Growing up Jehovah's Witness I dimly recall a quote by Lynn Margulis about Darwin's Origin Of Species that was taken out of context. She apparently had said Darwin's book utterly fails to explain how species originate, casting doubt on evolution itself. It wasn't until I was out of the religion that I discovered she meant Darwin didn't (and could not) take endosymbiosis into account. That's all she meant in the context of that quote.
Darwin's, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection does not address the origins of life. It is basically a compilation of examples that, taken together, form a compelling picture of how species evolve. Without knowing anything about DNA, Darwin postulated there must be a mechanism of inheritance with randomised variation that would favor some individuals over others, and how, in the struggle to survive in environments with limited resources, those gifted with more beneficial traits would be the ones to survive and pass on their favorable genes. Today, we know that as species adapt to changing conditions, they form different groups, perhaps living side by side, they can continue to reproduce, but only to a certain point. Once the differences become too great between two groups, such that they can no longer produce viable (able to reproduce) offspring, we have a new species.
Lynn Margulis was the original wonder woman. She raised four children, and as a single mother worked at two jobs in different cities while completing her post graduate work and writing a book.
she was better at being a scientist than a wife or mother. if a man chose his career over his family you wouldn't praise him for it. being intellectually consistent is better than being a feminist
She was a professor in my doctoral program at UMass Amherst and I took a class from her in the early 90's. She could certainly be forceful and abrasive, but if you raised an interesting point on a topic that she cared about, she treated you like a colleague, not a student. And I have never encountered anyone else with such breadth of knowledge across the natural sciences. I do wonder what she would have been like if she hadn't dealt with so much disparagement and abuse as a young scientist. A high level of stubborn tenacity was a survival skill and absolutely necessary for what she achieved in the 60's and 70's, but it was a double-edged sword. A complicated legacy, indeed, but I was deeply saddened to hear of her passing in 2011.
One thing I love about this channel, as well as Eons and many similar channels involving some of the same people, is the dedication to nuance. People are incredibly complex, and people can be brilliant and totally ahead of their time in some ways and just dead wrong in other ways. It's almost like the more talent someone has in one regard, the bigger their inevitable blind spot will be. That's why community is so important - we all have different strengths and weaknesses that balance each other out when we work together! So that's why humility is such an important virtue, because it is always the case that you could simply be wrong, despite your best efforts to understand something.
Dear Hank, back in the day I performed an experiment investigating the origins of mitochondria. I did this work at the University of Montana, A place I'm sure you're quite familiar with. Dr. Margie Kinnersly was the experiments designer and in fact she is still on campus as of now. I would strongly encourage you to speak with her or even I if you'd like to dig a little deeper into mitochondriogenesis. Both Margie and I are still in Missoula and though I can't speak for Margie, I would love to chat with you about your love of major evolutionary transitions and neat novel theories that have shown up from time to time. with love Evelyn Wall
I wonder if she would have been less stubborn later in life if only she had not faced decades of hostility, much of it rooted in sexism. Of course, there are plenty of other women in science who faced similar hardships and didn't turn out as contrarian as Margulis. I don't mean this as a defence of her pernicious positions. But I can imagine that, if I spend the best part of my life trying to convince people about the validity of theories that do turn out to be true, one of the lessons I learn is that sometimes one has to insist against all odds in order not to be unjustly silenced. And that can get so behaviourally engrained it might end up getting the better of me. By the way, I recently watched the documentary 'Symbiotic Earth' on her work and legacy (it's on Vimeo). It paints her in an overall much more positive light and (from what I remember) glosses over later controversies (it does mention some of her theories were wrong, but I don't recall it saying much about her HIV denial). It still makes for a fascinating watch. Whatever your opinion of her opinions, she was an extraordinary scientist, and her perseverance is inspiring (as long as it doesn't turn into imperviousness to reasonable doubt). Her legacy is also important in feminist materialist philosophy.
CerberaOdollam Ayn Rand? Was she actually right on anything though? (I’m very much not a fan of hers I’m afraid, I have been unable to find redeeming qualities in Rand’s work that can make up for her absolutely vile ideology)
Imagine growing up with Lynn Margulis and Carl Sagan as parents. Early divorce + massive inferiority complex I guess, but on the plus side, your dad's legacy is leaving the solar system and you end up writing awesome books with your badass scientist mum.
They aren't easy to find. I'm a microscopist myself and have spent a fair amount of time exploring this world of wild protists. I have only found one in twelve years. But a blood red amoeba that bores into algae to eat them in their homes? Yep, pretty cool.
@@johnnyswatts Hey John, I recommend you to collect the green scum from ponds, like Spirogyra and prepare a slide, leave it in a humidity chamber a day or two then observe it under the microscope. Vampyrella actually pretty common however they remain inactive after being disturbed. That's how we find our Vampryrella. Also we recorded them eating alga before and here is the link. ua-cam.com/video/io731XY8fH8/v-deo.html -James
Its very interesting to hear about the work microbiologists have done for the field! Can you do more episodes on interesting scientists like her in the future?
This boggles my mind because I can't imagine any other reason why our mitochondria have unique DNA. Did they give an opposing hypothesis, or was it just a "we're not 100%" thing?
One of the most fascinatingly baffling things about Lynn Margulis is her support for the larval transfer hypothesis. The idea is that a caterpillar-like creature somehow bred with an unrelated (!) butterfly-like creature, resulting in our modern caterpillars that metamorphose into butterflies. And the same thing supposedly happened with most or all other creatures with larval stages. I was reading Margulis' book Kingdoms and Domains, where this idea is baldly stated as a fact, and thought, "Wait, that's not right... is it?" It's almost plausible if you don't think too hard about it, but after investigating the idea and reading Donald I. Williamson's totally bonkers The Origins of Larvae, I can't see enough evidence to support this extraordinary claim.
