Section 2
Dr James Lovelock: Formulation
of the Gaia Hypothesis
BACKGROUND:
Primitive ExtraTerrestrial Glimpses ...
In the search for the evidence of extra-terrestrial life, the closer
- Earth’s neighboring planets - Venus and Mars were targeted by the
NASA program. Of these, due to the unknown conditions of the
planetary surface caused by the dense and agitated Venusian
atmosphere, the planet Mars was given priority. The first
spacecraft to visit Mars was Mariner 4 in 1965, and several others
followed including the two Viking landers in 1976.
Dr James Lovelock, a British Chemist specializing in the atmospheric
sciences, was a recognized leader in his field. He was to invent an
electron capture detector, capable of tracing extremely small
amounts of tracer elements in gases, which was used by the ozone
monitoring research concerning the effect of CFC’s in the early
1970’s. Almost a decade before this, NASA and the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL) requested the presence of Lovelock in their project
teams relating to the scientific search for the evidence of life on
Mars.
In collaboration with other project researchers, Lovelock predicted
the absence of life on mars based on the consideration of the
Martian atmosphere and its state of being in a chemically dead
equilibrium.
In contrast, the Terran atmosphere is in a chemical
state described as being far from equilibrium. The unlikely balance
of atmospheric gases which comprise the Earth’s atmosphere is quite
unique in our solar system. This fact would be clearly visible to
any extra-terrestrial observer, by comparison of the images of the
planets Venus, Earth and Mars.
And so it was to be in the history of mankind, in the last handful
of decades of the second millennium, mankind journeyed into space
and became - through image technology - an extra-terrestrial
observer:
VENUS
|
EARTH
|
MARS
|
|
|
|
CO2
(95%) |
N (77%),
O (21%) |
CO2
(95%) |
The question which Dr
James Lovelock obviously asked himself was ...
WHY was the Earth different?
-
Research concerning the
chemical analysis of the composition of the Venusian atmosphere has
yielded figures of 95-96% carbon dioxide, 3-4% nitrogen, with traces
of oxygen, argon and methane.
-
The same analysis for
Mars returns
95.3% carbon dioxide, 2.7% nitrogen, 1.6% argon, only 0.15% oxygen
and only 0.03% water.
-
In comparison the
Earth’s atmosphere at
present is 77% nitrogen, 21% oxygen with traces of carbon dioxide,
methane and argon.
What was happening upon the
Earth which enabled the maintenance of
such an unlikely combination of chemical gases - specifically
nitrogen and oxygen. What complex processes are at work within the
terrestrial atmosphere - and have occurred for many billions of
years - to explain this uniqueness?
How have these processes arisen
and what today maintains these processes at this equilibrium which
is chemically far from equilibrium?
Why is it so?
In the late 1960’s Lovelock took the first steps in answering these
questions by considering the the beginnings of life upon the planet
Earth.
The earliest of life-forms existed in the ancient oceans and
were the smallest and the simplest - less than single celled.
Contemporary microbiological research points to the fact that almost
3 billion years ago, bacteria and photosynthetic algae began
extracting the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and releasing
oxygen back into it.
Gradually - over vast geological time spans -
the atmospheric chemical content was altered away from the dominance
of carbon dioxide, towards the dominance of a mixture of nitrogen
and oxygen - towards an atmosphere which would favorably support
organic life powered by aerobic combustion - such as animals and
mankind.
How the Gaia
Hypothesis was so named...
So it was then that Dr James Lovelock, in looking for the evidence
of extra-terrestrial life on Mars, observed the Earth as might an
extra-terrestrial, and began to formulate a method of explanation as
to why the Earth appeared therefore to be not so much a planet
adorned with diverse life forms, but a planet which had been
transfigured and transformed by a self-evolving and self-regulating
living system. In view of the nature of this activity, Earth seemed
to qualify as a living being its own right. And so the hypothesis
took its initial form.
And as the story goes, while on a walk in the countryside about his
home in Wilshire, England, Lovelock described his hypothesis to his neighbour William Golding (the novelist - eg: Lord of the Flies),
and asked advise concerning a suitable name for it. The resultant
term "Gaia" - after the Greek goddess who drew the living world
forth from Chaos - was chosen.
Thus the Gaia Hypothesis was first postulated.
