Summer Reading from the EDGE Archive

Summer Reading from the Archive GAIA IS A TOUGH BITCH A Conversation with Lynn Margulis [November 2011] How did the eukaryotic cell appear? Probably it was an invasion of predators, at the outset. It may have started when one sort of squirming bacterium invaded another—seeking food, of course. But certain invasions evolved into truces; associations once ferocious became benign. When swimming bacterial would-be invaders took up residence inside their sluggish hosts, this joining of forces created a new whole that was, in effect, far greater than the sum of its parts: faster swimmers capable of moving huge quantities of genes evolved. Some of these newcomers were uniquely competent in the evolutionary struggle. Further bacterial associations were added on, as the modern cell evolved. [ [Read...]( ] --------------------------------------------------------------- THE EMERGENT SELF A Conversation with Francisco Varela [June 2001] Why do emergent selves, virtual identities, pop up all over the place, creating worlds, whether at the mind/body level, the cellular level, or the transorganism level? This phenomenon is something so productive that it doesn't cease creating entirely new realms: life, mind, and societies. Yet these emergent selves are based on processes so shifty, so ungrounded, that we have an apparent paradox between the solidity of what appears to show up and its groundlessness. That, to me, is the key and eternal question. [ [Read...]( ] --------------------------------------------------------------- CROSSING CULTURES A Conversation with Mary Catherine Bateson [October 2000] I think of my daughter and myself as having been born in different countries. We were actually born 30 years apart in the United States of America. That means we were born into massively different cultural environments. What occurred to me, and this is something I've felt for a very long time, is that you can use what people learn in the home, especially from age differences, to deal with other kinds of diversity. After all, we learn more at home before we get to school than we learn in school. And we learn about the nature of learning, fundamental things about relationships, so that we need to be more systematic in using learning within the home for the insight it offers to understanding things outside the home. Including learning to learn, of course. [ [Read...]( ] [EDGE.ORG]( Copyright (c) 2021 by Edge Foundation, Inc., 260 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10001. All Rights Reserved. Want to change how you receive these emails? You can [update your preferences]( or [unsubscribe from this list](