Breeding no. Horizontal transfer mediated by shared retrovirus?.... probably still no, but possible and testable. Dont forget your neurons are using retroviral DNA that is of nonmammal origin right now.
This sounds like a pre-Hox gene era hypothesis-before it was understood that all bilaterians are also segmented and that appendages are co-opted versions of other appendages, as well as the observed continuum of insect metamorphosis. Ed Lewis is another interesting biology biography. He was aware of the relationship between genomic and partial genomic duplications and segment appendage diversity. I think his only flub might have been correlating duplications (which later turned out to encompass Hox genes) with the addition of segments. The reality is a bit more complicated and nuanced than a 1:1 scenario. howver he still received a Nobel prize.
Thank you for addressing the parts that she had gotten wrong. For years growing up I admired her for having supported her ideas so strongly, especially because this one in particular is one of my favorite phenomena in biology. Little did I know how stubborn and flawed the rest of her ideas were. This goes to show how science works and how scientists can be different from eachother in how they view the world and their own ideas. And how most scientists who discovered important things had made many mistakes on the side.
Scientists are also just human and all kinds of people do become scientists. Not all scientists are reasonable people. Some scientists believe in the crazierst things. People become scientists for various reasons. Many Chemists for instance study chemistry because they are interested in drugs. Many biologsts study it because they like animals or have someone in the family who has a deadly disease. Not all scientists have a "scientific" mindset. People who study science with a scientific mindset usually had that mindset before they started studying. Sadly Universities often do not teach people how to think, what actual critical thinking is, no logic or reasoining skills, they don't even teach propertly what the scientific method is. Someone who comes to Uni with an esotheric, spiritual, religious mindset is very likely to keep that throughout their whole career. Someone could be a genius mathematician who can solve the most complex equations with ease, but believe in all kinds of nonsensical things. Being intelligent alone isn't enough. And of course you could be a great scientist with the right mindset, plan everything properly, conduct everything to the best of your knowledge and still end up with bogus results and thus come come up with a bogus explanation. There is so much that can go wrong by accident. There is no guarantee that you'll get it right. On the other hand, another scientist who believes in nonsensical stuff could just get lucky and discover something new and becomes famous.
*I convinced my sweetheart to name our 2 offspring after the legendary humble human, Lynn Marguilis. One we've named Lynn and the other we've named Margulis!* *Well, there's also our third child, but his name is Hank.*
I mean, she's a rotifer, she's probably got bigger problems than her name if all the footage of rotifers being eaten on this channel is anything to go by.
This is one of the most wonderful things I have ever heard. Thank you for allowing my journey to continue. It is never wrong to question the way things are told. It is always possible there is another truth.
I really enjoyed this science history inspired episode! I hope that you'll do more like this one! And James's images are just getting more and more amazing and beautiful!
Thanks for this video. It's important to remember that history and politics are a part of all human endeavors, even those which seem completely separated from such things.
As a science teacher I cringe when people talk about science like it's "above" such things, but as long as humans are involved, there will always be the fallable human element.
insofar as it is the best explanation for the observations of the similarities btwn plastid organelles and bacteria and the dissimilarities btwn those organelles and the other aspects eukaryotic cells/inheritance, it is "true"
People are complicated. Her being wrong about one very important thing doesn't make her a bad person, as well as being right about something profound doesn't necessarily make her a good person. Her legacy will help as well as hinder and it's important to separate these effects. The only thing that can and will help is continuing to pursue knowledge in a just and wholly scientific way, and in this way we can celebrate and build on the achievements of those who came before, while righting the wrongs left behind by their other, more harmful ideas.
I've always gotten Lynn Margulis confused with Anne Druyan, but it was only when you mentioned Dorion Sagan that I twigged why - they were both married to Carl Sagan (although at different times)
Ohh. This resonated with something I wrote about me last week during a creative workshop, lol. "She is an imitation, she might be remembered. Perhaps they will let her in again. When the chips fall, and the bodies are all buried, she'll be there and wonder why she chose to imitate life rather than live it; and in that wondering there will be uniqueness, and that will comfort her final moments. She was not an imitation, after all - but an amalgamation, just like everyone else: a drop in the sea of thought. It is in this sense that authors never die. They blend together, just like in our old warcry, before the devout crowds hijacked such sacred symbols. Our old warcry, often uttered in a dead tongue but ever renewed on her lips: out of many, one."
Endosymbiosis and plate tectonics are up there with top theories that feels like a thing we've always known. Every time I realize how relatively recent this knowledge is I feel disoriented.
Please produce a billion videos exactly like this. Explaining a complex idea with mind blowing images. For myself, it helps me focus. I love complex ideas coupled with complex visuals. It awakens the best parts of myself. Thank you.
The ideas that are valid stand, regardless of the other beliefs the discoverer might also have. We don't need to construct a ladder of moral hierarchy and judgment; our judgments of others are not useful. We admire the discoveries not the discoverers - in the world of scientific truth we should care more for the slime than the snail.
I had never heard about these bizarre views on Aids and Hiv. I thought her main controversy was centered on the gaia hypothesis and her ecological positions.
Those conspiracy theories are complicated, you never know which ones are true, which ones are false, which ones are made for distraction - until you research them really thoroughly.
@@ViskayaNuebler79 I'm not really sure what your background knowledge is in language and linguistics. But in linguistics we usually describe a sound by (among other things) where in the vocal tract is the greatest constriction. In other words, we describe a sound by where in the mouth it is made. So the sounds (I'm putting them in / / just to separate them) /r/ and /sh/ are both made primarily at the hard palate, for the sake of simplicity the hard palate is the roof of the mouth. But the sounds /s/ /t/ /k/ (a hard 'c' in structures) are made in places other than the hard palate. So I would say 'structures' something like (I'm separating sounds by hypens (-) just to make the individual sounds more clear) /s-t-r-u-k-sh-u-r-s/ ([stɹʌkʃɚz] for those who can read IPA). Hank tends to move many of the sounds to the palate (or palatalizes them). This makes his 'structures' sound like /sh-ch-r-u-k-sh-u-r-sh/ ([ ʃt͡ʃɹʌkʃɚʃ ]). TL;DR: He tends to produce most of the sounds at the hard palate (i.e. palatalized) whereas I tend to produce most of them other places in the mouth (alveolar ridge for most). Sorry if that was more than you were looking for. I'm more than happy to answer more questions; I am a language nerd :)
I'm an alumnus of UMass Amherst; unfortunately I didn't realize that she was faculty there until she died. ; ; P.S: The 'h' in 'Amherst' is silent: "AM-urst."