However, there was a big difference between postulating such a grand
schemed hypothesis and having it accepted by the traditional
scientific community, and there remained much research work to be
done in order to be able to more clearly specify the entirety of the
processes by which the modern planetary atmosphere had been evolved
and was continuing to be evolved.
And in this task, in the early
years of his further research concerning the Gaia hypothesis,
Lovelock was supported by the collaboration of Dr Lynn Margulis, a
leading and forward thinking American microbiologist.
Gaia: A New
Look at Life on Earth - [1979]
By 1979 James Lovelock had published some of his ideas in a first
book "Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth" in which the statement of
the specification of the Gaia Hypothesis had become somewhat better
defined.
In this book we find him putting forward the postulate:
’...the physical and
chemical condition of the surface of the Earth, of the
atmosphere, and of the oceans has been and is actively made fit
and comfortable by the presence of life itself. This is in
contrast to the conventional wisdom which held that life adapted
to the planetary conditions as it and they evolved their
separate ways.’’
Elsewhere, in relation
to the definition of Gaia we find the following:
"The entire range of
living matter on Earth from whales to viruses and from oaks to
algae could be regarded as constituting a single living entity
capable of maintaining the Earth’s atmosphere to suit its
overall needs and endowed with faculties and powers far beyond
those of its constituent parts...[Gaia can be defined] as a
complex entity involving the Earth’s biosphere, atmosphere,
oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback of
cybernetic systems which seeks an optimal physical and chemical
environment for life on this planet."
And in another section
we find speculative thoughts concerning Gaia, and one’s which
probably appealed to many of the readers who supported the various
environmental groups, but at the same time provoked the hard-lined
scientific critics of the Gaia Hypothesis:
"To what extent is
our collective intelligence also a part of Gaia? Do we as a
species constitute a Gaian nervous system and a brain which can
consciously anticipate environmental changes?" [p147]
The Gaia Hypothesis has
often been described by commentators as one of the most provoking
singular ideas to have been put forward in the second half of this
century, and while it struggled to be formally accepted in the
fields of the traditional sciences in the 1970’s and early 1980’s,
it certainly managed to provoke its share of debate.
During this
period, Lovelock prepared for a second publication.
The Ages of
Gaia: [1988]
A Biography of Our
Living Earth
Almost a decade after having the first book prepared, and almost
twenty years since initially considering the nature of the living
systems which are clearly in evidence in operation within the
terrestrial ecosystems, Lovelock had published a second book,
entitled "The Ages of Gaia".
In this we find - naturally enough -
that the presentation of his ideas are more mature, researched and
informed. Moreover, the interconnectedness of the all the natural
terrestrial systems - not just the atmosphere - was beginning to
emerge in his consideration of those original questions.
We see Lovelock evolving and refining the specification of the
nature of Gaia:
"The name of the
living planet, Gaia, is not a synonym for the biosphere - that
part of the Earth where living things are seen normally to
exist. Still less is Gaia the same as the biota, which is simply
the collection of all individual living organisms. The biota and
the biosphere taken together form a part but not all of Gaia.
Just as the shell is part of the snail, so the rocks, the air,
and the oceans are part of Gaia.
Gaia, as we shall see, has
continuity with the past back to the origins of life, and in the
future as long as life persists. Gaia, as a total planetary
being, has properties that are not necessarily discernable by
just knowing individual species or populations of organisms
living together ...
Specifically, the Gaia hypothesis says that
the temperature, oxidation, state, acidity, and certain aspects
of the rocks and waters are kept constant, and that this
homeostasis is maintained by active feedback processes operated
automatically and unconsciously by the biota."
Lovelock goes on to say
...
"You may find it
hard to swallow the notion that anything as large and apparently
inanimate as the Earth is alive. Surely, you may say, the Earth
is almost wholly rock, and nearly all incandescent with heat.
The difficulty can be lessened if you let the image of a giant
redwood tree enter your mind. The tree undoubtedly is alive, yet
99% of it is dead.
The great tree is an ancient spire of dead
wood, made of lignin and cellulose by the ancestors of the thin
layer of living cells which constitute its bark.
How like the
Earth, and more so when we realize that many of the atoms of the
rocks far down into the magma were once part of the ancestral
life of which we all have come."
