Comments on: Lynn Margulis Has Died

By: Lectora corrent

Lectora corrent — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 17:26:01 +0000

We must remember great scientists by their brilliant ideas, not by their mistakes. Newton, Pasteur, Pauling and many others had wrong ideas about some topics, but we remember them because they were great innovators and provided new insights in science as Lynn did. Since 1987, when I first met Lynn Margulis, I collaborated with her in several projects and translated into Spanish and Catalan several books and also articles by her. Her death has been a great loss for science and for those that treated her more or less closely. I also will miss her a lot.

Lynn Margulis

By: bacteriocentric

bacteriocentric — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 20:14:46 +0000

I just found out about her recent passing and ran across this blog. I am saddened, and even more saddened by her critics as this blog. She was a bastion of truth and was ridiculed by mainstream science for blantently obvious ideas that have now become fact-yet are still ignored for the most part by for profit science and those who don’t believe in evolution. Among her best works, A Garden of Microbial Delights, written with her son Dorian is one of my favorites as well as just about anything she put in writing. I will miss her and unfortunately most of her ideas will undoubtedly be vindicated long after her passing.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 01:18:08 +0000

Brian, thanks for the comments. What you say is in accord with everything I’ve heard and seen as well.

By: Brian Ogilvie

Brian Ogilvie — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 23:44:05 +0000

I knew Lynn for the last five years or so of her life, worked with her on a couple of graduate committees, and stayed with her in Oxford when she was Eastman Professor there in 2008-09. I appreciate your restraint with regard to her wacky ideas, especially later in life. My sense is that she was right on one big idea that was virulently opposed by the scientific mainstream, and that as a consequence she was sympathetic–often far too sympathetic–to ideas that were outside of the mainstream, sometimes without much regard for the evidence that supported them.

She was a generous supporter of her students, she encouraged people who had not followed a conventional academic path (high school to college to grad school) to pursue their intellectual interests, she was a patron of the arts, and whatever you thought of what she had to say, she was never dull or boring. As a historian of science, I’m glad to have known her and talked with her; it gave me the kind of insight into creative scientific minds that’s hard to get with the early modern figures I work on, since they’re long dead. As a colleague and friend, I’ll miss her a lot.

By: Elizabeth Kaplan

Elizabeth Kaplan — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 00:46:31 +0000

Watch her in this short interview. See scientific truth at its finest.

http://truthjihad.blogspot.com/2011/11/lynn-margulis-truth-seeker-1938-2011.html

By: Daniel J. Andrews

Daniel J. Andrews — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 22:33:07 +0000

That’s sad news. In one of our bio courses, we had to “reenact” the endosymbiotic theory–that is, we had to gather the evidence (from books, not from doing the actual work ourselves), and then attempt to persuade designated skeptics whose task was to present counter-evidence. A good lesson for both sides.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 04:05:28 +0000

Perhaps the post game makes it look OK but as I recall from those days it was a bit of a moving goal post.

By: sailor

sailor — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 01:30:33 +0000

I thought the gaia hypothesis was pretty OK. Basically the advent of life on the planet brought about huge changes in just about everything on earth from the atmosphere to climate. to quote Wikipedea:
The Gaia hypothesis was formulated by the chemist James Lovelock and co-developed by the microbiologist Lynn Margulis in the 1970s. Initially received with hostility by the scientific community, it is now studied in the disciplines of geophysiology and Earth system science, and some of its principles have been adopted in fields like biogeochemistry and systems ecology.
Its big problem was that Lovelock was totally undisciplined in the way he spoke and wrote, so he tended to say things a shortcutish way that angered any scientist. For example “Gaia likes it cold” I read two of his books, one was very flakey the other a better. But his basic ideas were OK, and one of the interesting ramifications was that if there is life on a planet (at least if it has been round a while) you won’t need to go digging for it you will be able to tell by the atmosphere.

By: Roberto

Roberto — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 00:53:25 +0000

you think the serious version of gaia, earth is a complex system..yatayataya…is a whacked out idea..? and i dont know enough about the larvae thing, but i will read and come back to you….mostly i suggest we remember her by her endosymbiotic drive. it seems that many evodevo biologists get pissed (not you) by her forceful critique of ‘natural selection’ and the ‘adaptationist programme’ (ala gould/lewontin).
pauling proposed a 3 (was it four?) DNA helix??
lets honour her memory.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 00:31:39 +0000

The two that come to mind are gaia and this one. Neither were specifically her ideas, but she had a hand in both and supported both.