Fun science fiction tidbit: one of the sequels to A Wrinkle In Time takes a scifi/fantasy spin on on the theory of mitochondria! Published in 1973! It's a crucial point of the story and is presented as a new theory that isn't accepted by all scientists. I read that book in the 90's, in elementary school. Before we started learning about cells. So I was SUPER CONFUSED why my teacher was teaching theories as facts. OOPS!! It's a fun story to read, through the lens of the time it was written in!
The fact that Richard Dawkins is a star and you have to dig to find about Margulis says a lot. The quote at 7:00 minutes about "it's just as important what you get wrong" is total and utter b.s. Newton was a numerologist, but that doesn't come up much does it. Dawkins was wrong about nearly everything to do with group selection, but he's still got his bully pulpit. Margulis theorized the origins of two fundamental cell structures, received experimental confirmation that has stood the test of time, but you're crapping on her about flagella. This video partakes in and recreates the same crap she obviously spent a lifetime fighting uphill against. Blerg. Do better.
Lynn Margulis, who I knew, was influential because of her passion. Sometimes her passion pushed in directions that ended up not vindicating her position (flagella being one protist evolution issue but not the only one). She was an 'incomplete' scientist. There were very few original observations (imagine what she might have offered if sher had cared to explore like Journey to the Microcosmos does), she often ignored things that contradicted her (I was once obliged to stand up after a talk she gave to the Royal Society of London to say "You are lying, and you know you are lying'.). Despite that, she still made me a nice pot of tea in her home. I think the account in this video is very fair, acknowledging the influence of her passion, making it clear that the core idea was not hers but it was Mereschkowsky's horse that she was backing; and that she added no new observations to help us along.
Man, I wonder what kind of conversation she'd had with Carl Sagan. Both are mavericks in their own field. Possibility of endosymbiosis in extraterrestrial planet was a recurring theme, I bet.
I also remember being taught in school that endosymbiosis was a popular but unproven theory. I did find it incredibly convincing even at the time though. And incredibly fascinating.
YEAHHHHHH im a massive warframe fan and i already knew about the naming inspiration, but hearing the narrator of this video talk about Lynn’s theories and “stubborn attitude towards her work” i couldn’t help but notice the sheer amount of similarities between the two... knowing that honestly makes the warframe Margulis so much cooler to me now
Food for thought: deep sea anglerfish have a parasitic mate that can eventually become fused and essentially an asexual self-reproducing animal as the female can control when the male fertilizes the eggs.
sending you good vibes for your art! have had art block this past week and I feel like my brain was replaced by a rock jttm always inspires me though, so perhaps I'll try and join you:)
The critique of Margulis here is hollow, referencing one particular statement she made about the development of HIV as a problematic view. The former was a HYPOTHESIS that was discounted by the author by appealing to so-called substantiated evidence on the subject. The author then goes on to reference Margulis as being given to conspiracy thinking without giving any examples of that. Bunk, a flimsy critique, no better than the bulwarks who dismissed her novel contributions from the beginning. This is what happens to women in science who don’t toe the line. Hopefully today that is changing.
Her views on HIV were not as far-out as most people think. Luc montagnier - the discoverer of HIV - also does not believe HIV to be sufficient to cause AIDS. He was preceded in this by Kary Mullis - the Nobel-prize-winning inventor of the polymerase chain reaction technique, as well as by the virologist Peter Duesberg. This is not to say, of course, that her view was correct. Just that it was a view that was shared by numerous heavyweight scientists. As for her "conspiracy" views, i will say straight away that the term "conspiracy theory" is almost NEVER used honestly by the people who relexively dismiss threatening ideas. It's enough to point out that our news media constantly push conspiracy theories ("Saddam is hiding weapons of mass destruction" or "Putin got Trump elected"), but they don't *call* them conpiracy theories. The term is reserved for ideas that the authorities deem unwelcome.
There's nothing the mainstream collective hates more than an iconoclastic women. Also they are probably suffering lots of cognitive dissonance from the fact that if they had a controversial hypothesis about AIDS, they would just censor themselves and let people suffer. Margulis's selfless outspokeness reminds them of this at some level and so irritates them.
The problem isn't when a scientist who consider her ideas right but some of them are wrong. It's when a scientist consider that their theories are right. In science, ideas must be controversial by nature, because they have to be debated, no matter how you feel about them. Pride is one of the worst things that can happen to successful scientists. And it happens much more often than one would think... In fact I can hardly think of a scientist who radically changed how their field worked while they were alive who didn't become mad with pride. I'm not sure humans can handle so much praise and confidence.
I was stunned when I read from Msrgulis that the origin of sex was a predatoty act. It was something like: ¡Hey handsome: Gimme all your ADN or you're dead!!!
Moderns morality is so twisted. Lynn was wrong about HIV, but she was right about A LOT of other things when the consensus was wrong. Keeping that in mind it would have been unethical for her not to speak her views considering the sheer amount of suffering at stake. Modern people mistake sensitivity for morality. It's as if they deem a person moral who would censor themselves on a health topic for political or social reasons when they believe they have new information that could save lives. That is absolutely absurd. Lynn is more moral than 99% of you because she said something she knew would blow back on her, ruin or at least stain her career. Wrong ideas are not an issue in science, only untestable ones. Metagenomics could easily test and disprove her hypothesis and probably has by this point.
