James Lovelock, Lynn Margulis and the Gaia Concept

One can argue that the Earth functions in many ways as a self-sustaining organism. Indeed, this is exactly the concept espoused by British biophysicist, geophysiologist, and inventor James Lovelock, who borrowed the name of the ancient Greek Earth goddess to name his theory.

Lovelock, who invented instruments used on Mars probes that searched for signs of life, has shown that the Earth’s atmosphere as it exists today could not have been created without the presence of life on the planet. He argues that the evolution of life itself, from simple early forms to those of today, has made the Earth “livable.”

Along with microbiologist Lynn Margulis, former wife of the late Carl Sagan and co-author of the Gaia Theory, Lovelock argues that life is as much a component of the Earth itself as are weather systems, plate tectonics, and ocean currents. (However, Margulis doesn’t call the Earth an actual organism, since organisms do not consume their own waste. Instead, she calls it an ecosystem, but appreciates why Lovelock prefers to consider it an organism (see http://www.edge.org/documents/ThirdCulture/n-Ch.7.html).)

And is this so hard to accept? After all, the body of every human being is itself the home to countless other organisms. Harboring myriad life forms, from intestinal flora to skin mites, each of us is, in a sense, an individual “world,” upon and within which legions of tiny creatures live and die in many generations over a single human lifespan.

For example, the body of every human being contains over 500 species of bacteria. Making up over 100 trillion cells, these bacteria actually far outnumber the body’s own cells, which number only a measly few trillion. Fungi and viruses are also along for the ride (see http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,65252,00.html).

Yet we humans are essentially unaware of the presence of any of these organisms (and the genes within them) inside and upon our bodies, except perhaps when illness strikes us.


Looking the other way, outward from our bodies to the planet itself, we may ourselves be no more than microbes or cells within the larger system or entity.

And if the Gaia “system,” like a living organism, can heal itself, perhaps we humans would be wise to make sure that our technology doesn’t prove too disruptive, or else the planet’s “immune response” might just eliminate us as a threat.

How could that happen? Perhaps in the form of catastrophic climate change triggered by the Greenhouse Effect, or in some other way that we haven’t even yet envisioned. In fact, Lovelock himself has predicted that global warming will force humans to retreat to the Arctic before the end of the 21st century (see Stuart Jeffries' article in The Guardian). He believes the human species will survive, although our civilization (like many others of the past) may not.

So perhaps there can be unforeseen advantages to smoothing the interface between our technology and the natural world we inhabit.

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