Earth, Life, and System

Bruce Clarke is Paul Whitfield Horn Professor of Literature and Science and chair of the Department of English at Texas Tech University. His research focuses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and science, with special interests in systems theory, narrative theory, and ecology. In 2010-11 he was senior fellow at the International Research Institute for Cultural Technologies and Media Philosophy, Bauhaus-University Weimar. His books are Allegories of Writing (1995), Dora Marsden and Early Modernism (1996), Energy Forms (2001), Posthuman Metamorphosis (2008), and Neocybernetics and Narrative (2014). He has coedited From Energy to Information (2002), Emergence and Embodiment (2009), and the Routledge Companion to Literature and Science (2010). He is now writing a cultural history of the American locations, transnational authors, and key concepts of the systems discourses gathered in the Whole Earth Catalog and CoEvolution Quarterly.

"Earth, Life, and System is a strikingly original and challenging collection of essays, which places the work and broad intellectual interests of Lynne Margulis in a variety of contexts and develops original arguments and interpretations that expand on and complement her interests." -- -Stacy Alaimo University of Texas at Arlington "Earth, Life, and System is a vital contribution to interdisciplinary knowledge about life, evolution, and the planetary imaginary. Clarke has assembled some of the best thought-provoking thinkers on this topic." -- -Tyler Volk New York University

• Contents List of Plates and Figures Acknowledgments Introduction: Earth, Life & System Bruce Clarke 1. Life on a Margulisian Planet: A Son's Philosophical Reflections Dorion Sagan 2. The RNA/Protein World and the Endoprebiotic Origin of Life Sankar Chatterjee 3. Exobiology at NASA: Incubator for the Gaia and Serial Endosymbiosis Theories James Strick 4. Symbiosis, Microbes, Kingdoms, and Domains Jan Sapp 5. The World Egg and the Ouroboros: Two Models for Theoretical Biology Susan Squier 6. The Planetary Imaginary: Gaian Ecologies from Dune to Neuromancer Bruce Clarke 7. James Shapiro, Bringing Cell Action into Evolution James Shapiro 8. Sustainable Development: Living with Systems Susan Oyama 9. Bovine Urbanism: The Ecological Corpulence of Bos Urbanus Christopher Witmore 10. Symbiotism: Earth and the Greening of Civilization Peter Westbroek Notes References List of Contributors Index