While the scientific
communities continued to debate the level of acceptability of the
Gaia Hypothesis, the global and holistic perspective of the concept
continued to capture the imagination of people from all walks of
life.
The indigenous cultures who saw the nature of earth as a
sacred spirit, others who sought the "oneness" in nature, those
concerned for the environment - the trees, the rivers and the
oceans, and those seeking contentious and revolutionary ideas, and
those seeking religious frameworks - to an increasing multicultural
and multidisciplined audience the concept of the Gaia Hypothesis was
nourished and supported as a New Age paradigm.
Multicellular Red Herrings flourished in the primordial seas of Gaian debate during the 1970’s and 1980’s [and of course still do to
a large extent] and while the non-scientific applicability of the
concept flourished far and wide, they tended to very much to reduce
the concentration upon the primary scientific issues of the
hypothesis, its analyses and the implications of these.
Largely however, these misunderstandings were unavoidable in the
initial statements of the specification of the hypothesis due to its
intrinsic holistic nature and the scope of the global concept which
it attempted to portray. Moreover, what was becoming clearer was
that the concept had applicability to many disciplines and to many
inter-disciplinary issues. The problem was in being specific.
Skeptics had argued (and still do) that this Gaia was teleological -
that it supposed the evidence of some design or purpose in the
nature of the biosphere - in particular the administration thereof -
and that this was contra to the accepted position of
Darwinian
evolutionary doctrine which supported natural selection.
Dr Lynn Margulis had much to reply in this area regarding the systematics of
Darwinian evolution in regard to the smallest and earliest of living
things upon the earth.
Yet in his research and in the above
publication, Lovelock countered this argument with ecological
considerations:
"Theoretical ecology
is enlarged. By taking the species and their physical
environment together as a single system, we can, for the first
time, build ecological models that are mathematically stable and
yet include large numbers of competing species. In these models
increased diversity among the species leads to better
regulation."
And then later,
elsewhere in the Ages of Gaia ...
"When the activity
of an organism favors the environment as well as the organism
itself, then its spread will be assisted; eventually the
organism and the environmental change associated with it will
become global in extent. The reverse is also true, and any
species that adversely affects the environment is doomed; but
life goes on."
But perhaps the most
popularly known counter-argument employed by Lovelock at this time
(in fact in 1983) was the systematic behavior of the theoretical
planet of Daisyworld which, like the earth, maintained its global
temperature reasonably constant in the face of time and the
increasing energy output of its sun.
Daisyworld
The following account of the Daisyworld is an extract from Guide
to the Blue Planet by M. Bjornerud, J. Hughes and
A. Baldwin, 1995.
I would therefore like to expressly thank Marcia Bjornerud and the Department of Environmental
Studies at Lawrence University for its original preparation:
"James Lovelock’s
Daisyworld is a hypothetical Earth-like planet, the same size as
Earth and orbiting the same distance from a star similar to
Earth’s Sun. Like our Sun, this star has grown progressively
brighter through time, radiating more and more heat. Yet the
surface temperature on Daisyworld has remained nearly constant
for most of the planet’s history.
This is because the biosphere
on Daisyworld, which consists only of dark-, light-, and
gray-colored daisies, has acted to moderate the temperature. The
daisies influence the surface temperature simply through their
albedo or reflectivity. Dark daisies absorb most of the Sun’s
heat; light-colored daisies reflect much of it back to space.
Gray daisies absorb about as much heat as they reflect.
But how
could the reflectivities of individual daisies affect the global
temperature?"
[A] Early in
the history of the planet, when the young Sun was still
relatively cool (see figure below), dark daisies would be the
fittest species, because clusters of them create local warm
spots that favor the growth of more daisies. Soon the planet
would be covered by dark daisies, and their collective effect
would be to increase the global temperature above what it would
have been in the absence of life
[B] When the dark daisies had established a comfortable
temperature, gray and white daisies would begin to take
advantage of the pleasant conditions. At first, gray daisies
would do better than light ones because clusters of reflective
light daisies wouldn’t be able to keep local temperatures warm
enough for survival.
Global
Temperature and Daisy Population
vs. Time & increasing Sun on Daisyworld
[C]
Eventually, the Sun’s output would reach the point where
unmoderated surface temperatures would exceed the maximum
tolerable to daisies.
