Grote, Mathias (Author)
Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences
Volume: 53
Issue: 4
Pages: 434-443
In the spring of 2020, when the shelves of hygiene products were emptying, a paradoxical product fell into my hands: a probiotic hand sanitizer. While the product’s claim to differentiate between bad bugs and good ones added to it cannot be discussed here, the mélange certainly embodied a collective ambivalence about microbes. Had we not learned in the preceding years that microbes were not our foes but rather partners in health (microbiome, phage therapy) and nutrition (fermentation), as well as in planetary homeostasis, such as through oceanic photosynthesis? In early 2020, these insights faced a sudden retreat. Yet, just three years distant, it seems safe to say that the pandemic did not elicit a wholesale backlash in humanity’s relationship to microbes, but rather, that the sea change revealing them as ubiquitous, as partners, if not as constituents of multitude selves seems to have prevailed.This essay explores this sea change of microbiology, as evidence indicates it has impacted the life sciences and medicine at large, suggesting a fundamental shift in a picture of life affecting significant parts of the sciences. Why have bacteria, as well as other small and hidden creatures such as fungi or algae become role models for how to understand life on planet Earth? Why do researchers from the humanities or popular science audiences far beyond academia marvel at the diversity and versatility of organisms that have hitherto fascinated mostly lab nerds? Do we see the rise of novel “emancipatory biologisms” countering those dominating the last century, which were inspired by Darwinism and Mendelian/molecular genetics? To approach these questions, I take a brief excursion into the history of microbiology to discuss the example of Lynn Margulis (1938–2011), whose battle cry “We are our viruses” still resounds, if now with some weird overtones.
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