide, and very little
oxygen. The oceans held large amounts of iron, other elements and
compounds that act as reducing agents (reacting with, and thereby
removing, oxygen).
LUCA – the last universal common ancestor was bacterial, and for
85 percent of the earth’s history, the biota consisted solely of micro-
organisms.55 Four types of bacteria – fermenting, swimming, oxygen-
breathing and photosynthesizing – created all life on earth through the
natural selection of organisms created through symbiogenesis and ran-
dom mutation. Bacteria sustain the chemical elements crucial to life on
earth – oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous, sulfur and carbon, and some
25 other gases – through ongoing (re)cycling processes that enable
flora and fauna to thrive.56 For example, photosynthesis, the ability to
split water by light energy to reduce carbon to sugar, led to what scien-
tists call the ‘oxygen Holocaust’ – the single greatest mass extinction of
living organisms on earth – that resulted when oxygen-producing bac-
teria multiplied and spread, killing the vast majority of organisms for
which oxygen was poisonous.57 Bacteria, then, not only evolved all life
(reproduction, photosynthesis and movement) on earth; they provided
(and continue to provide) the environment in which different kinds of
living organisms can exist.
Bacteria have thrived since, quite literally, life began. The key elements
of biosphere – carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorous and
sulfur (known as CHNOPS to science students cramming for exams) – are
all cycled by bacteria. Bacteria evolved the earth’s production economy:
phototrophs convert solar energy; chemotrophs convert chemical energy;
lithotrophs gain electrons from inorganic compounds (such as hydrogen
and sulfur) or simple organic compounds (such as water and
hydrogen sulfide); organotrophs convert complex organic substances
128 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

(such as proteins in dead biomass and carbohydrates in grasses and

grains) and so on.58
Bacteria are Gaian because they make up the bulk of living biota,
and they entangle all life in relations. As Vladimir Vernadsky put it,
the earth’s crust is ‘saturated with life’. Bacteria are also Gaian because
they are responsible for the bulk of the biosphere’s regulation through
metabolitic recycling. Bacteria achieve this through avid replication
(both vertical (heritable) genetic exchange and lateral gene transfer
(LGT)), quick reproduction – unimpeded by environmental con-
straints, an E. coli bacterium would equal the weight of the earth’s
crust in 1.75 days; a single cyanobacterium on a sterile earth could
oxygenate the atmosphere in 40 days – and their organization into
community structures that facilitate complex communication.59 As
Sonea and Mathieu put it, in community structures bacteria ‘form one
global, exceedingly diversified, yet functionally unified peculiar
being’. 60 Bacteria, in short, are the means through which all living
matter not only survives but also thrives.61
Bacteria are adept at creating and sustaining symbiotic relationships.
The number and diversity of planetary symbioses involving bacteria is
beyond fathom. For instance, cyanobacteria exist in both unicellular
and colonial forms (their blooms can be seen from space) and live sym-
biotically with protists, worms, sponges and other land and aquatic
plants. Bacteria fix nitrogen for more than 17,000 kinds of leguminous
plants.62 Without hindgut bacteria, these ‘tropical cows’ would not be
able to process (break down and make available to the biosphere in
recycling) one-third to two-fifths of the phytomass in their environ-
ments.63 The biosphere did not become a frozen wasteland thanks to
bacteria that decompose cyanobacteria living in ocean sediments,
releasing methane that attracts solar energy. All symbiotic relation-
ships, if looked at closely enough, involve bacteria, because bacteria are
necessary for all life. In short, the ‘biosphere’s evolution is unimagin-
able without symbioses’.64
While I have no doubt that there remain communities of people who
do not believe that humans are, at least in part, responsible for climate
change and environmental degradation, there is a growing consensus that
humans are precipitating incalculable shifts in the biosphere. In 1970,
Scientific American published a special issue entitled ‘The Biosphere’, in
which the founder of American limnology, G. Evelyn Hutchinson wrote:

Many people… are concluding on the basis of mounting and reason-

ably objective evidence that the length of life of the biosphere as an
 Microontologies of Environment 129

inhabitable region for organisms is to be measured in decades rather

than in hundreds of millions of years. This is entirely the fault of
our own species. It would seem not unlikely that we are approach-
ing a crisis that is comparable to the one that occurred when free
oxygen began to accumulate in the atmosphere.65

NeoDarwinism’s principle that natural selection works at the level of

the individual permeates E.O. Wilson’s, ‘juggernaut theory of human
nature’, Hamilton’s ‘selfish gene’ theory and the general emphasis on
nature ‘red in tooth and claw’ to argue that individuals are selfish and
global responsibility for the environment is far too esoteric a commit-
ment compared with immediate individual desires.66 That the explan-
ation for our current state of affairs comes from neoDarwinism is not
unimportant. It directs our attention away from alternative formula-
tions including possible ethical encounters between species, and sets
parameters on agendas for environmental change.67
Given the clear limits set, according to neoDarwinism, by evolution
vis-à-vis innate individualism and selfishness, human approaches
to the environment tend to be humanocentric, and focused on sus-
tainability. Sustainable development proceeds on the basis that the
biosphere can (and should) be continually developed by humans
in ways that will increase economic growth without precipitating
a tipping point of ecological crisis. ‘Valuation exercises’ – assigning
a monetary value to biospheric services such as trees’ production of
oxygen – are entirely formulated from the perspective of services
for humans.68 Critics argue that solar panels, organic foods and the
like are essentially a Western middle-class means of assuaging envir-
onmental guilt while maintaining ever increasing consumerist life-
styles.69
To my mind, the real challenge is to recognize that humans are not
the central players in climate (or any other biospheric) regulation.
Humans might ultimately render the biosphere inhospitable for humans
and other animals, but this shifted biosphere will certainly survive our
extinction. We may, in other words, precipitate global heating, but we are
not capable of extinguishing the biosphere altogether.70 Responding to
Mother Theresa’s comment that we need ‘to take care of the poor, the
sick and the hungry, and leave God to take care of the Earth’, Lovelock
said ‘If we as people do not respect and take care of the Earth, we can be
sure that the Earth, in the role of Gaia, will take care of us, and if neces-
sary, eliminate us’.71 Margulis is equally acerbic, referring to Gaia as a
‘tough bitch’.72
130 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

A reorientation to Gaia means recognizing the most important meet-

ings are not between humans and animals, but between microbes and
microbes: ‘We need’ writes Stephan Harding, ‘to develop a sense of
ourselves as beings in symbiotic relationship with Gaia, just as the mito-
chondria live in an intimate relationship with their larger, unseen host’.73

Toward an ecology of weakness

Gaia theory presents social theory with two challenges. First, Gaia
theory emphasizes lively biotic/abiotic co-productions that sustain the
biosphere. In so doing, it collapses the traditional social scientific dis-
tinction between living and nonliving matter. Second, Gaia theory
shifts the focus from animals to bacteria. As we have seen, for Gaia
theory, studying animals is essentially another way of studying
ourselves: humanocentric business-as-usual. The second challenge,
then, is to recognize that humans are not the central players in climate
regulation. Bacteria and microbial symbionts are far more central.
Humans might well precipitate global heating, but this is nothing com-
pared with the oxygen Holocaust. If, as Gaia theory argues, living
and nonliving matter cannot be so easily bifurcated, and if bacteria
are the primary means through which the biosphere is sustained, how
then might we proceed? In this concluding section, I focus on the
ethics of ecological concern. I am interested in our ethical relation-
ship with an environment largely made up of, and regulated by, bac-
teria. How, in other words, might we figure future meetings-with bac-
teria? Gaia theory challenges us to consider who we invite and who
we overlook when we meet the other in ethical encounters. Thus
far, we seem mainly directed toward the human protection of par-
ticular animals: flagship species such as polar and panda bears
obscure the vast number of symbiotic relations that sustain their sur-
vival.74
Yet while Gaia theory focuses on the inescapable entanglement of life
and nonlife, its own characterization of the biosphere as a superorgan-
ism invites criticisms associated with autopoiesis and self-organization.
It also, I argue, constitutes the point at which Gaia theory reveals
ambivalence towards difference. To the degree that this ambivalence
operates, it limits Gaia theory to an ecology of strength, and thereby
necessarily forecloses the form of ethical encounter, through environ-
mentalism, that it seeks.
The theoretical compass that orients my analysis is Peter van Wyck’s
thoughtful exegesis of deep ecology theory.75 In what he calls ‘the
 Microontologies of Environment 131

move to the outside’, van Wyck points to deep ecology’s tendency to

represent humans as a single ecological category, thereby effecting a
reduction of important social, political, economic and cultural differ-
ences amongst humans; the kind of reduction which social scientists
are so well attuned to critique. If/when global heating reduces the
human population from six billion to two million, social scientists
want to know which humans will survive and why. In other words,
difference becomes deep ecology’s remainder: Gaia’s collective ‘we’ ‘is
both the possibility for collective dissent, and a means for silenc-
ing it’.76 This remainder leads, I argue, to calls for a kind of ‘panoptic
efficiency’.77 Lovelock would like to reverse the current geography
in which humans are taking up more and more land and sea while
flora and other fauna are restricted to ever decreasing habitats. He
would like to see humans restricted to small geographic ‘islands’,
subject to heavy environmental surveillance (likely more Orwellian
than Newby’s Green Leviathan), and the majority of the earth’s
surface left to the biosphere.78 This re-creation of wilderness also
undoes the very collapse of naturecultures entanglement that Gaia
theory seeks to effect. Wilderness is that from which the human is
absent.
Finally, this remainder (of difference) speaks to the possible ethical
encounters in which humans might engage. Is the invocation of
wild(er)ness a means of, paraphrasing Thoreau, ‘preserving the world’
through a paradoxical collapse of difference, or might we better see
it as a first step toward speaking with rather than for the other? In
the first invocation of wilderness, humans seek an encounter in order
to recover ourselves. In the second invocation we might think of wilder-
ness as that which ‘marks a kind of reflective limit in which humans
may bear witness to strangeness, to otherness… It is a place where we
encounter otherness, and thereby come to know ourselves… this wilder-
ness-as-other [as] radical alterity, which stubbornly refuses to reflect back
anything at all’.79 The encounter itself transforms us into something
other than what we were prior to the encounter. In The Community of
Those Who Have Nothing in Common, Alphonso Lingis distinguishes
between a depth-perception of the other (van Wyck’s ecology of
strength) ‘that represents the concepts and laws of disciplining, educa-
tion, job training, professional etiquette, kinesics, linguistics, and ulti-
mately ethnobiology and animal psychology’ and a surface-sensitivity
(van Wyck’s ecology of weakness) that, while it cannot obviate the prac-
ticable field afforded by depth-perception, acknowledges this same depth-
perception imperative in the other. While social environmentalism may
132 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

assume too much difference, Gaia theory seems unable to think with
microbial-nonliving co-productions in terms that do not efface differ-
ence. An ecology of weakness leaves open the question of difference of
both degree and kind in encounters/meetings with microbial others.80
7
Eating Well, Surviving Humanism

In an important sense, it matters to the world how the world

comes to matter.1

We must be more open to being theoretically and empirically

surprised by what the world throws up. But we can only be
surprised, and then act appropriately, if collectively we stand
open to it.2

H’ordeuvre

This book details my attempt to build a microontology, as a way of

engaging seriously with the microcosmos. I am interested in the ways in
which bacteria are ally-assembling concrete actants who form, over and
over again, obligate and nonobligate symbiotic companions with life on
earth. I am equally interested in the ways in which bacteria are almost
entirely absent from current formulations interested in the origins and
parameters of, and possibilities for, sociable life. In this final chapter, I
want to contemplate the possibility of a microbial ethics; how we might
‘meet well with’ – to evoke Donna Haraway’s compelling term – bacteria.
My conviction is that social scientists must find ways to begin to theorize
an ethics of the microbial – particularly outside pathogen histories and
characterizations – and that this is fundamental to our future disciplinary
enterprise. I believe this is a tall order: considering an ethics of
(human)animal relations confronts enduring humanist foundational
assumptions as outlined in Chapter 2. To think beyond the animal seems
literally and figuratively beyond our ken.
My desire to think with bacteria – in a literal sense I do this already,
as the neural pathways in my brain were imagined by my bacterial

133
134 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

ancestors – is helpfully informed by Donna Haraway’s contemplation

about what can happen When Species Meet.3 At the outset, Haraway
details the community of the human body:

I love the fact that human genomes can be found in only about
10 percent of all the cells that occupy the mundane space I call my
body; the other 90 percent of the cells are filled with the genomes of
bacteria, fungi, protists, and such, some of which play in a sym-
phony necessary to my being alive at all, and some of which are
hitching a ride and doing the rest of me, of us, no harm. I am vastly
outnumbered by my tiny companions; better put, I become an adult
human being in company with these tiny messmates. To be one is
always to become with many.4

Haraway’s primary interests in this text are the meetings of Canidae

and Hominidae, and she delights in the telling of her cells’ coloniza-
tion by her companion species dogs, Ms. Cayenne Pepper and Roland.
Haraway asks of these families of kin and (taxonomic) kind important
questions about the possibilities for becoming-with companion spe-
cies. In this becoming-with, relating precedes identity: the relating
itself forms constituent identities, or actants as Latour would have it.
Not, as Haraway points out, that species do not have ontologies-in-
themselves ‘sometimes-separate heritages both before and lateral to
this encounter.’5 But there is contagion at work in Haraway’s species-
meeting: kin and kind defined less through ‘arboreal descent’ and
more through ‘the play of bodies’: a kind of forbidden fertilization of
species-meeting:6

Genes are not the point, and that surely is a relief. The point is com-
panion-species making. It’s all in the family, for better or worse,
until death do us part. This is a family made up in the belly of the
monster of inherited histories that have to be inhabited to be trans-
formed. I always knew that if I turned up pregnant, I wanted the
being in my womb to be a member of another species; maybe that
turns out to be the general condition. It’s not just mutts, in or out
of the traffic of international adoption, who seek a category of one’s
own in significant otherness.7

Haraway’s companion species impregnation is metaphoric to be sure

in its weaving of histories of co-dependence and production; but it is
more than this. A literal enmeshing of bodies and all of their resident
 Eating Well, Surviving Humanism 135

companion species (and those species) in a recursive cascade that

defines what and how we know what we know; ‘turtling all the way
down’ as Haraway puts it.8
Turtling all the way down defines the event of Haraway’s species-
meeting. In other words, Haraway works toward an ethics preceded by
the recognition of an always already incalculable enmeshing of species,
and an urgent need to reach beyond the kinds of ‘speaking for’ species
licensed through persistent claims of human exceptionalism:

Disarmed of the fantasy of climbing into heads, one’s own or others’,

to get the full story from the inside, we can make some multispecies
semiotic progress. To claim not to be able to communicate with and
to know one another and other critters, however imperfectly, is a
denial of mortal entanglement (the open) for which we are respons-
ible and in which we respond… Response is comprehending that
subject-making connection is real. Response is face-to-face in the
contact zone of an entangled relationship. Response is in the open.
Companion species know this.9

This incalculable enmeshment seems to me to proceed from a differ-

ent, nonhuman-centered ontology than Kant’s sublime, Wittgenstein’s
lion, Lyotard’s inhuman and Differend, Heidegger’s Hand-Werk,
Levinas’s dog Bobby and ultimately Derrida’s cat. I will not rehearse
the fine analyses undertaken of these philosophical treatises here: only
to say that each pivots on a comparison between humans and animals
(the animal), that leads to an ultimate disavowal (which at least for
Levinas and Derrida seems disquieting).10 And the philosophical limit
remains the human-animal, which, given that humans are animals,
says something important about the limits of bacterial ‘faciality’ within
a human imaginative horizon.
Facilitated enormously by Haraway’s thoughtful exegesis of ethical
encounters, I am interested in those companion species that are not
species at all: companion with not-species as it were.11 That bacteria do
not live up to/defy (depending on our microbial politics) taxonomic
expectations, is a first clue to the ontological and epistemological ques-
tions that bacteria invite us to consider. Put another way, I am struck
by the ways in which microbial becomings – becomings with bacteria,
becomings with microbial communities – somehow fall below our line
of view.
Reflecting upon Jacques Derrida’s framing of ethics in terms of what it
means to ‘eat well’ (in both literal and figurative senses), the final
136 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

chapter of When Species Meet is devoted to ‘parting bites that might

nourish mortal companion species who cannot and must not assimilate
one another but who must learn to eat well, or at least well enough that
care, respect, and difference can flourish in the open.’12 Haraway asks
‘What do they [species] contribute to the flourishing of the land and its
critters (naturalcultural in that sense)? That question does not invite a
disengaged “liberal” ethics or politics but requires examined lives that
take risks to help the flourishing of some ways of getting on together
and not others’ (288–9, original emphasis).
We might work through Haraway’s insightful questions in a literal
sense to consider how organisms ingest, use or otherwise transform
living/nonliving matter. All animals are, metabolically, consumers
(heterotrophs must use ready-made organic compounds). Autotrophic
bacteria, by contrast, do not ‘eat’ (they ‘fix’ or otherwise convert the
elements on which all living organisms depend). These bacteria are pro-
ducers, engaging in a different economy of eating and thus relating
with the world. Other kinds of bacteria, such as those found in
rumens, termite guts and human intestines, live symbiotically with
animals and other organisms, enabling food digestion. The difference
between consumers and producers also invokes a metaphoric sense of
eating well – the flourishing of care, respect, and difference as Haraway
describes – at the same time that humans confront what Pollan
acerbically calls ‘the omnivore’s dilemma’.13 Given our relation to the
biosphere as consumers, it is unsurprising that humans focus on
eating. As Pollan notes:

… the way we eat represents our most profound engagement with

the natural world. Daily, our eating turns nature into culture, trans-
forming the body of the world into our bodies and minds… Our
eating also constitutes a relationship with dozens of other species –
plants, animals, and fungi – with which we have coevolved to the
point where our fates are deeply entwined… Eating puts us in touch
with all that we share with the other animals, and all that sets us
apart. It defines us.14

I want to extend Haraway’s epistemology to focus on production as a

prevalent relational economy on earth, and as one important aspect of
our entanglement with bacteria. While appreciating the complex inter-
dependencies within-and-between living and nonliving matter,
Haraway’s species-meeting might obscure bacteria and the inorganic
figures only as ‘land’ (which is, itself, composed mainly of bacteria).
 Eating Well, Surviving Humanism 137

Indeed, bacteria – the last universal common ancestor and on which

the biosphere intimately depends – are typically excluded from the lit-
erature concerned with human animal bonds (even while they are an
immutable material part of all such bonds). Put another way, eating
well with bacteria requires an ethics absent from most current formula-
tions. By fore fronting those organisms on whom eating well literally
depends, I invite critical reflection upon the serious limitations we
create by eclipsing the much more significant relations all animals enjoy
with microorganisms – how our eating (well with) bacteria requires a
different relational economy.

Eating well with bacteria

In the economy of eating, all (human)animals are defined as con-

sumers. Put another way, we are entirely dependent upon fungi and
plants, who in turn are entirely dependent upon autotrophic bacteria
(bacteria engage in cascading relations of symbioses – mutually sustain-
ing, pathogenic, obligate or otherwise – with other organisms, includ-
ing other bacteria). Autotrophic organisms:

build their bodies exclusively from inert, non-living matter. Their

essential mass is composed of organic compounds containing nitro-
gen, oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen – all derived from the mineral
world. Autotrophs transform this raw material into the complex
organic compounds which are necessary for life. The preliminary
labors of autotrophs are ultimately necessary for the existence of
heterotrophs, which obtain their carbon and nitrogen largely from
living matter.15

Chemically, autotrophy looks like this:

Photoautotrophy:

Light energy + CO2 + H2O ⇒ sugar + O2 (waste)

Chemo autotrophy (ex. Methanogenesis):

Chemical bond energy + CO2 + H2 ⇒ sugar + CH4 (waste)

(Human)animals are omniecophagic (converting all plant, animal,

organic and inorganic matter into one form or another of human bio-
mass), and omnivoric, a term derived from the latin omne meaning
138 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

everything and vorare meaning to devour.16 In essence, we will eat

nearly anything, plant or animal. Michael Pollan eloquently argues
that we face a dilemma every time we eat; that is, every time we
enter into the earth’s economy of consumption.17 The dilemma arises
because we must eat to live, but in doing so we engage ourselves
in dependencies on other lives, a dependency that involves killing
(whether fauna and/or flora).
Animals must also digest the food they eat. All (human)animals’ diges-
tive tracts house millions of bacteria per gram of content, and it is these
bacteria that break down the food and enable digestion.18 According to
Lora Hooper and her colleagues, who study Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron
microflora in mice intestines, the human intestine is the most densely
populated organ of the body, and the site of the most intense human-
bacterial relationships.19 In our guts, bacteria influence our biology by
modulating the expression of genes that shape various physiological
functions (884).20 Ruminant animals (cows, sheep, goats, camels, buffalo,
deer, elk and so on) live symbiotically with untold multitudes of bacteria
that digest their food. The rumen is an organ in which food (grasses and
shrubs primarily composed of cellulose) are digested by bacteria and cili-
ated protozoans. Cows, bacteria, ciliated protozoans, and grass are entan-
gled in a superb collegial symbiotic relationship. Grasses benefit because
cattle expand the grasses’ habitat by preventing the spread of trees and
shrubs, by fertilizing the soil with manure and spreading and planting
grass seeds with their hooves. Bacteria benefit both the cattle and the
grass by inventing a way for cattle to digest what would otherwise be
indigestible. Without their bacterial companions, ruminant animals, like
their termite compatriots, could not digest their food. The beef empire
would not exist without bacteria.21
And what an empire it is. In the United Kingdom, roast beef and
Yorkshire pudding remain popular food choices.22 In America, eating beef
is considered a right, and certainly surpasses apple pie as symbolic
of the American white middle-class lifestyle. The Bovine spongiform
encephalopathy (BSE) crisis provided the public with an insight into
human-animal, animal-animal and animal-biota relations. To maximize
beef production, large-scale farmers and corporations have not only
significantly increased and changed cattle’s diet, they have also made her-
bivores into carnivores and, indeed, cannibals.23 The enormous increase
in the human consumption of steer meat (as well as chickens, pigs
and sheep) is dependent upon the monumental shift from the small
farm multi-crop approach to the corporate-funded and directed mono-
agriculture of corn. Mono-agriculture is hazardous: single nonrotated
 Eating Well, Surviving Humanism 139

crops divest the soil of its resources (such as bacteria) and make its replen-
ishment difficult; corn does not self-fertilize and requires human inter-
vention; and single crops decrease biodiversity. Most of the corn grown
in North America (about 60 percent) is used to feed cows, bulls and
steers – fed in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO) or what
Pollan calls ‘new animal cities’.24 The economic logic is simple: feed as
many cattle as possible in the shortest amount of time to create the
most beef possible. It is exactly opposite to the closed ecological loop
of old-style farm logic where animals were fed crop waste products, and
crops were fed animal waste products.25
Pollan’s detailed description of the lives of cattle in the beef produc-
tion industry in North America is sobering. Here, cattle are insem-
inated via mail-order semen straws. Beef cattle live with their mothers
for the first six months of their lives where they live on their mothers’
milk and field grasses. From there the cattle are moved to CAFOs (their
mothers have long since been inseminated again to produce another
cohort of beef and milk) where they are taught through a process that
Pollan describes as ‘backgrounding’ (confined to a pen and made to eat
from a trough) to eat corn. For the first time, the rumen encounters an
entirely new diet, consisting of liquefied fat (such as beef tallow – the
FDA ban on cannibalism makes exceptions in the form of blood prod-
ucts and fat) and protein supplements (including synthetic oestrogen),
antibiotics (Rumensin and Tylosin), alfalfa hay and silage (roughage)
and corn. About 37,000 cattle consume a million pounds of feed on
CAFOs per day.
This diet is not good for cattle. As Pollan describes, most cattle on
CAFOs are sick from bloating, acidosis, diarrhoea, ulcers, rumenitis,
liver disease and a weakening of the immune system which can in turn
lead to polio, enterotoxemia, coccidiosis and pneumonia.26 Cattle
spend only 150 days on feedlot diets: it is all their bodies can with-
stand before risking dire illness, and it is long enough to make their
bodies fat enough for the food industry to profit from their slaughter
for human (and cattle) consumption.
Beef itself is not good for human consumption, particularly at the rate
of three times a day as in many American diets. Corn-fed meat is worse
because it contains more saturated fat and less omega-3 fatty acids. Con-
suming CAFO-produced beef also means consuming what these cattle
consume, including liquefied fat (meaning cattle that have already gone
through CAFO production and slaughter), antibiotics, synthetic oestro-
gen, corn, feather meal, chicken litter, chicken, fish and pig meal and
faecal dust. And this is to say nothing of the microbial ecosystem found
140 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

on CAFOs. Commenting on the ‘deep pile of manure’ in which CAFO

cattle stand and sleep, Pollan observes that ‘the speed at which these
animals will be slaughtered and processed – four hundred an hour… –
means that sooner or later some of the manure caked on these hides
gets into the meat we eat’ (81–2).27 The four meat-packing companies
(Tyson subsidiary IBP, Cargill subsidiary Excel, Swift and Company,
and National) that kill and market four out of every five beef cattle
born in America attempt to sterilize the manure by irradiating the
cattle carcasses.
The feedlots themselves are not good for the environment. They
occupy vast swathes of land that could otherwise provide a habitat for
biodiverse flora and fauna. And they pollute. Referring to the cattle-
produced ‘manure lagoons’ Pollan notes this waste cannot be recycled
into the earth as soil fertilizer as old-style farming would do. The nitro-
gen and phosphorous levels are so high that they would kill the crops.
As it is, these lagoons contain heavy metals, hormones and chemicals
that end up in downstream waterways, even as far as the Gulf of
Mexico where an 8,000 mile zone is so starved of oxygen that only
algae and anaerobic microbes can live in it.
And CAFOs are linked to the environment and the global food chain
through (it will come as no surprise) fossil fuels, and more specifically,
petroleum. Pollan estimates that feeding one steer to slaughter-weight
uses up 35 gallons – nearly one barrel – of oil.

