When James Lovelock published his first book, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth in 1979, Richard Dawkins said that if the earth was a living entity, it would have to conform to the rules of evolution. There would be unsuccessful planets with no life (which there are) and other planets with life (which there may be) in competition with each other. And the alive planets would have to have the means to reproduce. So, clearly, earth was not a living thing.
But I suddenly thought about the tardigrades which may be on the moon. And I thought about Merlin Sheldrake and the fungi, which may be able to survive deep space. And how the lichens and other microorganisms started life on this planet by breaking up rocks and releasing minerals.
So, say an asteroid crashes into earth and bits fly off back into space carrying with them these incredible survival-specialists. Say this happens on another living planet too and then these two asteroids carry their burden together somewhere else and on that planet life evolves out of the little specks brought from two distinct living planets and create new life-forms. Or the intelligent life on two living planets contaminate other planets not with themselves but with their passenger tardigrades and lichens and the like, wittingly or unwittingly.
Say intelligent life is just the sperm of the egg to carry the precious genetic material of tiny life-forms from here to desert spaces in the universes. Say life spreads, but the intelligent life need not spread, just the seeds of life that these beings transport.
Maybe evolution can work on a universal level.
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