[D] At this point, light-colored daisies would begin to
become the fittest species because clusters of them would create
cool spots that would favor the growth of more daisies. As
light-colored daisies spread, their collective effect would be
to decrease the global temperature well below what it would have
been in the absence of any life forms. In this way, individual
daisies, without knowledge of or concern for the planet as a
whole, would have acted to control the global environment.
[E] Finally, the heat produced by the Sun would be so
great that neither type of daisy would be able to moderate the
temperature, and all species would die out.
NOTE: In the
lower plot, shaded area indicates temperature range tolerable by
daisies.
Thus Lovelock attempted
to answer the critics who perceived Gaia to be teleological.
Daisyworld as depicted above is a model that shows the manner in
which a homeostatic state can be maintained by individual organisms
acting only in their own interests - affording the global system a
reasonably constant temperature range in the face of growing solar
strength.
The traditional physical earth sciences of geology, oceanography,
meteorology and geography had beforehand never seriously considered
or analyzed the complex nature of the ecological systems abounding
in their respective domains and cross-domain systems. However it is
interesting to note that James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis
acknowledge the geologist-physician James Hutton’s concept of a
living Earth as a forerunner to the Gaia hypothesis.
In fact,
James Hutton (1727–1797), often considered to be the father
of modern geoscience, authored the concept of the rock cycle, which
depicts the interrelationships between igneous, sedimentary, and
metamorphic rocks.
The upper part of the earth (mantle, crust and
surface) can be envisioned as a giant recycling machine; matter that
makes up rocks is neither created nor destroyed, but is
redistributed and transformed from one rock type to another. It was Hutton who suggested that the proper study of the Earth should be by
"geophysiology".
Just as human physiology can be viewed as a system of interacting
components (nervous, pulmonary, circulatory, endocrine systems,
etc), so too can the Earth be understood as a system of four
principal components (atmosphere, biosphere, geosphere, and
hydrosphere). Thus we find this more holistic approach the Gaian
specification being made by Lovelock’s use of this term "geophysiology"
for the investigations of Earth, life and ecological science. As
with human physiology, it emphasizes its biological base, the
perspective of the whole system, and an interest in systemic health.
In the same year (1988) that this second book was published, the
debates concerning the Gaia Hypothesis within the scientific
community were still in full swing, and it was therefore decided to
hold a symposium in relation to this matter, at which various
scientists had the opportunity of presenting papers.
The collective
information presented at this meeting was - three years later - to
become the substance of the third book concerning the Gaia
Hypothesis to which Dr James Lovelock had contributed.
Scientists on
Gaia - The Symposium [1988]
And the publication
Scientists on Gaia
Edited by
Stephen Schneider and Penelope Boston, MIT Press 1991
Clearly, as was evidenced at this symposium and in the resultant
publication, there existed a great range of scientific opinion on
the Gaia Hypothesis - dependant upon which issue of the concept was
being discussed. And this is not really surprising in consideration
of the implications of the hypothesis.
Implication in short ... That the Earth could be considered a vast
living system in its own right.
That such a meeting of eminent physical scientists would actually
convene over the discussion of such a matter would have been
inconceivable to the traditional physical scientist a mere
quarter-century earlier. In fact, just over one century earlier
(1882), James Clerk Maxwell, the founding father of the modern
physical sciences - specifically Electromagnetic Theory - published
a book entitled "Matter and Motion".
Although it was written in
non-technical terms for the aspiring nineteenth century "NewAge
scientist", owing to its easy presentation, clarity and methodical
exposition of the contemporary body of scientific knowledge, it was
to become one of the standard texts for all future physical
scientists - students and professors alike.
The very first article
of the introduction is as follows:
Article 1 -
Nature of Physical Science
Physical
Science is that department of knowledge which relates to the
order of nature, or in other words, to the regular succession of
events. The name of physical science, however, is often applied
in a more or less restricted manner to those branches of science
in which the phenomena considered are of the simplest and most
abstract kind, excluding the consideration of the more complex
phenomena, such as those observed in living beings.
And yet here in 1988, a
group of geophysical scientists convene a meeting over the Gaia
Hypothesis - the hypothesis which implies that the Earth may be
considered as a vast living system.