Remembering and forgetting

Like its theoretical companion, gifting, ethics involves remembering

and forgetting.28 So, as Pollan describes:

the short, unhappy life of a corn-fed feedlot steer represent[s] the

ultimate triumph of industrial thinking over the logic of evolu-
tion… Eating industrial meat takes an almost heroic act of not
knowing or, now, forgetting… What is perhaps most troubling,
and sad, about industrial eating is how thoroughly it obscures
all these relationships and connections. [It is] a journey of
forget-ting… how and what we eat determines to a great extent
what use we make of the world – and what is to become of it (my
emphasis).29

Pollan, as I read him, invokes forgetting in terms of human connec-

tions with nature; with animals and our environment. Commenting
 Eating Well, Surviving Humanism 141

on the entanglement of ethics and human connections with the envir-

onment, John Urry notes that until very recently, the West had no
sense of an ‘inclusive ethical community’: nature had no rights and
nature existed only to serve humans.30 In this sense, nature was con-
ceived of as something forgettable. Distilling this shift into terms that
strongly resonate with social scientists, and invoking the Lockean
concept of natural rights with irony, Roszak states: ‘we are finally
coming to recognize that the natural environment is the exploited pro-
letariat, the downtrodden nigger of everybody’s industrial system…
Nature must also have its natural rights’.31 This necessitates that we
‘treat “natural” non-humans as autonomous participants…in the world’
and that non-humans have responsibilities as well.32 This is a tall order:
non-human participation, let alone responsibilities, challenges the
humanocentric restriction of citizenship to people.
And to a large degree, ‘the problem of the other is the problem of
knowing the other’.33 Haraway’s political project is deeply concerned
with this point: that we proceed from an ethics in which the other
(animals) cannot relate in and of themselves. It is why Lyotard pivots
ethical discussions around a concept of the victim:

Some feel more grief over damages inflicted upon an animal than
over those inflicted upon a human. This is because the animal is
deprived of the possibility of bearing witness according to the
human rules of establishing damages, and as a consequence, every
damage is like a wrong and turns it into a victim ipso facto. – But, if
it does not at all have the means to bear witness, then there are not
even damages, or at least you cannot establish them… That is why
the animal is a paradigm of the victim.34

The (nonhuman) animal, then, is a victim because of its capacity to

both forget (forgive?) and not bear witness (take revenge?).35 Levinas, we
know, thought about this too. Zygmunt Bauman observes that Levinas’s
theory of ethics ‘is not based on a model of “fair exchange and reciprocity
of benefits” (as in John Rawls’s influential social-contract model…), but
rather on what Levinas has called a “total responsibility” to the Other
“without waiting for reciprocity”’.36 Even so, or perhaps because of this,
Levinas does not ultimately enter into a relationship with concentration
camp dog Bobby; a relationship in which Bobby may well have
responded but remained outside of Levinas’s ken.37 Bobby remains face-
less. And if animals ‘big like us’ are precluded from responding – are
faceless – how far below our ethical horizon do bacteria fall?38
142 The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

Once again, Joost Van Loon’s insightful work on viruses and ‘parasite
politics’ provides a way forward:

The parasite gives us a rather different ‘Other’ than that elusive figure
that is central to the work of Levinas…. Instead of a morally impera-
tive and highly evolved figure, the parasite ‘Other’ is other in its
lowness. It is thus more able to resist the idolatry of otherness and
total self-negation commonly found in Levinasian-inspired ethics. This
resistance is essential if we are not to be entrapped in another, inverse,
form of identity politics. In its ‘becoming-host’ the parasite does not
allude to the high ground, yet it cannot engage in survivalism either as
survival is essentially based on the negation of any form of becoming.
In becoming-host, the parasite is the most effective ethical Other to
engender a sense of ‘community-in-difference’. That is, rethinking
community through the figure of the parasite allows us to steer clear of
both the survivalism of the solitary-autonomous but authentic indi-
vidual and the mediocre identity politics of the herd collective.39

To the parasite, we might well add the multitudes of bacteria that

form symbiotic or otherwise relational entanglements with (human)-
animals. Symbiogenesis is a form of ‘becoming-host’ in which commu-
nity-in-difference is durational, involving past, present and future.

Surviving humanism

A microbial ethics – an ethics of eating well with bacteria – requires that

we remember the first (and last) link in the food chain. It must begin with
an appreciation of these minute creatures, the stuff of life. From a purely
humanocentric perspective, we want to remember that we share (and
intimately depend upon) the same microbial ecosystem as everything
that we eat. Now, I think it is a safe bet that rumen bacteria will continue
to find ingenious ways to digest the corn and whatever else humans see
fit to force-feed cattle, chickens, sheep and pigs. So I am not arguing that
we replace our ‘save the baby seals’ with ‘save the bacteria’ banners, for
the simple reason that we are not capable of eradicating all microbes.
Nor, if we define parthenogenesis as defying death, are we capable of
killing bacteria. And while I appreciate Haraway’s desire for the kind of
eating well that occurred through her colleagues’ discussion of human
placental ingestion and carnivore versus vegan diets, I also appreciate that
someone who wants to eat well with bacteria will have a quantitatively
and qualitatively more difficult time with these issues. Eating well with
 Eating Well, Surviving Humanism 143

bacteria is decidedly beyond animal rights rhetoric. What it does effect

is a startling extension to those with whom we meet-with:

To take back our personhood in relation to other animals changes

everything. Anyone who seriously engages in this task comes to realize
that our planet is replete with opportunities to form personal relation-
ships with many different kinds of beings. Even if most of us end up
forming bonds only with domestic animals, it is important to fully
digest the fact that millions and millions of potential nonhuman
friends exist in our forests and oceans, savannas and swamps. Radically
rethinking our relations with other species can change the future;
for example, in the context of an endangered species, what if we
expanded our concerns about the disappearance of an abstract cat-
egory to include the concrete reality of death by starvation or disease
or poaching or multitudes of feeling, thinking, relational individuals?40

Microbial ethics, then, must appreciate encounters as already deeply

and endemically contagious. As Derrida observes:

One never eats entirely on one’s own: this constitutes the rule under-
lying the statement ‘one must eat well.’ It is a rule offering infinite
hospitality. And in all differences, ruptures and wars (one might even
say wars of religion), ‘eating well’ is at stake. Today more than ever.
One must eat well – here is a maxim whose modalities and contents
need only be varied, ad infinitum… A discourse thus restructured can
try to situate in another way the question of what a human subject, a
morality, a politics, the rights of the human subject are, can be, and
should be. Still to come, this task is indeed far ahead of us.41

The microbial Other constantly responds. It is a question of how we

respond to, as Jamie Lorimer calls it, ‘nonhuman charisma’ outside of
current pathogen (and to a much smaller degree, biomimicry) formula-
tions.42 Wonderfully invoking eating, digestion and incorporation as
metaphors for theorizing itself, Sara Ahmed writes, ‘we might consider
the ontological encounter as a form of eating and digestion; the other
is valued as that which one is with, but only so far as it can be taken
in by, and incorporated into, the philosophical body’.43 Symbiogenesis,
as a kind of failed digestion, environment becoming entangled mesh-
work organism, offers opportunities to eat well both literally and
philosophically.
Notes

Preface and Acknowledgments

1 John Brockman, The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1995), 129–46, 139. Epitaph courtesy of Lynn Margulis,
in THE THIRD CULTURE: Beyond the Scientific Revolution by John Brockman.
Copyright © 1995 by John Brockman. Reprinted with the permission of
Simon & Schuster, Inc.
2 Emily Dickinson, The Poems of Emily Dickenson (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co.,
1941), 61. Reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of
Amherst College from The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition, Ralph
W. Franklin, ed., Cambridge Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, Copyright © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Copy-
right © 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
3 Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, What is Sex? (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1997).

Chapter 1
1 William Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, 2.
2 Keith Ansell Pearson, Viroid Life: Perspectives on Nietzsche and the Transhuman
Condition (London: Routledge, 1997); Keith Ansell Pearson, Germinal Life: The
Difference and Repetition of Deleuze (London: Routledge, 1999); Bruno Latour,
The Pasteurization of France (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988);
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, What is Philosophy? (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1994); Donna Haraway, When Species Meet (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2008); Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway:
Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2007); Vicky Kirby, Telling Flesh: The Substance of the Corporeal
(New York: Routledge, 1997); Manuel De Landa, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear
History (New York: Swerve, 2000); Elizabeth Wilson, Neural Geographies: Fem-
inism and the Microstructure of Cognition (New York and London: Routledge,
1998); Alphonso Lingis, Foreign Bodies (New York: Routledge, 1994); Elizabeth
Grosz, Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power (Durham: Duke University Press,
2005); Rosalyn Diprose, Corporeal Generosity: On Giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-
Ponty, and Levinas (New York: State University of New York Press, 2002).
3 Perhaps I shall be accused of suffering from a bad case of microbiology and
geosciences envy. If this means that I have gained a much more nuanced
appreciation of the reflexive ways in which my natural scientific colleagues
negotiate science and philosophy, then I affirm such an accusation. And yet,
might this castigation itself be a ruse to dismiss further critical reflection? I
worry that a sense of smugness pervades the social sciences generally and
licenses the false impression that natural scientists are largely ignorant of
philosophical and social studies of science (they/scientists are observed;
we/social scientists are observers) while we can proceed with social scientific

144
 Notes 145

analyses that assume we may gain sufficient understanding of phenomena by

studying what we distinguish as social aspects of materiality. The way in which
Bruce Robbins and Andrew Ross, co-editors of Social Text, referred to Alan
Sokal’s article as ‘a little hokey’, revealing of Sokal’s ‘sense of vulnerability’ and
their publication of his article as a small act of kindness mixed with pity leaves
me cold. Moreover, I have yet to read an article published in a reputable scien-
tific magazine about, say, quantum field theory, written by a sociologist. See
Andrew Ross, Science Wars (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1996).
4 Alan Sokal, ‘A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies,’ Lingua Franca
(1996), 51.
5 Evelyn Fox Keller, ‘Selected Letters to the Editor,’ in The Sokal Hoax, ed.
Editors of Lingua Franca (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska
Press, 2000), 59.
6 Indeed, Alfred North Whitehead described ‘all of Western philosophy’ as ‘a
footnote to Plato’ and Martin Heidegger’s more cryptic assessment was that
Plato single-handedly set Western philosophy on the dead-end path it still
follows today. See Steven L. Goldman, The Science Wars: What Scientists Know
and How They Know It (Chantilly, VI: The Teaching Company, 2006), 231.
7 Modern science largely defines itself, explicitly, as the reasoned alternative (or,
more forcefully, the catastrophic blow) to religion (and bearing in mind that
modern science is impregnated with a heavy dose of ideas from the Middle
Ages and Renaissance, which infused religion, paganism and all sorts of other
influences that we today might identify as more or less ‘scientific’). Witness the
Catholic Church’s vehement reaction to Galileo’s endorsement of the Coper-
nican sun-centred account of the solar system. It was Galileo’s insistence that
the sun-centerd account was the Truth, that it was certain, universal and necess-
ary, rather than confining the theory to a system that predicted the movement
of the planets with greater precision than Ptolemy’s system that got him into
trouble. The Bible states that the sun normally moves, since it stood still for
Joshua in Aijalon. Copernicus’s system requires the earth to move and the sun
to remain still. Galileo was essentially saying that the Bible should be read as a
figurative document (and thus open to interpretation) rather than literally. In
the context of the Church fighting the Thirty Years War (from 1618–1648) in
which millions of people were killed in the name of religion (Protestantism
versus Catholicism) the Church understandably took exception to Galileo’s
ideas. It is no accident that the motto of the British Royal Society, founded
some 300 years ago, is nullius in verba – take nothing on authority. See Steven
L. Goldman, The Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They Know It.
8 Steven L. Goldman, The Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They
Know It, 56.
9 René Descartes, so familiar to social scientists, epitomized Plato’s form of
rationalism. Descartes argued that experiments were equivocal because they
were particular (to the experimenter, context and so on) and that true
knowledge was achievable only through universal hypotheses from which
knowledge would be logically deduced.
10 Steven L. Goldman, The Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They
Know It, 112.
11 Stanley Cavell, In Quest of the Ordinary: Lines of Skepticism and Romanticism
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 31.
146 Notes

12 Steven L. Goldman, The Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They
Know It, 31. See also the 2007 CBC podcast ‘How to Think About Science’,
interview with Steven Shapin.
13 Francis Bacon, The New Organon (New York: Bobbs Merrill, 1960), 97.
14 Steven L. Goldman, The Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They
Know It, 44–5.
15 Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer present a finely argued exposition of
science on the side of the earth giants in Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes,
Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press,
1985). See also the 2007 CBC podcast ‘How To Think About Science’ inter-
view with Steven Shapin.
16 Steven L. Goldman, The Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They
Know It.
17 Steven L. Goldman, The Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They
Know It, 78.
18 Norman Campbell, Physics, The Elements (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Pres, 1920).
19 Ian Hacking, ‘The Self-Vindication of the Laboratory Sciences,’ in Andrew
Pickering, ed., Science as Practice and Culture (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1992), 52.
20 Steve Fuller, Philosophy of Science and its Discontents (New York: Guilford
Press, 1992), 420. See also Steven L. Goldman, The Science Wars: What Scien-
tists Know and How They Know It, 138; Ian Hacking, ‘The Self-Vindication of
the Laboratory Sciences’, 55. Another thread woven through the debates
between the gods and earth giants is termed naïve realism. This idea takes
as its starting point the contention that knowledge ‘good enough’ to make
things happen, that is to progress in science and technology, is more
important than arriving at Truth per se. ‘Another way of stating this is [to
say that] a theory can explain to the satisfaction of a group of thinkers, can
make correct predictions, and can even lead to technological applications
that work and still be wrong, still not be true of reality’, what Duhem calls
the ‘underdetermination of theory by data’. See Pierre Duhem, The Aim and
Structure of Physical Theory (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1954). This approach is exemplified by Joseph Fourier’s Analytical Theory of
Heat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1823), in which Fourier
devised a mathematical theory of heat independent of what heat actually is.
Known as ‘Fourier’s Move,’ it effectively states that understanding the truth
of heat is less important, less practical, than understanding how heat
behaves. Bacon’s theory echoes this approach insofar as he argued that a
method that delivers knowledge about how nature works, is more impor-
tant than a theory of knowledge in philosophy per se. A number of critics of
this approach, best voiced perhaps in Paul Feyerabend’s Against Method:
Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge (Atlantic Highlands: Human-
ities Press, 1975), argue that knowledge derived from method cannot be dis-
tinguished from philosophical concerns with true knowledge in this way.
21 Schrödinger formulated the equation for the wave behavior of matter, while
Heisenberg formulated the particle behavior equation.
22 Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entangle-
ment of Matter and Meaning, 76.
 Notes 147

23 Barad calls this paradox ‘quantum weirdness’ and Bohr wrote ‘Anyone who
is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it’. See Karen Barad,
Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter
and Meaning, 83.
24 Planck’s Constant (h = 6 × 10–34 joule-seconds) is the point at which micro
(quantum) phenomena diverges from macro (Newtonian) phenomena. In
other words, phenomena exist at the macro level when Planck’s Constant = 0.
I defer here to my father, a physicist, according to whom physics isn’t inter-
ested in why this constant exists or how the universe would look if this con-
stant was even slightly different (atoms would be a different size, and life as we
know it might not be possible). Concerned about the attraction of thinking in
terms of two worlds (the micro and the macro), Erwin Schrödinger produced
the famous gedanken known colloquially as ‘Schrödinger’s Cat’. A cat is placed
in a sealed box containing a table on which rests a Geiger counter and a
radioactive source. If the Geiger counter detects decay, it releases poison,
which kills the cat. If the machine does not detect decay, the cat remains alive.
The fate of the cat is, in Bohr’s terms, ‘entangled’ with the fate of the atom.
Schrödinger’s point is that a simultaneously alive and dead cat defies common
sense, which holds that the cat is either alive or dead but not both simultane-
ously. Schrödinger’s Cat reminds me of Margaret Lock’s fine analysis of the
differences in the concept of death between Western and Japanese cultures.
But once the test has been actualized, we have crossed the line from probabil-
ity to certainty. See Edward Norbeck and Margaret Lock, Health, Illness, and
Medical Care in Japan: Cultural and Social Dimensions (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 1987) and Sarah Franklin and Margaret Lock (2003) Remaking
Life and Death: Toward an Anthropology of the Biosciences (Santa Fe: School of
American Research Press, 2003). I also think about the scene from the film The
Princess Bride in which the wizard describes one of the characters as only
‘mostly dead’.
25 Quantum theory comes with a number of implications that are worth
making explicit. First, quantum theory does not mean chaos all the way
down. Indeed, at the quantum level we get patterns, and hence a higher
degree of order (all electrons in the known universe are the same: not
similar, but exactly the same.) Nor is quantum theory the material proof of
anarchism. Second, the universe is not divided up into two simultaneously
existing worlds – one at the quantum and one at the macroscopic level (the
division itself is anthropocentric: we think atoms are small because we have
adopted a particular size scale). Third, and contrary to strong claims about
physics as more ‘objective’ because it deals only in empiricism, physics
makes liberal use of philosophy through gedankens; practical tools used by
physicists to think the unthinkable. Moreover, discussions between Einstein,
Bohr, Heisenberg, Schrödinger and others took seriously the metaphysical
implications of quantum theory, and Bohr’s writings are replete with com-
mentaries on metaphysics.
26 Personal communication with Brian Hird (2007).
27 William I. Thompson, Gaia 2 Emergence: The New Science of Becoming (New
York: Lindisfarne Press, 1991), 14, my emphasis.
28 Niels Bohr, ‘Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic
Physics,’ The Philosophical Writings of Niels Bohr. Vol. 2 Essays 1933–1957 On
148 Notes

Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge (New York: Science Edition Inc, 1949/
1961), 72.
29 Cliff Hooker, ‘The Nature of Quantum Mechanical Reality’, in R.G. Colodny,
ed., Paradigms and Paradoxes (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,
1972), 156.
30 Einstein, Bohr and other physicists debated the ontological and epistemo-
logical implications of quantum theory in a series of articles and face-to-
face meetings including the International Physics Congress and the Fifth
Physical Conference in 1927, the Solvay Conferences in 1930 and 1933, the
International Congress on Light Therapy in 1932, the Second International
Congress for the Unity of Science in 1936, and the International Institute of
Intellectual Co-operation of the League of Nations meeting in 1938. It was in
one of these discussions between Einstein and Bohr that Einstein’s famous
dictum ‘God does not play dice’ reflected Einstein’s concern with the onto-
logical implications of quantum theory for physicists studying matter.
31 D. Howard, ‘Einstein and Duhem’, in R. Ariew and P. Barker, eds., Pierre
Duhem: Historian and Philosopher of Science, Sythese, 83 (1989): 240–1.
Einstein, taking the side of the gods, believed that this uncertainty might
simply reflect the ‘incompleteness’ of quantum mechanics. This is some-
times referred to as the ‘hidden variable hypothesis’ because it refers to the
idea that complete knowledge is possible given the right measurement.
32 Albert Einstein, B. Podolsky, and N. Rosen, ‘Can Quantum-Mechanical
Descriptions of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?’ Physical Review 47
(1935): 777–80, 696, my emphasis. Einstein’s disquiet was evident through-
out his life. Commenting on the implications of quantum theory, he wrote:
‘To believe this is logically possible without contradiction; but it is so very
contrary to my scientific instinct that I cannot forego the search for a more
complete conception’ (Albert Einstein, ‘Physics and Reality,’ Journal of
Franklin Institute 221 (1936): 349). Einstein’s unease was not without justifi-
cation: spin-off theories such as Everett, Wheeler and Graham’s (EWG)
Model speculate that natural laws are actually probability manifolds pro-
ducing an almost infinite number of universes, so that not only is every-
thing possible, but everything conceivable will happen in at least one
universe. ‘Bell’s Theorem’ states that ‘nonlocal’ correlations exist between
any two particles that have once been in contact (see J.S. Bell, Speakable and
Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics (Cambridge University Press, 1989)).
These sorts of ideas led to Einstein’s famous comment about entanglement:
that every time a mouse looks at the universe, the universe must change
(and Wolf’s calculation that the mouse’s brain is so small as to make the
changes caused by the mouse’s observations negligible. See Robert Anton
Wilson, Quantum Psychology: How Brain Software Programs You and Your World
(Tempe, AZ: New Falcon, 1990).
33 Niels Bohr, ‘Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in
Atomic Physics,’ 41, 60–1.
34 Niels Bohr, ‘Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in
Atomic Physics,’ 50.
35 Niels Bohr, ‘Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic
Physics,’ 64; Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and
the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, 56.
 Notes 149

36 Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entangle-
ment of Matter and Meaning, 205.
37 Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entangle-
ment of Matter and Meaning, 197. My own reading of Bohr’s work sustains
Barad’s argument that Bohr is not ‘antirealist’. What his work does suggest,
and has been reiterated by others, is that ‘[i]n all these theories there are
many quantum descriptions of the same universe. Each of them depends
on a way of splitting the universe in two parts such that one part contains
the observer and the other part contains what the observer wishes to
describe… The quantum description is always the description of some part
of the universe by an observer who remains inside it’ (Lee Smolin, Three
Roads to Quantum Gravity, (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 47–8; see also
Carlo Rovelli, ‘Relational Quantum Mechanics,’ International Journal of
Theoretical Physics 35, no. 8 (1996): 1637–78). As such, the totality of the
universe is inaccessible (in an ontological sense) from the observer.
38 Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entangle-
ment of Matter and Meaning. There is insufficient space here to detail how
each physicist’s research contributed to the development of quantum
theory (see Niels Bohr, ‘Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Prob-
lems in Atomic Physics’). Planck’s discovery of the universal quantum of
action, Einstein’s discovery that photo-effects and other physical phenom-
ena depend upon individual quantum effects, Rutherford’s discovery of the
atomic nucleus, Franck and Hertz’s experiments producing spectra through
the impact of electrons on atoms, and a host of other developments, all
contributed to what is known today as quantum theory. Quantum theory is
now a mature branch of physics with good predictive power at the micro-
level: in other words, quantum mechanics works (this was the basis of
Fourier’s description of heat: it doesn’t matter that we don’t understand the
ontology of heat; it works and that is sufficient). Applications of quantum
theory have enabled the development of cell phones, CD players and lap-
tops – about 30 percent of the US gross national product (Tim Folger,
‘Quantum Shmantum,’ Discover 22 no. 9 (2001)).
39 Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entangle-
ment of Matter and Meaning, 88.
40 Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entangle-
ment of Matter and Meaning, 37. Pickering also refers to developments in par-
ticle physics to outline his theory of post-humanist ‘noncorrespondence
realism’ in which the ‘the representational chains of science terminate not
“in the world itself” but in specific captures and framings of material
agency’ which are, in effect, closures effected by the outcome of ‘machinic,
conceptual, and social maneuverings in fields of material and disciplinary
agency’. See Andrew Pickering, The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and
Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 186, 194.
41 Niels Bohr, ‘Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in
Atomic Physics,’ 20–1.
42 Niels Bohr, ‘Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in
Atomic Physics,’ 22. While he ventured into the implications of quantum
theory for understanding metaphysical problems such as consciousness,
Bohr was cautious: ‘… I should like to emphasize that considerations of the
150 Notes

kind here mentioned are entirely opposed to any attempt of seeking new poss-
ibilities for a spiritual influence on the behavior of matter in the statistical
description of atomic phenomena’ (Niels Bohr, ‘Discussion with Einstein on
Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics,’ 11). Social scientists recognize
this position because it challenges anthropocentric and popularized notions,
not to mention liberal humanist conceptions of the individual as ultimately
responsible for her/his willed behavior (expounded in the film What the Bleep?
and the like). A number of these applications make strong claims about the
applicability of quantum theory to human political, psychological or spiritual
concerns. These popularized accounts share a narrative route that goes like
this: quantum theory (the hardest of the hard sciences and therefore most
objective, valid and so on) proves the nonbifurcation of observer-observed
which means that people can control every aspect of their lives (getting rich,
having more sex with more attractive partners, overcoming infertility, obesity
and so on), and collectively, we can create a peaceful, environmentally respon-
sible humanity – all this by recognizing quantum theory’s ‘message’. For a
more explicit link between quantum theory and religion see M. Ricard and
T. Xuan Thuan, The Quantum and the Lotus: A Journey to the Frontiers Where
Science and Buddhism Meet (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004). But as Barad
cautions: ‘In the popular literature, quantum physics is often positioned as
the scientific path leading out of the West to the metaphysical Edenic garden
of Eastern mysticism. Paralleling these popular renditions, one can find sug-
gestions in the literature that quantum physics is inherently less androcentric,
less Eurocentric, more feminine, more post-modern, and generally less regres-
sive than the masculinist and imperializing tendencies found in Newtonian
physics. But those who naively embrace quantum physics as some exotic
Other that will save our weary Western souls forget too quickly that quantum
physics underlies the workings of the A-bomb, that particle physics (which
relies on quantum theory) is the ultimate manifestation of the tendency
toward scientific reductionism, and that quantum theory in all its applications
continues to be the purview of a small group of primarily Western-trained
males’ (Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the
Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, 67–8).
43 Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, Trans. Catherine Porter (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993); Michael Callon and John Law,
‘After the Individual in Society: Lessons on Collectivity From Science, Tech-
nology and Society,’ Canadian Journal of Sociology 22, no. 2 (1997): 1–11;
Isabelle Stengers, Power and Invention: Situating Science, Trans. P. Bains (Minnea-
polis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997); John Law, Power, Action and Belief:
A New Sociology of Knowledge? (London: Routledge, 1986); Andrew Pickering,
The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency and Science; Michel Serres, Les Cinq Sens
(Paris: Hachette, 1985); Michael Kearnes, ‘Geographies That Matter: The
Rhetorical Deployment of Physicality?’ Social and Cultural Geography 4, no. 2
(2003); Steve Fuller, Social Epistemology (Indiana University Press, 1988); Henri
Bergson. Matter and Memory, Trans. Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer
(London: George Allen and Unwin, 1911); Rosi Braidotti, Transpositions (Cam-
bridge: Polity Press, 2006); Alan Irwin and Brian Wynne, Misunderstanding
Science? The Public Reconstruction of Science and Technology (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996); Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and
 Notes 151

