Section 4

Background Work of Others towards the Gaia Hypothesis

 

We have seen how over the last few decades Dr James Lovelock - independent atmospheric scientist and inventor - and Dr Lynn Margulis - prominently acclaimed microbiologist - have respectively continued to research and develop both the implications and the scientific specification for their collaborative Gaia Hypothesis.

We will now examine the earlier work of other researchers in one or other scientific fields which, at various times, have been attributed as being earlier pioneers in the overall introduction of the Gaia Hypothesis.

This section will cover reference to:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


James Hutton

"We find no vestige of a beginning, - no prospect of an end."

James Hutton

Theory of the Earth - 1790

James Hutton (1727-1797), the eminent 18th century gentleman farmer and founder 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. PETROLOGY, the study of rocks and their origins, is essentially the formal process by which we resolve the interrelationships expressed in the rock cycle. For more information on the rock cycle refer to the source of this information at the University of British Columbia.

James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis acknowledge the geologist-physician James Hutton’s concept of a living Earth as a forerunner to the Gaia hypothesis. It was Hutton who suggested that the proper study of the Earth should be known as "geophysiology".

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Gregory Bateson

"My central thesis can now be approached in words.
The pattern which connects is a metapattern. It is a pattern of patterns.
It is that metapattern which defines the vast generalization that, indeed, it is patterns which connect."

Gregory Bateson

Mind and Nature, a Necessary Unity (1979)

The works of Gregory Bateson (1904 - 1980) spanned the introduction of the Gaia Hypothesis. Bateson was an anthropologist, philosopher, photographer and filmmaker, naturalist, poet and author of a fair number of works. He was widely respected for his vision and statement of a systemic or cybernetic wisdom in relation to the dynamic mechanisms of nature. His writings have been the source of much environmental insight.

In his book Uncommon Wisdom: Conversations With Remarkable People by Fritjof Capra, we learn a little concerning the story-telling and writing style of Bateson:

"Since relationships are the essence of the living world, one would do best if one spoke a language of relationships to describe it. This is what stories do. ’What matters in stories is not the plot, the characters or the scenery. What matters is the relationships between them."
Refer Book Reviews: Social/Political by Daniel Redwood

Perhaps there are two best references on the web at present concerning Gregory Bateson: Firstly Candice Bradley, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Lawrence University in Appleton, and rsauzier’s reference pages at the University of San Francisco.

 

These two documents will also provide an index of various other documents current on the web concerning Gregory Bateson.

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Teilhard de Chardin

"But why should there be unification in the world and what purpose does it serve?
To see the answer to this ultimate question, we have only to put side by side
the two equations which have been gradually formulating themselves
from the moment we began trying to situate the phenomenon of man in the world:
Evolution = Rise of consciousness
Rise of consciousness = Union effected

Teilhard de Chardin

Le Phénomène humain, 1955

Geologist, paleontologist, Jesuit priest, and philosopher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) was born in Sarcenat, France.

 

He lectured in pure science at the Jesuit College in Cairo, was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 1911, and in 1918 became professor of geology at the Intitut Catholique in Paris. He went on paleontological expeditions in China and Asia, but his unorthodox ideas at that time led to a ban on his teaching and publishing. Nevertheless, his work in Cenozoic geology and paleontology became known, and he was awarded academic distinctions. His major work, Le Phénomène humain (written 1938-40, The Phenomenon of Humanity) was posthumously published. Based on his scientific thinking, it argues that humanity is in a continuous process of evolution towards a perfect spiritual state. From 1951 he lived in the USA.

In Le Phenomene Humain Teilhard de Chardin is clearly seen to be one of the earlier writers who have had great influence in the gradual generic formation of the foundations of the contemporary Gaia Hypothesis.

"The general gathering together in which, by correlated actions of the without and the within of the earth, the totality of thinking units and thinking forces are engaged - the aggregation in a single block of a mankind whose fragments weld together and interpenetrate before our eyes in spite of (indeed in proportion to) their efforts to separate - all this becomes intelligible from top to bottom as soon as we perceive it as the natural culmination of a cosmic process of organization which has never varied since those remote ages when our planet was young."

