Cosmologic philosophy: gaia is back (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, January 23, 2017, 16:16 (2861 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: An essay supporting the concept of a living Earth:

http://nautil.us//issue/44/luck/why-most-planets-will-either-be-lush-or-dead?utm_source...

QUOTES: "Studying Earth’s global biosphere together, Margulis and Lovelock realized that it has some of the properties of a life form. It seems to display “homeostasis,” or self‐regulation. Many of Earth’s life‐sustaining qualities exhibit remarkable stability. The temperature range of the climate; the oxygen content of the atmosphere; the pH, chemistry, and salinity of the ocean—all these are biologically mediated. All have, for hundreds of millions of years, stayed within a range where life can thrive. Lovelock and Margulis surmised that the totality of life is interacting with its environments in ways that regulate these global qualities. They recognized that Earth is, in a sense, a living organism. Lovelock named this creature Gaia."

"The scientific revolution has revealed us, as individuals, to be incredibly tiny and ephemeral, and our entire existence, not just as individuals but even as a species, to be brief and insubstantial against the larger temporal backdrop of cosmic evolution. If, however, we choose to identify with the biosphere, then we, Gaia, have been here for quite some time, for perhaps 3 billion years in a universe that seems to be about 13 billion years old. We’ve been alive for a quarter of all time. That’s something."

DAVID'S comment: I agree.

I’m not quite sure what you agree with, but this whole concept ties in very nicely with BBella’s view of the interdependence of ALL THAT IS. The rather grandiose idea that "we” have been here for a quarter of all time means nothing more than the fact that there has been life on Earth for some 3 billion years.(Not sure that I agree with "all time" either, but that's a different subject!) Margulis – to whose work you first introduced me – was a pioneer in the field of evolutionary cooperation and bacterial intelligence, and the Gaia concept seems to me to be a natural extension of these two lines of thought, as intelligence interacts with the environment. None of this, I feel honour bound to point out, has any bearing on the existence of God. Margulis was an agnostic.