Science (London: Yale University Press, 1985); Donna Haraway, The Haraway
Reader (New York and London: Routledge, 2004).
44 H.M. Collins and Steven Yearley, ‘Epistemological Chicken’, in Andrew
Pickering, ed., Science as Practice and Culture (Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 1992), 304. The ‘weak program’ is defined as ‘the idea that socio-
psychological causes need only be sought for error, irrationality and devi-
ation from the proper norms and methodological precepts of science. As
such, the weak program resembles representationalism in the belief that
‘errors’ in the scientific method can be both measured and taken into
account (i.e. eliminated). See David Bloor, ‘Anti-Latour,’ Studies in History
and Philosophy of Science 30, no. 1 (1999): 113–29.
45 William I. Thompson, Gaia 2 Emergence: The New Science of Becoming, 20.
46 David Bloor, ‘Anti-Latour,’ 90.
47 This seems to come close to Bohr’s definition of objectivity: ‘… however far
the phenomena transcend the scope of classical physical explanation, the
account of all evidence must be expressed in classical terms. The argument
is simply that by the word “experiment” we refer to a situation where we
can tell others what we have done and what we have learned and that,
therefore, the account of the experimental arrangement and of the results
of the observations must be expressed in unambiguous language with suit-
able application of the terminology of classical physics’ (Niels Bohr,
‘Discussion with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics,’ 39).
48 David Bloor, ‘Anti-Latour,’ 110.
49 David Bloor, ‘Anti-Latour,’ 87.
50 H.M. Collins Steven Yearley, ‘Epistemological Chicken,’ 310.
51 See the Bloor-Latour debate in Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science
and the Collins and Yearley debate with Woolgar, Callon and Latour in
Andrew Pickering (ed.), Science as Practice and Culture.
52 Bruno Latour, The Pasteurization of France, 193. Latour lists the terms he has
variously adopted to document the indivisibility of ‘nonsocial’ nature and
‘social’ nature: ‘inscription, visualization, translation, trials, mediation, names
of action, black-boxing, historicity of things’. ANT’s approach requires science
studies practitioners to take actants seriously, as, according to Latour, scien-
tists already do: ‘any scientist worth the name has been thoroughly redefined
by the actors he or she has dealt with’. Bruno Latour, ‘For Bloor and Beyond:
A Reply to David Bloor’s “Anti-Latour,”’ Studies in the History and Philosophy of
Science 30, no. 1 (1999): 121, 126.
53 Graham Harman, The Metaphysics of Objects: Latour and His Aftermath (draft
manuscript, 2008), 2.
54 Bruno Latour, The Pasteurization of France, 205–6.
55 Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, 4.
56 Steve Woolgar, ‘Some Remarks about Positivism: A Reply to Collins and
Yearley,’ in Andrew Pickering, ed., Science as Practice and Culture (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 327–42, 332.
57 Michael Callon and Bruno Latour, ‘Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the
Bath School!,’ in Andrew Pickering, ed., Science as Practice and Culture
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), 350.
58 Graham Harman, The Metaphysics of Objects: Latour and His Aftermath, 12.
59 Graham Harman, The Metaphysics of Objects: Latour and His Aftermath, 61.
152 Notes

60 Graham Harman, The Metaphysics of Objects: Latour and His Aftermath, 20,
29.
61 Graham Harman, The Metaphysics of Objects: Latour and His Aftermath, 144.
62 Steve Woolgar, ‘Some Remarks about Positivism: A Reply to Collins and
Yearley,’ 335.
63 Michael Callon and Bruno Latour, ‘Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the
Bath School!,’ 346.
64 Bruno Latour, ‘For David Bloor… and Beyond: A Reply to David Bloor’s
“Anti-Latour,”’ 118.
65 Graham Harman, The Metaphysics of Objects: Latour and His Aftermath, 26.
66 Michael Callon and Bruno Latour, ‘Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the
Bath School!,’ 355.
67 Bruno Latour, The Pasteurization of France, 159.
68 Graham Harman, The Metaphysics of Objects: Latour and His Aftermath, 29.
69 Graham Harman, The Metaphysics of Objects: Latour and His Aftermath, 7.
Again, the strong program argues that everything is ultimately part of nature
(such as observers and consciousness), but that causal explanations for
scientific phenomena are to be found in social explanations (resonant with
Durkheim), which, by its own definition, must be already within nature.
Kearnes makes the point that ‘a reductive logic of causality haunts current
calls for a “material culture” approach or a rematerialization of contem-
porary social and cultural geography. An external materiality is acted upon
by socio-cultural consumption and thus becomes an object.’ Michael Kearnes,
‘Geographies That Matter: The Rhetorical Deployment of Physicality?,’
Social and Cultural Geography 4, no. 2 (2003): 148.
70 Bruno Latour, The Pasteurization of France, 35.
71 Graham Harman, The Metaphysics of Objects: Latour and His Aftermath, 170.
72 See H. M. Collins Steven Yearley, ‘Epistemological Chicken’; Karin Knorr-
Cetina, Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1985); S. Schaffer, ‘Review of B. Latour, The Pas-
teurization of France,’ Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 22 (1991):
175–92; S. Shapin, ‘Following Scientists Around,’ Social Studies of Science 18
(1988): 533–50; Alan Sokal and J. Bricmont, Fashionable Nonsense: Post-
modern Intellectuals’, Abuse of Science (New York: Picador, 1998).
73 For an example, see Bruno Latour, ‘A Relativistic Account of Einstein’s Rela-
tivity,’ Social Studies of Science, 18 (1988): 3–44, 20. In this analysis, Latour
asks: ‘in what ways can we, by reformulating the concept of society, see
Einstein’s work as explicitly social? Latour’s answer is surprising given his
emphasis is on ‘things-in-themselves’ – which would presumably include
time/space and gravity – having their own agentic existence. Latour argues
that Einstein’s theory of special relativity is, at its root, semiotic theory. He
analyzes Einstein’s discussion of special relativity to pivot on the difference
between relativism and relativity. Relativism, defined by Latour reading
Einstein (using the example of two observers, one on a moving train and
one on the station platform), says that all observers can be ‘shifted out’ of
a space and time, but when we shift them back in, their reports (of their
location) will not be superimposable (they will not agree). Latour seems to
think that Einstein’s ‘observers’ are human, whereas Einstein’s observers are
simply measuring devices, which the other measuring devices need not
 Notes 153

fear, as Latour assumes, ‘might betray, might retain privileges, and send
reports that could not be used to expand our knowledge [or require] dis-
cipline… to turn them into dependent pieces of apparatus that do nothing
but watch the coincidence of hands and notches…’ (Bruno Latour, ‘A Rela-
tivistic Account of Einstein’s Relativity,’ 22). Latour argues that Einstein’s
theory of special relativity is commensurate with semiotics in which all nar-
rators of texts must be ‘shifted out’ of that text. In other words, ‘… there is
no difference to be made in principle, between internal sociology – how to
manage the population of actants that make up the content of a text – and
external sociology’ (Bruno Latour, ‘A Relativistic Account of Einstein’s Rela-
tivity,’ 27). This seems a curious slip. Latour’s point is to demonstrate, through
special relativity, that distinguishing between observer (social) and observed
(object) is an epistemological dead end. But in practice, the material seems
to collapse into the cultural, which then occupies center-stage.
74 Ian Hacking, ‘The Self-Vindication of the Laboratory Sciences,’ in Andrew
Pickering, ed., Science as Practice and Culture, 52.
75 Adrian Mackenzie and Andrew Murphie, ‘The Two Cultures Become Multiple?
Sciences, Humanities and Everyday Experimentation,’ Australian Feminist
Studies, 23, no. 55 (2008): 87–100.
76 Adrian Mackenzie and Andrew Murphie, ‘The Two Cultures Become Multiple?
Sciences, Humanities and Everyday Experimentation,’ 89.

Chapter 2
1 Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication
(New York: Organe Judd, 1868), 204.
2 R.Y. Stanier and C.B. van Niel, ‘The Concept of a Bacterium,’ Archives of
Microbiology 42 (1962): 17–35. Epitaph by permission of Archives of
Microbiology and Springer Publishing.
3 Albert Einstein. URL: < http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/2310>. Accessed
August 2008.
4 Of course, and as Latour points out, the human eye, microscopes and lab-
oratories have been key to understanding bacteria at all, at the same time
that bacteria are notoriously resistant to laboratory culturing. See Bruno
Latour, Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies, 113–73.
5 How small is small? Bacteria are about 1/10 to 1/100 the size of microor-
ganisms such as Paramecium and Amoeba, can only be resolved with a
microscope. How big is big? The largest bacteria is Epulsopiscium fishelsoni,
a gram-positive bacteria that inhabits surgeonfish guts. It is rod-shaped
and about 0.08 × 0.6 millimeters (half a millimeter) long, which is bigger
than most animal cells, and can be seen with the unaided human eye.
6 Betsey Dexter Dyer, A Field Guide To Bacteria (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2003), 14.
7 R.A. Lafferty, ‘Slow Tuesday Night,’ in Nine Hundred Grandmothers
(Berkeley Heights, NJ: Wildside Press, 1999), 134–42. I thank Bronislaw
Szerszynski for drawing my attention to Lafferty’s writing.
8 Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of
History (New York: W.W. Norton, 1989), 309–10.
154 Notes

9 CBC Radio, ‘How to Think About Science’, 2007. URL: <http://www.cbc.ca/

ideas/features/science/index.html> Date accessed: March 2008.
10 Rosi Braidotti, Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics, 100.
11 Arthur C. Clarke, Greetings Carbon Based Bipeds! (London: HarperCollins,
1999), 333. For industrial mimicry of microbes see Janine Benyus,
Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature (New York: Harper Perennial, 2002).
12 Judith Roof, ‘From Protista to DNA (and Back Again): Freud’s Psycho-
analysis of the Single-Celled Organism,’ in Zoontologies: The Question of
the Animal, ed. Cary Wolfe (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2003), 101–20.
13 Judith Roof, ‘From Protista to DNA (and Back Again): Freud’s Psycho-
analysis of the Single-Celled Organism,’ 105.
14 Anticipating my argument in Chapter 5, Roof points out that sexuality is
not an ‘originary process’ if sexual reproduction turns out to be an evolu-
tionary accident. It also means that protists would not be exceptions to
‘evolution’s rule’ (Judith Roof, ‘From Protista to DNA (and Back Again):
Freud’s Psychoanalysis of the Single-Celled Organism,’ 113).
15 Dorion Sagan, ‘Metametazoa: Biology and Multiplicity,’ in Incorporations,
eds. J. Crary and S. Kwinter (New York: Urzone Books, 1992), 377.
16 Haraway explicitly links symbiosis with epistemology: ‘Yoking together
all the way down’, she writes, ‘is what sym-bio-genesis means’ (Donna
Haraway, When Species Meet, 31). See also Isabelle Stengers, ‘Turtles All the
Way Down,’ in the chapter Power and Invention: Situating Science. Trans.
P. Bains (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981), 61–74.
Interestingly, and foreshadowing the next section of this chapter, scientists
have developed technology to allow SSU rRNA sequencing from uncul-
tured organisms and mixed pools of DNA (called culture-independent
PCR). Even with this, 99 percent of natural microbes are not cultured
using standard techniques. See Norman Pace, ‘The Early Branches in the
Tree of Life,’ in Assembling the Tree of Life, eds. Joel Cracraft and Michael
Donoghue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 79.
17 Sandra Blakeslee, ‘Microbial Life’s Steadfast Champion,’ The New York
Times (October 15, 1996).
18 This section is highly indebted to the following sources: Betsey Dexter
Dyer, A Field Guide To Bacteria; Dorion Sagan and Lynn Margulis (1993)
Garden of Microbial Delights: A Practical Guide to the Subvisible World
(Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing); John L. Howland, The Sur-
prising Archaea: Dis-covering Another Domain of Life (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2000); Tim Friend, The Third Domain: The Untold Story of
Archaea and the Future of Biotechnology (Washington, DC: Joseph Henry
Press, 2007). Although not the subject of this chapter, the other kingdoms
consist of the following. Protoctists include nucleated microorganisms
(eukaryotes) that are not animals, plants or fungi (protists are single-celled
protoctists). Fungi are eukaryotes that grow from spores, do not form
embryos, do not have undulipodia during any stages of their life cycle. Fungi
do not ingest food via mouths, but rather absorb nutrients from water or
from protoctist, animal and/or plant tissue. Animals are multicellular organ-
isms with (usually) two sets of chromosomes in each cell that develop from
fertilization and result in a zygote and then blastula. Blastulas are
common to all animals. Plants are sexually reproducing, multicellular
 Notes 155

eukaryotes that develop from embryos that are never blastular. See
Dorion Sagan and Lynn Margulis, Garden of Microbial Delights: A Practical
Guide to the Subvisible World, 86–7.
19 Dorion Sagan and Lynn Margulis, Garden of Microbial Delights: A Practical
Guide to the Subvisible World, 61.
20 Dorion Sagan and Lynn Margulis, Garden of Microbial Delights: A Practical
Guide to the Subvisible World, 61.
21 A number of scientists hypothesize that life began in these anoxic, high
alkalinity, very hot temperatures. See, for example, Michael J. Russell, ‘The
Importance of Being Alkaline,’ Science 302 (2003): 580–1; W. Martin and
Michael J. Russell, ‘On the Origin of Cells: A Hypothesis for the Evolutionary
Transitions from Abiotic Geochemistry to Chemoautotrophic Prokaryotes,
and from Prokaryotes to Nucleated Cells,’ Philosophical Transactions of the
Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 10, no. 1098 (2002): 1–27.
22 Of course, our 20 percent oxygen atmosphere oxidizes metals without
bacteria.
23 Betsey Dexter Dyer, A Field Guide To Bacteria, 118.
24 Betsey Dexter Dyer, A Field Guide To Bacteria, 127.
25 Betsey Dexter Dyer, A Field Guide To Bacteria, 147.
26 Dwayne Savage, as cited in Betsey Dexter Dyer, A Field Guide To Bacteria, 279.
27 Betsey Dexter Dyer, A Field Guide To Bacteria, 205.
28 See Betsey Dexter Dyer, A Field Guide To Bacteria.
29 Deb Hayden, Pox: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis (New York:
Basic Books, 2003).
30 Lynn Margulis, ‘Spirochetes Awake: Syphilis and Nietzsche’s Mad Genius,’ in
Dazzle Gradually: Reflections on the Nature of Nature, eds. Dorion Sagan and
Lynn Margulis (White River Junction: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007).
31 Because methane reacts completely in the presence of oxygen, the contin-
uous presence of methane on earth means that it is continuously being
manufactured. About 30 percent of atmospheric methane is produced by
grazing animals. See Dorion Sagan and Lynn Margulis, Garden of Microbial
Delights: A Practical Guide to the Subvisible World, 113–15.
32 Tyler Volk, ‘Gaia is Life in a Wasteland of By-products,’ in Scientists Debate
Gaia: The Next Century, eds. Stephen Schneider, James Miller, Eileen Crist
and Penelope Boston (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004), 27–36.
33 Edward O. Wilson, ‘The Meaning of Biodiversity and the Tree of Life,’ in
Assembling the Tree of Life, eds. Joel Cracraft and Michael Donoghue (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2004), 539–42, 540.
34 Bruno Latour, ‘From Fabrication to Reality: Pasteur and His Lactic Acid
Ferment’ and ‘The Historicity of Things: Where Were Microbes Before
Pasteur?,’ in Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies, 113–44,
145–73.
35 Bruno Latour, Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies, 122.
36 Bruno Latour, Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies, 124.
37 Latour defines propositions as occasions that allow entities to modify their
definition over the course of an event. See Graham Harman, The Metaphysics
of Objects: Latour and His Aftermath, 141.
38 Astrid Schrader, ‘Phantomatic Species Ontologies: Questions of Survival in
the Remaking of Kin and Kind,’ 4S Conference, Vancouver, B.C.
(November 2006), 1–10.
156 Notes

39 Astrid Schrader, ‘Phantomatic Species Ontologies: Questions of Survival in

the Remaking of Kin and Kind,’ 15.
40 See Jan Sapp, ‘The Prokaryote-Eukaryote Dichotomy: Meanings and Mytho-
log,’ Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews, 69, no. 2 (2005): 292–305.
Literalizing Deleuze’s event in a way that I particularly like, bacteria are
known less for their morphology (indeed, it is notoriously difficult to dis-
tinguish between bacteria, even with microscope technology) and more for
their activity: what they do. This goes back to my argument about the ocular
imagination, as bacteria are often amorphous to human eyes and there-
fore cannot be easily distinguished on the basis of appearance. As such,
other factors such as metabolism and motility become important practical
descriptors.
41 Herbert F. Copeland, The Classification of Lower Organisms (Palo Alto: Pacific
Books, 1956); Thomas P. Curtis, William T. Sloan, and Jack W. Scannell,
‘Estimating Prokaryote Diversity and its Limits,’ Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences USA 99 (2002): 10494–9; Peter Edwards, ‘A Class-
ification of Plants into Higher Taxa Based on Cytological and Biochemical
Criteria,’ Taxon 25, no. 5/6 (1976): 529–42; Gordon F. Leedale, ‘How Many
are the Kingdoms of Organisms?’ Taxon 23 (1974): 261–70; Robert
H. Whittaker, ‘New Concepts of Kingdoms of Organisms,’ Science 163 (1969):
150–60; Robert H. Whittaker and Lynn Margulis, ‘Protist Classification
and the Kingdoms of Organisms,’ BioSystems 10 (1976): 3–18; Carl Woese
and George Fox, ‘Phylogenetic Structure of the Prokaryotic Domain: The
Primary Kingdoms,’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA
74, no. 11 (1977): 5088–90; Carl Woese, O. Kandler and M.L. Wheelis,
‘Towards a Natural System of Organisms: Proposal for the Domains Archaea,
Bacteria, and Eucarya,’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA
87 (1990): 4576–9.
42 Jan Sapp, ‘The Prokaryote-Eukaryote Dichotomy: Meanings and Mytho-
logy,’ 301. Molecular phylogeny consists of analyzing sequences of orthol-
ogous genes (homologous sequences are orthologous if they are separated
by a speciation event) from different organisms such that corresponding
DNA can be compared. In this way, scientists attempt to construct phylo-
genetic genealogies. The greater the differences in DNA sequences, the
further apart, hypothetically, the evolutionary distance between organ-
isms. According to W. Ford Doolittle, there are 20100 possible proteins, 100
amino acids long. A sequence identity of more than 15 percent between
any two proteins is neither coincidence nor unlikely to be the result
of evolutionary convergence (rediscovering the same solution twice).
Assessing which genes might tell us something about ‘deep phylogeny’ is
dependent upon a number of constraints: (1) the gene must occur in all
forms of life; (2) the gene must have resisted lateral transfer; and (3) the
genes must contain enough numbers of homologous nucleotides in order
to infer relationships with some kind of validity and reliability. See
Norman Pace, ‘The Early Branches in the Tree of Life,’ 76–85, 77.
43 E.O. Wilson’s description of the bacteriologist’s field experience is meant to
capture a sense of the challenge of classification. He writes, ‘Scientists
expert in the classification of each of the most diverse groups, such as
bacteria, fungi, and insects, are continuously burdened with new species
almost to the breaking point. Working mostly alone and on minuscule
 Notes 157

budgets, they try desperately to keep their collections in order while eking
out enough time to publish accounts of a small fraction of the novel life
forms sent to them for identification’. Edward O. Wilson, ‘The Meaning of
Biodiversity and the Tree of Life,’ in Assembling the Tree of Life, eds. Joel
Cracraft and Michael Donoghue (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004),
540.
44 See Julie Sommerlund, ‘The Multiplicity of Classifications and Research
Practices in Molecular Microbial Ecology,’ Social Studies of Science 36, no. 6
(2006): 909–28. Sommerlund asks: ‘if you cannot test the VBNC-bacteria
– because they cannot live while being tested – how can you tell if they
are alive, or even in existence?’ (914).
45 Julie Sommerlund provides an interesting science studies analysis of the ten-
sions between phylogenetic and naturalist approaches. Part of the tension,
Sommerlund notes, is about intuition. Hippopotamus and wart hogs intu-
itively appear on nearby branches because they both have four feet. 16S
sequencing, however, reveals that hippos are more genetically related to
whales (Julie Sommerlund, ‘The Multiplicity of Classifications and
Research Practices in Molecular Microbial Ecology’).
46 Margulis needs to retain the prokaryote-eukaryote distinction because sym-
biogenesis theory is predicated on the hypothesis that all eukaryotes derive
from prokaryotic ancestors. It also recognizes that prokaryotes are
monogenomic while eukaryotes are polygenomic through symbiogenesis.
Margulis and Whittaker have devised a schema meant to acknowledge the
insights of molecular biology while retaining symbiogenesis as the major
driving force of evolution. The schema includes the superkingdom
Prokaryota, which includes the kingdom Monera (which itself contains
Bacteria and Archaea); and the superkingdom Eukaryota, which includes the
kingdoms Protoctista, Animalia, Plantae and Fungi.
47 See also Lynn Margulis, Michael Dolan, and Ricardo Guerrero, ‘The
Molecular Tangled Bank: Not seeing the Phylogenies for the Trees,’ Biology
Bulletin 196 (1999): 413–14, 414. The authors argue that partial phylogenies
can never be full phylogenies in the sense that all organisms (with the
exception of a few bacteria) have thousands of proteins required at all times
for metabolism. Others also argue against the theory that Archaea is a sepa-
rate domain. See, for example, R.S. Gupta and E. Griffiths, ‘Critical Issues in
Bacterial Phylogeny,’ Theoretical Population Biology 61, no. 4 (2002): 423–34;
R.S. Gupta, ‘Evolutionary Relationships among Bacteria: Does 16S rRNA
provide all the answers?’, ASM News 66 (2000): 189–90; R.S. Gupta, Life’s
Third Domain (Archaea): An Established Fact or an Endangered Paradigm?:
A New Proposal for Classification of Organisms Based on Protein Sequences
and Cell Structure, Theoretical Population Biology 54, no. 2 (1998): 91–104.
48 Jan Sapp, ‘The Prokaryote-Eukaryote Dichotomy: Meanings and
Mytholog,’ 302. Julie Sommerlund further adds that the gene sequencing
computer programs use assumptions about how close together the
branches should be (Julie Sommerlund, ‘The Multiplicity of Classifications
and Research Practices in Molecular Microbial Ecology’).
49 Hervé Philippe hypothesizes that prokaryotes derived from eukaryotes. See
Hervé Philippe, ‘The Origin and Radiation of Eucaryotes,’ in Assembling
the Tree of Life, eds. Joel Cracraft and Michael Donoghue (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004), 95–106. See also Hervé Philippe, Agnès Germot
158 Notes

and David Moreira, ‘The New Phylogeny of Eukaryotes,’ Current Opinion in

Genetics & Development 10, no. 6 (2000): 596–601.
50 See also Joel Cracraft and Michael Donoghue, Assembling the Tree of Life.
51 Maria Rivera and James Lake, ‘The Ring of Life Provides Evidence for a
Genome Fusion Origin of Eukaryotes,’ Nature 431 (September 2004):
152–5. Time, as Norman Pace points out, also complicates the metaphor
since different lines of descent change at different rates. See Norman Pace,
‘The Early Branches in the Tree of Life,’ 83–4.
52 Nicholas Wade, ‘Life’s Origins Get Murkier and Messier: Genetic Analysis
Yields Intimations of a Primordial Commune,’ The New York Times (June
13, 2000).
53 Norman Pace, ‘The Early Branches in the Tree of Life,’ 79. Another set of
agential cuts produces a Tree of Life reversal such that eukaryotes preceded
prokaryotes within a biota in which an RNA molecule performed tasks
now carried out by RNA, DNA and proteins together. This theory is not
well supported. See David Penny and Anthony Poole, ‘The Nature of the
Last Universal Common Ancestor,’ Current Opinion in Genetics &
Development 9, no. 6 (1999): 672–7. See also Hervé Philippe, ‘The Origin
and Radiation of Eucaryotes,’ in Assembling the Tree of Life, 95–106.
54 Maria Rivera James Lake, ‘The Ring of Life Provides Evidence for a Genome
Fusion Origin of Eukaryotes,’ Nature 431 (September 2004): 154.
55 ‘Noise’ is defined as the degree to which interference obscures a phylo-
genetic signal. See W. Ford Doolittle, ‘Bacteria and archaea,’ in Assembling
the Tree of Life, 92.
56 D. Brochier, E. Bapteste, D. Moreira and H. Philippe, ‘Eybacterial Phylogeny
Based on Translational Apparatus Proteins,’ Trends in Genetics 18 (2002): 1–5.
57 James R. Brown, Christophe J. Douady, Michael J. Italia, William
E. Marshall and Michael J. Stanhope, ‘Universal Trees Based on Large
Combined Protein Sequence Datasets,’ Nature Genetics 28 (2001): 281–5.
58 W. Ford Doolittle, ‘Bacteria and archaea,’ in Assembling the Tree of Life, 93.
59 Hervé Philippe, ‘The Origin and Radiation of Eucaryotes,’ 97–8.
60 Hervé Philippe, ‘The Origin and Radiation of Eucaryotes,’ 98.
61 Hervé Philippe, ‘The Origin and Radiation of Eucaryotes,’ 98.
62 In a cascade of complications, slow-evolving lineages can also be mis-
placed by the LBA artifact, at least in Aquificales and Thermotogales. Hervé
Philippe, ‘The Origin and Radiation of Eucaryotes,’ 99.
63 A good accessibly written book on the scientific search for the origins of
life is Robert M. Hazen, Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life’s Origins
(Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press, 2007).
64 Erwin Schrödinger, What is Life? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1944); Sorin Sonea and Leo Mathieu, Prokaryotology: A Coherent View (Les
Presses de L’Universite de Montreal, 2000); Bernard Dixon, Power Unseen:
How Microbes Rule the World (New York: Freeman, 1994).
65 Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers
through Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), 158.
66 Researchers meet-with bacteria through a variety of techniques including
computer modeling and environment-manipulating in Petri dishes. See
Eshel Ben-Jacob and Herbert Levine, ‘Self-Engineering Capabilities of
Bacteria,’ Journal of the Royal Society Interface (Published online, 2005),
1–18.
 Notes 159

