In 1950, she made a discovery so radical...
That she was silenced for decades.
What Barbara McClintock found was so revolutionary,
That the world's scientists couldn't even comprehend it.
McClintock had discovered that genes could JUMP.
They responded to their environment like living beings.
She called them “jumping genes.“
But here's the extraordinary part of her story.
While every other scientist was dissecting nature...
Into smaller and smaller pieces,
Barbara was doing something radical.
She was listening.
Every morning at 6:30am, she'd walk into her cornfield at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Not as a researcher extracting data.
But to have a conversation with living intelligence.
Her colleagues called her approach “mystical.“
They preferred their nature dead, predictable, controllable.
But McClintock saw something they couldn't.
Every cell was a universe of intelligence.
Every plant was processing information and making decisions.
Every living system was connected in ways science hadn't yet imagined.
After decades of silence towards her discovery...
In 1983, she became the first woman to win a solo Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Her words that year captured everything:
“Everything is one. There is no way in which you draw a line between things.“
Today, as we face unprecedented environmental challenges, McClintock's vision feels prophetic.
The boundaries we draw between...
👩🏽💼Business and nature 🍃
💰Profit and purpose 💪
🖐️Human and ecosystem 🌍
...they're illusions.
This is when the most powerful solutions emerge:
When we remember that we're not separate from the systems we're trying to heal.
When we recognise that our success isn't independent of planetary health.
Nature isn't a machine to be fixed.
It's an intelligent partner waiting to co-create with us.
-------
Thanks to Shai Tubali, Ph.D. for teaching me this quote.
♻️ Repost this to help your network
👉 Follow Dan Sherrard-Smith for more
That she was silenced for decades.
What Barbara McClintock found was so revolutionary,
That the world's scientists couldn't even comprehend it.
McClintock had discovered that genes could JUMP.
They responded to their environment like living beings.
She called them “jumping genes.“
But here's the extraordinary part of her story.
While every other scientist was dissecting nature...
Into smaller and smaller pieces,
Barbara was doing something radical.
She was listening.
Every morning at 6:30am, she'd walk into her cornfield at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.
Not as a researcher extracting data.
But to have a conversation with living intelligence.
Her colleagues called her approach “mystical.“
They preferred their nature dead, predictable, controllable.
But McClintock saw something they couldn't.
Every cell was a universe of intelligence.
Every plant was processing information and making decisions.
Every living system was connected in ways science hadn't yet imagined.
After decades of silence towards her discovery...
In 1983, she became the first woman to win a solo Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Her words that year captured everything:
“Everything is one. There is no way in which you draw a line between things.“
Today, as we face unprecedented environmental challenges, McClintock's vision feels prophetic.
The boundaries we draw between...
👩🏽💼Business and nature 🍃
💰Profit and purpose 💪
🖐️Human and ecosystem 🌍
...they're illusions.
This is when the most powerful solutions emerge:
When we remember that we're not separate from the systems we're trying to heal.
When we recognise that our success isn't independent of planetary health.
Nature isn't a machine to be fixed.
It's an intelligent partner waiting to co-create with us.
-------
Thanks to Shai Tubali, Ph.D. for teaching me this quote.
♻️ Repost this to help your network
👉 Follow Dan Sherrard-Smith for more