This would have been inconceivable - only prior to the time of
space-flight. As a direct consequence of space flight - and through
the technology of computerized image communications - for the first
time in his generic history, man was able to physically perceive his
native global terrestrial home from an extra-terrestrial vantage
point.
And if it was not the early pictures of the earth which captured the
attention of the planetary inhabitants, then it was the time in the
year of 1969 when the Eagle landed on the moon.
As a result of this symposium of 1988, while it was still clear that
the Gaia Hypothesis was not accepted by many of the contemporary
peers of Lovelock, it was equally clear that there was growing
support from the non-scientific members of the global community.
While the scientific community’s consideration of the Gaia
Hypothesis was being readied for entry into its second decade of
debate, the holistic ontology which it represented was eagerly
applied to an extremely wide spectrum of ecological and
environmental sciences, social sciences, intellectual and
philosophical movements and other not-specifically-intellectual
reforms which collectively grouped themselves - as a spectrum of
humanity through the prism of Gaia - as "New Age".
Certain claims concerning the Gaia Hypothesis could not be refuted -
in particular the claim that the biota has a substantial influence
over certain aspects of the abiotic world.
We thus find Lovelock
confident enough with the Gaia Hypothesis to the extent that he puts
it forward - not as a hypothesis - but as the Gaia Theory:
"Gaia theory is
about the evolution of a tightly coupled system whose
constituents are the biota and their material environment, which
comprises the atmosphere, the oceans, and the surface rocks.
Self-regulation of important properties, such as climate and
chemical composition, is seen as a consequence of this
evolutionary process.
Like living
organisms and many closed-loop self-regulating systems, it would
be expected to show emergent properties; that is, the whole will
be more than the sum of its parts.
Quite clearly, for many
scientists - feet firmly planted upon Earth - who were immediately
unprepared to relinquish the traditional scientific methodology,
there were many flaws in Lovelock’s arguments. However, it also
became evident at this symposium (Scientists on Gaia) that the Gaia
Hypothesis presented not just one but a range previously unrelated
issues concerning the complex nature of the global ecology.
This important point was addressed by James Kirchner (UC Berkeley).
His constructive criticism was that the Gaia Hypothesis may be
better viewed as a collection of related hypotheses, which could be
classified within a spectrum from weak Gaia (which related to the
known evidence of biochemical cycles) to strong (as a form of global
physiology). Hence the polarization of pro- vs. anti-Gaia scientists
is unnecessary and unproductive.
His preparation of this analysis
was well received by other critics as a suitable working definition
of terms, has been since commonly quoted in internet FAQ’s relating
to Gaia, and is set out below:
Kirchner’s
Spectrum of Gaian Hypotheses ... from Weak to Strong
Showing an approximate
indication of the measure of support from the scientific
community
|
The Hypotheses |
The specification of the
hypotheses |
STATUS |
INFLUENTIAL |
The biota has a substantial
influence
over certain aspects of the abiotic world. |
Supported |
CO-EVOLUTIONARY |
The biota influences the
abiotic environment,
and the latter influences the evolution of
the biota by Darwinian processes. |
Debated |
HOMEOSTATIC |
The interplay between biota
and environment is
characterized by stabilizing negative feedback loops.
|
Debated |
TELEOLOGICAL |
The atmosphere is kept in
homeostasis
not just by the biosphere, but in
some sense _for_ the biosphere.
|
Daisyworld |
OPTIMIZING |
The biota manipulates its
environment for the purpose
of creating biologically favorable conditions for
itself. |
Skeptical |
James W. Kirchner went
on to publish further critique in his article "The Gaia hypothesis:
can it be tested?" in Reviews of Geophysics 27:2, 223-235, 1989.
In
fact there is much traditional resistance to Gaia simply because it
is claimed that it is not a scientific hypothesis in the Popperian
sense as it cannot be falsified. On the other hand there are those
who would argue that the Popperian definition implies the
methodology of reductionism, and that reductionism may not be able
to fully define the quintessence of extremely complex and
inter-connected systems.
In response to such criticism Lovelock writes:
"Fortunately for
me I was brought up in that school of science that
believes in reading the books after rather than before an
experiment."
In conclusion to this
section relating to the debate and development of acceptance of
issues relating to Gaia during this 1988 Symposium, presentation of
papers and their later publication in a book entitled "Scientists on
Gaia" by Stephen Schneider and Penelope Boston (MIT Press).