An extensive and interesting extract from de Chardin’s work is concluded with the following:

"The two-fold crisis whose onset began in earnest as early as the Neolithic age and which rose to a climax in the modern world, derives in the first place from mass-formation (we might call it a ’planetisation’) of mankind. Peoples and civilizations reached such a degree either of frontier contact or economic interdependence or psychic communion that they could no longer develop save by interpenetration of one another. But it also arises out of the fact that, under the combined influence of machinery and the super-heating of thought, we are witnessing a formidable upsurge of unused powers.


Modern man no longer knows what to do with the time and the potentialities he has unleashed. We groan under the burden of this wealth. We are haunted by the fear of ’unemployment’. Sometimes we are tempted to trample this super-abundance back into the matter from from which it sprang without stopping to think how impossible and monstrous such an act against nature would be.

When we consider the increasing compression of elements at the heart of a free energy which is also relentlessly increasing, how can we fail to see in this two-fold phenomenon the two perennial symptoms of a leap forward of the ’radial’- that is to say, of a new step in the genesis of mind?

In order to avoid disturbing our habits we seek in vain to settle international disputes by adjustments of frontiers - or we treat as ’leisure’ (to be whiled away) the activities at the disposal of mankind. As things are now going it will not be long before we run full tilt into one another. Something will explode if we persist in trying to squeeze into our old tumble-down huts the material and spiritual forces that are henceforward on the scale of a world.

A new domain of psychical expansion - that is what we lack. And it is staring us in the face if we would only raise our heads to look at it.

Peace through conquest, work in joy. These are waiting for us beyond the line where empires are setup against other empires, in an interior tantalization of the world upon itself, in the unanimous construction of a spirit of the earth.

For those interested in researching the works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin further there is a growing amount of references on the web, and one place to commence such a search is with a good search engine.


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Further Background to Gaia

"Ancient belief and modern knowledge have fused emotionally
in the awe with which astronauts with their own eyes and we by indirect vision
have seen the Earth revealed in all its shining beauty against the deep darkness of space.
Yet this feeling, however strong, does not prove that Mother Earth lives.
Like a religious belief, it is scientifically untestable
and therefore incapable in its own context of further rationalization."

Dr James Lovelock

There would be little contention that the ancient beliefs of mankind down through the Ages and under the sun of all Lands would not disagree in principle with the general principles of the Gaia Hypothesis.

 

The records of such belief and the worship of deities gave rise to the naming of the hypothesis GAIA.

Moreover, in modern times - today - the recorded beliefs, culture and religion of many of the non-western-culture native and indigenous peoples of the planet earth would attest to the principle of the ecological perspectives and veracity of the Gaia Hypothesis. One of the excellent resources in this area, besides the living within nature, is the 1992 publication "Wisdom of the Elders" - by Peter Knudtson and David Suzuki.

 

The work is a gathering of sacred stories and traditions from the indigenous cultures of the world; deeply profound ecological wisdom about our universe, our planet, and our physical and spiritual lives.

In this review it was decided to group such "evidence" under a separate presentation and this has been effected at Chapter 6 ... The Gaia Hypothesis, NewAge Movements & Ancient Revivals. The context of scientific specification presently demands only the generically established intellectual precedents which fall within the scope of the discipline in which the specification is to be outlined.

A hypothesis which examines the entire planetary processes as a living "super-organism" will naturally, under the contemporary scientific climate, find itself being criticized by many of the disciplines of science - largely due to its interdisciplinary nature.

The Gaia Hypothesis has had the effect - in the last quarter century - of engendering a great variety of interdisciplinary studies which are being readily accepted into the education processes of the more mainstream sciences.

 

As a global paradigm, the Gaia Hypothesis has a great deal of inertia in terms of scientific support. In terms of a new scientific paradigm, as has been discussed in the earlier chapters, there is still a great deal of debate and indeed misunderstanding concerning the nature of the systems which are required to be understood so that the specification of the hypothesis and theory might be outlined.

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