The Fragility of Evolution: Re-envisioning Life's Creative Processes

Written in plain-spoken language and based on earlier scholarly work, it explores eight biological domains that reveal fragility as the key to novelty and transformation:

The dynamic genome, fluid and interactive with the environment;

Symbiosis, the creative merger of distinct organisms;

Sexuality, where two beings unite to generate unique offspring;

Multicellularity, enabling most macroscopic life;

Development, the fragile passage from immaturity to maturity;

The principle of the “head,” the organism’s holistic yet vulnerable center;

The social dimension, balancing cooperation and competition; and

The ecological web, a delicate network of interdependence.

Together these domains reveal a cumulative, spiritual dimension in biology—one that links fragility with creativity, vulnerability with emergence.

Teaching youth and the public to recognize the fragility within life’s processes can deepen our reverence for existence and enhance humanity’s chances for survival on Earth.