skeptical
Muse
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2007
- Messages
- 957
I'm curious as to the opinions people here have about Lynn Margulis and her work. There is no doubt that her theory of the origin of eukaryotic cells from the symbiosis of prokaryotic cells and her tenacity in pushing it have made here a bit of a legend in Biology cirlces. However, I am noticing a bit of a disturbing tendency in her more recent work.
I'm reading my second book by Lynn Margulis, Acquiring Genomes, (the first was What is Life) and although I'm only about half way through it, there there have been some fairly disturbing comments about evolutionary biologists and neo-darwinism in particular. For example, she claims that evolutionary biologists don't know anything about microbiology or palentology. She claims that the speciation has never been observed to arise from just random DNA mutations and natural selection alone. She claims that neo-darwininsts are equivalent to a "religious sect" and she is partiuclarly scaling about the use of "capialist, competitive" metaphors that focus on intra and inter species competition.
Her alternative theory (which is in some respects compatible with more traditional neo-darwinian theories) is that speciation arises from either entirely or almost entirely from symbiosis of two or more organisms, with DNA mutations playing only a minor role. She does have some evidence that is presented for symbiosis playing a role in speciation, however she seems very focused on eviscerating and demonizing neo-darwinian ideas and individual evolutionary biologists in particular. She calls out Dawkins by name and ridicules the idea of the "selfish gene", apparently because she has a strong distate for competitve metaphors. (she also doesn't like terms like competition, altruism, etc)
So I'm at a bit of a loss to evaluate her. Clearly she has done good, solid scientifically credible work in the past. She was also one of 13 recipients of the Darwin-Wallace award in 2008. She clearly knows a lot about the microbial world and symbiosis in general.
However, her writings about neo-darwinism seem eerily close to the sorts of things I've read by creationists, and her attacks come very close to ad-homs. She also seems completely obsessed with proving that intra and inter species competition play almost no role and suggests that metaphors of competition amongst individuals amounts to psuedoscience.
I should also mention she is apparently a 9/11 truther. She stated ""The 9/11 tragedy is the most successful and most perverse publicity stunt in the history of public relations." http://patriotsquestion911.com/professors.html
And a HIV denialist: http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2007/03/post_33.php
So, she seems to be following the trek from "respected scientist" to "fringe wackjob" at a rather appalling rate.
What are others opinions of her?
I'm reading my second book by Lynn Margulis, Acquiring Genomes, (the first was What is Life) and although I'm only about half way through it, there there have been some fairly disturbing comments about evolutionary biologists and neo-darwinism in particular. For example, she claims that evolutionary biologists don't know anything about microbiology or palentology. She claims that the speciation has never been observed to arise from just random DNA mutations and natural selection alone. She claims that neo-darwininsts are equivalent to a "religious sect" and she is partiuclarly scaling about the use of "capialist, competitive" metaphors that focus on intra and inter species competition.
Her alternative theory (which is in some respects compatible with more traditional neo-darwinian theories) is that speciation arises from either entirely or almost entirely from symbiosis of two or more organisms, with DNA mutations playing only a minor role. She does have some evidence that is presented for symbiosis playing a role in speciation, however she seems very focused on eviscerating and demonizing neo-darwinian ideas and individual evolutionary biologists in particular. She calls out Dawkins by name and ridicules the idea of the "selfish gene", apparently because she has a strong distate for competitve metaphors. (she also doesn't like terms like competition, altruism, etc)
So I'm at a bit of a loss to evaluate her. Clearly she has done good, solid scientifically credible work in the past. She was also one of 13 recipients of the Darwin-Wallace award in 2008. She clearly knows a lot about the microbial world and symbiosis in general.
However, her writings about neo-darwinism seem eerily close to the sorts of things I've read by creationists, and her attacks come very close to ad-homs. She also seems completely obsessed with proving that intra and inter species competition play almost no role and suggests that metaphors of competition amongst individuals amounts to psuedoscience.
I should also mention she is apparently a 9/11 truther. She stated ""The 9/11 tragedy is the most successful and most perverse publicity stunt in the history of public relations." http://patriotsquestion911.com/professors.html
And a HIV denialist: http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2007/03/post_33.php
So, she seems to be following the trek from "respected scientist" to "fringe wackjob" at a rather appalling rate.
What are others opinions of her?