67 A. Lazcano, A. Becerra and L. Delaye, ‘Perception: When Life First Perceived

its Surroundings,’ in Chimeras and Consciousness: Evolution and the Sensory
Self, eds. Lynn Margulis and Celeste Asikainen (White River Junction,
Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishers, forthcoming).
68 Alarmones are modified purine-ribotides, including cyclic AMP (cAMP,
adenosine 3′,5′-cyclic monophosphate), cGMP (guanosine 3′,5′-cyclic mono-
phosphate), AppppA (diadenosine tetraphosphate), and ZTP (5-amino-4-
imidazole carboxamide riboside 5'-triphosphate). See Lazcano, A., Becerra, A.
and Delaye, L. (forthcoming).
69 Bacteria also sample (‘taste’) their food before they consume it. Photo-
synthetic bacteria store low entropy-energy (visible light in the solar spec-
trum between 350 and 650 nano meters) in nano-sized quanta of ATP
molecules that they inject into molecular assemblages for movement and
into enzymes for timed (nonrandom, heterogeneicly dispersed) catalysts.
The ATP that bacteria create further acts as a kind of sensory system for the
genome. For instance, in E. coli, different sets of genes digest different
sugars. When a cell can digest a better sugar (say, glucose rather than
lactose), a specific gene produces a repressor of the lactose gene (required
for lactose digestion). Other genes produce a catabolic activator protein
(CAP) that activates the lactose gene. So the lactose genes are
expressed only in circumstances in which lactose is present and glucose is
absent.
70 Eshel Ben-Jacob, ‘Generic Modeling of Cooperative Growth Patterns in
Bacterial Colonies,’ Nature 368 (1994): 46–9; Eshel Ben-Jacob, ‘Complex
Bacterial Colonies,’ Nature 373 (1995): 566–7; Eshel Ben-Jacob, ‘Bacterial
Wisdom, Godel’s Theorem and Creative Genomic Webs,’ Physica A 248
(1998): 57–76; Eshel Ben-Jacob, ‘Bacterial Self-organization: Co-enhancement
of Complexification and Adaptability in a Dynamic Environment,’
Philosophical Transactions – Royal Society. Mathematical, Physical and Engineer-
ing Sciences 361(2003): 1283–312; Eshel Ben-Jacob et al., ‘Bacterial Linguistic
Communication and Social Intelligence,’ Trends in Microbiology 12, no. 8
(2004): 366–72; Eshel Ben-Jacob, Y. Shapira and A.I. Tauber, ‘Seeking the
Foundations of Cognition in Bacteria: From Schrödinger’s Negative Entropy
to Latent Information,’ Physica A 359 (2006): 495–524; Eshel Ben-Jacob,
Y. Shapira and A.I. Tauber, ‘Bacterial Sociality: Communication and Social
Intelligence in Bacteria,’ in Chimeras and Consciousness: Evolution and the
Sensory Self, eds. L. Margulis and C. Asikainen (White River Junction: VT:
Chelsea Green Publishers, forthcoming). See also B.J. Crespi, ‘The Evolution
of Social Behavior in Microorganisms,’ Trends in Ecological Evolution, 16
(2001): 178–83.
71 James A. Shapiro and Martin Dworkin, Bacteria as Multicellular Organisms
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
72 Eshel Ben-Jacob, ‘Bacterial Self-organization: Co-enhancement of
Complexification and Adaptability in a Dynamic Environment,’ 1300.
73 Ben-Jacob (forthcoming). See http://star.tau.ac.il/~eshel/movie.html for
video clips of the bacterial processes described here. Eshel Ben-Jacob, ‘Bac-
terial Self-organization: Co-enhancement of Complexification and
Adaptability in a Dynamic Environment,’ 1300.
74 Eshel Ben-Jacob, I. Cohen, I. Golding, D. Gutnick, M. Tcherpakov,
D. Helbing and I. Ron, ‘Bacterial Cooperative Organization Under Anti-
160 Notes

biotic Stress,’ Physica A 282, no. 1 (2000): 247–82; Ilan Ron, Ido Golding,
Beatrice Lifsitz and Eshel Ben-Jacob, ‘Bursts of Sectors in Expanding Bacterial
Colonies as a Possible Model for Tumor Growth and Metastases,’ Physica A:
Statistical Mechanics and its Applications 320 (2003): 485–96.
75 Richard Losick and D. Kaiser, ‘Why and How Bacteria Communicate,’
Scientific American 276, no. 2 (1997): 73.
76 Bonnie Bassler, ‘Small Talk: Cell-to-Cell Communication in Bacteria,’ Cell
109 (2002): 421–4.
77 Bonnie Bassler, ‘Small Talk: Cell-to-Cell Communication in Bacteria,’ 421.
78 Richard Losick and D. Kaiser, ‘Why and How Bacteria Communicate,’
68–73.
79 I. Cohen, I. Golding and E. Ben-Jacob, ‘Biofluiddynamics of Lubricating
Bacteria,’ Mathematical Methods Applied to Science 24 (2001): 1429–68; Mark
Lyte, ‘Microbial Endocrinology and Infectious Disease in the 21st Century,’
Trends in Microbiology 12 (2004): 14–20.
80 Eshel Ben-Jacob and Herbert Levine, ‘Self-engineering Capabilities of
Bacteria,’ 2–3.
81 For a detailed description of the biochemical processes involved in Myxo-
coccus xanthus sporulation, see J.M. Kuner and D. Kaiser, ‘Fruiting Body
Morphogenesis in Submerged Cultures of Myxococcus xanthus,’ Journal of
Bacteriology 151, no. 2 (1982): 458–61.
82 Eshel Ben-Jacob, Israela Becker, Yoash Shapira and Herbert Levine,
‘Bacterial Linguistic Communication and Social Intelligence,’ Trends in
Microbiology 12, no. 8 (2004): 366–72.
83 James A. Shapiro, ‘The Significance of Bacterial Colony Patterns,’ BioEssays
17, no. 7 (1995): 597–607. Although it goes against the traditional Kotchian
isolation of a single bacterium, studying bacteria as multicellular colonies
affords new ways to meet-with bacteria. As Ben-Jacob and Levine write,
‘the idea that bacteria act as unsophisticated uncommunicative and
uncooperative cells stems from years of laboratory experiments where the
bacteria are grown in Petri dishes under benign conditions’. Eshel Ben-
Jacob and Herbert Levine, ‘Self-engineering Capabilities of Bacteria,’ 1.
84 James A. Shapiro, ‘The Significance of Bacterial Colony Patterns,’ 597.
85 Eshel Ben-Jacob and Herbert Levine, ‘Self-engineering Capabilities of
Bacteria,’ 10.
86 Eshel Ben-Jacob and Herbert Levine, ‘Self-engineering Capabilities of
Bacteria,’ 2.
87 Eshel Ben-Jacob, ‘Bacterial Self-organization: Co-enhancement of Complex-
ification and Adaptability in a Dynamic Environment,’ 1285.
88 Eshel Ben-Jacob, Israela Becker, Yoash Shapira and Herbert Levine,
‘Bacterial Linguistic Communication and Social Intelligence,’ 367.
89 Eshel Ben-Jacob, Israela Becker, Yoash Shapira and Herbert Levine,
‘Bacterial Linguistic Communication and Social Intelligence,’ 367.
90 Greg Bear, Blood Music (New York: I Books, 2002).
91 Eshel Ben-Jacob, Israela Becker, Yoash Shapira and Herbert Levine,
‘Bacterial Linguistic Communication and Social Intelligence,’ 371.
92 Eshel Ben-Jacob, Israela Becker, Yoash Shapira and Herbert Levine,
‘Bacterial Linguistic Communication and Social Intelligence,’ 371. Trans-
posons are DNA sequences that can move to different positions within a
 Notes 161

single cell’s genome. Transposons are classified into one of two classes:
retrotransposons in which RNA copy and paste sequences back into the
genome; and DNA transposons which cut and paste DNA into the genome.
93 J.P. Rasicella, P.U. Park, P.U. and M.S. Fox, ‘Adaptive Mutation in Escherichia
coli: A Role for Conjugation,’ Science 268 (1995): 418–20.
94 Eshel Ben-Jacob, ‘Bacterial Wisdom, Godel’s Theorem and Creative Genomic
Webs,’ 65. Margulis maintains that these bacterial ancestors were already
‘conscious entities’ insofar as awareness of the surrounding environment is a
condition of life. Eukaryotes’ neurons derive from symbiogenetic bacterial
mergers: as we have already seen, cells (including neurons) are hetero-
genomic, complex and with multiple ancestors. Spirochetes, Margulis theor-
izes, became the undulipodia of eukaryotic cells. With their 24-nanometer
tubules, spirochetes are homologous to the neurotubules of the neurons.
Indeed, animal sense organs – auditory, visual, tactile and gustatory – are
composed of undulipodiated cells.
95 Eshel Ben-Jacob, ‘Bacterial Wisdom, Godel’s Theorem and Creative
Genomic Webs,’ 70.
96 Gregory Bateson, ‘Form, Substance, and Difference: Nineteenth Annual
Korzybski Memorial Lecture,’ in Steps to an Ecology of Mind (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1992), 448–64.
97 C.S. Peirce, The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Edited by
C. Hartshorne and P. Weiss (vols. 1–6) and A. Burks (vols. 7–8) (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1931–1958). Biosemiotics is also associated
with Jakob von Uexküll, Yuri Stepanov and Gregory Bateson. Zoosemiotics
concerns the scientific study of signaling behavior amongst nonhuman
animals where ‘a living animal is the transcoder in a biological version of
the traditional information-theory circuit’. While zoosemiotics has init-
iated studies much more concerned with animal communication in its
own right – inevitable comparisons with human communication are made,
with humans decidedly in the complexity and sophistication lead. See
Thomas A. Sebeok, ‘Zoosemiotics,’ American Speech 43, no. 2 (1968): 143.
See also Thomas A. Sebeok, Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1994) and Thomas A. Sebeok, Global Semiotics
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001).
98 Jesper Hoffmeyer, ‘Biosemiotics,’ in Encyclopedia of Semiotics, ed. P. Bouissac
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 82.
99 Jesper Hoffmeyer, ‘Biosemiotics,’ 83.
100 Alexei Sharov, ‘What is Biosemiotics?’ URL: <http://www.gypsymoth.
ento. vt.edu/-sharov/biosem/geninfo.html> Accessed September 2,
2008.
101 Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway.
102 Jesper Hoffmeyer, ‘Biosemiotics,’ 84.
103 Jesper Hoffmeyer, ‘Biosemiotics,’ 84.
104 Thomas A. Sebeok, The Sign and its Masters (Texas: University of Texas
Press, 1979). See also Jesper Hoffmeyer, Signs of Meaning in the Universe
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1997). I am in agreement with
Hoffmeyer’s characterization of the ‘seclusion’ of eukaryotic organisms rel-
ative to bacterial openness to foreign DNA. On the other hand, I think that
Ben-Jacob and colleagues’ research on bacterial decision-making might
162 Notes

complicate Hoffmeyer’s suggestion that eukaryotes developed greater semi-

otic degrees of freedom than prokaryotes. See Jesper Hoffmeyer, ‘How Can
It Be the Case That the World Contains Human Beings?’ Australian Feminist
Studies, 23, no. 55 (2008): 19–30, p. 25.
105 Robert E. Park, ‘Human Ecology,’ The American Journal of Sociology 42, no. 1
(1936): 1–15; Robert E. Park, ‘Symbiosis and Socialization: A Frame of
Reference for the Study of Society,’ The American Journal of Sociology XLV,
no. 1 (1939): 1–25. I thank Martin French for drawing my attention to these
articles.
106 Rober E. Park quoting J. Arthur Thompson, in ‘Human Ecology,’ 3.
107 Robert E. Park, ‘Human Ecology,’ 13.
108 G. Runciman, Personal email communication (May 1, 2008).
109 Graham Harman, The Metaphysics of Objects: Latour and His Aftermath, 118.
110 Anna Tsing, ‘Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as Companion Species,’ in Think-
ing With Donna Haraway, ed. S. Ghamari-Tabrizi (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, forthcoming). See also Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Friction: An Ethno-
graphy of Global Connection (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005),
especially Chapter 5. For Tsing, the Meratus people’s relationship with the
flora and fauna is neither naïve nor romantic: it is a practical living-with
in symbiotic domestication.
111 Alphonso Lingis, ‘Animal Body, Inhuman Face,’ in Zoontologies: The Ques-
tion of the Animal, ed. Cary Wolfe (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2003), 166.
112 See Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
(New York: W.W. Norton, 2005), chapters 7 and 11.
113 Alphonso Lingis, ‘Animal Body, Inhuman Face,’ 168.
114 Joost Van Loon, ‘Parasite Politics: On the Significance of Symbiosis and
Assemblage in Theorizing Community Formations,’ in Politics at the Edge,
eds. C. Pierson and S. Tormey (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 241–53.
115 Joost Van Loon, ‘Parasite Politics: On the Significance of Symbiosis and
Assemblage in Theorizing Community Formations,’ 250.
116 Joost Van Loon, ‘Epidemic Space,’ 46.
117 Joost Van Loon, ‘Epidemic Space,’ 49.
118 Joost Van Loon, ‘Epidemic Space,’ 48–9.

Chapter 3
1 Joel Cracraft and Micheal Donoghue (eds.), Assembling the Tree of Life, 86.
Epitaph by permission of Oxford University Press Inc.
2 Roger Stanier, ‘Some Aspects of the Biology of Cells and Their Possible
Evolutionary Significance,’ in Organization and Control in Prokaryotic Cells,
eds. H.P. Charles and B.C. Knight. Twentieth Symposium of the Society
for General Microbiology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970),
31. Epitaph reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press.
Reproduced with permission.
3 George Orwell in Michael Crichton, State of Fear (New York: HarperCollins,
2004), ix.
 Notes 163

4 Lynn Margulis, Symbiosis in Cell Evolution, Second Ed. (San Francisco:

W.H. Freeman and Company, 1981).
5 J.B. Edelmann and M.J. Denton, ‘The Uniqueness of Biological Self-
Organization: Challenging the Darwinian Paradigm,’ Biology and Philosophy
22, no. 4 (2007): 579–601.
6 I take on board critiques of Kuhn’s thesis concerning paradigm shifts, but
nevertheless find Kuhn’s general theory of use in thinking through
neoDarwinism as normal science. For critiques see Steve Fuller, Kuhn vs.
Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science (Columbia University Press,
2005).
7 See Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1970); Ludwig Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific
Fact (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979); and Karin Knorr-Cetina,
Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge.
8 Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entangle-
ment of Matter and Meaning.
9 Anna Tsing, ‘Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as Companion Species,’ in Thinking
With Donna Haraway, ed. S. Ghamari-Tabrizi (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
forthcoming).
10 Cleveland, L.R. and Grimstone, A.V. ‘The Fine Structure of the Flagellate
Mixotricha paradoxa and its Associated Microorganisms,’ Proceedings of the
Royal Society, B (1964), 159: 668–860. Michael F. Dolan, ‘Speciation of
Termite Gut Protists: The Role of Bacterial Symbionts,’ International
Microbiology 4, no. 4 (2001): 203–8; Michale F. Dolan and H. Melnitsky,
‘Patterns of Protist-Bacteria Associations in the Gut of the Wood-feeding
Cockroach Cryptocerus,’ Journal of the North Carolina Academy of Science 121,
no. 2 (2005): 56–60.
11 Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, ‘The Beast with Five Genomes,’ Natural
History (June 2001).
12 A. Vucinich, ‘Foreword’, in Concepts of Symbiogenesis: A Historical and Critical
Study of the Research of Russian Botanists, L.N. Khakhina (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1992), vii–xiv, viii, x.
13 See Evelyn Fox Keller, Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development
with Models, Metaphors, and Machines (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2003); Michael Gibbons, Camille Limoges, and Helga Nowotny,
The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in
Contemporary Societies (London: Sage, 1994); Jan Sapp, Genesis: The Evolution
of Biology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
14 Donna Mehos, ‘Appendix: Ivan E. Wallin and His Theory of Symbioticism,’
in Concepts of Symbiogenesis: A Historical and Critical Study of the Research of
Russian Botanists, L.K. Khakhina (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1992), 149–64. The abject rejection of Wallin’s theory provides further
evidence for (it is indeed a veritable ‘sub-plot’ of the symbiogenesis story)
the ways in which normal science responds to anomalies through cognitive
reasoning and normative sanctioning (in this case attacks on Wallin’s cred-
ibility as a scientist) (Mehos in Khakhina, 1992).
15 Sapp (J. Sapp, Evolution by Association: A History of Symbiosis (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1994) makes the point that Marx was aware of mutualism
arguments that engaged evidence of symbiosis and speculates that Marx
164 Notes

found the neoDarwinian emphasis on struggle for survival fit more closely

with his developing theory of class conflict.
16 The outline of Margulis’s symbiogenesis theory can be found in Lynn Mar-
gulis, Symbiosis in Cell Evolution; Lynn Margulis, ‘Big Trouble in Biology:
Physiological Autopoiesis versus Mechanistic neo-Darwinism,’ in Slanted
Truths: Essays on Gaia, Symbiosis, and Evolution, eds. L. Margulis and D. Sagan
(New York: Springer-Verlag, 1997); Lynn Margulis and Rene Fester, Symbiosis
as a Source of Evolutionary Innovation: Speciation and Morphogenesis (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Lynn Margulis and Dorion
Sagan, Acquiring Genomes: A Theory of the Origins of Species (New York: Basic
Books, 2002); and Lynn Margulis and Karlene Schwartz, Five Kingdoms:
An Illustrated Guide to the Phyla of Life on Earth, Third Ed. (New York:
W.H. Freeman and Company, 1998).
17 Lynn Margulis, Symbiosis in Cell Evolution. S. Sonea and L. Mathieu,
Prokaryotology: A Coherent View (Les Presses de L’Universite de Montreal,
2000); I.E. Wallin, Symbioticism and the Origin of Species (Baltimore: Williams
and Wilkins, 1927).
18 T.M. Embley and R.P. Hirt, ‘Early Branching Eukaryotes?’, Current Opinions in
Genetic Development 8, no. 6 (1998): 624–9; Hervé Philippe, ‘The Origin and
Radiation of Eucaryotes,’ 97. Interestingly, findings that the first three eukary-
ote lineages to emerge (diplomonads, microsporidia, and trichomonads) do
not have mitochondria, suggests that mitochondrial symbiogenesis occurred
relatively late during eukaryote evolution. Other research suggests that mito-
chondria were lost for some organisms through LGT.
19 Ernsy Mayr, What Evolution Is (New York: Basic Books, 2001).
20 These propositions are taken from Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb, Evolu-
tion in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation
in the History of Life (Boston: MIT Press, 2005), 29.
21 Jan Sapp, Evolution by Association (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994),
204, my emphasis. For symbiogenesis theory, evolution is characterized
by greater discontinuity than the ‘variable speedism’ espoused by
Dawkins or Eldridge and Gould’s ‘punctuated equilibria’ because it does
not depend on sexual reproduction. See Richard Dawkins, Climbing Mount
Improbable (London: Penguin Books, 1996) and Stephen J. Gould, The
Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2002).
22 For instance, ciliates have been found to show Lamarckian inheritance. If a
piece of a ciliate’s (a eukaryotic protist) cortex is removed, inverted and
reinserted, its offspring’s cortex will also be inverted. See William Martin
and T. Martin Embley, ‘Early Evolution Comes Full Circle,’ Nature 431
(9 September 2004): 134–7; Maria Rivera and James Lake, ‘The Ring of Life
Provides Evidence for a Genome Fusion Origin of Eukaryotes,’ Nature 431
(9 September 2004): 152–5. See also J.B. Edelmann and M.J. Denton, ‘The
Uniqueness of Biological Self-Organization: Challenging the Darwinian
Paradigm,’ Biology and Philosophy 22, no. 4 (2007): 579–601 (on biological
self-organization as Lamarckian).
23 This and the previous quote by Stephen J. Gould, The Structure of Evolu-
tionary Theory (Cambridge, Mass. and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 2002), 140, 141, 143, my emphasis.
 Notes 165

24 J.B. Edelmann and M.J. Denton, ‘The Uniqueness of Biological Self-

Organization: Challenging the Darwinian Paradigm,’ Biology and Philosophy
22, no. 4 (2007): 579–601.
25 Daniel Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life (New
York: Touchstone, 1995), 75. Margulis argues that while symbiogenesis theory
is clearly at odds with neoDarwinism, it does not contradict Darwin’s original
theory. The literature suggests that Darwin, although convincing his col-
leagues of evolution itself, struggled to situate natural selection as the heart of
the evolutionary process – the ‘law of higgledy-piggledy’ as physicist Herschel
called it (in S. Kingsland, ‘Evolution and Debates Over Human Progress from
Darwin to Sociobiology,’ Population and Development Review, 14 Suppl. (1988):
167–98, 174). However, the only available alternatives at the time sought
some force internal to the organism (as in Lamarckism) or external (God).
Young alludes to Darwin’s own intuition that there was more to evolution by
natural selection by renaming his famous book On the Origin of Species by
Means of Natural Selection and All Sorts of Other Things, 107.
26 Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W.W. Norton, 1986),
318. See also Michael Ruse, Darwin and Design: Does Evolution Have a
Purpose? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
27 J.B. Edelmann and M.J. Denton, ‘The Uniqueness of Biological Self-
Organization: Challenging the Darwinian Paradigm,’ 586.
28 For critiques of this position see Evelyn Fox Keller, The Century of the Gene
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000); Theresa Marie MacPhail,
‘The Viral Gene: An Undead Metaphor Recoding Life,’ Science as Culture 13,
no. 3 (2004): 325–44; Susan Oyama, The Ontogeny of Information: Develop-
mental Systems and Evolution, Second Ed. (Duke University Press, 2000);
Luciana Parisi, Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Bio-technology and the Mutations of
Desire (London and New York: Continuum Press, 2004); and Jan Sapp,
Genesis: The Evolution of Biology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
29 Lynn Margulis, ‘Genetic and Evolutionary Consequences of Symbiosis,’
Experimental Parasitology 39 (1976): 279.
30 Lynn Margulis, ‘Big Trouble in Biology: Physiological Autopoiesis versus
Mechanistic neo-Darwinism,’ in Slanted Truths. Essays on Gaia, Symbiosis and
Evolution, eds. Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan (New York: Springer-Verlag,
1997), 273.
31 E. White, ‘In the Beginning was Slime Mold: Evolution and the Grotesque,’
SLSA Conference paper (November 2006).
32 Joan Strassmann and David Queller, ‘Altruism among Amoebas,’ Natural
History (September 2007): 24–9.
33 Lynn Margulis and Karlene Schwartz, Five Kingdoms: An Illustrated Guide to the
Phyla of Life on Earth, Third Ed. (New York: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1998).
34 Jan Sapp, Evolution by Association: A History of Symbiosis, 206.
35 Within the cascade of corollaries, we must also consider the agential cut
enacted by the epistemic privileging of disciplinary boundaries. Symbio-
genesis theory remains a meta-disciplinary discourse focused on inter-
actions that, unlike genetics, requires the integration of research from a
range of disciplines including microbial and cell biology, biochemistry,
genetics, geology, marine biology and paleontology. Requiring scientists in
diverse specializations to collaborate is challenging: sub-disciplines use their
166 Notes

own languages and epistemes and scientists are generally not encouraged to
work outside their sub-discipline.
36 See Jan Sapp, Genesis: The Evolution of Biology. Anthony van Leeuwenhoek
(1632–1723) first described microbes, using the best microscopes that could
magnify objects 270 times. Swabbing his teeth with a stick (aka tooth-
brush), van Leeuwenhoek observed a microcosmos teeming with minute
organisms. Joseph Amato notes that it did not take long for this teeming
mass to be enveloped within a negative biopolitics of germ theory, a kind of
‘what you don’t know (and can’t see) does hurt you’. See Joseph Amato, Dust:
A History of the Small and the Invisible (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2000), 97, 103. A number of prokaryotologists also object to bio-
logical language that describes bacteria as pathogens, as ‘simple’ life forms
compared with the ‘complexity’ of larger forms of life, while simultane-
ously obfuscating Homo sapiens’ bacterial origins and current status as sym-
bionts. See Sonea and Mathieu (2000).
37 Susan Oyama, The Ontogeny of Information: Developmental Systems and
Evolution, 143.
38 Keith Ansell Pearson, Viroid Life, 132. According to Margulis, even most mol-
ecular biologists do not explicitly recognize that they are studying symbioses.
She writes, ‘The literature of eukaryotic molecular biology grows, but the
practitioners of this science do not think of themselves as analysts of inte-
grated symbioses. That they are studying a latter-day microbial community
and its interactions has not yet been factored into their thinking’. See Lynn
Margulis and Dorion Sagan, The Origins of Sex: Three Billion Years of Genetic
Recombination, 18.
39 Luciana Parisi, Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Bio-technology and the Mutations of
Desire, 60.
40 Luciana Parisi, Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Bio-technology and the Mutations of
Desire, 35, 40.
41 Jan Sapp, Evolution by Association: A History of Symbiosis, 208. ‘Cytoplasmic
heredity’ in sexually reproducing organisms is the inheritance of genetic
traits from a single parent and independent of nuclear genes (Jinks, 1964). A
number of phenomena once considered to conform to nuclear (vertical)
inheritance principles are now known to be cases of uni-parental or
nonMendelian bi-parental transmission (see Lynn Margulis, Symbiosis in Cell
Evolution, 1981); Moraes et al., ‘Mitochondrial DNA deletions in progressive
external ophthalmoplegia and Kearns-Sayre syndrome,’ New England Journal
of Medicine 320, no. 20 (1989): 1293–9; G. Singh, M.T. Lott and D.C. Wallace,
‘A Mitochondrial DNA Mutation as a Cause of Leber’s Hereditary Optic
Neuropathy,’ New England Journal of Medicine 320 (1989): 1300–5.
42 David Hull, Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Con-
ceptual Development of Science (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1988) provides a succinct account of the gene/cell/organism/species unit of
selection debate. Symbiogenesis theory’s understanding of the symbiont
differs from Hull’s definition of ‘interactor’ (408) insofar as the ‘entity’ cannot
be distinguished from its environment (i.e. the entity is its environment). This
entity also replicates, for instance in mitosis.
43 Woese argues that the Archaean was a pre-Darwinian time in which there
were no such thing as individuals that competed. See Carl Woese, ‘A New
 Notes 167

Biology for a New Century,’ Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews 68,
no. 2 (2004): 173–86 and Nigel Goldenfeld and Carl Woese, ‘Connections
Biology’s Next Revolution,’ Nature 445 (25 January 2007).
44 Charles Mann, ‘Lynn Margulis: Science’s Unruly Earth Mother,’ Science 252
(1991): 378–81, p. 252. See also David Stamos, The Species Problem: Biological
Species, Ontology, and the Metaphysics of Biology (Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books, 2003).
45 Nigel Goldenfeld and Carl Woese, ‘Connections Biology’s Next Revolution,’
Nature 445 (25 January 2007): 369.
46 Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (New York:
Viking Press, 1974), 86–7.
47 Lynn Margulis, ‘Gaia is a Tough Bitch,’ in The Third Culture, ed. J. Brockman
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 135.
48 Jan Sapp, Evolution by Association: A History of Symbiosis. As Sahl wryly notes,
‘Remember that no matter how selfish, how cruel, how unfeeling you have
been today, every time you take a breath, you make a flower happy’, in
Richard Lewontin, The Triple Helix (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2000), 55.
49 Newly discovered symbiotic relationships are consistently reported in scien-
tific journals. Symbiosis has been identified in monads and polymonads,
dyads and polydyads (such as mitochondria), triads and polytriads (such as
‘anaerobic’ worms, amoebae and photosynthetic animals), quadrads and
polyquadrads (such as wood-eating insects and nitrogen fixation by
legumes) and pentads and polypentads (for instance invertebrate animals
and land plants). See H. Timourian, ‘Symbiotic Emergence of Metazoans,’
Nature 226 (18 April 1970): 283–4; L. Marquez et al., ‘A Virus in a Fungus in
a Plant: Three-way Symbiosis Required for Thermal Tolerance,’ Science 63
(2007): 545–58; Lynn Margulis, ‘Genetic and Evolutionary Consequences of
Symbiosis,’ Experimental Parasitology 39 (1976): 277–349; D.J. Depew and
B.H. Weber, Darwinism Evolving: Systems Dynamics and the Genealogy of
Natural Selection (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997); Stephen J. Gould, The
Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Cambridge, Mass. and London: The Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, 2002); R. Law, ‘The Symbiotic Phenotype:
Origins in Evolution,’ in Symbiosis as a Source of Evolutionary Innovation, eds.
Lynn Margulis and Rene Fester (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), 57–71;
W. Martin and T.M. Embley, ‘Early Evolution Comes Full Circle,’ Nature 431
(9 September 2004): 134–7; J. Maynard Smith, Evolutionary Genetics, Second
Ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); P. Nardon and A.M. Grenier,
‘Serial Endosymbiosis Theory and Weevil Evolution: The Role of Symbiosis,’
Symbiosis as a Source of Evolutionary Innovation, eds. Lynn Margulis and Rene
Fester (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), 153–69; M. Rivera and J. Lake,
‘The Ring of Life Provides Evidence for a Genome Fusion Origin of Eukary-
otes,’ Nature 431 (9 September 2004): 152–5; D.C. Smith and A.E. Douglas,
The Biology of Symbiosis (London: Edward Arnold, 1987).
50 W. Ford Doolittle, ‘Phylogenetic Classification and the Universal Tree,’
Science 284 (1999): 2124–9; Nigel Goldenfeld and Carl Woese, ‘Connections
Biology’s Next Revolution.’ H. Ochman, J.G. Lawrence and E.A. Groisman,
‘Lateral Gene Transfer and the Nature of Bacterial Innovation,’ Nature 405
(2000): 299–304.
168 Notes

