The uniformity of the earth's life, more astonishing than its diversity, is accountable by the high probability that we derived, originally, from some single cell, fertilized in a bolt of lightning as the earth cooled.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The earth has a life of its own.
Life clearly does more than adapt to the Earth. It changes the Earth to its own purposes. Evolution is a tightly coupled dance, with life and the material environment as partners. From the dance emerges the entity Gaia.
Life does more than adapt to the Earth. It changes the Earth to its own purposes.
The essence of life is statistical improbability on a colossal scale.
We know too little about how life began on Earth to lay confident odds. It may have involved a fluke so rare that it happened only once in the entire galaxy. On the other hand, it may have been almost inevitable, given the right environment.
Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and never the same.
The earth was probably born by accident; but, in accordance with one of the most general laws of evolution, scarcely had this accident happened than it was immediately made use of and recast into something naturally directed.
Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.
Chance alone is at the source of all novelty, all creation in the biosphere.
In the age of networked everything, life moves sideways and covers lots of ground while barely touching the earth.