Susan Brassfield wrote:
>The Gaia Hypothesis is that the earth and everything on it as a whole is an
>interconnected system and that it is literally alive and sentient. If you
>here of a lab procedure that detects sentience, do let me know.
As I understand it, the idea of Gaia as a sentient being was a speculative
early adjunct to the theory, which Lovelock has since dropped.
"I recognise that to view the Earth as if it were alive is just a
convenient, but different, way of organising the facts of the Earth. I am of
course prejudiced in favour of Gaia and have filled my life for the past
twenty-five years with the thought that Earth may be alive: not as the
ancients saw her÷a sentient Goddess with a purpose and foresight÷but alive
like a tree. A tree that quietly exists, never moving except to sway in the
wind, yet endlessly conversing with the sunlight and the soil. Using
sunlight and water and nutrient minerals to grow and change. But all done so
imperceptibly, that to me the old oak tree on the green is the same as it
was when I was a child." (in "Gaia: The Practical Science of Planetary
Medicine", Gaia Books Limited, London, 1991, p.12.) [Quoted from:
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/users/philosophy/mave/guide/gaiath~1.htm]
I think the hypothesis that there are self-regulating (negative feedback)
mechanisms at work in Gaia (the Earth with its environment and biota) is
quite plausible and is open to scientific verification, though doubt has
been cast on the mechanisms so far proposed, such as the carbon cycle.
Perhaps, from an anthropic point of view, we should *expect* to see such
mechanisms, as without them the environment might have been too unstable for
intelligent life to evolve.
Viewing the Earth as a living organism may turn out to be useful. But, in
any case, it isn't a scientific theory.
Richard Wein (Tich)
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