The
following extract provides a summarization of the development of the
Gaia Hypothesis as at the 1990’s and attempts to delineate the
relationship between it and the traditional doctrinal stream which
has been named Earth System Science:
"For more than a
century students of the evolution of the living and nonliving
parts of the Earth have known that life influences the physical
and chemical characteristic of the planet. Nevertheless, the
dominant paradigm in earth sciences has been that inexorable
inorganic forces, such as changing energy output from the Sun,
collisions of the Earth with extraterrestrial bodies,
continental drift, or other orbital element variations have been
the principal driving forces behind climate twenty years ago.
James Lovelock and
Lynn Margulis coined the phrase the Gaia hypothesis to suggest
not only that life has a greater influence on the evolution of
the Earth than is typically assumed across most earth science
disciplines but also that life serves as an active control
system. In fact, they suggest that life on Earth provides a
cybernetic, homeostatic feedback system, leading to
stabilization of global temperature, chemical composition, and
so forth.
When first introduced in the early 1970s the Gaia hypothesis
attracted the most attention from theologians interested in the
possibility that the Earth controlled its environment on purpose
(i.e., teleological implications), from those looking for
"oneness" in nature, and from those defending polluting
industries, for whom the Gaia hypothesis provided a convenient
excuse whereby some collective set of natural processes would
largely offset any potential damages from human disturbance to
earth systems.
Although none of these aspects was underlined in
the scientific work of Lovelock and Margulis, these
nonscientific side issues diverted attention in the scientific
community away from a serious analysis of the Gaia hypotheses
and its implications.
By the mid 1980s,
Gaia advocates and detractors began a series of critiques and
counter-critiques, often carried out through third parties such
as television documentary producers One of us (Schneider) having
been party to such a debate came to realize the absurdity of the
situation in which an interesting and controversial idea like
the Gaia hypothesis was being debated largely in nonscientific
forums, if at all"
Earth System Science is
not entirely equivalent to the Gaia Hypothesis, although both take
an interdisciplinary approach to studying systems operations on a
planetary-scale.
Earth System Science seeks to understand the mass
and energy transfers among interacting components of the Earth
System (biosphere, hydrophere, geosphere, atmosphere, and
anthrosphere), which is not entirely synonymous to the the Gaia
principle which purports that for practical purposes it may be
useful to consider the earth as if it were a living organism.
Clearly however, the new
insights of global environmental and ecological modelling afforded
by the Gaia Hypothesis, now Theory, by Lovelock and
Margulis were
beginning to open up an entirely new range of research projects,
experimental programs and inter-disciplinary areas which beforehand
were inconceivable to the structure of the traditional physical
sciences.
In the closing years of the 1980’s and through the 1990’s many such
new research areas were to be formally chartered, and it is not
within the scope of this document to specify them all.
However, it
is perhaps interesting to see an example, and the following brief
account, given by Richard H. Gammon at Harvard University, concerns
the specification of "geophysiology":
The habitability of the
planet depends directly on the radiative/photochemical properties of
biologically produced trace gases, which together constitute less
than a percent of the total atmospheric burden.
These trace gases are
generally the volatile, often methylated products of microbial
metabolic processes occurring in low-oxygen sites in both
terrestrial and marine environments. The present atmospheric
composition, and consequently the present climate, reflects a
balance of the flux of these reduced volatile species (e.g., CH4,
CH3SCH3, N2O, reactive hydrocarbons, methyl halides) from microbial
sources vs. the subsequent dispersal, photochemical oxidation, and redeposition of degradation products as nutrients to the planetary
surface and awaiting microbes.
VENUS
|
EARTH
|
MARS
|
|
|
|
CO2
(95%) |
N (77%),
O (21%) |
CO2
(95%) |
The elucidation of the relevant chemical species, reactions, and
fluxes governing the natural recycling of the element essential for
life is the primary goal of the interdisciplinary research field
called "biogeochemistry."
The controversial hypothesis that the
living earth can best be understood as a self-regulating biochemical
system which controls, or at least strongly influences, the mean
state of the planet has stimulated recent research in which might be
called "geophysiology" or "biochemical climatology."