51 Nigel Goldenfeld and Carl Woese, ‘Connections Biology’s Next Revolution,’

369.
52 Fredrik Bäckhed, Ruth Ley, Justin Sonnenburg, Daniel Peterson and Jeffrey
Gordon, ‘Host-Bacterial Mutualism in the Human Intestine,’ Science 307,
no. 5717 (25 March 2005): 1915ss–1920ss; Steven Gill et al., ‘Metagenomic
Analysis of the Human Distal Gut Microbiome,’ Science 312, no. 5778:
1355–9; E. Singer, ‘A Better Biofuel,’ Technology Review (Tuesday 3 April 2007):
1; Jan Sapp, Evolution by Association: A History of Symbiosis; J.B. Edelmann and
M.J. Denton, ‘The Uniqueness of Biological Self-Organization: Challenging
the Darwinian Paradigm,’ 579–601.
53 See for example C.G. Kurland, L.J. Collins and D. Penny, ‘Genomics and the
Irreducible Nature of Eukaryotic Cells,’ Science 12 (19 May 2006): 1011–14;
P. Godfrey-Smith, ‘Is it a Revolution?’ Biology and Philosophy 22 (2007): 429–37.
54 Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 197.
55 Joe Collier, ‘The Politics of Scientific Reputation,’ British Medical Journal 313
(1996): 888.
56 Thomas Cavalier-Smith, ‘Microbial Muddles,’ BioScience 53 (10 October
2003): 1008–13, 1009, 1010.
57 For excellent work on women’s continued struggles in science see Evelyn Fox
Keller, A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock (New
York: W.H. Freeman and Company, 1994); Donna Haraway, Primate Visions:
Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (London and New York:
Routledge, 1989); Sally Gregory Kohlstedt and Helen Longino, Women, Gender
and Science: New Directions (Osiris 12) (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1997); M. Mayberry, B. Subramaniam and L. Weasel, Feminist Science
Studies (New York: Routledge, 2001). For public understandings of science lit-
erature see Alan Irwin and Brian Wynne, Misunderstanding Science? The Public
Reconstruction of Science and Technology. Biographies of Margulis invariably
make reference to her early marriage to astronomer Carl Sagan, and employ
various terms (such as ‘Gaia’s Unruly Earth Mother’) to preference the fact that
she is a woman scientist (Charles Mann, ‘Lynn Margulis: Science’s Unruly Earth
Mother.’) They also frequently recount that she has four children and that she
and her son Dorion Sagan write science books for public consumption. By con-
trast, how many people know how many children Mayr, Maynard-Smith,
Gould, Cavalier-Smith or Dawkins have, or who they have been married to.
58 Mayr in Charles Mann, ‘Lynn Margulis: Science’s Unruly Earth Mother,’
Science 252 (1991): 378.
59 W. Ford Doolittle in Charles Mann, ‘Lynn Margulis: Science’s Unruly Earth
Mother,’ Science 252 (1991): 3381.
60 Maynard Smith in Charles Mann, ‘Lynn Margulis: Science’s Unruly Earth
Mother,’ Science 252 (1991): 379.
61 This is part of what Pickering refers to as the ‘mangle of practice’. Whether
symbiogenesis theory will, eventually, display greater or lesser correspon-
dence, is a scientific point. My argument is that this correspondence cannot
be easily separated from the mangle, including every minute element of the
whole science program (from measuring instruments, funding and so on).
See Andrew Pickering, The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science.
62 This title is taken from ‘Darwin’s Metaphor: Does Nature Select?’ The Monist
55 (1971): 442–503.
 Notes 169

63 See, for example, Richard Lewontin, The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism and
Environment; Richard Lewontin, It Ain’t Necessarily So: The Dream of the Human
Genome and Other Illusions, Second Ed. (New York: New York Review Books,
2001); Evelyn Fox Keller, Refiguring Life: Metaphors of Twentieth-Century Biology
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1995); Evelyn Fox Keller, The Century of
the Gene (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000).
64 Carl Zimmer, ‘Now: The Rest of the Genome,’ New York Times (10 November
2008). URL: <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/science/11gene.html?_r=>.
Accessed November 11, 2008. I thank Christopher Canning for directing my
attention to this article.
65 My interest here in not in detailing intelligent design or creationist cri-
tiques of evolutionary theory.
66 For critiques of neoDarwinism that emphasize symbiosis, see Connie Barlow,
The Ghosts of Evolution: Nonsensical Fruit, Missing Partners, and Other Ecological
Anachronisms (New York: Basic Books, 2000); Robert Wesson, Beyond Natural
Selection (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1991); Frank Ryan, Darwin’s Blind
Spot: Evolution Beyond Natural Selection (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company,
2002); Jaroslav Flegr, Frozen Evolution (Prague: Charles University in Prague,
2008); Christian deDuve, Singularities: Landmarks on the Pathways of Life
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Jan Sapp, Evolution by Asso-
ciation: A History of Symbiosis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
67 Margaret McFall-Ngai, ‘Unseen Forces: The Influence of Bacteria on Animal
Development,’ Developmental Biology 242 (2002): 1. See also L.V. Hooper,
M.H. Wong, A. Thelin, L. Hansson, P. Falk and J. Gordon, ‘Molecular Analysis
of Commensal Host-Microbial Relationships in the Intestine,’ Science 291
(2001): 881–4.
68 D.A. Relman and S. Falkow, ‘The Meaning and Impact of the Human Genome
Sequencing for Microbiology,’ Trends in Molecular Biology 9, no. 5 (2001):
206–8.
69 Margaret McFall-Ngai, ‘Unseen Forces: The Influence of Bacteria on Animal
Development,’ Developmental Biology 242 (2002): 4.
70 Lora V. Hooper, Melissa H. Wong, Anders Thelin, Lennart Hansson,
Per G. Falk and Jeffrey I. Gordon, ‘Molecular Analysis of Commensal
Host-Microbial Relationships in the Intestine,’ Science 291, no. 5505 (2001):
881–4.
71 Margaret McFall-Ngai, ‘Unseen Forces: The Influence of Bacteria on Animal
Development,’ 9. I am struggling with a terminology that doesn’t reiterate
the term ‘host’ because of its long association with pathogens.
72 Margaret McFall-Ngai, ‘Unseen Forces: The Influence of Bacteria on Animal
Development,’ 9–10.
73 Conrad H. Waddington, ‘Epigenetics and Evolution,’ in Evolution, eds.
R. Brown and J. Danielli, Evolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1953), 186–99.
74 Scott Gilbert, ‘The Genome in its Ecological Context: Philosophical Perspec-
tives on Interspecies Epigenesis,’ 214.
75 John Protevi’s three lectures on Deleuze and Biology provide a useful intro-
duction to ‘evo-devo’ (www.protevi.com/john). See also Eva Jablonka and
Marion Lamb, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral,
and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life.
170 Notes

76 This is a synopsis of the central dogma explained by Eva Jablonka and

Marion Lamb, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral,
and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life.
77 Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic,
Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life, 7.
78 As Sapp writes, ‘Bacteria are composites; they have acquired and integrated
genes from diverse taxa. Lateral gene transfer blurs the boundaries between
‘species’. The ease with which genes are interchanged among bacteria has led
many microbiologists to suggest that the biological species concept does not
apply. See Jan Sapp, Genesis: The Evolution of Biology, 231. To give flavor to my
‘and other phenomena’ consider nucleotide replacement. In a sequence of
only 100 units (and DNA strands are often much longer), made up of four
modules (adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine), 4100 different sequences
are possible. This is more than the number of atoms in the galaxy. Sickle cell
anemia is caused by a one nucleotide change (an A instead of a T) in the
nucleotide sequence in hemoglobin. See Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb,
Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic
Variation in the History of Life, 55. Consider also that infectious disease microbi-
ologists have found that antibiotic resistance is so successful because bacteria
readily exchange antibiotic resistance genes via plasmids. This challenged the
expected mechanism of random mutation followed by natural selection.
Selection does occur, but the mutations are not ‘within genes within species,
but whole genes (or suites of genes) transferred across species boundaries, on
which selection was acting’ (Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb, Evolution in Four
Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History
of Life, 88). Now microbiologists talk of ‘pathogenicity islands’ (bacterial spe-
cialized clusters of genes that carry virulence factors facilitating bacterial
defense and transfer of the island itself), ‘saprophytic islands’ that facilitate
decay and ‘ecological islands’ that facilitate metabolism in unusual circum-
stances (Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic,
Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life, 89). And LGT
also occurs between domains, between bacteria and archaea, bacteria and
eukaryotes and so on: ‘rumor in the field now has it that similar analyses will
show that one-third of the genes in the yet-to-be-published genome sequence
of the methane-producing archaean Methanosarcina mazei are of bacterial
provenance – an astonishing result!’ (Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb, Evolution
in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the
History of Life, 90).
79 Eva Jablonka ad Marion Lamb, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic,
Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life.
80 Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic,
Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life, 7.
81 Jablonka and Lamb make the important point here that Herbert Spencer
was among those who took it for granted that evolutionary principles went
beyond biology to explain social change as well. In this sense, Spencer and
his contemporaries of similar conviction supported Lamarckian evolution.
We see a re-formulated extension in Dawkin’s writings on ‘memes’.
82 A logic that works in step with the central dogma argues that gene sequence
data is more fundamental than organismal form and function because DNA
 Notes 171

sequence determines form and function rather than the other way around.
Interestingly, and as W. Ford Doolittle points out, this is based on the
assumption that different genes in a genome might have different phylo-
genetic histories, something that Margulis’s research on mitochondria and
chloroplasts showed to be the case: ‘the fact that [all of an organism’s
genes do not have the same phylogeny] proved the endosymbiont hypoth-
esis’. Moreover, Doolittle asserts that the majority of genes in any bacterial
or archaeic genome show different phylogenies, and are produced through
nonsymbiogenetic means, leading him to conclude that there is no unique
universal genomic tree. See W. Ford Doolittle, ‘Bacteria and Archaea,’ in
Assembling the Tree of Life, 86–94, 88.
83 Jablonka and Lamb refer to Lindegren’s research on the bread mould Neuro-
spora in which two-thirds of the mutations do not follow Mendel’s principle
in which offspring do not show intermediate characteristics but rather a segre-
gation of traits. Jablonka and Lamb argue this research, like research showing
epigenetics in bacteria, transposons (‘jumping genes’) in maize and the like
were either ignored or explained away. See Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb,
Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Vari-
ation in the History of Life, 43–4; Carl Lindegren, The Yeast Cell, its Genetics and
Cytology (St. Louis: Educational Publishers, 1949).
84 Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic,
Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life, 87.
85 Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic,
Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life, 92–7.
86 James Shapiro, as cited in Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb, Evolution in Four
Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the
History of Life, 70–1.
87 Mark and Mary Anne Alliegro at the Marine Biology Laboratory in Wood’s
Hole are researching the possibility that centrosomes contain DNA. So far,
they have established that Spsula oocyte centrosomes contain RNA. See
Mark Alliegro and Mary Anne Alliegro, ‘Centrosomal RNA Correlates with
Intron-poor Nuclear Genes in Spisula Oocytes,’ Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences 105, no. 19 (5 May 2008): 6993–7.
88 Jan Sapp, Evolution by Association: A History of Symbiosis, 204.
89 P. Godfrey-Smith, ‘Is it a Revolution?’ Biology and Philosophy 22 (2007):
430.
90 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 94.
91 Symbiogenesis is the microbial version of the historicity that Latour writes
about with regard to humans. A historicity in which there is linear time
(the symbiogenesis of nuclear material precedes the symbiogenesis of mito-
chondria) and also a Bergsonian time in which the past is inherited within
the present and future. See Bruno Latour, Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the
Reality of Science Studies, 159–62, 171, Figure 5.2.
92 Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic,
Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life, 102.
93 Richard Dawkins, The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene, 133,
137, 159, 161, and 257. Dawkins used the term ‘misfirings’ to describe all of
those actions that do not fit with his selfish gene theory of natural selection
during my interview with him on 16 June 2008.
172 Notes

94 Elizabeth Grosz, Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2005). Sociobiology and the more recent evolutionary
psychology is founded upon the application of evolutionary theory to
human and animal behavior. See, for instance: Jerome Barkow, Leda Cos-
mides and John Tooby (eds.), The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and
the Generation of Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Margo
Wilson and Martin Daly, Homicide (Aldine Transaction, 1988); David Buss,
Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of Mind, Third Ed. (Allyn and Bacon,
2007); David Buss, The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (Wiley, 2005);
Stephen Sanderson, The Evolution of Human Sociality: A Darwinian Conflict
Perspective (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishing, Inc,
2001).
95 For examples of feminist, queer and post-colonial theories see Noreen
Giffney and Myra Hird, Queering the NonHuman (Ashgate, 2008) and Donna
Haraway, How Like a Leaf: An Interview with Donna Haraway (New York:
Routledge, 1999). For examples of engagements with symbiogenesis see
Donna Haraway, When Species Meet (University of Minnesota Press, 2007)
and Luciana Parisi, Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Bio-technology and the Mutations
of Desire (London and New York: Continuum Press, 2004).

Chapter 4
1 Marcel Mauss, The Gift. The Form and Reason For Exchange in Archaic Societies,
Translated by W.D. Halls (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1950/1990).
2 Rosalyn Diprose, Corporeal Generosity: On giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-
Ponty, and Levinas (New York: State University of New York Press,
2002).
3 Nigel Clark, ‘Disaster and Generosity,’ The Geographical Journal 171, no. 4
(2005): 384–6.
4 Donna Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Sig-
nificant Otherness; Donna Haraway, When Species Meet; Karalyn Kendall, ‘The
Face of a Dog: Levinasian Ethics and Human/Dog Coevolution,’ in Queering
the (Non-)Human.
5 Haraway does make the point that ‘“Companion species” is a bigger and
more heterogeneous category than companion animal, [which] must
include such organic beings as rice, bees, tulips, and intestinal flora, all of
whom make life for humans what it is – and vice versa’ (Donna Haraway,
The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness,
15).
6 Richard Feynman, ‘There’s plenty of Room at the Bottom,’ Journal of
Microelectromechanical Systems 1, no. 1 (1992): 60–6.
7 Maureen O’Malley and John Dupré, ‘Size Doesn’t Matter: Towards a More
Inclusive Philosophy of Biology,’ Biology and Philosophy 22 (2007): 155.
8 Maureen O’Malley and John Dupré, ‘Size Doesn’t Matter: Towards a More
Inclusive Philosophy of Biology,’ 155.
9 Nick Bingham, ‘Bees, Butterflies, and Bacteria: Biotechnology and the
Politics of Nonhuman Friendship,’ Environment and Planning A 38 (2006):
483–98, 496.
 Notes 173

10 Parts of this section are taken from Myra J. Hird ‘The Corporeal Generosity of
Maternity’, Body and Society, 2007, 13 (1): 1–20. Reprinted with kind permission
from Sage Publishing.
11 Marcel Mauss, The Gift. The Form and Reason For Exchange in Archaic Societies, ix.
12 Marcel Mauss, The Gift. The Form and Reason For Exchange in Archaic Societies, 12.
13 Marcel Mauss, The Gift. The Form and Reason For Exchange in Archaic Societies, 12.
14 Morna Joy, ‘Beyond the Given and the All-giving: Reflections on Women and
the Gift,’ Australian Feminist Studies 14, no. 30 (1999): 315–32. See also M.
Godelier, ‘Some Things You Give, Some Things You Sell, But Some Things You
Must Keep For Yourselves: What Mauss Did Not Say About Sacred Objects,’ in
The Enigma of Gift and Sacrifice, eds. E. Wyschogrod; J.J. Goux. and E. Boynton
(New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), 19–37.
15 Nigel Clark, ‘Disaster and Generosity,’ 384–6; Alphonso Lingis, Excesses:
Eros and Culture (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1983).
16 Nigel Clark, ‘Disaster and Generosity,’ 93.
17 Alphonso Lingis, Dangerous Emotions (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2000), 174–5.
18 Jacques Derrida, Given Time (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1992).
19 Lingis refers to Nietzsche’s directive that ‘whenever you do a good deed,
you should take a stick and thrash any bystander to muddle his [sic] memory.
Then you should take that stick and thrash your own head, to muddle your
own memory’ (Alphonso Lingis, Dangerous Emotions, 179).
20 Rosalyn Diprose, Corporeal Generosity: On giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-
Ponty, and Levinas, 75.
21 Nigel Clark, ‘Disaster and Generosity,’ 7.
22 Lingis states that ‘what gifts give is the ability to give gifts’ (Alphonso
Lingis, Dangerous Emotions, 181).
23 It is precisely this tension between the generosity and violence of the cor-
poreal that leads Rackham to refer to the HIV virus inside her body as a
‘viral lover’ (2000).
24 Donna Haraway, When Species Meet, 9.
25 Karalyn Kendall, ‘The Face of a Dog: Levinasian Ethics and Human/Dog
Coevolution,’ in Queering the (Non-)Human, eds. Noreen Giffney and Myra
Hird (Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2008), 185–204.
26 Nigel Clark, ‘Disaster and Generosity,’ 7.
27 Robert Wilson, ‘Recent work in individualism in the social, behavioral and
biological sciences,’ Biology and Philosophy 19 (2004): 397.
28 Maureen O’Malley and John Dupré, ‘Size Doesn’t Matter: Towards a More
Inclusive Philosophy of Biology,’ Biology and Philosophy 22 (2007): 156.
29 Scott Gilbert, ‘Cells in Search of Community: Critiques of Weismannism
and Selectable Units in Ontogeny,’ Biology and Philosophy 7 (1992): 478.
30 Scott Gilbert, ‘Cells in Search of Community: Critiques of Weismannism
and Selectable Units in Ontogeny,’ 478.
31 Burnet in Thomas Pradeu and Edgardo Carosella, ‘The Self Model and the
Conception of Biological Identity in Immunology,’ Biology and Philosophy
21 (2006): 235.
32 Eileen Crist and Alfred I. Tauber, ‘Selfhood, Immunity, and the Biological
Imagination: The Thought of Frank Macfarlane Burnet,’ Biology and Philo-
174 Notes

sophy 15, no. 4 (2000): 510. This genealogy of the association between
economic theories of competition, struggle and individualism on the one
hand and biology on the other has been taken up within the philosophy
and biology literature. See Scott Gilbert, ‘Cells in Search of Community:
Critiques of Weismannism and Selectable Units in Ontogeny,’ 473–87. Crist
and Tauber argue that the immunological self was not simply ‘imported
from a cultural and historical milieu into a scientific context, but rather
emerged as an immanent concept within immunology itself (Eileen Crist
and Alfred I. Tauber, ‘Selfhood, Immunity, and the Biological Imagination:
The Thought of Frank Macfarlane Burnet,’ 517).
33 Alfred Tauber, ‘Postmodernism and Immune Selfhood,’ Science in Context 8,
no. 4 (1995): 579–607, 584. In Chapter 5 I discuss Zuckerman and Lederberg’s
notion of ‘post-mature’ scientific discoveries, which refers to science’s nearly
exclusive concentration on bacteria as pathogens. See Harriet Zuckerman and
Joshua Lederberg, ‘Postmature Scientific Discovery?’ Nature 324 (December
1986): 629–31.
34 Eileen Crist and Alfred I. Tauber, ‘Selfhood, Immunity, and the Biological
Imagination: The Thought of Frank Macfarlane Burnet,’ 524.
35 In an insightful analysis, Tauber describes Nietzsche’s approach to biology in
similar terms: the ‘sovereign subject relates only to that which it constructs
or confronts’ (Alfred Tauber, ‘Postmodernism and Immune Selfhood,’ Science
in Context 8, no. 4 (1995): 581). The account of symbiogenesis in this paper
attempts to exceed Nietzsche’s characterization.
36 Eileen Crist and Alfred I. Tauber, ‘Selfhood, Immunity, and the Biological
Imagination: The Thought of Frank Macfarlane Burnet,’ 526.
37 Eileen Crist and Alfred I. Tauber, ‘Selfhood, Immunity, and the Biological
Imagination: The Thought of Frank Macfarlane Burnet,’ 526.
38 Myra J. Hird, ‘Chimerism, Mosaicism and the Cultural Construction of
Kinship,’ Sexualities 7, no. 2 (2004): 225–40.
39 Gilbert notes that the complex ongoing interaction with the changing envir-
onment means that there really isn’t such a thing as identical twins with
respect to immunity since no two individuals will have had identical inter-
actions with an identical environment. For these reasons, Pradeu and
Carosella propose their ‘continuity hypothesis’ whereby immune activation
is triggered by discontinuity of interaction. Understanding commensal
bacteria as ‘self’ becomes intelligible within the continuity hypothesis, as a
more ‘heterogeneous view of biological identity’. Scott Gilbert, ‘The Genome
in Its Ecological Context: Philosophical Perspectives on Interspecies Epi-
genesis,’ Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 981 (2002): 202–18. See also Thomas Pradeu
and Edgardo Carosella, ‘The Self Model and the Conception of Biological
Identity in Immunology,’ Biology and Philosophy 21 (2006): 248.
40 Scott Gilbert, ‘The Genome in Its Ecological Context: Philosophical Perspec-
tives on Interspecies Epigenesis,’ 210.
41 Yolanda Lopez-Boado, Carole Wilson, Lora Hooper, Jeffrey I. Gordon, Scott
J. Hultgren and William Parks, ‘Bacterial Exposure Induces and Activates
Matrilysin in Mucosal Epithelial Cells,’ Journal of Cell Biology 148, no. 6
(2000): 1305–15.
42 Margaret McFall-Ngai, ‘Unseen Forces: The Influence of Bacteria on Animal
Development,’ 8; Lora V. Hooper, Melissa H. Wong, Anders Thelin, Lennart
Hansson, Per G. Falk and Jeffrey I. Gordon, ‘Molecular Analysis of Com-
 Notes 175

mensal Host-Microbial Relationships in the Intestine,’ Science 291, no. 5505

(2001): 881–4.
43 G. Rook and J. Stanford, ‘Give Us This Day Our Daily Germs,’ Immunology
Today 19, no. 3 (1998): 113–16.
44 Margaret McFall-Ngai, ‘Unseen Forces: The Influence of Bacteria on Animal
Development,’ 1–14. Here I adopt an inclusive definition of co-evolution,
which assumes the evolution of already entangled organisms. See Myra Hird,
‘Symbiosis, Microbes, Coevolution and Sociology,’ Ecological Economics 2008,
10(001): 1–6.
45 Lynn Margulis, ‘Genetic and Evolutionary Consequences of Symbiosis,’
279.
46 For this reason, O’Malley and Dupré argue that eukaryotic cells are a ‘super-
organism composed of chromosomal and organellar genes and a multitude
of prokaryote and viral symbionts’. Maureen O’Malley and John Dupré,
‘Size Doesn’t Matter: Towards a More Inclusive Philosophy of Biology,’ 157.
47 Jan Sapp, Genesis: The Evolution of Biology, 235.
48 Dorion Sagan, ‘Metametazoa: Biology and Multiplicity,’ 368.
49 Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (New York:
Viking Press, 1974), 86; Eric White, ‘In the Beginning Was Slime Mold:
Evolution and the Grotesque,’ SLSA Conference paper, November 2006,
2.
50 Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Dazzle Gradually: Reflections on the Nature
of Nature.
51 Alphonso Lingis, ‘Animal Body, Inhuman Face,’ 166.
52 Stephen Jay Gould, Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin
(New York: Harmony Books, 1996). See also K. Sterelny, ‘Bacteria at the
High Table,’ Biology and Philosophy 14 (1999): 459–70.
53 Cary Wolfe, ‘Introduction,’ in Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal, ed.
C. Wolfe (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), ix–xxiii.
54 Hiroaki Kitano and Kanae Oda, ‘Robustness Trade-offs and Host-microbial
Symbiosis in the Immune System,’ Molecular Systems Biology 2 (2006): 1.
55 Alfred I. Tauber, ‘Postmodernism and Immune Selfhood,’ 579–607.
56 Hiroaki Kitano and Kanae Oda, ‘Robustness Trade-offs and Host-microbial
Symbiosis in the Immune System,’ 1–10.
57 See Evelyn Fox Keller, The Century of the Gene; Scott Gilbert, ‘Cells in Search
of Community: Critiques of Weismannism and Selectable Units in
Ontogeny’; Theresa Marie MacPhail, ‘The Viral Gene: An Undead Metaphor
Recoding Life’; Susan Oyama, The Ontogeny of Information: Developmental
Systems and Evolution; Luciana Parisi, Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Bio-technology
and the Mutations of Desire; Jan Sapp, Genesis: The Evolution of Biology. Gilbert
observes that economic arguments put forward by political economists such
as Adam Smith maintain that competition leads to cooperation. However,
Gilbert argues that cooperation must be operative in any interaction in the
first place in order for it to come to characterize the interaction (Scott
Gilbert, ‘Cells in Search of Community: Critiques of Weismannism and
Selectable Units in Ontogeny’).
58 Eric Schneider and Dorion Sagan, Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics
and Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 311.
59 Maureen O’Malley and John Dupré, ‘Size Doesn’t Matter: Towards a More
Inclusive Philosophy of Biology.’
176 Notes