There is a certain reality to genius that is seldom understood and never appreciated. An innately adventurous mind is willing to question where cowards will not go, and what is here called getting it wrong is a static form to support intellectual cowardice, because we are often premature to say that something is wrong, but never come back to admit that they the cowards were wrong, because they did nor see or wait long enough to be shown. That does not mean that the genius in their speculation will always be right, simply they are not bound by the same very natural and very common cowardice of mind.
Another discussion of the very important "balance" between orthodoxy and radical new understanding. While learning everything I could that was understood in science, I have always been drawn to the edges of science. Over my 50 year career I have studied many "edgy" ideas. Virtually all have not been useful for the advance of science. But maybe a couple might have potential. The calculus of fractal structures has given some insight into gauge theory. The assumption that the "Dirac sea" might be real, gives a competitive idea of unified field theory. This is the part that the general public and biological scientists will like: there are peer reviewed papers of this idea, but . . . they are so mathematical that I haven't found a physicist that will even look at the idea. "It's not mainstream" is all I've heard. Just like this episode, there might be something to "Causal Fermion Systems" but no one will even consider it. I found your video especially important. Thank you
This is why peer reviewed stuff is important--just in case someone is talking out of their butt, you have the facts. It's important to note though, it's a very human conceit to assume we know everything about something, or that we'll ever learn everything about it. Stay humble my friends.
Help me! I got a new microscope the swift 350b it's good but I for some reason even at 1000x protozoa are still very tiny does anyone know how to fix this?
Why do your vids always activate subtitles?! No other channels do this, but whenever I click on one of yours I have to manually deactivate them again...
How have I not heard of this lady before? I mean, she did all of this _and_ she was married to Carl Sagan, how the hell did she slip through my notice all these years?
Oh, because she was also a 9/11 truther and an AIDS denialist and generally just seemed to go out of her way to try and piss people off because she was forever bitter about endosymbiogenesis being laughed at. Got it.
Growing up Jehovah's Witness I dimly recall a quote by Lynn Margulis about Darwin's Origin Of Species that was taken out of context. She apparently had said Darwin's book utterly fails to explain how species originate, casting doubt on evolution itself. It wasn't until I was out of the religion that I discovered she meant Darwin didn't (and could not) take endosymbiosis into account. That's all she meant in the context of that quote.
Darwin's, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection does not address the origins of life. It is basically a compilation of examples that, taken together, form a compelling picture of how species evolve. Without knowing anything about DNA, Darwin postulated there must be a mechanism of inheritance with randomised variation that would favor some individuals over others, and how, in the struggle to survive in environments with limited resources, those gifted with more beneficial traits would be the ones to survive and pass on their favorable genes. Today, we know that as species adapt to changing conditions, they form different groups, perhaps living side by side, they can continue to reproduce, but only to a certain point. Once the differences become too great between two groups, such that they can no longer produce viable (able to reproduce) offspring, we have a new species.
Lol I've heard that before, too.
The dangers of cherry-picking.
It must have been from something a long time ago. Their website has two references to her and neither of them are what you say.
alucientes I never fully noticed, but it's true. Darwin didn't even attempt to address the origin of living organisms, only how species came about.
Lynn Margulis was the original wonder woman. She raised four children, and as a single mother worked at two jobs in different cities while completing her post graduate work and writing a book.
she was better at being a scientist than a wife or mother. if a man chose his career over his family you wouldn't praise him for it. being intellectually consistent is better than being a feminist
My HS Bio professor actually knew and was an acquaintance of Lynn Margulis's and that is my lame claim to fame.
"Lame claim to fame"
i love english orthography
Dr. Fownes?
@@vitaurea thank Weird Al
She was a professor in my doctoral program at UMass Amherst and I took a class from her in the early 90's. She could certainly be forceful and abrasive, but if you raised an interesting point on a topic that she cared about, she treated you like a colleague, not a student. And I have never encountered anyone else with such breadth of knowledge across the natural sciences. I do wonder what she would have been like if she hadn't dealt with so much disparagement and abuse as a young scientist. A high level of stubborn tenacity was a survival skill and absolutely necessary for what she achieved in the 60's and 70's, but it was a double-edged sword. A complicated legacy, indeed, but I was deeply saddened to hear of her passing in 2011.
One thing I love about this channel, as well as Eons and many similar channels involving some of the same people, is the dedication to nuance. People are incredibly complex, and people can be brilliant and totally ahead of their time in some ways and just dead wrong in other ways. It's almost like the more talent someone has in one regard, the bigger their inevitable blind spot will be. That's why community is so important - we all have different strengths and weaknesses that balance each other out when we work together! So that's why humility is such an important virtue, because it is always the case that you could simply be wrong, despite your best efforts to understand something.
It was rejected 12 times and SHE STILL KEPT AT IT?! What a hero!
Poor Dorion, son of the God of Astronomy and the Goddess of Symbiosys, must hurt his back to carry such great legacy.
Fun fact about Margulis' personal life: she was actually married to Carl Sagan for a while.
Second fun fact: she is related to Meryl Streep
what the heck
Eat the cats rats an bats....bon voyage
Also fun fact, she is a 9-11 truther and their son Jeremy Sagan too. as Carl said: extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence
Oh wow, that's kinda cool
Hank Green's relaxing voice in this is such a change from the fast-paced Crash Course videos.
*3 guarantees in the microbial life cycle:*
*1. Death*
*2. Mitosis*
*3. Being excited for another upload from Journey to the Microcosmos.*
Enjoying the thumbs up baiting?
The muscle hank of MiCo returns!
Chill, it's fun.
I always look for Rotifer's comment(s) 😊❤
Only Eukaryotic life undergoes mitosis, most microbes are bacteria, they undergo another similar process called binary fission.