Such it was then, that at the closing years of the 1980’s, although
the Gaia hypothesis was still being debated from various traditional
scientific disciplinarian viewpoints, the concept itself had
promulgated a renewed research into the global (extra-terrestrial)
perspective of the living and the non-living terrestrial systems.
The seed of ideas and research which in the past, prior to space
flight and the Gaia Hypothesis, had fallen through the cracks of the
floor of the traditional scientific structures, were now being
caught in the newly spun networking of emergent inter-disciplinary
scientific fields, and were flourishing.
James Lovelock
- and the Gaia Theory - the 1990’s
To conclude this section on the presentation of the Gaia Theory and
its development, I would present two more recent quotations from the
continuing work by Lovelock in the publication of his ideas.
The
first is to be found in a book by the author Christian de Duve,
entitled "Vital Dust: A Cosmic Imperative" - Models assembled from
spare parts in review of which Lovelock comments:
"The distinguished
cosmologist Fred Hoyle made a rare error when he rejected the
possibility that life might have originated on the earth’s
surface. He thought it impossible for a living cell to evolve
from the mix of chemicals coating the surface of the new-formed
planet. He held this view strongly and said: such an event is as
unlikely as that of a Boeing 747 rising, ready to fly, from a
tornado-swept junk yard."
Further in this review,
and concerning the microbiological research results which had been
so supportive (in the work of Dr Lynn Margulis) of the Gaia
Hypothesis and Theory, Lovelock acknowledges the ground breaking
work of that field of science. Clearly, the advent of means whereby
the behaviour of extremely complex systems may be analyzed - via
data processing machinery - has assisted scientific understanding in
many fields, no less in the fields of the Life Sciences.
In 1989, James Lovelock prepared the Forward to a work by the writer
Elisabet Sahtouris entitled Earthdance: Living Systems in
Evolution.
Recently, the entirety of the work has been made
available on the web, with the author’s invocation of
To my planet and its people, and
the following continuation of Lovelock’s thoughts have been
extracted and are presented:
The Gaia hypothesis,
now accorded the status of Gaia theory, is maturing with
experience and the tests of time, not unlike the humans of this
book.
It is spurring a great deal of scientific research into
the geophysiology of our living planet. It is also spurring
philosophic conceptions of what it means to our species to be
part of a living planet. Some of these conceptions stay
carefully within the accepted limits of science; others have a
religious bent.
Most, especially
environmentalist conceptions, advocate for humanity, being
primarily concerned with human survival. A few, taking a clue
from my partner Lynn Margulis and myself, advocate for the
planet and the much maligned microbes with which the Gaian
system originated and which continue to do its basic work.
In the intervening
years, even in the short time since I wrote my own words about
Gaia being an unconventional topic, less eccentric scientists
than I have declared Gaia more conventional, meaning that Gaia
theory is now recognized as a legitimate and fruitful basis for
scientific investigation and is thus being brought into the
scientific fold. In our first account of Gaia as a system
neither Lynn Margulis nor I fully understood what it was we were
describing. Our language tended to be anthropomorphic and,
especially in my first book, Gaia, poetic.
Not surprisingly,
some scientists misunderstood our intentions and accused us of
saying that organisms acted from some in-built purpose to
regulate the planet’s climate and chemical composition. The
notion of purpose in natural systems is of course a scientific
taboo, a sin of heresy.
That heresy is avoided in the clearer
modern version, which is Gaia theory. This theory sees the
evolution of the material environment and the evolution of
organisms as tightly coupled into a single and indivisible
process or domain.
Gaia, with its capacity for homeostasis, is
an emergent property of this domain. There is no more need to
invoke notions of purpose or foresight in the evolution of this
domain than there is in the evolution of our own bodies within
Gaia
As the title of a recent article in Science put it, "No Longer
Willful, Gaia Becomes Respectable."
This means that Gaia
scientists will be constrained by bureaucratic forces, by the
pressures of tenure, and by the tribal divisions and rules of
scientific disciplines. That, in turn, means we will need some
antidote to the inevitable separations and constraints.
We will
need independent synthesizers and visionaries who can make sense
of the data produced by the scientific establishment and present
it to us in ways that make our living planet real to us within
the Gaian context and thus give meaning to our own lives and
those of our children and grandchildren.
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