In his wildly imaginative book Imaginary Magnitude (1973), Polish author Stanislaw Lem introduces Eruntics, a fictional treatise in which a philosopher describes how he taught English to a colony of bacteria. These microbes, according to Lem, communicate via Morse code and can even predict the future. Through this satirical lens, Lem invites us to reconsider one of the most historically overlooked and misunderstood forms of life: the bacterium.
Bacteria are the most abundant organisms on Earth. They inhabit virtually every environment—from deep oceans to the upper atmosphere—and some species have even survived the vacuum of outer space. In many ways, they are superior to us: their evolutionary head start and biological resilience vastly surpass our understanding of the world. To them, we owe cheese, butter, wine, and yogurt—but also tuberculosis, cholera, scarlet fever, and diphtheria. With a bit more humility, perhaps our pale blue dot would have been more accurately named Planet Bacteria.
To put things in perspective
Homo sapiens emerged in Africa around 200,000 years ago, whereas bacteria have existed on Earth for an estimated 3.8 billion years. That’s billions of years of evolutionary trial, error, and refinement. “When we finally arrived,” Lem writes, “they subjected us for millennia to suffering, culminating in the great epidemics that wiped out entire populations.”
Human suspicion of invisible agents dates back to the Middle Ages. The Black Death taught us that disease could be caused by unseen invaders. Long before we understood bacteria as living organisms with flagella and cell membranes, they were the conceptual doorway that helped us understand causality—from unseen agents to observable effects.
The first known observation of bacteria occurred in 1676, thanks to the simple-lens microscope created by Dutch tradesman Anton van Leeuwenhoek. The term bacteria itself—derived from the Greek bakterion, meaning “little rod”—entered scientific vocabulary in the 19th century.
In recent decades, bacteria have polarized the scientific community. On one hand, researchers warn of their lethal potential and growing resistance to antibiotics, as detailed in José Ramón Vivas’s Super Bacteria (2019) and History of Pathogenic Bacteria (2020). On the other, science communicators like David G. Jara highlight the promise of bacteria in combating deforestation and reducing environmental pollutants, as explored in his book Bacteria, Bugs, and Other Friends (2016).
Tiny Gods
Among the most extraordinary species is Deinococcus radiodurans, a bacterium resistant to gamma radiation, ultraviolet light, and extreme dehydration. While a dose of 600 rads is fatal to humans, this microbe could survive—and even holds promise in future cancer therapies.
Some bacteria can break down single-use plastics; others help decontaminate polluted environments. After the Exxon Valdez oil spill in March 1989, bacterial communities played a crucial role in degrading the oil across more than 2,000 kilometers of Alaskan coastline.
Though it’s estimated that over a billion bacterial species exist, only about 43,000 have been formally identified, and the majority remain unstudied. Of those we know, only a small fraction—around 500—are harmful to humans. Nevertheless, bacteria remain one of the leading causes of disease and mortality worldwide.
In the realm of fiction, Lem playfully imagined bacterial strains with predictive powers, naming the substances they secrete futurasin plusquamperfectiva and futuregnostic excitin. Under the influence of these compounds, “even those coli strains that, like E. poetica, could do nothing but write bad poetry, acquired prophetic insight,” he quipped.
Bacteria are tiny gods—at once life-givers and life-takers. They embody abundance, mystery, and knowledge. In a world increasingly constrained by narrow thinking, bacteria offer not just scientific insight but a much-needed exercise for our collective imagination.