Dear Hank, back in the day I performed an experiment investigating the origins of mitochondria. I did this work at the University of Montana, A place I'm sure you're quite familiar with. Dr. Margie Kinnersly was the experiments designer and in fact she is still on campus as of now. I would strongly encourage you to speak with her or even I if you'd like to dig a little deeper into mitochondriogenesis. Both Margie and I are still in Missoula and though I can't speak for Margie, I would love to chat with you about your love of major evolutionary transitions and neat novel theories that have shown up from time to time.
with love
Evelyn Wall
I really appreciate this thought provoking reminder on the scientific process
I wonder if she would have been less stubborn later in life if only she had not faced decades of hostility, much of it rooted in sexism. Of course, there are plenty of other women in science who faced similar hardships and didn't turn out as contrarian as Margulis. I don't mean this as a defence of her pernicious positions. But I can imagine that, if I spend the best part of my life trying to convince people about the validity of theories that do turn out to be true, one of the lessons I learn is that sometimes one has to insist against all odds in order not to be unjustly silenced. And that can get so behaviourally engrained it might end up getting the better of me. By the way, I recently watched the documentary 'Symbiotic Earth' on her work and legacy (it's on Vimeo). It paints her in an overall much more positive light and (from what I remember) glosses over later controversies (it does mention some of her theories were wrong, but I don't recall it saying much about her HIV denial). It still makes for a fascinating watch. Whatever your opinion of her opinions, she was an extraordinary scientist, and her perseverance is inspiring (as long as it doesn't turn into imperviousness to reasonable doubt). Her legacy is also important in feminist materialist philosophy.
a lot like my crush, Ayn. interesting.
CerberaOdollam Ayn Rand? Was she actually right on anything though? (I’m very much not a fan of hers I’m afraid, I have been unable to find redeeming qualities in Rand’s work that can make up for her absolutely vile ideology)
@@cerberaodollam Just as contrarian and unpleasant, but without the added baggage of being right about anything!
@@the57bears yes men were to blame for her beliefs
Her book "What Is Life?" is astounding. She wrote it with her son, Dorian Sagan.
Imagine growing up with Lynn Margulis and Carl Sagan as parents. Early divorce + massive inferiority complex I guess, but on the plus side, your dad's legacy is leaving the solar system and you end up writing awesome books with your badass scientist mum.
10:02
"Vampyrella"? Come on guys, let's see more of this interestingly named little critter!
They aren't easy to find. I'm a microscopist myself and have spent a fair amount of time exploring this world of wild protists. I have only found one in twelve years. But a blood red amoeba that bores into algae to eat them in their homes? Yep, pretty cool.
We actually showed some of the amazing behaviors of Vampyrella before, check this, please.
ua-cam.com/video/io731XY8fH8/v-deo.html
-James
@@johnnyswatts Hey John, I recommend you to collect the green scum from ponds, like Spirogyra and prepare a slide, leave it in a humidity chamber a day or two then observe it under the microscope. Vampyrella actually pretty common however they remain inactive after being disturbed. That's how we find our Vampryrella. Also we recorded them eating alga before and here is the link.
ua-cam.com/video/io731XY8fH8/v-deo.html
-James
Great video. It's nice to see someone discussing Lynn Margulis in this more nuanced way.
That was an especially awesome video, so human and instructive. Thank you for this, and congratulations!
Its very interesting to hear about the work microbiologists have done for the field! Can you do more episodes on interesting scientists like her in the future?
She’s outstanding in her field ;)
I took grade 11 Bio a couple years ago and we are still taught that endosymbiosis is only very probably true
This boggles my mind because I can't imagine any other reason why our mitochondria have unique DNA. Did they give an opposing hypothesis, or was it just a "we're not 100%" thing?
text books are so behind the curve.
@@Brahmdagh Yet They update them yearly to make you keep buying more of the stupid boring stuff.
@@DouglasEKnappMSAOM "update" in quotes.
It might upset teleologists more than evolution. Hard to do.
Thanks for the piece on Marguilis- big picture thinker and along with McClintock amoung the greatest biologists of all time.
One of the most fascinatingly baffling things about Lynn Margulis is her support for the larval transfer hypothesis. The idea is that a caterpillar-like creature somehow bred with an unrelated (!) butterfly-like creature, resulting in our modern caterpillars that metamorphose into butterflies. And the same thing supposedly happened with most or all other creatures with larval stages. I was reading Margulis' book Kingdoms and Domains, where this idea is baldly stated as a fact, and thought, "Wait, that's not right... is it?" It's almost plausible if you don't think too hard about it, but after investigating the idea and reading Donald I. Williamson's totally bonkers The Origins of Larvae, I can't see enough evidence to support this extraordinary claim.
Breeding no. Horizontal transfer mediated by shared retrovirus?.... probably still no, but possible and testable. Dont forget your neurons are using retroviral DNA that is of nonmammal origin right now.
This sounds like a pre-Hox gene era hypothesis-before it was understood that all bilaterians are also segmented and that appendages are co-opted versions of other appendages, as well as the observed continuum of insect metamorphosis. Ed Lewis is another interesting biology biography. He was aware of the relationship between genomic and partial genomic duplications and segment appendage diversity. I think his only flub might have been correlating duplications (which later turned out to encompass Hox genes) with the addition of segments. The reality is a bit more complicated and nuanced than a 1:1 scenario. howver he still received a Nobel prize.
Thank you for addressing the parts that she had gotten wrong. For years growing up I admired her for having supported her ideas so strongly, especially because this one in particular is one of my favorite phenomena in biology. Little did I know how stubborn and flawed the rest of her ideas were. This goes to show how science works and how scientists can be different from eachother in how they view the world and their own ideas. And how most scientists who discovered important things had made many mistakes on the side.
