Slanted Truths: Essays on Gaia, Symbiosis and Evolution by Lynn Margulis (PDF)

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“Lynn Margulis is one of the most successful synthetic thinkers in modern biology. This collection of her work, enhanced by essays co-authored with Dorion Sagan, is a welcome introduction to the full breadth of her many contributions.” EDWARD O. WILSON, AUTHOR OF THE DIVERSITY OF LIFE “An important contribution to the history of the 20th century. Read it and you will taste the flavor of real science.” JAMES LOVELOCK, AUTHOR OF GAIA: A NEW LOOK AT LIFE ON EARTH “Truly inspirational and of fundamental importance. This thoughtful series of essays on some of the largest questions concerning the nature of life on earth deserves careful study.”PETER RAVEN, MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “Although admitting that many predictions of the Gaia Hypothesis remain unproven, Slanted Truths charts the rise of Gaia from obscurity to the pages of the world’s leading scientific journals.” Trends in Ecology and Evolution “Twenty-four reprinted essays … ranging from a memoir of J. Robert Oppenheimer through … to some reflections on science education.” Science From the Publisher Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan here present their fourth book as a writing team, a collection of their essays on Gaia theory, symbiosis, individuality, and the way science is practiced nowadays. Lynn Margulis is most famous for her now-widely-accepted proposition that the cells of higher plants and animals are not individuals but symbiotic unions of more primitive cells. In these essays, perhaps more clearly than in any of Margulis and Sagan’s previous books, we can see how her seemingly disparate interests combine into a coherent and very provocative scientific world-view about the tendency of life to form complex communities. About the Author Lynn Margulis is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Biology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Dorion Sagan is a writer living in Amherst. This is their fourth book. They have previously collaborated on Microcosmos, The Garden of Microbial Delights, and What Is Life? and are at work on a new book, What Is Sex? Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐came on time and as described, good.

⭐No scientist of our times has more right than Lynn Margulis to crow about her once-ridiculed but now-vindicated discoveries, such as the cell symbiosis hypothesis. Yet, for all her enthusiasm in promoting her now widely respected triumphs and her new, still-to-be-tested hypotheses, Margulis does not gloat. She is gracious with her opponents and generous in sharing credit with her grad students and other collaborators. One of the volume’s most attractive features is that it summarizes the development to date of the views of James Lovelock and herself, on their widely debated and very influential Gaia hypothesis. We are treated to numerous fascinating anecdotes about the making of such a controversial theory, and about its reception (not always very polite, let alone friendly) by the community of “objective” scientists. The real gems of the book, however, are two autobiographical pieces by Margulis, “Sunday with J. Robert Oppenheimer” and “The Red Shoe Dilemma,” and a third article “Big Trouble in Biology.” In the first, we witness the encounter between the precocious sixteen year old future scientist Margulis and the recently deposed titan of atomic physics and “father of the atomic bomb” at his home in Princeton. The second piece offers Margulis’s retrospective on what it meant to be a woman during our times who tried to be a great scientist, as well as a great wife and mother. Her spare use of words throws sharply into relief the realities still facing young women who would make a career in the sciences. Every one of those young women should read this book, and especially “The Red Shoe Dilemma.” For any critics of the excesses of late-twentieth century reductionism in the life sciences, “Big Trouble in Biology” will be a call to arms, albeit a very thoughtful and provocative one. Lynn Margulis is no anti-science crackpot; nor is she a latter-day vitalist. But from one of the most successful practitioners in the methodology of reductionism, this heart-felt call for LOOKING at whole, living organisms and marvelling at their living qualities is a challenge that demands serious attention.

⭐”Don’t judge a book by its cover” is a common saying, but what if the cover itself is racist? The title “Slanted Truths” implies that an expose of perfidy awaits the reader, while the face of a South East Asian statue indicates the race of the perpetrators.Until the cover art is changed I will not buy this book and I urge others to do likewise.

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