Biology on deep ecology

Profile: Gregory Bateson

Sun, 28 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) was an anthropologist, biologist, and cyberneticist whose groundbreaking work on systems thinking, learning theory, and the “ecology of mind” provided essential foundations for deep ecological understanding of consciousness and communication. His interdisciplinary approach revealed fundamental patterns connecting psychological, biological, and ecological systems.

Bateson’s early anthropological work led him to recognize that culture, mind, and nature operate according to similar systemic principles. His studies of communication patterns in humans and other animals revealed that information, not energy or matter, is the fundamental organizing principle of living systems - directly paralleling deep ecology’s understanding that all beings participate in networks of relationship and communication.

Profile: Elisabet Sahtouris

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Elisabet Sahtouris is an American and Greek evolution biologist, futurist, and author whose work emphasises how cooperation and symbiosis, rather than competition alone, drive evolutionary processes. Similarly to Lynn Margulis Her research on living systems theory offers scientific foundations for ecological worldviews that recognize nature’s inherent cooperative and self-organizing aspects.

Trained in evolution biology and microbiology, Sahtouris has dedicated her career to making evolutionary science accessible to wider audiences while revealing its implications for human society and economics. Her concept of “mature ecosystems” proposes that natural systems evolve from competitive to cooperative relationships, offering models for sustainable human civilization.

Profile: Lynn Margulis

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Lynn Margulis (1938-2011) was an American evolutionary biologist whose endosymbiotic theory proposed that complex cells arose through symbiotic mergers of simpler organisms. Her work emphasized cooperation and symbiosis as drivers of evolutionary innovation alongside competition.

Margulis proposed her theory in 1967, suggesting that complex cells with nuclei (eukaryotes) arose through symbiotic mergers of simpler bacterial cells. Her hypothesis that mitochondria and chloroplasts were once independent bacteria that became incorporated into larger cells faced initial resistance. Her paper “On the Origin of Mitosing Cells” was rejected by fifteen journals before publication. One grant application received the response: “Your research is crap.”