Scientists are also just human and all kinds of people do become scientists. Not all scientists are reasonable people. Some scientists believe in the crazierst things. People become scientists for various reasons. Many Chemists for instance study chemistry because they are interested in drugs. Many biologsts study it because they like animals or have someone in the family who has a deadly disease. Not all scientists have a "scientific" mindset. People who study science with a scientific mindset usually had that mindset before they started studying. Sadly Universities often do not teach people how to think, what actual critical thinking is, no logic or reasoining skills, they don't even teach propertly what the scientific method is. Someone who comes to Uni with an esotheric, spiritual, religious mindset is very likely to keep that throughout their whole career. Someone could be a genius mathematician who can solve the most complex equations with ease, but believe in all kinds of nonsensical things. Being intelligent alone isn't enough.
And of course you could be a great scientist with the right mindset, plan everything properly, conduct everything to the best of your knowledge and still end up with bogus results and thus come come up with a bogus explanation. There is so much that can go wrong by accident. There is no guarantee that you'll get it right.
On the other hand, another scientist who believes in nonsensical stuff could just get lucky and discover something new and becomes famous.
*I convinced my sweetheart to name our 2 offspring after the legendary humble human, Lynn Marguilis. One we've named Lynn and the other we've named Margulis!*
*Well, there's also our third child, but his name is Hank.*
Tough life for Margulis
I mean, she's a rotifer, she's probably got bigger problems than her name if all the footage of rotifers being eaten on this channel is anything to go by.
The footage on this channel is amazing. The microbe at 2:18 was particularly impressive to see.
wouldn't cal it a bicrobe tbh... zooplankton or just plankton would be more correct
This is one of the most wonderful things I have ever heard.
Thank you for allowing my journey to continue.
It is never wrong to question the way things are told.
It is always possible there is another truth.
I really enjoyed this science history inspired episode! I hope that you'll do more like this one! And James's images are just getting more and more amazing and beautiful!
Thanks for this video. It's important to remember that history and politics are a part of all human endeavors, even those which seem completely separated from such things.
As a science teacher I cringe when people talk about science like it's "above" such things, but as long as humans are involved, there will always be the fallable human element.
Introduced female cousin to this channel. Her response?
"This is the first time I've gotten a crush on a voice."
:D
Tell here to listen to the first Hearts Of Space. More months I thought they were the same person!
I just finished the second year of my Biology undergrad and endosymbiosis is taught as being true
insofar as it is the best explanation for the observations of the similarities btwn plastid organelles and bacteria and the dissimilarities btwn those organelles and the other aspects eukaryotic cells/inheritance, it is "true"
People are complicated. Her being wrong about one very important thing doesn't make her a bad person, as well as being right about something profound doesn't necessarily make her a good person. Her legacy will help as well as hinder and it's important to separate these effects. The only thing that can and will help is continuing to pursue knowledge in a just and wholly scientific way, and in this way we can celebrate and build on the achievements of those who came before, while righting the wrongs left behind by their other, more harmful ideas.
I've always gotten Lynn Margulis confused with Anne Druyan, but it was only when you mentioned Dorion Sagan that I twigged why - they were both married to Carl Sagan (although at different times)
Ohh. This resonated with something I wrote about me last week during a creative workshop, lol. "She is an imitation, she might be remembered. Perhaps they will let her in again. When the chips fall, and the bodies are all buried, she'll be there and wonder why she chose to imitate life rather than live it; and in that wondering there will be uniqueness, and that will comfort her final moments. She was not an imitation, after all - but an amalgamation, just like everyone else: a drop in the sea of thought. It is in this sense that authors never die. They blend together, just like in our old warcry, before the devout crowds hijacked such sacred symbols. Our old warcry, often uttered in a dead tongue but ever renewed on her lips: out of many, one."
Endosymbiosis and plate tectonics are up there with top theories that feels like a thing we've always known. Every time I realize how relatively recent this knowledge is I feel disoriented.
Please produce a billion videos exactly like this. Explaining a complex idea with mind blowing images. For myself, it helps me focus. I love complex ideas coupled with complex visuals. It awakens the best parts of myself. Thank you.
The ideas that are valid stand, regardless of the other beliefs the discoverer might also have. We don't need to construct a ladder of moral hierarchy and judgment; our judgments of others are not useful. We admire the discoveries not the discoverers - in the world of scientific truth we should care more for the slime than the snail.
I had never heard about these bizarre views on Aids and Hiv. I thought her main controversy was centered on the gaia hypothesis and her ecological positions.
Those conspiracy theories are complicated, you never know which ones are true, which ones are false, which ones are made for distraction - until you research them really thoroughly.
That twirling Phacus was COOOOOL. :D
Hank to all the phonemes whenever he says the word "structures":
You get palatalized! YOU get palatalized!! You ALLLLLL get palatalized!!!!
what does it mean to get palatalized? How do you say structures?
@@ViskayaNuebler79 I'm not really sure what your background knowledge is in language and linguistics. But in linguistics we usually describe a sound by (among other things) where in the vocal tract is the greatest constriction. In other words, we describe a sound by where in the mouth it is made. So the sounds (I'm putting them in / / just to separate them) /r/ and /sh/ are both made primarily at the hard palate, for the sake of simplicity the hard palate is the roof of the mouth. But the sounds /s/ /t/ /k/ (a hard 'c' in structures) are made in places other than the hard palate. So I would say 'structures' something like (I'm separating sounds by hypens (-) just to make the individual sounds more clear) /s-t-r-u-k-sh-u-r-s/ ([stɹʌkʃɚz] for those who can read IPA). Hank tends to move many of the sounds to the palate (or palatalizes them). This makes his 'structures' sound like /sh-ch-r-u-k-sh-u-r-sh/ ([ ʃt͡ʃɹʌkʃɚʃ ]).
TL;DR: He tends to produce most of the sounds at the hard palate (i.e. palatalized) whereas I tend to produce most of them other places in the mouth (alveolar ridge for most).
