The microscope has gradually exposed the vastness of the microcosm
and is now giving us a startling view of our true place in nature.
It now appears that microbes--also called microorganisms, germs, bugs,
protozoans, and bacteria, depending on the context--are not only the
building blocks of life, but occupy and are indispensable to every known
living structure on the earth today. From the paramecium to the human race,
all life forms are meticulously organized, sophisticated aggregates of
evolving microbial life...
...the simplest and most ancient organisms are not only the forebears and
the present substrate of the earth's biota, but they are ready to expand
and alter themselves and the rest of life, should we "higher" organisms
be so foolish as to annihilate ourselves.
Next, the view of evolution as chronic bloody competition among individuals
and species, a popular distortion of Darwin's notion of "survival of
the fittest," dissolves before a new view of continual cooperation,
strong interaction and mutual dependence among life forms. Life did not
take over the globe by combat, but by networking. life forms multiplied
and complexified by co-opting others, not just by killing them."
"As we examine ourselves as products of symbiosis over billions of years,
the supporting evidence for our multimicrobe ancestry becomes overwhelming.
Our bodies contain a veritable history of life on earth. Our cells maintain an
environment that is cardon - and hydrogen - rich, like that of the earth when
life began. They live in a medium of water and salts like the composition of
the early seas."
"It is not preposterous to postulate that the very conciousness that
enables us to probe the workings of our cells may have been born of
the concerted capacities of millions of microbes that evolved
symbiotically to become the human brain."
"There is no evidence that human beings are the supreme stewards of life on
earth, nor the lesser offspring of a superintelligent extraterrestial
source. But there is evidence to show that we are recombined from
powerful bacterial communities with a multibillion-year-old history.
...Our powers of intelligence and technology do not belong specifically
to us but to all life
...Intelligence and technology, incubated by
humankind, are really the property of the microcosm. they may well
survive our species in forms of the future that lie beyond our
limited imaginations."