Gaia
The Gaia hypothesis, conceptualized by James Lovelock in the early 1960s after the launch of Sputnik, theorizes that the planet Earth itself exists as a self-regulating, single organism called Gaia. Hired by NASA to design instruments capable of searching Mars for signs of life, Lovelock instead began exploring questions of why Earth is capable of supporting life. While lifeless planets are surrounded by atmospheres in chemical equilibrium, the gases of Earth’s atmosphere do not exist in equilibrium. As Evan Eisenberg describes it in The Ecology of Eden, Earth’s atmosphere, logically, should be composed somewhat similarly to the planets it lies between, but instead its composition is quite different: enter Gaia. Eisenberg explains Lovelock’s concept of Gaia in relation to physicist Erwin Schrödinger’s idea that living organisms resist entropy. Eisenberg elaborates, "An environment—a planet, to take a random example—in which life was present in force would itself show a reversal of entropy. In the universal flow toward physical and chemical equilibrium, the planet would be an island, a shoal, an eddy of strangeness" (263).
In essence, Lovelock’s hypothesis suggests that Earth resists chaos because it exists as an evolving host organism itself, allowing other life to inhabit it. As an organism, then, Earth’s resistance to entropy has allowed it to survive a multitude of harrowing events such as drastic climate changes and enormous meteor impacts. In the same sense, Earth as Gaia will continue to survive by evolving and regulating itself, though the life inhabiting it may not always survive its changes.
The Gaia hypothesis has met much resistance both from scientists as well as from non-scientists. From a Darwinian perspective, critics condemn the Gaia hypothesis based on its interactions with other planets. This argument claims that for Earth to be considered an evolving organism, it must first be in competition with other self-regulating planets and that those planets must be reproducing in order to have any sort of evolution (Eisenberg 266). Critics argue that without other life-sustaining planets ripe for competition and without the production of Gaia-like offspring, Earth cannot be considered an evolving entity. Still, it can be argued that not all living things have the biological ability to reproduce and that humans technologies may lead to the reproduction of Gaia through the colonization of other planets.
Another criticism of the Gaia hypothesis is that it dangerously complicates the relationship between humans and nature. If humans are to consider Earth as an organism that essentially has the ability to regulate itself and thus survive major traumas, ideas of the place or role of humans in nature become increasingly problematic. By allowing people to easily dismiss or even ignore the large impact humans and human technologies can have on nature. By shifting blame and responsibility from humans to Earth, a naïve interpretation of the Gaia hypothesis and of a self-saving planet without any human change only perpetuates the environmental woes societies face.
Though controversial, the Gaia hypothesis offers an interesting set of ideas for consideration concerning relationships between nature, humans, and science and technology. As Eisenberg suggests, "The Gaia hypothesis is not so much an answer as a question: Why is the earth such a nice place to live? Why has it stayed a nice place to live for nigh on three billion years?...Every ecologist knows that the net of cause and effect, of cost and benefit, is denser and finer than he ever can know. What the Gaia hypothesis does is remind him that the net entangles the whole planet—from the dance of ions three miles up to the heavings of magma three miles down" (268).
(see also anthropocentrism; see also ecology)