There's something about micro-organisms...

that gets me very excited.

Take for instance this page:

http://www.scdworld.com/showsubdetail.cfm?cat=6&sub=18

uhhh...excuse me while I wipe my drool. Here is a highly efficient way of working with the world. Invisible, compact, profoundly effective and empowering. If we couldn't see bacteria with electron microscopes we'd assume they were spiritual.... as, in some ways, they really are!

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/teleology-biology/

teleomentalism... uhhh. The fundamental unity of god's creation and humanity's variable perception of evolution seems to evade either side of the debate. The physical unity of the microbial universe illuminates this progressive, complex, dynamic sense of spiritual unity that science and religion can only aspire to.

http://www.gaiaweb.uk.net/GAIASYMB.htm

I honestly believe the SET theory, detailed above, to be the most effective assimilation of the incredible findings of microbiology in the last decade into the mainstream theory of Darwinian evolution. There is no other way to account for the emergence of complex systems except via the agency of co-operative partnerships.

On the subject of co-operative partnerships, here is the final and ultimate word:

"5. Once a marriageable young girl was alone in her house because her parents and relatives had gone that day to another place. At that time a few men arrived at the house, specifically desiring to marry her. She received them with all hospitality.
6. The girl went to a private place and began to make preparations so that the unexpected male guests could eat. As she was beating the rice, the conchshell bracelets on her arms were colliding and making a loud noise.
7. The young girl feared that the men would consider her family to be poor because their daughter was busily engaged in the menial task of husking rice. Being very intelligent, the shy girl broke the shell bracelets from her arms, leaving just two on each wrist.
8. Thereafter, as the young girl continued to husk the rice, the two bracelets on each wrist continued to collide and make noise. Therefore she took one bracelet off each arm, and with only one left on each wrist there was no more noise.
9. O subduer of the enemy, I travel throughout the surface of the earth learning constantly about the nature of this world, and thus I personally witnessed the lesson of the young girl.
10. When many people live together in one place there will undoubtedly be quarreling. And even if only two people live together there will be frivolous conversation and disagreement. Therefore, to avoid conflict, one should live alone, as we learn from the example of the bracelet of the young girl."

The speaker is Krishna Vasudeva in the Uddhava Gita, speaking, obviously enough, to the disciple Uddhava about the value of solitary co-operation. Krishna's moderate insight and sophisticated intellectualism are as on the money today as they were three thousand years ago. This is from the (somewhat overwrought) translation on http://www.gita-society.com/section3/UddhavaGita.htm

Writing of the novel comes apace. I have put several new mini-chapters online today.