Sorry if that was more than you were looking for. I'm more than happy to answer more questions; I am a language nerd :)
These are the kinds of comments I come to youtube to read, thank you :)
When I was at studying medicine at the university of Aarhus in the mid seventies, most microbiologists were convinced endosymbiosis was »a thing« ...
"Thank you for coming on this journey with us, as we explore the unseen world..." of I D E A S.
I love the thumbnails! Great channel! Thank you for sharing all this.
Good evening, this seems like a good video to end my day with
Same my dude, good night
I'm an alumnus of UMass Amherst; unfortunately I didn't realize that she was faculty there until she died. ; ;
P.S: The 'h' in 'Amherst' is silent: "AM-urst."
Great job. Very well produced. 💚💚💚
Fun science fiction tidbit: one of the sequels to A Wrinkle In Time takes a scifi/fantasy spin on on the theory of mitochondria! Published in 1973! It's a crucial point of the story and is presented as a new theory that isn't accepted by all scientists. I read that book in the 90's, in elementary school. Before we started learning about cells. So I was SUPER CONFUSED why my teacher was teaching theories as facts. OOPS!! It's a fun story to read, through the lens of the time it was written in!
The fact that Richard Dawkins is a star and you have to dig to find about Margulis says a lot. The quote at 7:00 minutes about "it's just as important what you get wrong" is total and utter b.s. Newton was a numerologist, but that doesn't come up much does it. Dawkins was wrong about nearly everything to do with group selection, but he's still got his bully pulpit. Margulis theorized the origins of two fundamental cell structures, received experimental confirmation that has stood the test of time, but you're crapping on her about flagella. This video partakes in and recreates the same crap she obviously spent a lifetime fighting uphill against. Blerg. Do better.
There's so much footage in this I want to know more about.
Lynn Margulis was the kind of person to call her peers "arrogant fools", wasn't she?
Great episode! I love the new biographical spin.
Speaking of scientific rigor or lack thereof, how about a future episode on Radiolarians and the seminal but flawed work of Ernst Haeckel
Lynn Margulis, who I knew, was influential because of her passion. Sometimes her passion pushed in directions that ended up not vindicating her position (flagella being one protist evolution issue but not the only one). She was an 'incomplete' scientist. There were very few original observations (imagine what she might have offered if sher had cared to explore like Journey to the Microcosmos does), she often ignored things that contradicted her (I was once obliged to stand up after a talk she gave to the Royal Society of London to say "You are lying, and you know you are lying'.). Despite that, she still made me a nice pot of tea in her home. I think the account in this video is very fair, acknowledging the influence of her passion, making it clear that the core idea was not hers but it was Mereschkowsky's horse that she was backing; and that she added no new observations to help us along.
I feel like she was a complete scientist.. scientists come with all kinds of opinions and morals..
she was human after all.
So what you clarify here - in other words - is that she was a better human being than those who sully her name for no reason whatsoever.
I enjoy watching these before going to bed🔬
Such a pleasure to watch your videos, thank you
Such a beautiful and important thought this video brings us.
Glad you could bring up the both "good and bad" up from Professor Margulis.
BEST CHANNEL EVER. will someone pay for college for me so i can do microbiology instead of cook for minimum wage at 30 years old? lol
bad investment
"Others dismissed her theory outright." No doubt the fact that she was a woman had something to do with that. People suck!
never realized the scientific community and academia were so sexist, I thought it was an uneducated people thing
Please do a video on wastewater microbes.
She should have won a Nobel Prize, for her unpublished work on Spirochetes...Why hasn't it been published? Anyone know where I can get it?
Man, I wonder what kind of conversation she'd had with Carl Sagan. Both are mavericks in their own field. Possibility of endosymbiosis in extraterrestrial planet was a recurring theme, I bet.
I also remember being taught in school that endosymbiosis was a popular but unproven theory. I did find it incredibly convincing even at the time though. And incredibly fascinating.
Did they also teach you the difference between a theory and a hypothesis? And that proving is not really possible as much as disproving.
@@DouglasEKnappMSAOM 🙄 Seriously? What about my comment compelled you to throw this Scientific Method 101 BS at me?
Warframe devs named a character Margulis. Now I know where they got the name.
The woman who discovered the psychic symbiosis possible between the Tenno and the Warframes.
YEAHHHHHH im a massive warframe fan and i already knew about the naming inspiration, but hearing the narrator of this video talk about Lynn’s theories and “stubborn attitude towards her work” i couldn’t help but notice the sheer amount of similarities between the two... knowing that honestly makes the warframe Margulis so much cooler to me now
what exactly is going on at the end of the organism at 5:12??
ua-cam.com/video/gf-ZUYIkPl0/v-deo.html Around 1:30 should be the answer
Why is this music just the most fitting thing ever? If microorganisms had a theme tune it'd be this.
Lovely as always.
That Phacus lismorensis from 2:04 moves like a falling leaf. Reminds me of Giardia Lamblia parasite
Love the vids keep them coming
omg. That cute Tardigrade amazing video at 4:29. Also thanks for putting Margulis work in perspective. Thanks for the Amazing videos of endosymbiosis.
I always thought I was older than Hank - it turns out I'm a month and two weeks younger! Some times we get things wrong
Scientists like cats - marking, protecting and fighting for their territory.
That is humanity in general. We are the most territorial beings on this world.
This is a great one
Good job
Food for thought: deep sea anglerfish have a parasitic mate that can eventually become fused and essentially an asexual self-reproducing animal as the female can control when the male fertilizes the eggs.
Hank knows this, famously
What an amazing video, seriously
Love your channel.
I wonder if times is different for microbes?
aw yeah more microcosmos things to listen to while drawing
sending you good vibes for your art! have had art block this past week and I feel like my brain was replaced by a rock
jttm always inspires me though, so perhaps I'll try and join you:)
Cool, I do that as well!