60 Luciana Parisi, Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Bio-technology and the Mutations of

Desire, 40.
61 Given the historical association between symbiosis and ‘mutualism’ within
anarchism at the turn of the previous century, it is not surprising that evolu-
tionary biologists are wary of this anthromorphization (Gillian Beer, ‘The Face
of Nature: Anthropomorphic Elements in the Language of The Origin of
Species,’ Languages of Nature, ed. L. Jordanova (London: Free Association
Books, 1986). Symbiosis and symbiogenesis may well draw particular attention
to organismal mutual dependence, but this is a feature of all living organisms
within the biosphere. As Sahl wryly notes, ‘Remember that no matter how
selfish, how cruel, how unfeeling you have been today, every time ‘you take a
breath, you make a flower happy’ (in R.C. Lewontin, The Triple Helix
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000, 55). What they do suggest
is that the concept of individualism, so closely implicated in neoDarwinian
programs of research, is predicated on a paradigmatic preference of animals
over all other life forms, generational gene transfer and random mutation.
62 Scott Gilbert, ‘The Genome in Its Ecological Context: Philosophical
Perspectives on Interspecies Epigenesis,’ 202–18.
63 F.W. Doolittle, ‘Bacteria and Archaea,’ 88.
64 Joost Van Loon, ‘Parasite Politics: On the Significance of Symbiosis and
Assemblage in Theorizing Community Formations,’ 250.
65 Joost Van Loon, ‘Epidemic Space,’ Critical Public Health 151 (2005): 49.
66 Joost Van Loon, ‘Epidemic Space,’ 49.
67 Joost Van Loon, ‘Epidemic Space,’ 41.
68 Joost Van Loon, ‘Epidemic Space,’ 41.
69 Julie Theriot in Philip J. Hilts, ‘Watching Host Cells Collaborate in Bacterial
Infection,’ The New York Times (17 June 1997); Donna Haraway and Thyrza
Nichols Goodeve, How Like a Leaf (New York: Routledge, 2000), 75.
70 Lewis Thomas, Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Teacher (New York: Viking,
1974).
71 Lynn Margulis, ‘Kingdom Animalia: The Zoological Malaise from a Micro-
bial Perspective,’ American Zoology 30 (1990): 861–75.
72 G.R. Fleischaker and Lynn Margulis, ‘Autopoiesis and the Origin of Bacteria,’
Advances in Space Research 6, no. 11 (1986): 53.
73 F.G. Varela, H.R. Maturana, and R. Uribe, ‘Autopoiesis: The Organization of
Living Systems, Its Characterization and a Model,’ BioSystems 5, no. 4 (1974):
187–96; F.J. Varela, and D. Johnson, ‘On Observing Natural Systems,’ The
CoEvolution Quarterly (1976): 26–31; H.R. Maturana, ‘Neurophysiology of
Cognition,’ in Cognition: A Multiple View, ed. P. Garvin (New York: Spartan
Books, 1979), 3–23; Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, Autopoiesis
and Cognition: The Realization of the Living (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing
Company, 1980); Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, The Tree of
Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding (Boston: New Science
Library, 1987).
74 Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition: The
Realization of the Living, xxii.
75 N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became PostHuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics,
Literature, and Informatics (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999),
136.
 Notes 177

76 Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, The Tree of Knowledge: The

Biological Roots of Human Understanding, 48.
77 Maturana and Varela write explicitly that ‘reproduction and evolution are not
essential for living organisms’ (Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, The
Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding, 11).
78 N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became PostHuman: Virtual Bodies in Cyber-
netics, Literature, and Informatics, 141. The displacement of replication with
autopoiesis as the defining feature of life explains why Gaia theory is not
concerned with the biosphere as a population of one and how it is able to
reject the environment-organism distinction. Margulis and her colleagues
argue that local processes, generated through symbioses, have brought
about global self-regulation over the vast expanse of earth time. S. Brown,
L. Margulis, S. Ibarra and D. Siqueiros, ‘Desiccation Resistance and
Contamination as Mechanisms of Gaia,’ BioSystems 17, no. 4 (1985):
337–60.
79 Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition: The
Realization of the Living, 80.
80 N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became PostHuman: Virtual Bodies in Cyber-
netics, Literature, and Informatics, 146–7.
81 N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became PostHuman: Virtual Bodies in Cyber-
netics, Literature, and Informatics, 152.
82 Phillip Dunham explains that most of the dust we encounter (especially in the
home) is actually us. This dust consists of miniscule fragments of dead skin
that has peeled from our bodies. The outermost layers of the skin on our body
is in the process of becoming dust. Rather than epitomize a boundary between
nonmatter (culture) and matter (nature), ‘self’ and ‘other’, familiar and for-
eign, dust ‘… resists the modernist ennui, the weariness of classification, the
strain of keeping things fixed… Dust is no respecter of boundaries, whether
real or imagined’ (Phillip Dunham, ‘Dust,’ in Patterned Ground: Entanglements
of Nature and Culture, eds. Stephan Harrison, Steve Pile and Nigel Thrift
(Reaktion Books, 2004), 99.
83 Alfred Tauber, ‘Postmodernism and Immune Selfhood,’ 601.
84 M. Rosengarten, ‘Thinking Menstrual Blood,’ Australian Feminist Studies 15,
no. 31: 99.
85 Bruce Braun, ‘Biopolitics and the Molecularization of Life,’ Cultural Geogra-
phies 14 (2007): 6–28.
86 Bruce Braun, ‘Biopolitics and the Molecularization of Life,’ 17.
87 Emmanuel Levinas, Time and the Other, Trans. Richard Cohen (Pittsburgh, PA:
Duquesne University Press, 2001); Emmanuel Levinas, The Levinas Reader,
Trans. Sean Hand (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003); Emmanuel Levinas,
Humanism and the Other, Trans. Nidra Poller (Champaign: University of Illinois
Press, 2005); Jacques Derrida, Given Time (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1992); Jacques Derrida, The Politics of Friendship (London: Verso, 1997);
John Caputo, Against Ethics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993);
John Caputo, ‘Who is Derrida’s Zarathustra? Of fraternity, friendship, and a
Democracy to Come,’ Research in Phenomenology 29 (1999): 184–98; Roberto
Esposito, Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2008).
88 Roberto Esposito, Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy, x.
178 Notes

89 Timothy Campbell, ‘Bios, Immunity, Life: The Thought of Roberto Esposito,’

in Roberto Esposito, Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 2008), vii–xlii, xxxi.
90 Roberto Esposito, Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy, 116. While I find Esposito’s
arguments concerning community compelling, I do not agree with
(Campbell’s reading of) Esposito’s supposition that there is not life without
individuation through birth: bacteria effectively complicate individuation
before, during and after life (xxxiii). Also, while I appreciate that Esposito is
referring to political positions, the distinction between parasites as either
symbionts or ‘true’ parasites obscures the transformative aspect of symbiosis
itself, as harm may change to survival and vice versa (18).
91 Jean Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 2000), 3, original emphasis.
92 Nick Bingham, ‘Bees, Butterflies, and Bacteria: Biotechnology and the Politics
of Nonhuman Friendship,’ Environment and Planning A 38 (2006): 492.
93 John Caputo, ‘Who is Derrida’s Zarathustra? Of fraternity, friendship, and a
Democracy to Come,’ 184.
94 Nick Bingham, ‘Bees, Butterflies, and Bacteria: Biotechnology and the Politics
of Nonhuman Friendship,’ 489.

Chapter 5
1 Sadie Plant, Zeros + Ones: Digital Women + The New Technoculture (New York:
Doubleday, 1997), 205.
2 Elizabeth Wilson, ‘Biologically Inspired Feminism: Response to Helen Keane
and Marsha Rosengarten, “On the Biology of Sexed Subjects,”’ Australian
Feminist Studies 17, no. 39 (2002): 283–5.
3 Sharon Kinsman, ‘Life, Sex and Cells,’ in Feminist Science Studies, eds.
Mayberry, Subramaniam and Weasel (New York: Routledge, 2001),
193–203, 197.
4 Lambert, D. and the Diagram Group (2005) The Secret Sex Lives of Animals
(New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.).
5 Harriet Zuckerman and Josh Lederberg, ‘Postmature Scientific Discovery?’
Nature 324 (1986): 629–31, 629. Social studies of science are familiar with
premature discoveries in science – those observations made in a scientific
context that precludes their understanding. Within evolutionary theory,
perhaps the best-known example of a premature discovery was Mendel’s
theory of particulate inheritance. Only 35 years later, when Darwin had put
forth the theory of evolution through natural selection, were the implica-
tions of Mendel’s experiments contextualized.
6 Harriet Zuckerman and Josh Lederberg, ‘Postmature Scientific Discovery?’
629.
7 Janet Browne’s article, ‘Botany for Gentlemen’ provides a lively and thorough
critique of Erasmus Darwin’s poem ‘The Love of the Plants’. The poem, meant
as a vindication of Linneas’s plant taxonomy, reified very familiar and highly
normative conceptions of 19th century British femininity and masculinity.
See Janet Browne, ‘Botany for Gentlemen,’ Isis 80, no. 4 (1989): 593–621. See
also Londa Schiebinger, Nature’s Body: Sexual Politics and the Making of Modern
 Notes 179

Science (London: Pandora, 1993); Myra Hird, Sex, Gender and Science (New
York: Palgrave, 2004).
8 Emile Durkheim, Suicide (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), 385.
9 Part of this section appears in Myra Hird, Sex, Gender and Science.
10 John Maynard-Smith, The Evolution of Sex (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1978); Charles Darwin The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to
Sex (London: John Murray, 1890); Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is (New York:
Basic Books, 2001).
11 J.L. Mackay, ‘Why Have Sex?,’ British Medical Journal 322, no. 7286 (2001):
623.
12 Evolutionary theory’s ‘problem’ finds expression in the Red Queen Hypo-
thesis. The idea here is that evolution is not concerned with progress
because in a constantly changing environment, change is necessary just to
survive. In Alice in Wonderland, the Red Queen tells Alice that she must run
very fast in Wonderland just to stay in the same place. See Lynn Margulis
and Dorion Sagan, What is Sex? 120–1.
13 See, respectively, William Hamilton, Robert Axelrod, and Reiko Tanese,
‘Sexual Reproduction as an Adaptation to Resist Parasites,’ Proc. Natl Acad.
Sci. 87 (1990): 3566–73; Aneil Agrawal, ‘Similarity Selection and the Evolu-
tion of Sex: Revisiting the Red Queen,’ PLOS Biol. 4 (2006): 1364–71; Alexey
Kondrashov, ‘Deleterious Mutations and the Evolution of Sexual Repro-
duction,’ Nature 336 (1988): 435–40; R.A. Fisher, The Genetical Theory of Natural
Selection (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930); Joseph Felsenstein, ‘The Evolution-
ary Advantage of Recombination,’ Genetics 78, no. 2 (1974): 737–56.
14 Graham Bell, The Masterpiece of Nature: The Evolution and Genetics of Sexuality
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 99, emphasis in original.
15 Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, The Origins of Sex: Three Billion Years of
Genetic Recombination. See also Judith Roof’s critique of Freud’s utilitarian
approach to protists as that ‘lowest organism’ through which a conservative
Darwinism (neoDarwinism) illustrates the universalism of the replication
drive. Although ‘obligingly stable, simple, persistent, and flexible’, protists
nevertheless exist as ‘exception[s] to evolution’s rule’ insofar as they persist
through evolutionary time ‘at their lowly level’ rather than evolving into
‘higher’ more complex organisms. Because their reproduction is uniparental,
protists defy death – side-stepping desire that all organisms have to return to
death as the originary state of quiescence through the pleasure principle
(Judith Roof, ‘From Protists to DNA (and Back Again): Freud’s Psychoanalysis
of the Single-Celled Organism,’ 105). Freud, reading Darwin, brings protists
back into the evolutionary fold by arguing that repeated cloning weakens
the organism, whilst the combining of genetic material from more than one
source strengthens the organism, providing the quid pro quo that sexual
reproduction goes hand-in-hand with ‘higher creatures’: ‘protista exception
has become the incarnation of a rule’ (109, 110).
16 Margulis and Sagan, Origins of Sex: Three Billion Years of Genetic Recombination,
235.
17 Margulis and Sagan, What is Sex?, 17.
18 Margulis and Sagan, What is Sex?, 235.
19 Lynn Margulis in Lawrence Joseph, Gia: The Growth of an Idea (New York:
St. Martin’s Press, 1990), 63.
20 Margulis and Sagan, What is Sex?, 17.
180 Notes

21 Susan Oyama, ‘The Conceptualization of Nature: Nature as Design,’ 171–84, 51.

22 Margulis and Sagan, Origins of Sex: Three Billion Years of Genetic Recombination.
23 Nick Lane, Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life (Oxford
University Press, 2005).
24 Margulis and Sagan, Origins of Sex: Three Billion Years of Genetic Recombination,
232.
25 Most, but not all, eukaryotes undergo mitosis when they divide.
26 In human males, sperm with a single set of chromosomes are meiotically
reduced from diploid spermatocytes. In human females, eggs with a single
set of chromosomes are meiotically reduced from diploid oocytes.
27 Margulis and Sagan, Origins of Sex: Three Billion Years of Genetic Recombination,
62.
28 Margulis and Sagan, Origins of Sex: Three Billion Years of Genetic Recombination,
233.
29 There has been a case of a boy born with an XX configuration, however.
This boy’s ovum split several times before being fertilized by sperm, pro-
viding further evidence that parthenogenic reproduction extends to humans.
P. Cohen, ‘The Boy Whose Blood Has No Father,’ New Scientist, 7 October,
1995, p. 16.
30 Donna Haraway, Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of
Modern Science (London and New York: Routledge): 352.
31 Margulis and Sagan, What is Sex?, 57.
32 See Myra J. Hird, Sex, Gender and Science (Basingstoke: Palgrave Press, 2004)
for a detailed description of the historical identification, construction and
tenacious refusal of chromosomes, hormones, genitals, gametes, personality
types and the like to conform to human normative prescriptions of gender
difference.
33 George Krizek, ‘Unusual Interaction Between a Butterfly and a Beetle: “Sexual
Paraphilia” in Insects?’ Tropical Lepidoptera 3, no. 2 (1992): 118.
34 David Policansky, ‘Sex Change in Plants and Animals,’ Annual Review of
Ecology and Systematics 13 (1982): 471–95.
35 R.H. Denniston, ‘Ambisexuality in Animals,’ in Homosexual Behaviour:
A Modern Reappraisal, ed. Judd Marmor (New York: Basic Books), 35–40.
36 Bruce Bagemihl notes that transvestism does not mean taking on activities
or behaviors that are considered to be either typically ‘female’ or ‘male’. For
instance, the sexual reproduction of offspring is typically considered a
female prerogative. But for sea horses and pipe fish, the male bears and
gives birth to offspring. So male sea horses and male pipe fish are not prac-
ticing transvestism when they produce offspring. Bagemihl notes this is also
the case for behaviors involved in what biologists term ‘courtship’. In many
species, females are more aggressive than males in these behaviors. Should a
female in these species behave passively, she would be practicing trans-
vestism. It is worth noting here that nonhuman animals who engage in
transvestite behavior, like their human counterparts, specifically avoid
homosexual behavior. The misconception that transvestites (usually male)
attempt to be ‘feminine’ in order to attract sexual relationships with men is
as erroneous for the nonhuman as the human animal world. See Bruce
Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999).
 Notes 181

37 See also Denis Owen, ‘Mimicry and Transvestism in Papilio phorcas,’ Journal
of Entomological Society of Southern Africa 51 (1988): 294–6; Joan Roughgarden,
Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).
38 Theo Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski and John Peterson Myers, Our Stolen
Future (London: Little Brown and Company, 1996).
39 Leonard Paulozzi, J. David Erickson and Richard J. Jackson, ‘Hypospadias
Trends in Two American Surveillance Systems,’ Pediatrics 100 (1997): 831–4;
Helen Dolk, M. Vrijheid, B. Armstrong, L. Abramsky, F. Bianchi, E. Garne,
V. Nelen, E. Robert, J.E. Scott, D. Stone and R. Tenconi, ‘Risk of Congenital
Anomalies Near Hazardous Waste Landfill Sites in Europe: The EUROHAZ-
CON Study,’ The Lancet 352 (8 August 1998): 423–7.
40 Phillip Landrigan, Joy E. Carlson, Cynthia F. Bearer, Joan Spyker Cranmer,
Robert D. Bullard, Ruth A. Etzel, John Groopman, John A. McLachlan, Frederica
P. Perera, J. Routt Reigart, Leslie Robison, Lawrence Schell and William A. Suk,
‘Children’s Health and the Environment: A New Agenda for Prevention
Research,’ Environmental Health Perspectives 106, no. 3 (1998): 787–94.
41 Edmund J. Clark, David O. Norris and Richard E. Jones, ‘Interactions of
Gonadal Steroids and Pesticides (DDT, DDE) on Gonaduct Growth in Larval
Tiger Salamanders,’ General and Comparative Endocrinology 109 (1998): 94–105;
A.L. Reeder, G.L. Foley, D.K. Nichols, L.G. Hansen, B. Wikoff, S. Faeh,
J. Eisold, M.B. Wheeler, R. Warner, J.E. Murphy and V.R. Beasley, ‘Forms and
Prevalence of Intersexuality and Effects of Environmental Contaminants on
Sexuality in Cricket Frogs,’ Environmental Health Perspectives 106, no. 5 (1998):
261–6.
42 Ann Oliver Cheek and John A. McLachlan, ‘Environmental Hormones and the
Male Reproductive System,’ Journal of Andrology 19, no. 1 (1998): 5–10; Rober
J. Golden, Kenneth L. Noller, Linda Titus-Ernstoff, Raymond H. Kaufman,
Robert Mittendorf, Robert Stillman and Elizabeth A. Reese, ‘Environmental
Endocrine Modulators and Human Health: An Assessment of the Biological
Evidence,’ Critical Review of Toxicology 28, no. 2 (1998): 109–227; Geary Olsen,
Frank D. Gilliland, Michele M. Burlew, Jean M. Burris, Jack S. Mandel and
Jeffrey H. Mandel, ‘An Epidemiologic Investigation of Reproductive Hormones
in Men with Occupational Exposure to Perfluorooctanoic Acid,’ JOEM 40,
no. 7 (1998): 614–22; R. Santti, S. Makela, L Strauss, J. Korkman, M.L. Kostian,
‘Phytoestrogens: Potential Endocrine Disruptors in Males,’ Toxicology and
Industrial Health 14, nos. 1–2 (1998): 223–7; N. Skakkeæk, ‘Germ Cell Cancer
and Disorders of Spermatogenesis: An Environmental Connection?’ APMIS
106 (1998): 3–12; C.R. Tyler, C. et al., ‘Endocrine Disruption in Wildlife:
A Critical Review of the Evidence,’ Critical Reviews of Toxicology 28, no. 4
(1998): 319–61.
43 Londa Schiebinger, Has Feminism Changed Science? (Cambridge and London:
Harvard University Press, 1999), 149–50.
44 This section is taken from Myra J. Hird, Sex, Gender and Science.
45 Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Cambridge, Massachusetts:
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000), 315. See also Martin
Reite and Nancy G. Caine eds., Child Abuse: The Nonhuman Primate Data (New
York: Alan R. Liss Inc., 1983).
46 Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis.
182 Notes

47 Darling in Anne Fausto-Sterling, ‘Feminism and Behavioral Evolution: A Taxo-

nomy,’ in Feminism and Evolutionary Biology ed. Patricia Adair Gowaty (New
York: Chapman and Hall, 1997), 51. Fausto-Sterling notes that this account
was curiously absent from later reports of research on stags. See also Bruce
Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity.
48 P. Vasey, ‘Homosexual Behaviour in Primates,’ International Journal of
Primatology 16 (1995): 173–204.
49 Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural
Diversity.
50 Mary S. McDonald Pavelka, ‘Sexual Nature: What Can We Learn from a
Cross-Species Perspective?,’ in Sexual Nature, Sexual Culture, eds. P. Abramson
and S. Pinkerton (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 17–36.
51 Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural
Diversity, 215.
52 Another critique of the saliency given to sexual reproduction over other
evolutionary developments comes from Hoffmeyer, who points out that
membrane formation is ‘the decisive step in pre-biotic evolution’ (see Jesper
Hoffmeyer, ‘How Can it Be The Case That The World Contains Human
Beings,’ 19–30. The importance of membrane as causative structures is
mainly eclipsed by the focus on DNA. Cognizant of the importance of
membrane formation to the evolution of cells, Margulis and Guerrero refer
to sex as a consequence, an after-effect, of membrane formation: ‘indi-
viduals emerge when this interchange is restricted; the membrane toughens,
the genes become packaged into a membrane bounded nucleus, and our
world of sex and death emerges’ (Lynn Margulis and Ricardo Guerrero,
‘Kingdoms in Turmoil,’ New Scientist 129 (1991): 50.
53 Margulis and Sagan, Origins of Sex: Three Billion Years of Genetic Recombination,
15.
54 Margulis and Sagan, Origins of Sex: Three Billion Years of Genetic Recombination,
180.
55 Bacterial sex is complicated. It involves a number of conditions that must
be met. First, two prokaryotes must make physical contact, and remain
attached long enough for DNA to pass from one prokaryote to the other
through the cell wall. The transferred DNA might or might not be inte-
grated into the recipient prokaryote’s DNA. If it is combined, then the
recipient’s DNA must be spliced, the donor DNA inserted, and the DNA
ligated (patched) by enzymes. This, in and of itself, is a complicated process
involving a sequence of necessary steps. In ‘crossing over’, chromatin might
be transferred which then line up and exchange parts. The number of genes
transferred depends upon environmental concerns such as temperature,
length of mating and chemical factors.
56 Symbiogenesis theory hypothesizes that spirochetes became microtubule-
organizing-centers (MTOCs), a transition crucial to the origin of mitosis.
The MTOCs of many protists are embedded in the nuclear membrane and
large numbers of repeated DNA sequences have no direct role in protein
coding (what scientists have called ‘junk DNA’ because they cannot account
for its presence), and, that myriad ways of rearranging, detecting and
copying nucleic acids from different sources exist in both prokaryotes and
eukaryotes, suggesting that these DNA sequences are remnants of genomes
 Notes 183

from what were once independent organisms. Bacterial intracellular

symbiosis is also associated with speciation (as outlined in Chapter 3).
Symbiogenesis theory takes these facts as indicators of the symbiogenetic
origins of DNA from different sources, rather than as an indication of
DNA ‘selfishness’. It is also associated with sex change in at least two
genera of insects – boll weevils (Paul Nardon and Anne-Marie Grenier,
‘Serial Endosymbiosis Theory and Weevil Evolution: The Role of
Symbiosis,’ in Symbiosis as a Source of Evolutionary Innovation: Speciation
and Morphogenesis, eds. Lynn Margulis and R. Fester (Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press, 1990) and lice (Andrew P. Martin, B.D. Kessing, and S.R.
Palumbi, ‘Accuracy of Estimating Genetic Distance Between Species From
Short Sequences of Mitochondrial DNA,’ Molecular Biology and Evolution 7
(1990): 485–8.
57 Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Dazzle Gradually: Reflections of the Nature
of Nature, 111.
58 Root Gorelick (under review) Origin of Sex: The Evolutionary Joys of Self Sex, 7.
59 Multicellularity is not limited to animals or plants: bacteria can also be
multicellular and their cells can differ both morphologically and physio-
logically.
60 Margulis and Sagan, Origins of Sex: Three Billion Years of Genetic Recombination,
166.
61 Margulis and Sagan, Origins of Sex: Three Billion Years of Genetic Recombination,
166.
62 Margulis and Sagan, What is Sex?, 24.
63 Anne Fausto-Sterling, ‘Feminism and Behavioral Evolution: A Taxonomy,’ 53.
64 Margulis and Sagan, What is Sex?, 80.
65 Kim Sterelny and Paul Griffiths, Sex and Death: An Introduction to Philosophy
of Biology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 71.
66 Vaclav Smil, The Earth’s Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change (Cambridge,
MA: The MIT Press, 2002), 79.
67 Margulis and Sagan refer to ‘jumping genes, “redundant” DNA, nucleotide
repair systems, and many other dynamic genetic processes [that] exploit
the “cut and paste” recombination of ancient bacteria-style sexuality that
evolved long before plants, animals, or even fungi or protists appeared on
this planet’ (Margulis and Sagan, Origins of Sex: Three Billion Years of Genetic
Recombination, 181).
68 U.P. Roos, ‘From Proto-mitosis to Mitosis: An Alternative Hypothesis on the
Origin and Evolution of the Mitotic Spindle Origins of Life,’ Origins of Life
and Evolution of Biospheres 13, nos. 3/4 (1984): 183–93.
69 Jesper Hoffmeyer, ‘How Can It Be the Case That the World Contains
Human Beings?’, 84.
70 Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Dazzle Gradually: Reflections of the Nature
of Nature, 111.
71 M. Meselson, URL: <http://www.mcb.harvard.edu/Faculty/Meselson.html>.
Accessed August 18, 2008.
72 Root Gorelick (under review) Origin of Sex: The Evolutionary Joys of Self
Sex, 1.
73 Emile F. Maupas, ‘Sur la Conjugaison des Paramécies,’ C.R. Acad. Se. III, 103
(1886): 482–4; Emile F. Maupas, ‘La Rajeunissement Karyogamique Chez
184 Notes

Les Ciliés,’ Archives de Zoologie Expéimentale et Générale (Serie 2) 7 (1889):

149–519.
74 L.R. Cleveland, ‘The Origin of Evolution of Meiosis,’ Science 105 (1947):
287–9.
75 Anne Fausto-Sterling, ‘Feminism and Behavioral Evolution: A Taxonomy,’
in Feminism and Evolutionary Biology, ed. Patricia Adair Gowaty (New York:
Chapman and Hall, 1997), 54.
76 Anne Fausto-Sterling, ‘Feminism and Behavioral Evolution: A Taxonomy,’
57.
77 Vicky Kirby, ‘Subject to Natural Law: A Mediation on the “Two Cultures”
Problem,’ Australian Feminist Studies 23, no. 55 (2008): 5.
78 Elizabeth Grosz, The Nick of Time (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2004), 91.
79 Elizabeth Grosz, Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2005), 6.
80 Elizabeth Grosz, Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power, 17.
81 Elizabeth Grosz, The Nick of Time, 30.
82 Elizabeth Grosz, The Nick of Time, 23, 24.
83 Elizabeth Grosz, Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power, 67.
84 Elizabeth Grosz, Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power, 68.
85 Elizabeth Grosz, Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power, 22.
86 Luciana Parisi, Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Bio-technology and the Mutations
of Desire.
87 Luciana Parisi, Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Bio-technology and the Mutations
of Desire, 12.
88 Luciana Parisi, Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Bio-technology and the Mutations of
Desire, 22.
89 Luciana Parisi, Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Bio-technology and the Mutations of
Desire, 57.
90 Luciana Parisi, Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Bio-technology and the Mutations
of Desire, 78.
91 Luciana Parisi, Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Bio-technology and the Mutations
of Desire, 91.
92 Marianne Schwartz and John Vissing, ‘Paternal Inheritance of Mitochon-
drial DNA,’ New England Journal of Medicine 347, no. 8 (2002): 576–80.
93 Yevgenya Kraytsberg, Marianne Schwartz, Timothy A. Brown, Konstantin
Ebralidse, Wolfram S. Kunz, David A. Clayton, John Vissing and Konstantin
Khrapko, ‘Recombination of Human Mitochondrial DNA,’ Science 304
(2004): 981.
94 Nick Lane, Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life.
95 Luciana Parisi, Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Bio-technology and the Mutations of
Desire, 51.
96 Bruce Bagemihl uses the term ‘quiet revolution’ to refer to the superabun-
dance of diversity in a strong ecosystem. I like its association with the
transformation of Quebec sexual culture during the 1960s and 1970s
(Bruce Bagemihl, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural
Diversity).
97 Luciana Parisi, Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Bio-technology and the Mutations of
Desire, 196.
 Notes 185

