Dazzle Gradually : Reflections on the Nature of Nature

The sometimes-dry topics of evolution and ecology come alive in this new collection of essays—many never before anthologized. Learn how technology may be a sort of second nature,” how the systemic human fungus Candida albicans can lead to cravings for carrot cake and beer, how the presence of life may be why there’s water on Earth, and many other fascinating facts. The essay Metametazoa” presents perspectives on biology in a philosophical context, demonstrating how the intellectual librarian, pornographer, and political agitator Georges Bataille was deeply influenced by Russian mineralogist Vladimir Vernadsky and how Bataille’s take on Vernadsky’s ideas led to his notion of the absence of meaning in the face of the sun—which later influenced Jacques Derrida, thereby establishing a causal chain of influence from the hard sciences to topics as abstract as deconstruction, postmodernism and continental philosophy. In Spirochetes Awake” the bizarre connections between syphilis, genius, and madness are traced in the lives of Nietzsche, Lincoln, and Mozart among others; and fascinating new evidence suggests that AIDs is not caused by HIV at all, but may rather be an ancient disease caused by microbes that may also have laid the evolutionary framework for the human brain.

Lynn Margulis is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.