I couldn't just listen to these videos, the filmed part is just as important to enjoy the content 😍😍😍
Wait, when you're talking about flagella as endosymbionts, you're not talking about the flaily bits of some cells but dinoflagellates, right?
Okay, apparently you _are_ talking about the organelles. That does indeed sound a bit insane.
The critique of Margulis here is hollow, referencing one particular statement she made about the development of HIV as a problematic view. The former was a HYPOTHESIS that was discounted by the author by appealing to so-called substantiated evidence on the subject. The author then goes on to reference Margulis as being given to conspiracy thinking without giving any examples of that. Bunk, a flimsy critique, no better than the bulwarks who dismissed her novel contributions from the beginning. This is what happens to women in science who don’t toe the line. Hopefully today that is changing.
Her views on HIV were not as far-out as most people think. Luc montagnier - the discoverer of HIV - also does not believe HIV to be sufficient to cause AIDS. He was preceded in this by Kary Mullis - the Nobel-prize-winning inventor of the polymerase chain reaction technique, as well as by the virologist Peter Duesberg. This is not to say, of course, that her view was correct. Just that it was a view that was shared by numerous heavyweight scientists.
As for her "conspiracy" views, i will say straight away that the term "conspiracy theory" is almost NEVER used honestly by the people who relexively dismiss threatening ideas. It's enough to point out that our news media constantly push conspiracy theories ("Saddam is hiding weapons of mass destruction" or "Putin got Trump elected"), but they don't *call* them conpiracy theories. The term is reserved for ideas that the authorities deem unwelcome.
There's nothing the mainstream collective hates more than an iconoclastic women. Also they are probably suffering lots of cognitive dissonance from the fact that if they had a controversial hypothesis about AIDS, they would just censor themselves and let people suffer. Margulis's selfless outspokeness reminds them of this at some level and so irritates them.
The problem isn't when a scientist who consider her ideas right but some of them are wrong.
It's when a scientist consider that their theories are right.
In science, ideas must be controversial by nature, because they have to be debated, no matter how you feel about them.
Pride is one of the worst things that can happen to successful scientists. And it happens much more often than one would think... In fact I can hardly think of a scientist who radically changed how their field worked while they were alive who didn't become mad with pride. I'm not sure humans can handle so much praise and confidence.
I was stunned when I read from Msrgulis that the origin of sex was a predatoty act.
It was something like:
¡Hey handsome: Gimme all your ADN or you're dead!!!
me: hears the word margulis
also me: TENNO, IM DETECTING VOID FISSURES IN THE AREA
Moderns morality is so twisted. Lynn was wrong about HIV, but she was right about A LOT of other things when the consensus was wrong. Keeping that in mind it would have been unethical for her not to speak her views considering the sheer amount of suffering at stake. Modern people mistake sensitivity for morality. It's as if they deem a person moral who would censor themselves on a health topic for political or social reasons when they believe they have new information that could save lives. That is absolutely absurd. Lynn is more moral than 99% of you because she said something she knew would blow back on her, ruin or at least stain her career. Wrong ideas are not an issue in science, only untestable ones. Metagenomics could easily test and disprove her hypothesis and probably has by this point.
There is a certain reality to genius that is seldom understood and never appreciated. An innately adventurous mind is willing to question where cowards will not go, and what is here called getting it wrong is a static form to support intellectual cowardice, because we are often premature to say that something is wrong, but never come back to admit that they the cowards were wrong, because they did nor see or wait long enough to be shown. That does not mean that the genius in their speculation will always be right, simply they are not bound by the same very natural and very common cowardice of mind.
I need a paragraph of a summary someone please give a summary of this video
Another discussion of the very important "balance" between orthodoxy and radical new understanding. While learning everything I could that was understood in science, I have always been drawn to the edges of science. Over my 50 year career I have studied many "edgy" ideas. Virtually all have not been useful for the advance of science. But maybe a couple might have potential. The calculus of fractal structures has given some insight into gauge theory. The assumption that the "Dirac sea" might be real, gives a competitive idea of unified field theory. This is the part that the general public and biological scientists will like: there are peer reviewed papers of this idea, but . . . they are so mathematical that I haven't found a physicist that will even look at the idea. "It's not mainstream" is all I've heard. Just like this episode, there might be something to "Causal Fermion Systems" but no one will even consider it.
I found your video especially important. Thank you
The dirac sea describes the behavior of a field theory with fermions. It is very much mainstream physics.
Okay but can we talk about how Hank Green is listed as a supporter on patreon?
Nice info, thanks for sharing!!
Nothing worth knowing comes easy, I guess.
This is why peer reviewed stuff is important--just in case someone is talking out of their butt, you have the facts. It's important to note though, it's a very human conceit to assume we know everything about something, or that we'll ever learn everything about it. Stay humble my friends.
does anyone know what kind of microscope this is? and how did they film this? thanks a lot for the help.
Help me! I got a new microscope the swift 350b it's good but I for some reason even at 1000x protozoa are still very tiny does anyone know how to fix this?
I watch for microbes and I get a story that sends my mind spinning about human psychology and why people believe conspiracy theories.
Why do your vids always activate subtitles?! No other channels do this, but whenever I click on one of yours I have to manually deactivate them again...
How have I not heard of this lady before? I mean, she did all of this _and_ she was married to Carl Sagan, how the hell did she slip through my notice all these years?
Oh, because she was also a 9/11 truther and an AIDS denialist and generally just seemed to go out of her way to try and piss people off because she was forever bitter about endosymbiogenesis being laughed at. Got it.
Can you make a video on how to culture different microbes?
... you know that tropic's kind of "how long is a piece of string" scale of broad?
2:54 is that a bongo playing tardigrade?
Huh. I was in UMass Amherst in 2005....and never knew she was there. heh.
Lewis Thomas et al were, for me, more connected to scientific observations of organisms and interpretation thereof. Also far better with words.
2:11 wait, is that a leaf?