Chapter 6
1 John Urry, ‘Order on the Edge of Chaos,’ American Sociological Association
Conference, (New York, 14 August 2007); James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia:
Earth’s Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity (New York: Basic Books, 2006).
2 Stepehen Schneider, James Miller, Eileen Crist, Penelope Boston, ‘Preface,’
in Scientists Debate Gaia: The Next Century, eds. S. Schneider, J. Miller,
E. Crist and P. Boston (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), xiii–xvii.
3 Stepehen Schneider, James Miller, Eileen Crist, Penelope Boston, Scientists
Debate Gaia: The Next Century, xiii. Lovelock defends his continued use of
the goddess symbol (and while Margulis does not herself favor the name,
she defends Lovelock) because it resonates with the public imagination,
allowing people to think about the planet as a whole. Scientists, on the
other hand, display outright hostility toward the name because of its wide-
spread appeal to lay persons who subscribe to ‘spiritual’ notions of the
earth. For instance, the Liechtenstein-based Foundation for Gaia and the
Gaia Institute of the Cathedral of St John the Divine offer massage, lifestyle
instruction and the like. For most scientists, recourse to anything other
than science on the side of Plato’s gods is too reminiscent of the long strug-
gle to free society from religious dogma. Richard Dawkins, science’s most
recent critic of religion, described Gaia theory thus: ‘the Gaia theory thrives
on an innate desire, mostly among laypeople, to believe that evolution
works for the good of all’. [It is] Profoundly erroneous… [and] sounds
exactly like the origin of a religion to me’. Dawkins quoted in Lawrence
E. Joseph, Gaia: The Growth of an Idea, 56, 69.
4 Alan Irwin, Sociology and the Environment: A Critical Introduction to Society,
Nature and Knowledge (Oxford: Polity Press, 2001), 180. Howard Newby’s
acerbic observation of sociology’s disinterest in moving beyond a social
studies agenda is no less sobering: ‘the slender contribution of sociologists
to the study of the environment has been, to put it mildly, disappointing’
(in Alan Irwin, Sociology and the Environment: A Critical Introduction to Society,
Nature and Knowledge, vi).
5 Steven L. Goldman, The Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They Know
It. For instance, SSK’s strong program ‘symmetry postulate’ argues that all ideas
(whether rational, irrational, true or false) are social ‘through and through’.
See David Bloor, ‘Anti-Latour,’ Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 30,
no. 1 (1999): 113–29. One of the long-term points of contention between the
SSK and ANT pivots on the degree to which scientific claims are accorded
explanatory status as things-in-themselves, or more accurately perhaps, things-
in-phenomena. See also Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum
Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning.
6 Alan Irwin, Sociology and the Environment: A Critical Introduction to Society,
Nature and Knowledge, 21.
7 John Urry, Sociology Beyond Societies: Mobilities for the Twenty First Century
(London: Routledge, 2000), 18. This latter concern assumes, of course, that
social scientists consider the earth to be, to a greater or lesser extent, in an
environmental crisis, that humans have precipitated this crisis, and that
humans can do something to avert or otherwise mitigate the crisis’s
effects.
186 Notes

8 Warren M. Hern, ‘Why Are There So Many of Us? Description and Diag-
nosis of a Planetary Ecopathological Process,’ Population and Environment: A
Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 12, no. 1 (1990): 9–39.
9 See David Strahan, The Last Oil Shock: A Survival Guide to the Imminent
Extinction of Petroleum Man (London: John Murray Publishers, 2007);
Vaclav Smil, The Earth’s Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change
(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002); James Lovelock, The Revenge of
Gaia: Earth’s Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity (New York: Basic
Books, 2006); E.O. Wilson, The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth
(New York: W.W. Norton, 2007).
10 J. MacAllister, ‘Gaia and Symbiogenesis: Communities Become Individuals,’
in Chimeras and Consciousness: Evolution and the Sensory Self, eds. L. Margulis,
C. Asikainen and W. Krumbein (White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea
Green Publishing, forthcoming).
11 Keith Ansell Pearson, Viroid Life: Perspectives on Nietzsche and the Trans-
human Condition. For discussions of an ‘enlivened nature’ approach, see
Vicki Kirby, ‘Subject to Natural Law: A Meditation on the “Two Cultures”
Problem,’ Australian Feminist Studies 23, no. 55: 5–17; Elizabeth Wilson,
‘Introduction: Somatic Compliance – Feminism, Biology, and Science,’
Australian Feminist Studies 14, no. 29: 7–18, and Timothy Mitchell, ‘Can the
Mosquito Speak?,’ in Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 2002).
12 Lynn Margulis and James Lovelock, ‘The Atmosphere as Circulatory System
of the Biosphere – The Gaia hypothesis,’ CoEvolution Quarterly 6 (1975):
30–40; Lynn Margulis and James Lovelock, ‘Is Mars a spaceship, too?,’
Natural History 85 (1976): 86–90; Lynn Margulis and James Lovelock,
‘The View from Mars and Venus,’ The Sciences 17 (1977): 10–13;
Lynn Margulis and James Lovelock, ‘Atmospheres and Evolution,’ in
Life in the Universe, ed. J. Billingham (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981),
79–100; James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, ‘Atmospheric Homeostasis
By and for the Biosphere: The Gaia Hypothesis,’ Tellus 26 (1974): 2–10;
Andrew Watson, James Lovelock, and Lynn Margulis, ‘Methanogenesis,
fires and the regulation of atmospheric oxygen,’ BioSystems 10 (1979):
293–8.
13 For instance, geoscientists tend to obviate the role of organisms (primarily
bacteria) in environmental evolution, and biologists tend to be unaware of
the complex and intricate ways in which nonliving matter interacts with
living organisms.
14 Hans Peter Duerr, Dreamtime: Concerning the Boundary Between Wilderness and
Civilization. Trans. F. Goodman (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987); Alphonso
Lingis, The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); Giorgio Agamben, The Open: Man and
Animal. Trans. K. Attell (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004);
Donna Haraway, When Species Meet; Peter C. van Wyck, Primitives in the
Wilderness: Deep Ecology and the Missing Human Subject (New York: State
University of New York Press, 1997).
15 See Peter C. van Wyck, Primitives in the Wilderness: Deep Ecology and the
Missing Human Subject, 126.
16 Eduard Seuss in Vaclav Smil, The Earth’s Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and
Change, 1, my emphasis.
 Notes 187

17 V.I. Vernadsky, The Biosphere, ed. M. McMenamin (New York: Copernicus/

Springer-Verlag, 1926/1997), 39. G. Evelyn Hutchinson, the founder of the
science of ecology, introduced Vernadsky’s work to the English-speaking
world. See G.E. Hutchinson, ‘On Living in the Biosphere,’ The Scientific
Monthly 67 (1948): 393–7.
18 James Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1995).
19 Realizing from the atmospheric data that life could not exist on Mars,
Lovelock and Hitchcock informed NASA that millions of dollars could be
saved. NASA spent the money anyway, equipping the Viking mission with
three experiments that concluded there was no life on Mars.
20 James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth Is Fighting Back – and
How We Can Still Save Humanity (Santa Barbara, CA: Allen Lane, 2006).
21 Andrew Free and Nicholas Barton, ‘Do Evolution and Ecology Need the
Gaia Hypothesis?’ Trends in Ecology and Evolution 22, no. 11 (2007): 611–19.
22 C. Barlow and Tyler Volk, ‘Gaia and Evolutionary Theory,’ BioScience, 42
(1992): 686–93.
23 Margulis quoted in Lawrence E. Joseph, Gaia: The Growth of an Idea (New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), 7.
24 Freese, in Penelope Canan, ‘Bringing Nature Back: The Challenge of Environ-
mental Sociology,’ Sociological Inquiry 66, no. 1 (1996): 29–37.
25 David Schwarzmann and Tyler Volk, ‘Biotic Enhancement of Weathering
and Surface Temperatures on Earth Since the Origin of Life,’ Palaeo-
geography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology (Global and Planetary Change
Section), 90 (1991): 357–71.
26 Paul Lowman and Neil Armstrong, Exploring Earth, Exploring Space (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 279.
27 Stephan Harding and Lynn Margulis, ‘Water Gaia,’ in Search of Gaia, eds.
E. Crist and B. Rinker (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, forthcoming).
28 Tyler Volk, ‘Gaia is Life in a Wasteland of By-products,’ in Scientists Debate
Gaia: The Next Century, eds. S. Schneider, J. Miller, E. Crist and P. Boston
(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004), 27–36, 31.
29 Connie Barlow and Tyler Volk, ‘Gaia and Evolutionary Theory,’ 689. Some
evolutionary theorists, while not advocating a reconciliation between
the modern synthesis and Gaia, do suggest Gaia theory’s utility in provok-
ing new lines of inquiry. For example, John Maynard Smith writes: ‘No Dar-
winist could accept the “Gaia” hypothesis, according to which the Earth is
analogous to a living organism, because the Earth is not an entity with mul-
tiplication, variation and heredity. However, we should not be too con-
temptuous of that idea, logically flawed as it is, until we can give a better
account of the long-term stability of the biosphere than is at present poss-
ible’. See J. Maynard Smith, ‘Evolutionary Progress and Levels of Selection,’
in Evolutionary Progress, ed. M. Nitecki (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1988), 219–30.
30 Connie Barlow and Tyler Volk, ‘Gaia and Evolutionary Theory,’ 692.
31 James Lovelock, ‘A Physical Basis for Life Detection Experiments,’ Nature
207, no. 4997 (1965): 568–70. For a review of nine further testable hypo-
theses, see C. Barlow and Tyler Volk, ‘Gaia and Evolutionary Theory’ and
Andrew Free and Nicholas Barton, ‘Do Evolution and Ecology Need the
Gaia Hypothesis?’ Trends in Ecology and Evolution 22, no. 11 (2007): 611–19.
188 Notes

32 James W. Kirchner, ‘The Gaia Hypothesis: Can It Be Tested?’ Review of

Geophysiology 27 (1989): 223–35.
33 In Connie Barlow and Tyler Volk, ‘Gaia and Evolutionary Theory,’ 691.
34 Timothy M. Lenton, ‘Clarifying Gaia: Reflection With or Without Natural
Selection,’ in Scientists Debate Gaia: The Next Century, eds. S. Schneider,
J. Miller, E. Crist and P. Boston (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 16.
35 See Timothy M. Lenton, ‘Gaia and Natural Selection,’ Nature 394 (1998):
439–47; and Timothy M. Lenton and James Lovelock, ‘Daisyworld is
Darwinian: Constraints on Adaptation Are Important for Planetary Self-
regulation,’ Journal of Theoretical Biology 206, no. 1: 109–14. Lovelock notes
with some relish that all attempts since Daisyworld (his own and others’) to
model evolutionary systems using large numbers of variables in complex
interactions have found that nonteleological regulation works.
36 Timothy M. Lenton, ‘Gaia and Natural Selection.’ See also Andrew Free and
Nicholas Barton, ‘Do Evolution and Ecology Need the Gaia Hypothesis?,’ 613.
37 Free and Barton point out that while microorganisms are essential for photo-
synthesis and cycling ratios to exist, Homoestatic Gaia does not require
multicellularity. Nor does it require the stability of species composition.
Indeed, while a diversity of microbial metabolic activities enhances stability
of nutrient recycling, it seems to be the community structure of these micro-
bial metabolic pathways that leads to stability (Andrew Free and Nicholas
Barton, ‘Do Evolution and Ecology Need the Gaia Hypothesis?,’ 612–20).
38 Responding to criticisms that the earth does not resemble a homeostatic
system (the atmosphere became aerobic after hundreds of millions of years),
Lovelock offered the term ‘punctuated homeostatic’ to allow for system dis-
turbances that then stabilize. Margulis uses the term ‘homeorrhetic’ from
developmental biology to arrive at the same notion of change and stability.
Lynn Margulis, ‘Kingdom Animalia: The Zoological Malaise from a Micro-
bial Perspective,’ 861–75. See also C. Barlow and Tyler Volk, ‘Gaia and
Evolutionary Theory,’ 686–7.
39 For scientific opposition to the biosphere as a superorganism, see Richard
Dawkins, The Extended Phenotype (New York: W.H. Freeman, 1982); W. Ford
Doolittle, ‘Questioning a Metaphor,’ in From Gaia to Selfish Genes, ed. Connie
Barlow (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991), 235–6; Paul Ehrlich,
‘Coevolution and its Applicability to the Gaia Hypothesis,’ in Scientists on
Gaia, eds. S.H. Schneider and P.J. Boston (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1991), 19–22; and D.S. Wilson and E. Sober, ‘Reviving the Superorganism,’
Journal of Theoretical Biology 136 (1989): 337–56. The charge that Gaia theory
is nonDarwinian is the nub of scientific criticism. Remarking on the popu-
larity of The Ages of Gaia amongst environmentalists and lay persons, Ford
Doolittle remarked, ‘the good thing about this engaging little book by Jim
Lovelock is that reading it gives one a warm, comforting feeling about
Nature and man’s [sic] place in it. The bad thing is that this feeling is based
on a view of natural selection – that force which alone is responsible for the
existence and characteristics of the biosphere – which is unquestionably
false’. Doolittle quoted in Lawrence E. Joseph, Gaia: The Growth of an Idea,
56. It is worth noting that this comment was made prior to the publication
of Lovelock’s latest book The Revenge of Gaia, which describes the human
environmental genocide (at least four billion people) that global warming
 Notes 189

will precipitate. To humanists and post-humanists alike, there is little

comfort to be found in this scenario. Stephen J. Gould wrote that ‘the [Gaia]
hypothesis says nothing new – it offers no new mechanisms. It just changes
the metaphor, but metaphor is not a mechanism!’. D. Abram, ‘The Mech-
anical and the Organic: On the Impact of Metaphor in Science,’ in Scientists
on Gaia, 66. Gould, in turn, fails to recognize that the mechanical is itself a
metaphor, and one that has been critiqued by evolutionary theorists since its
initial association with Darwinism. See Marcia Bjornerud, ‘Gaia: Gender and
Scientific Representations of the Earth,’ Journal of the National Women’s
Studies Association 9 (1997): 89–106. Ironically, Daisyworld has been criti-
cized as ‘too mechanistic’ and not corresponding to ‘real life’.
40 Connie Barlow and Tyler Volk, ‘Gaia and Evolutionary Theory,’ 686–7.
41 Timothy M. Lenton, ‘Clarifying Gaia: Reflection With or Without Natural
Selection,’ 17.
42 Stepehen Schneider, James Miller, Eileen Crist and Penelope Boston,
‘Preface,’ in Scientists Debate Gaia: The Next Century, eds. S. Schneider,
J. Miller, E. Crist and P. Boston (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), xiii–xvii,
xiii. Lovelock notes the irony that his Gaia metaphor was created around the
same time that evolutionary biologist William Hamilton coined the power-
ful ‘selfish’ and ‘spiteful’ gene metaphors. The ‘selfish gene’ metaphor is also
open to misinterpretation (James Lovelock, ‘Reflections on Gaia,’ in Scientists
Debate Gaia: The Next Century, eds. S. Schneider, J. Miller, E. Crist and
P. Boston (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004).
43 James Lovelock, ‘Reflections on Gaia,’ 3. See also Tyler Volk, Gaia’s Body:
Toward a Physiology of Earth (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2003).
44 See Lawrence E. Joseph, Gaia: The Growth of an Idea, 69; Joel L. Sachs et al.,
‘The Evolution of Cooperation,’ Quarterly Review of Biology 79 (2004):
135–60 and Andrew Free and Nicholas Barton, ‘Do Evolution and Ecology
Need the Gaia Hypothesis?,’ 616.
45 Vaclav Smil, The Earth’s Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change.
46 Connie Barlow and Tyler Volk, ‘Gaia and Evolutionary Theory,’ 686–93.
47 For the counter-argument that reproduction is spatial replication and metabo-
lism is temporal replication see Vilmos Csányi, Evolutionary Systems and Society
(Durham, DC: Duke University Press, 1989); Vilmos Csányi and George
Kampis, ‘Autogenesis: The Evolution of Replicative Systems,’ Journal of
Theoretical Biology 114 (1985): 303–21. For instance, Csányi argues that metab-
olism and reproduction are actually temporal and spatial (respectively) forms
of replication, but that replication at local microbial levels can give rise to reg-
ulation at the biospheric level. V. Csányi, Evolutionary Systems and Society
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989); V. Csányi, and G. Kampis,
‘Autogenesis: The Evolution of Replicative Systems,’ Journal of Theoretical
Biology 114 (1985): 303–21. Other scientists focus on thermodynamics rather
than ‘the population of one’ problem, arguing that nonequilibrium thermo-
dynamics accounts for the biosphere’s evolution: the biosphere is an autocat-
alytic metabolism that emerges spontaneously and evolves, creating life as the
fastest means of maximizing entropy. Schull goes further: he argues that
species intelligence is an emergent property of evolutionary selection. Salthe
goes beyond the neoDarwinian pale: he argues that as a ‘developing thermo-
dynamically open autonomous system’, the biosphere will inevitably become
190 Notes

senescent. For these perspectives on thermodynamics, see S. Schneider and

R. Londer, The Coevolution of Climate and Life (San Francisco: Sierra Club
Books, 2004); Eric Schneider and Dorion Sagan, Into the Cool: Energy Flow,
Thermodynamics and Life; J. Schull ‘Are species intelligent?,’ Behavioral Brain
Science, 13 (1990): 63–108 and S. Salthe, ‘The Evolution of the Biosphere:
Towards a New Mythology,’ World Futures, 30 (1990): 53–67.
48 A. Schrader, ‘Time, Speed, and Delays in Environmental Crises,’ in Dinos &
Demons: The Politics of Temporality and Responsibility in Science (Doctoral
Dissertation, UCSC, 2008).
49 A. Schrader, ‘Time, Speed, and Delays in Environmental Crises,’ 231. See
also N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cyber-
netics, Literature, and Informatics.
50 Margulis is fond of remarking that the only difference between humans and
animals is that humans are capable of wholesale self-deception. See Lynn
Margulis and Dorion Sagan, What is Life?
51 John Urry differentiates between ‘instantaneous’ and ‘social’ times through
which technology and the human imagination conceive time in very short
periods (the life-span of three human generations for instance) and ‘glacial’
time, which is a Gaian time-line of invisible long-term co-evolving
processes at work (John Urry, Sociology Beyond Societies: Mobilities for the
Twenty-first Century (New York: Routledge, 2000)).
52 Similarly, the most significant division is between the superkingdoms Eukary-
ota (including kingdoms Protoctista, Fungi and Plantae) and Prokaryota
(including kingdom Monera and the sub-kingdoms Archaeobacteria and
Eubacteria), not between humans and other animals (or even human/animals
and all other organisms such as plants, fungi and protoctista). We know most
about Eukaryota and least about Prokaryota – not because the former is more
‘complex’ and/or capable of ‘advanced’ survival, but because we are
Eukaryota. As Margulis puts it, ‘most of what we know about the living world
is large enough to see without a microscope’.
53 James Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth, xix.
54 Bruno Latour, The Pasteurization of France, 222.
55 Vaclav Smil, The Earth’s Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change.
56 Dorion Sagan and Lynn Margulis, Garden of Microbial Delights: A Practical
Guide to the Subvisible World.
57 Methanogens, for instance, exist only in the absence of oxygen, and live by
decomposing organic matter and converting carbon to carbon dioxide and
methane, which is then recycled into the atmosphere. During the Archaean,
methanogens produced almost as much carbon as photosynthetic bacteria
removed. See Vaclav Smil, The Earth’s Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and
Change.
58 Vaclav Smil, The Earth’s Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change. Bacteria
have also learned to combine these specialisms: for instance, photolitho-
trophs such as green and purple sulfur bacteria, cyanobacteria, phytoplank-
ton, algae and land plants, thrive on solar energy and elemental and organic
compound elements. Chemolithotrophic metabolism literally keeps the bio-
sphere’s biogeochemical cycles of carbon, nitrogen and sulfur functioning.
59 Vladimir Vernadsky, The Biosphere, 64.
60 S. Sonea and L. Mathieu, Prokaryotology: A Coherent View, 9–10, my emphasis.
61 Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, What is Sex?
 Notes 191

62 Vaclav Smil, The Earth’s Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change.

63 Vaclav Smil, The Earth’s Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change. Termites,
in turn, form symbiotic relationships with ants – they are myrmecophylous
to put it in fancy language. Smil describes several functional categories of
symbioses: pollination symbioses between insects, birds, flowering plants and
bats (bees pollinate over 70 percent of the world’s top 100 crops); harvest
symbioses occur during the gathering and/or processing of nutrients; and dis-
persal symbioses diffuse plant seeds into the biosphere; and protective sym-
bioses have evolved to protect one or both species, for instance fungi living
inside plant leaves, stems and bark. Consider the remarkable symbiotic
relationship between ants and acacia trees. Remove the ants and the tree
dies.
64 Vaclav Smil, The Earth’s Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change, 225.
Again, it is easy to see how Gaia theory conceptualizes the biosphere as a
homeostatic system with emergent properties, since the prokaryotic world
itself is a massive efficient system greater than the sum of its individual
elements (themselves not easily distinguished).
65 G.E. Hutchinson, ‘The Biosphere,’ Scientific American 223 (1970): 53.
66 Take for example, the ‘Busselton Effect’ which describes a small Western
Australian town that decided to ban the use of aerosol cans within its town
limits with a view to restoring the shield of stratospheric ozone above their
own heads. I was similarly bemused in New Zealand when a group of graduate
students told me that they did not need to worry about the effects of nuclear
fallout because New Zealand did not have nuclear bombs or use nuclear power.
67 Amory Lovins asks ‘why did the USA put its young people into 06 mpg tanks
in the Gulf when the need for Gulf oil in the USA could have been totally
removed by the same young people driving 32 mpg cars? (in Ann Henderson-
Sellers, ‘Greenhouse, Gaia and Global Change: A Personal View of the Pitfalls
of Interdisciplinary Research,’ Australian Geographer 20, no. 1 (1992): 25).
68 Vaclav Smil, The Earth’s Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change.
69 Within the scope of anthropocentric solutions, some efforts are more appeal-
ing than others. For instance, Van Jones’s ‘Green Jobs, Not Jail’ program is, to
my mind, an inspiring effort to make the largely affluent Green Movement
accessible to America’s poor. Through various Green Job programs, Jones
seeks to yoke together the American middle-class desire to practice Green
living with the Black underclass’s economic survival and desire to participate
in Green living that is largely beyond their reach. See http://www.vanjones.
net/. See also Alan T. Durning, Green-Collar Jobs: Working in the New Northwest
(Seattle: Northwest Environment Watch, 1999).
70 Lovelock notes that Gaia’s current biodiversity is transient and subject to
gradual and abrupt changes. The mass extinction in the late Permian (about
250 million years ago) thought to have been caused by giant volcanic erup-
tions, killed more than half of the families of marine species, 70 percent of
vertebrate genera and countless species of rooted plants. Other nonhuman
precipitated mass extinctions took place in the Precambrian, Cambrian,
Ordovician, Devonian, Permian, and End-Cretaceous.
71 James Lovelock in Stepehen Schneider, James Miller, Eileen Crist and
Penelope Boston, Scientists Debate Gaia: The Next Century, 1906. Lovelock’s
attitude toward humanity borders on ambivalence. He writes: ‘We must
moderate our passion for human rights and being to recognize the rest of
192 Notes

life on earth. The risk to individuals of cancer from exposure to nuclear

radiation or to products of the chemical industry is personally important
but should not be our most urgent concern. First in our thoughts should be
the need to avoid perturbing what seems to be an unstable and failing
superorganism. Above all, we do not want to trigger the jump to a new but
unwanted stable climate.’ See James Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia: A Biography
of Our Living Earth, 228.
72 Lynn Margulis, ‘Gaia is a Tough Bitch,’ 129–46.
73 Stephan Harding, Animate Earth: Science, Intuition and Gaia (Totnes, Devon:
Green Books, 2006), 226–7.
74 E.O. Wilson likens the attempt to reassemble an endangered or extinct ecolog-
ical community – because of their nearly limitless number of bacteria, species,
symbioses and niches – to unscrambling an egg with two spoons. See
D. Wilkinson, ‘Do We Need to Worry About the Conservation of Micro-
organisms?,’ in Earthy Realism: The Meaning of Gaia, ed. M. Midgley (Charlottes-
ville, VA: Societas, 2007), 55. E.O. Wilson in Vaclav Smil, The Earth’s Biosphere:
Evolution, Dynamics, and Change (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002).
75 Peter C. van Wyck, Primitives in the Wilderness: Deep Ecology and the Missing
Human Subject (New York: State University of New York Press, 1997).
76 Peter C. van Wyck, Primitives in the Wilderness: Deep Ecology and the Missing
Human Subject, 25.
77 Peter C. van Wyck, Primitives in the Wilderness: Deep Ecology and the Missing
Human Subject, 30.
78 Interestingly, Lovelock’s deep ecology is sympathetic to technology (nuclear
power and flotillas of vertical pipes in the tropical seas to boost the ocean’s
take-up of CO2). See James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate Crisis
and the Fate of Humanity and James Lovelock and Chris Rapley, ‘Ocean Pipes
Could Help the Earth to Cure Itself,’ Nature 449 (September 2007): 403.
79 Peter C. van Wyck, Primitives in the Wilderness: Deep Ecology and the Missing
Human Subject, 92.
80 Niche’ theory looks at the coevolution of genetic, organismal and environ-
mental properties of organism-environment relations (see F. John Odling-
Smee, Kevin N. Laland and Marcus W. Feldman, Niche Construction: The
Neglected Process in Evolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003).
De Laplante makes a cogent argument for a ‘more expansive conception of
ecological science’ that includes the social sciences. See Kevin De Laplante,
‘Toward a More Expansive Conception of Ecological Science,’ Biology and
Philosophy 19 (2004): 263–81. See also Ann Henderson-Sellers, ‘Greenhouse,
Gaia and Global Change: A Personal View of the Pitfalls of Interdisciplinary
Research,’ Australian Geographer 20, no. 1 (1992): 1–43.

