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We Are All Lichens
The World-Making Symbiosis of Science and Religion
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Modern biology increasingly shows that no organism lives alone. Human bodies are not self-contained individuals but holobionts, communities of human cells, microbes, and other symbionts that develop, metabolize, and survive together. For developmental biologist Scott F. Gilbert, this understanding of life has consequences far beyond the laboratory. It calls for a new account of our responsibilities to one another and to the planet.
We Are All Lichens traces biology’s shift from gene-centered explanations to a science of relationships, processes, and mutual dependence. Embryology shows cells forming one another through reciprocal induction. Studies of microbiomes reveal organisms as ecosystems. The concept of sympoiesis, or making-with, extends this insight from the developing embryo to the holobiont and ultimately to Gaia, a living world sustained by interspecies cooperation.
The book’s chapters revisit fertilization, embryonic development, childbirth, immunity, evolution, and metabolism, challenging familiar accounts that make DNA determinative and treat the organism as a bounded individual. Gilbert shows that bodies are made and maintained through cooperation, and that protecting future life requires protecting the ecological relationships on which all life depends.
Gilbert also argues that neither science nor religion can confront climate change alone. Drawing on developmental biology, environmental ethics, and numerous religious traditions, he proposes an alliance rather than a merger. Science can clarify how life depends on fragile relationships, while religion can help turn knowledge into collective action. Both science and religion begin in wonder, and both can nurture the attention, reverence, and moral commitment needed to resist extractive systems.
We Are All Lichens connects biology, religion, and multispecies ethics. It asks readers to understand human beings as participants in overlapping communities of life on which our collective survival depends.
“What can do more to salvage a vibrant future than Gilbert’s splendid sympoiesis of science and religion? In the creative interaction of all of us earthlings growing in and through each other, a new efficacy of ecological alliance emerges—embryonically.”—Catherine Keller, author of No Matter What: Crisis and the Spirit of Planetary Possibility
“Scott Gilbert’s book is not just good, it is exquisite—an ode to four billion years of unimaginable becoming. Awe and Wonder—Spirit and Science."—Stuart Kauffman, author of The Origins of Order
“Read this wonderful book for pleasure and deep understanding! Gilbert proposes new common stories, grounded in data, that nurture imagination and action. He shows that approaches from Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, different Indigenous knowledges, and more support these stories. Western sciences did not invent reciprocity and co-becoming, but the new biologies are adding richly to possible common understanding. In wonder and gratitude, We Are All Lichens teaches us collaborative practices of care for our damaged planet.”—Donna J. Haraway, author of Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene
Scott F. Gilbert is Howard A. Schneiderman Professor of Biology Emeritus at Swarthmore College, Finland Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Helsinki, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Oulu. He is coauthor of Developmental Biology (Oxford, 1985–2023), now in its thirteenth edition, and of Evolution Evolving: The Developmental Origins of Adaptation and Biodiversity (Princeton, 2024).
Donna J. Haraway (Foreword By)
Donna J. Haraway is Distinguished Professor Emerita of the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her many books include Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Duke, 2016)