What Is Life?

"A masterpiece of science writing. . . . You will cherish "What Is Life? because it is so rich in poetry and science, in the service of profound philosophical questions."--Mitchell Thomashow, "Orion

Lynn Margulis is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the author of more than one hundred articles and ten books, including Symbiosis and Cell Evolution (second edition 1993). Dorion Sagan, general partner of Sciencewriters, is the author of Biospheres (1990). Together they are the authors of Microcosmos (California, 1996), What Is Sex? (1990), Garden of Microbial Delights (1995), and Mystery Dance (1991).

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FOREWORD Undreamt Philosophies, by Niles Eldredge 1 LIFE: THE ETERNAL ENIGMA In the Spirit of Schroedinger * Life's Body * Animism vs. Mechanism * Janus among the Centaurs * Blue Jewel * Is There Life on Mars? * Life as Verb * Self-Maintenance * The Autopoietic Planet * The Stuff of Life * Mind in Nature 2 LOST SOULS Death: The Great Perplexer * The Breath of Life * Cartesian License * Entering the Forbidden Realm * Cosmic Wiggles * The Meaning of Evolution * Vernadsky's Biosphere * Lovelock's Gaia 3 ONCE UPON A PLANET Beginnings * Hell on Earth * Spontaneous Generation * Origins of Life * "Stumbling Forward" * Metabolic Windows * The RNA Supermolecule * Cells First 4 MASTERS OF THE BIOSPHERE Fear of a Bacterial Planet * Life Is Bacteria * The Metabolically Gifted * The Gene Traders * Our Splendid Kin * From Plenty to Crisis * Breakfast Ferment * Green, Red, and Purple Beings * Oxygen Excitement * Quintessential Polluters, Quintessential Recyclers * Living Carpets and Growing Stones 5 PERMANENT MERGERS The Great Cell Divide * Five Kinds of Beings * Twists in the Tree of Life * Squirmers * Strange New Fruit * Wallin's Symbionts * Multicellularity and Programmed Death * Sexual Genesis in the Microworld, or When Eating Was Sex * The Power of Slime 6 THE AMAZING ANIMALS The (Bower) Birds and the (Honey) Bees * What Is an Animal? * Great-Grandparent Trichoplax * Sex and Death * Cambrian Chauvinism * Evolutionary Exuberance * Messengers 7 FLESH OF THE EARTH The Underworld * Kissing Molds and Destroying Angels * Cross-Kingdom Alliances * Underbelly of the Biosphere * Hitchhiking Fungi, Counterfeit Flowers, and Aphrodisiacs * Hallucinogenic Mushrooms and Dionysian Delights * Transmigrators of Matter 8 THE TRANSMUTATION OF SUNLIGHT Green Fire * The Accursed Share * Ancient Roots * Primeval Trees * Floral Persuasion * Solar Economy 9 SENTIENT SYMPHONY A Double Life * Choice * Little Purposes * Butler's Blasphemy * Habits and Memory * Existence's Celebration * Superhumanity * Expanding Life * Rhythms and Cycles EPILOGUE NOTES GLOSSARY ACKNOWLEDGMENTS SOURCES OF ILLUSTRATIONS INDEX