Chapter 7
1 Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the
Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, 380. Copyright © 2007, Duke
University Press. All rights reserved. Used by permission of the publisher.
2 John Agnew, ‘Open to Surprise,’ Progress in Human Geography 30, no. 1
(2006): 1–4. Reprinted by permission of SAGE.
3 Donna Haraway, When Species Meet.
 Notes 193

4 Donna Haraway, When Species Meet, 3.

5 Donna Haraway, When Species Meet, 25.
6 Donna Haraway, When Species Meet, 30.
7 Donna Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant
Otherness, 96.
8 Donna Haraway, When Species Meet, 33. See Isabelle Stengers, ‘Turtles All the
Way Down,’ in Power and Invention: Situating Science (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 1997), 60–74. Stengers asks whether we are able to
‘tackle the epistemological ‘obstacle,’ the description of a world centered on
us, of turtles made for our support…’ (60). Here is the rub: can ‘we’ (humans)
think beyond ‘big like us’? Do we humans think alone, or are we forever
enmeshed with our companion species in thinking itself?
9 Donna Haraway, When Species Meet, 226.
10 See Cary Wolfe, ‘In the Shadow of Wittgenstein’s Lion,’ in Zoontologies: The
Question of the Animal, ed. Cary Wolfe (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2003), 1–58; Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Wittgenstein Reader, ed. A. Kenny
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1994); J.F. Lyotard, The Inhuman, Trans. G. Bennington
and R. Bowlby (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991); J.F. Lyotard,
The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, Trans. G. Van Den Abbeele (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1989); Jacques Derrida, ‘“Eating Well” or the
Calculation of the Subject,’ in Who Comes After the Subject? eds. E. Cadava,
P. Connor and J.L. Nancy (New York: Routledge, 1991); Jacques Derrida, ‘The
Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow),’ in Animal Philosophy: Essential
Readings in Continental Thought, eds. M. Calarco and P. Atterton (New York:
Continuum, 2004/1997); Emmanuel Levinas, ‘Report of “The Paradox of
Morality”: An Interview with Emmanuel Levinas,’ in The Provocation of Levinas:
Rethinking the Other, eds. R. Bernasconi and D. Wood (London: Routledge,
1988); Emmanuel Levinas, ‘The Name of a Dog, or Natural Rights,’ in Difficult
Freedom: Essays on Judaism, trans. S. Hand (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1990/1975); Emmanuel Levinas, ‘Interview,’ in Animal
Philosophy: Essential Readings in Continental Thought, eds. M. Calarco and
P. Atterton (New York: Continuum, 2004); John Llewelyn, ‘Am I Obsessed
by Bobby? (Humanism of the Other Animal),’ in Re-Reading Levinas, eds.
R. Bernasconi and S. Critchley (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
1991); Karalyn Kendall, ‘The Face of a Dog: Levinasian Ethics and Human-Dog
Co-evolution,’ in Queering the Non/Human, eds. Noreen Giffney and Myra
J. Hird (Aldershot: Ashgate Press, 2008), 185–204; Catherine Wilson, Moral
Animals: Ideals and Constraints in Moral Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004).
11 Norman Pace writes ‘Microbial diversity is too broad, far too complex to be
accommodated by species counts’. Norman Pace, ‘The Early Branches in the
Tree of Life,’ 84.
12 Donna Haraway, When Species Meet (University of Minnesota Press, 2007),
287; Jacques Derrida, ‘“Eating Well” or the Calculation of the Subject,’ in
Who Comes after the Subject? eds. E. Cadava, P. Connor and J.L. Nancy (New
York: Routledge, 1991).
13 Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma (New York: Penguin Press, 2007).
14 Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, 10.
15 V.I. Vernadsky, The Biosphere, ed. M. McMenamin (New York: Copernicus/
Springer-Verlag, 1926/1997), 104. Vernadsky points to a corollary of the
autotroph-heterotroph distinction, which is that heterotrophs are restricted
194 Notes

to regions where they can consume living matter. In other words, auto-
trophs enjoy a much more extensive habitat. The Biosphere’s annotator,
Mark McMenamin notes that a single autotrophic cyanobacterium, with
unrestricted growth, could oxygenate the earth’s atmosphere in 40 days. See
V.I. Vernadsky, The Biosphere, ed. M. McMenamin (New York: Copernicus/
Springer-Verlag, 1926/1997), 105, fn.206.
16 Hern, in Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma (New York: Penguin Press,
2007).
17 Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma (New York: Penguin Press, 2007).
18 S. Sonea and L. Mathieu, Prokaryotology: A Coherent View (Les Presses de
L’Universite de Montreal, 2000), 16. Mice reared by scientists in a microbe-
free environment must consume about 30 percent more calories to maintain
the same body weight as mice kept in microbe-rich habitats. See Marlene Zuk,
Riddled With Life: Friendly Worms, Ladybug Sex, and the Parasites That Make Us
Who We Are.
19 Lora Hooper, Melissa Wong, Anders Thelin, Lennart Hansson, Per Falk and
Jeffrey Gordon, ‘Molecular Analysis of Commensal Host-Microbial Relation-
ships in the Intestine,’ Science 291, no. 2 (2001): 881–4.
20 See also: H. Wexler, ‘Bacteriodes: The Good, the Bad and the Nitty-Gritty,’
Clinical Microbiological Review 20 (2007): 593–621; P. Gerard, P. Lepercq,
M. Leclerc, F. Gavini, P. Raibaud and C. Juste, ‘Bacteriodes sp. Strain D8, the
First Cholesterol-Reducing Bacterium Isolated from Human Feces,’ Applied
Environmental Microbiology 73 (2007): 5742–9; B. Corthesy, H. Gaskins and
A. Mercenier, ‘Cross-Talk Between Probiotic Bacteria and the Host Immune
System,’ Journal of Nutrition 137 (2007): 781S–790S; P. Eckburg, E. Bik,
C. Bernstein, E. Purdom, L. Dethlefsen, M. Sargent, S. Gill, K. Nelson and
D. Relman, ‘Diversity of the Human Intestinal Microbial Flora,’ Science 308
(2005): 1635–8; J. Xu and J. Gordon, ‘Inaugural Article: Honor Thy
Symbionts,’ PNAS 100 (2003): 10452–9; V. Mai and J. Morris Jr., ‘Colonic
Bacterial Flora: Changing Understandings in the Molecular Age,’ Journal of
Nutrition 134 (2004): 459–64. ‘Probiotic’ drinks are based on the premise that
the bacteria in these drinks will introduce ‘good’ bacteria into the human
intestine, thereby ‘rebalancing’ the microflora. For a review of the lack of
evidence that probiotic drinks actually work, see G. Tannock, ‘A Special
Fondness for Lactobacilli,’ Applied Environmental Microbiology 70 (2004):
3189–94.
21 Vaclav Smil, The Earth’s Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change.
22 John Urry, Sociology Beyond Societies: Mobilities for the Twenty-first Century.
23 Adam, in Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
24 Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, 67.
25 Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
26 Rumenitis is good news for the bacillus Fusobacterium necrophorum, whose
presence characterizes this disease; enterotoxemia is good news for the
bacillus Clostridium perfringens, and coccidiosis is good news for the proto-
zoan (single-celled eukaryote) coccidian.
27 Zuk estimates that 75 percent of all new human emerging diseases are
spread from animals to humans (Marlene Zuk, Riddled With Life: Friendly
Worms, Ladybug Sex, and the Parasites That Make Us Who We Are).
28 Recall the footnoted discussion in Chapter 4 about Nietzsche’s contention
that true gifting involves forgetting. The only way, according to Nietzsche,
 Notes 195

to truly gift is to bludgeon the gifter such that s/he doesn’t remember
giving, and to bludgeon the recipient so that s/he does not know who did
the gifting.
29 Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, 10–11, 68, 84.
30 John Urry, Sociology Beyond Societies: Mobilities for the Twenty-first Century,
169.
31 Roszak in Roderick Nash, The Rights of Nature (Madison, WI: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1989), 13.
32 Mike Michael, Constructing Identities (London: Sage, 1996), 135; H. Batty
and T. Gray, ‘Environmental Rights and National Sovereignty,’ in National
Rights, International Obligations, eds. S. Caney, D. George and P. Jones
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996). I think this is to some degree what
Latour envisions will be the work of the ‘Parliament of Things’. He writes:
‘Let us again take up the two representations and the double doubt about
the faithfulness of the representatives, and we shall have defined the
Parliament of Things… Natures are present, but with their representatives,
scientists who speak in their name. Societies are present, but with the objects
that have been serving as their ballast from time immemorial… The imbrolios
and networks that had no place now have the whole place to themselves. They
are the ones that have to be represented; it is around them that the
Parliament of Things gathers henceforth’. See Bruno Latour, We Have
Never Been Modern, 144, my emphasis. In such a Parliament of Things,
the nonhuman would have responsibilities of action, of response, and of
ethics.
33 Cary Wolfe, Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal, 3.
34 J.F. Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, 28.
35 Derrida notes that ‘the Word, logos, does violence to the heterogeneous
multiplicity of the living world by reconstituting it under the sign of iden-
tity, the as such and in general – not “animals” but “the animal”, in Cary
Wolfe, Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal, 23.
36 Bauman in Cary Wolfe, Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of
Species, and the Posthumanist Theory, xvii.
37 See Karalyn Kendall, ‘The Face of the Dog: Levinasian Ethics and Human/ Dog
Coevolution,’ in Queering the NonHuman, eds. Noreen Giffney and Myra Hird,
185–204. Of course, Bobby may not have wanted to relate to Levinas at all,
which makes the ethical encounter all that much more challenging. As Latour
writes, ‘It is not an easy task to transform the inarticulate mutterings of a mul-
titude of entities that do not necessarily want to make themselves under-
stood’. See Bruno Latour, Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into
Democracy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 168.
38 Noting Daniel Dennett’s point that consciousness is not digital (i.e. it is not an
all or nothing entity), Wolfe argues that it is of little help in thinking through
the ethical differences between abusing a dog and abusing a scallop – ‘differ-
ences that would seem, to many people, to be the point, even if they are cer-
tainly not ethically the only point …’. See Cary Wolfe, Zoontologies: The
Question of the Animal, 42. Contrast this with Rosi Braidotti’s critique of deep
ecology, which pivots on a definitive separation between humans and
animals. She writes, ‘Deep ecology consequently displays the moral arrogance
that consists in granting to non-humans the same moral rights as to humans.’
See Rosi Braidotti, Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics, 117.
196 Notes

39 Joost Van Loon, ‘Parasite Politics: On the Significance of Symbiosis and

Assemblage in Theorizing Community Formations,’ 251–2.
40 Barbara Smuts, ‘Between Species: Science and Subjectivity,’ Configurations
14, nos. 1–2 (2006): 115–26.
41 Jacques Derrida, ‘“Eating Well” or the Calculation of the Subject,’ 115, 109.
42 Jamie Lorimer, ‘Nonhuman Charisma,’ Environment and Planning D: Society
and Space 25 (2007): 911–32. I thank Rebecca Scott for drawing my atten-
tion to this article. Biomimicry refers to human imitation of bacterial
behaviors in the service of technological development. Biomimicry includes
the use of bacteria (patented in the United States in 1972) that eat oil spills,
cyanide in water systems, and the production of bacteriophages used in
genetic engineering. See Joseph Amato, Dust: A History of the Small and the
Invisible (Berkeley: University of California Press), 14; Janine Benyus,
Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature (HarperCollins, 2002).
43 Sara Ahmed, Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality (London:
Routledge, 2000), 39.
Index

Note: Page numbers followed by n refer to notes.

abstract sex, 113 community, 46–52

Acrasia, 97–8 cyanobacteria, 32–3
Actinoastrum, 98–9 eating well with, 137–40
actor network theory (ANT), 15–16 forms of life, 35–41
agential cut, 35, 59, 71, 82 gram-positive bacteria, 31–2
alarmones, 41 green sulfur bacteria, 28
Altmann, Richard, 61 meetings with, 52
Amsterdam Declaration, 122–3 difference which makes a
Analytical Theory of Heat difference, 53–4
(Fourier), 146n.20 nature-culture-social
Applied and Environmental schema, 54–7
Microbiology, 68 microbes
archaea perception, 41
bacteria and, 26 communication and
ancient hyperthermophiles self-engineering, 42–6
and thermophilic green immunity and, 83
nonsulfurs, 27–8 as parasites, 66
cyanobacteria, 32–3 proteobacteria, 28–31
gram-positive bacteria, 31–2 sex and gender in, 102–3
green sulfur bacteria, 28 social intelligence, 52
proteobacteria, 28–31 spirochetes, 33–4
spirochetes, 33–4 Bacteroides, 30
halophiles, 34 Barad, Karen, 1, 11, 12, 35, 53, 54,
hyperthermophiles, 34 147n.23
methanogens, 34 Barlow, Connie, 123
Armstrong, Neil, 122 barnacle sex, 91–3
autogamy, 108 Bauman, Zygmunt, 141
autopoiesis, 86–8 bdelloid rotifers, 109
autotrophic organisms, 136, 137 Bear, Greg, 52
Axelrod, R., 69 Becerra, Arturo, 41
Ben-Jacob, Eshel, 42, 47, 49, 52, 53
Bacon, Francis, 5 Berkeley, George, 4
bacteria, 93, 127–8 ‘big like us’ approach, 21–6, 87
ancient hyperthermophiles Bingham, Nick, 90
and thermophilic green biological self
nonsulfurs, 27–8 autopoiesis, 86–8
archaea and, 26 co-evolved microbiota, 83
halophiles, 34 corporeal gifting, 86
hyperthermophiles, 34 immunity, 81
methanogens, 34 selfhood, 85
‘big like us’ approach, 21–6 symbiotic relationships, 84

197
198 Index

biosphere, 119–20 Delaye, Luis, 41

birth control, in animals, 104 Deleuze, Gilles, 1, 113
Bloor, David, 14 Dennett, Daniel, 75–6
Bohr, Niels, 7, 9, 10–12 depth perception, 119, 131
Boyle, Robert, 6 Derrida, Jacques, 80, 90, 143
Brahe, Tycho, 5–6 Descartes, René, 6
Braidotti, Rosi, 25 Descent of Man: And Selection in
Braun, Bruce, 86, 89 Relation to Sex, The (Darwin), 94
Bricmont, J., 3 Dexter Dyer, Betsey, 24
Buchnera, 30 Dialogues (Plato), 3
Burnet, Frank, 81–2 Dictyostelium discoideum, 65–6
Diprose, Rosalyn, 1, 77, 80, 82, 89
Callon, Michael, 16–17 Donoghue, Michael, 38
Campbell, Norman, 7 Doolittle, F.W., 38, 40, 70
Campbell, Timothy, 89–90 Douglas, Mary, 78
Caputo, John, 90 Duerr, Hans Peter, 119
Carosella, Edgardo, 83 Dupré, John, 78, 81, 85
cattle lives in beef production, 139 Durkheim, Emile, 94
causality, 10
Cavalier-Smith, Thomas, 69 ecology of strength and
Cavell, Stanley, 4 weakness, 119, 130–2
chemolithotrophy, 27 Edwards, Peter, 36
Chlorochromatium, 28 Einstein, Albert, 10
‘choreography of ontogeny’, 97 embodied generosity, 77
chromosome structures, 101 endemic parasitism, 85–6
Clark, Nigel, 80, 81 entangled material agencies, 11, 12
Clarke, Arthur C., 25 environment, microontologies
Cleveland, L.R., 110 bacteria, 127–8
Cohen, Ferdinand, 93 ecology of weakness, 130–2
Coleman, David, 24 Gaia theory, 116
Collins, H.M., 14 proposals of, 119–22
Community of Those Who Have Nothing scientific criticism, 122–6
in Common, The (Lingis), 131 global warming, 117–18
Concentrated Animal Feeding humans and, 128–30
Operations (CAFO), 139, 140 symbiosis and, 118
Copeland, Herbert F., 36 Environmental Microbiology and
Copernican system of planets, 5–6 International Microbiology, 68
corporeal generosity, 77, 80, 89 epidemic space, 57
corporeal gifting, 78, 80, 86, 89 epigenetics, 72–3
Cracraft, Joel, 38 Erwinia, 30
Crist, Eileen, 82 Escherichia coli, 30
Curtis, Thomas P., 36 Esposito, Roberto, 89
cyanobacteria, 32–3 eukaryotes, meiotic sex in, 107–8
Cyanoderma, 33
cytosine methylation, 109–10 Fausto-Sterling, Anne, 110–11
fission fungi, 93
Daisyworld, 124 flagella, 27
Darwin, Charles, 38, 91, 94 Fox, George, 36
De Bary, Anton, 61 Fox Keller, Evelyn, 3
 Index 199

free will, 12 Hoffmeyer, Jesper, 53

Freese, 121 Homeostatic Gaia, 123
Fuller, Steve, 7 homosexual behavior, 104
Hooke, Robert, 6
Gaia theory, 116, 118, 119 Hooker, Cliff, 10
challenges, 136 Hooper, Lora, 138
Lovelock approach to, 120–1 Hume, David, 4, 5
proposal of, 121–2 Hutchinson, Evelyn G., 128
scientific criticism, 122–6 hypersex, 107, 113
Galileo, 3–4, 6 hyperthermophilic archaea, 28, 29,
Gallionella, 29 34
gender
definition, 100 immunity, 81, 83
difference, 94 individual entities, 12
as epiphenomenon, 101 individualism, 12
gender-changing species, 101–2 inductive communication, 42
Geosiphon pyriforme, 105 informative communication, 42
gifting, 78–81, 88 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Gilbert, Scott, 81, 83 Change Fourth Assessment
global warming, 117–18 Report (2007), 117
glomales (mycorrhizal fungi), 108–9 International Biodiversity
gods and earth giants, 3–4, 5 Programme, 123
Goldenfeld, N., 67, 68 International Geosphere Biosphere
Goldman, Steven L., 4, 6 Programme, 123
gonochoristic fish, 101 International Human Dimensions
Gorelick, Root, 107, 109–10 Programme on Global
Gould, S.J., 24, 38, 64 Environmental Change, 123
gram-positive bacteria, 31–2 intuition, 4
green sulfur bacteria, 28
Griffiths, Paul, 108 Jablonka, Eva, 72–3
Grosz, Elizabeth, 1, 76, 111–12 Joy, Morna, 79–80
Guattari, Felix, 1, 113
Kandler, O., 36
Hacking, Ian, 7, 19 Kant, Immanuel, 4, 13
Haeckel, Ernest, 38 Kendall, Kara, 80–1
halophiles, 34 Kepler’s theory, 6
Hamilton, W., 69, 129 Kinsman, Sharon, 92
Haraway, Donna, 1, 86, 100, 119, Kirby, Vicki, 1, 111
133, 134, 135, 136 Kirchner, James W., 123
Harding, Stephan, 122 Kitano, Hiroaki, 84
Harman, Graham, 15, 18–19, Kozo-Polyansky, B.M., 61
55 Krizek, George, 105
Hayden, Deborah, 33
Hayles, Katherine, 87–8 Lafferty, R.A., 24
Heisenberg, Werner, 9 Lake, James, 38
Henderson, L.J., 122 Lamb, Marion, 72–3
Hennig, Willi, 38 Lane, Nick, 98, 115
Hitchcock, Dian, 120 Last Universal Common Ancestor
Hobbes, Thomas, 6 (LUCA), 38, 41
200 Index

lateral gene transfer (LGT), 38, 40, mitosis

170n.78 definition, 98–9
Latour, Bruno, 1, 12, 13, 15–19, 35, phases, 106
41, 55, 93, 127, 152n.73 structures, 107
Lazcano, Antonio, 41 mixis, 99–100, 105, 109
Lederberg, Josh, 93 Mixotricha paradoxa, 59–60
Leedale, Gordon F., 36 molecular sexes, 113
Lenton, Timothy M., 124–5 Mollenhaur, Dieter, 105
Leptothrix, 29 Monera, 93
Levinas, Emmanuel, 80–1, 90, 141 Murphie, Andrew, 19
lichen, 32, 59 myxobacteria, 30, 46, 49
Lingis, Alphonso, 1, 56, 80, 119,
131 Nancy, Jean-Luc, 90
Linné, Carl von, 36, 94 natural selection, organisms, 70
Locke, John, 4 co-evolution, 71–2
Loon, Van, 85–6 epigenetics, 72–3
Lorimer, Jamie, 143 in evolution, 64–5
Lovelock, James, 116, 117, 120, 121, mutations in bacteria, 73–4
123–5, 127, 129, 131 Neisseria, 29
Lowman, Paul, 122 neoDarwinism, 62–70, 95, 129
bacteria as pathogens, 66
Mackay, J.L., 94–5 natural selection, in
Mackenzie, Adrian, 19 evolution, 64–5
macrocosmos, 118 propositions, 62–3
Margulis, Lynn, 21, 24, 29, 33, 34, 36, New Organon, The (Bacon), 5
37–8, 59, 62, 64, 68, 69, 86, 95, Newton, Isaac, 4, 6
97, 101, 105–11, 115, 116, 118, nonhuman charisma, 143
120, 121, 122, 129 nonmodern microontology, 19–20
Mastotermes darwiniensis, 61 Nostoc (cyanobacterium), 33, 105
Mathieu, Leo, 128
Maturana, Humberto, 86, 87 objectivity, 11
Mauss, Marcel, 77, 78–9 Oda, Kanae, 84
Mayr, Ernst, 62, 70, 94 O’Malley, Maureen, 78, 81, 85
McFall-Ngai, Margaret, 71 Ophryotrocha, 101
meiosis, 99 Origin of Species, The (Darwin), 91
Mereschkowski, K.S., 61 oxygen Holocaust, 127
Meselson, Matthew, 109 Oyama, S., 66, 97
methanogen metabolism, 27
methanogens, 27, 34, 191n.58 Paenibacillus dendritiformis, 42, 46
microbial ethics, 133 Papilio phorcas, 102
eating well with bacteria, 137–40 Paradoxurus hermaphroditus, 31
enmeshing of species, 135 parasite politics, 56
forgetting human connections with Parisi, L., 67, 113
environment, 140–2 Park, Robert, 54
species-meeting, 134, 136 particle–wave duality, 7, 8, 9
surviving humanism, 142–4 parsimonious relation to the world,
microcosmos, 118, 133 80, 82
mitochondria, 29 Pearson, Keith Ansell, 1, 66, 118
mitochondrial DNA, 113, 114–15 Peirce, C.S., 53
 Index 201

Pelochromatium, 28 Sebeok, Thomas A., 53–4

perception, of bacteria, 41 self, microontologies
Pfiesteria piscicida, 35 biological self, 81–8
Philippe, Hervé, 40 corporeal gifting, 78–81
photoautotrophs, 27 self/nonself relation, 77
Photobacter, 30 symbiotic generosity, 88–90
photosynthetic metabolism, 27 Selfish Gene, The (Dawkins), 69
Plato, 3 selfish gene theory, 114–15,
Podolsky, B., 10 129
Policansky, David, 101 self/nonself model, 81–2
Pollan, Michael, 136, 138 sex, microontologies
Pradeu, Thomas, 83 barnacle sex, 91–3
proteobacteria, 28–31 glossary of terms, 96–103
Pseudomonas, 30 post-mature discoveries and
Ptolemy’s system, 5, 6 evolutionary theory’s
purple nonsulfur bacteria, 27 problem, 93–6
purple sulfur bacteria, 27 revolutions, 109–15
sexual diversity, 103–5
quantum theory, 9, 10, 12 sexual reproduction and
quorum sensing, 44 evolution, 100, 105–9
sexual unions, levels of, 98
realism, 3, 12, 16 Shapiro, James, 74
reality, 10, 11, 14 Sharov, Alexei, 53
rejuvenesence theory, 110 Sloan, William T., 36
reproduction, definition, 97 Smith, John Maynard, 70, 94, 95
Revenge of Gaia, The (Lovelock), 116 social constructivism, 3
Rivera, Marla, 38 social intelligence, 52
Roof, Judith, 25 Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
Roos, U.P., 109 (SSK), 13–15
Rose, Nikolas, 86 Sokal, Alan, 3–7
Rosen, N., 10 Sonea, S., 128
rotifers, 109 Sphaerotilus, 29
Runciman, G., 54 spirochetes, 33–4
Stanier, Roger, 36
Saccharomyces cerevisiae, 101 Stentor polymorphous, 101
Sagan, Dorion, 83, 84–5, 95, 97, 101, Sterelny, Kim, 108
106, 107, 110, 111 Streptomyces, 31
Sapp, Jan, 38, 170n.78 Suess, Eduard, 119
Scannell, J.W., 36 symbiogenesis theory, 107,
Schiebinger, Londa, 102 183n.56
Schimper, Andreas, 61 definition, 58
Schizomycetes, 93 evolution of, 59–62
Schizophyllum commune, 100–1 neoDarwinism and, 62–70
Schneider, Eric, 84–5 bacteria as pathogens, 66
Schneider, Stephen, 125 natural selection, in
Schrader, Astrid, 35, 126 evolution, 64–5
Schrödinger, Erwin, 9, 147n.24 propositions, 62–3
Schwarzmann, David, 122 sexual reproduction and, 95–6,
Scientific American, 128 108
202 Index

symbiosis van Wyck, Peter C., 119, 130,

definition, 58 131
natural selection, 65 Varela, Francisco, 86, 87
research on, 68–9 Vernadsky, Vladimir, 120, 128
from space, 119–22 Vibrio, 30
species mergence, 83 volition, 12
symbiotic generosity, 88–90 Volk, Tyler, 122
Systema Naturae (Linné), 94
wave–particle duality, 7, 8,
Tauber, A.I., 82 9
Theriot, Julie, 86 Weismann, August, 73, 81
Thiobacillus, 29 Wheelis, M.L., 36
Thomas, L., 67, 83 When Species Meet, 136
Thompson, William I., 13 Whitman, William, 24
transvestism, 102, 180n.36 Whittaker, Robert H., 36
‘trap of differentition’, 107 Wiebe, William, 24
Tree of Life (TOL), 38, 39 Wilson, E.O., 103, 129
Treponema pallidum, 33, 34, 56 Wilson, Elizabeth, 1, 91–2
Trichonympha, 96–7 Wilson, Robert, 81
Trichophilus, 33 Woese, C., 36, 37, 67,
Tsing, Anna, 55, 56 68
Wolfe, Cary, 84
Uncertainty Principle, 9 Woolgar, Steve, 16
United Nations Conference on World Climate Research
Environment and Programme, 123
Development, 117
Urry, John, 116, 141 Yearley, Steven, 14

Van Loon, Joost, 56–7, 85–6, 142 Zuckerman, Harriet, 93

van Niel, C.B., 36 zygomycete fungus, 105