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The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth (Commonwealth Fund Book Program)

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"The Ages of Gaia" by James Lovelock

What is the Gaia Hypothesis? Stated simply, the idea is that we may have discovered a living being bigger, more ancient, and more complex than anything from our wildest dreams. That being, called Gaia, is the Earth.

More precisely: that about one billion years after it's formation, our planet was occupied by a meta-life form which began an ongoing process of transforming this planet into its own substance. All the life forms of the planet are part of Gaia. In a way analogous to the myriad different cell colonies which make up our organs and bodies, the life forms of earth in their diversity coevolve and contribute interactively to produce and sustain the optimal conditions for the growth and prosperity not of themselves, but of the larger whole, Gaia. That the very makeup of the atmosphere, seas, and terrestrial crust is the result of radical interventions carried out by Gaia through the evolving diversity of living creatures.

Encountering the Earth from space, a witness would know immediately that the planet was alive. The atmosphere would give it away. The atmospheric compositions of our sister planets, venus and mars, are: 95-96% carbon dioxide, 3-4% nitrogen, with traces of oxygen, argon and methane. The earth's atmosphere at present is 79% nitrogen, 21% oxygen with traces of carbon dioxide, methane and argon. The difference is Gaia, which transforms the outer layer of the planet into environments suitable to its further growth. For example, bacteria and photosynthetic algae began some 2.8 billions of years ago extracting the carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen into the atmosphere, setting the stage for larger and more energetic creatures powered by combustion, including, ultimately, ourselves.

That is how James Lovelock discovered Gaia; from outer space.In the 1960's, during the space race which followed the launching of Sputnik, he was asked by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Nasa to help design experiments to detect life on Mars.The Viking lander gathered and tested some Martian soil for life with no results. Lovelock had predicted as much, by analyzing the atmosphere of Mars: it is in a dead equilibrium. By contrast, the atmosphere of Earth is in a "far from equilib rium" state- meaning that there was some other complex process going on which maintained such an unlikely balance. It occurred to him that if the Viking lander had landed on the frozen waste of antarctica, it might not have found any trace of life on Earth either. But a sure giveaway would be a complete atmospheric analysis... which the Viking lander was not equipped to do. Lovelock's approach was not popular at Nasa because Nasa needed a good reason to <I> land </I> on Mars, and the best was to look for life. Viking found nothing on Mars, but Lovelock had seen the Earth from the perspective of an ET looking for evidence of life. And he began thinking that what he was seeing was not so much a planet adorned with diverse life forms, but a planet transfigured and transformed by a self-evolving and self-regulating living system.By the nature of its activity it seemed to qualify as a living being. He named that being Gaia, after the Greek goddess which drew the living world forth from Chaos.

"The name of the living planet, Gaia, is not a synonym for the biosphere-that part of the Earth where living things are seen normally to exist. Still less is Gaia the same as the biota, which is simply the collection of all individual living organisms. The biota and the biosphere taken together form a part but not all of Gaia. Just as the shell is part of the snail, so the rocks, the air, and the oceans are part of Gaia. Gaia, as we shall see, has continuity with the past back to the origins of life, and in the future as long as life persists. Gaia, as a total planetary being, has properties that are not necesarily discernable by just knowing individual species or populations of organisms living together...Specifically, the Gaia hypothesis says that the temperature,oxidation, state, acidity, and certain aspects of the rocks and waters are kept constant, and that this homeostasis is maintained by active feedback processes operated automatically and unconsciously by the biota."

Even the shifting of the tectonic plates, resulting in the changing shapes of the continents, may result from the massive limestone deposits left in the earth by bioforms eons ago.

"You may find it hard to swallow the notion that anything as large and apparently inanimate as the Earth is alive. Surely, you may say, the Earth is almost wholly rock, and nearly all incandescent with heat. The difficulty can be lessened if you let the image of a giant redwood tree enter your mind.The tree undoubtedly is alive, yet 99% of it is dead.The great tree is an ancient spire of dead wood,made of lignin and cellulose by the ancestors of the thin layer of living cells which constitute its bark. How like the Earth, and more so when we realize that many of the atoms of the rocks far down into the magma were once part of the ancestral life of which we all have come."

The root question of Gaia's critics, and a central point in his theory concerns the difference between a planetary environment which might only be the aggregate result of myriad independent life forms coevolving and sharing the same host, and one which is ultimately created by life forms deployed, so to speak, to accomplish the purpose of the larger being. Is the idea of Gaia only a romantic and dramatized description of the terrestrial biosphere and its effects, or is there a planetary being, whose life cycle must be counted in the billions of years, which spawns these evolving life forms to suit the purpose of its being. Do our kidney cells ask each other these sorts of questions? While your white blood cells thrive and reproduce, going about their business,they are indisputably serving the life of the larger body which you use, though whatever consciousness they experience in their realm is certainly far from that which you, the larger being, the whole, experience.

Recent scientific work, such as in the field of complex systems, have begun to give us the impression that this opposition of terms, the larger caused by its constituents, or the costituents created by the larger, may be one of those oppositions which are the constructs of our own minds, and must be dropped if we are to understand the truth, which is neither the one nor the other, but more difficult to comprehend and more fascinating to behold. Perhaps there is awareness appropriate at every level.Perhaps that is a property of life.

And what might be the nature of its evolution, this planetary being called Gaia? Anthropocentrists to the last, we might assume that the production of the human species is a great step upward for Gaia, a sort of rapidly evolving brain tissue. Or that she prepares the earth as a cradle and crucible of consciousness evolving. Other analogies come to mind: are we part of her arsenal of interplanetary spores?

And what might constitute a life cycle for such a being- might it be as strange as that of the slime mold? What stage would Gaia be in now? Is our species part of her maturity or an incubation period? Is Gaia herself somehow part of a larger living being, perhaps on a galactic scale? If so how do the cells of this larger being remain in communication? Will we eventually be able to experience something of the awareness which Gaia has?

Lovelock points out that Gaia, being ancient and resourceful enough to have carried out these successive changes of the planet in spite of asteroid collisions and other setbacks, is herself probably not endangered by the relatively momentary depradations of the human species, as it befouls and cripples the bio-dynamics of its environment. Rather,the danger is to the human rac

Imagine living in Europe during the Dark Ages, when everyone thought the world was flat, and having someone demonstrate to you that the world is a sphere. In our modern version of the Dark Ages of the environment we are under the delusion that our Earth is lump of rock inhabited by life. Lovelock shows that the Earth is a living, self-regulating system comprised of all of life tightly coupled with its environment. He traces the 3.5 billion year life of the Earth as a living entity in an easy and enjoyable to read fashion. If we as a species are fortunate enough to survive the next 1000 years it will be because this book was recognized as the most important ever written in the 20th century. For you Gaia theory buffs out there: The Gaia theory dawned on Lovelock when he was having a conversation with Carl Sagan and some other colleagues.

The Ages of Gaia is not just the story of Gaia and how she was discovered, but also the adventures of an individual scientist vs. the scientific establishment and the adventures of a British land-lover vs. the political establishment. It also is a gentle warning to the passengers on spaceship Earth, a.k.a. Gaia, that the spaceship is not in danger, the passengers are!

Gaia is not a living creature. Gaia is a self regulating habitat that favors denizens that manage to get along harmoniously and hinders those that don't. There are no reasons or theologies given for this behavior. As Ayn Rand might have said: it is the nature of Gaia to be like she is. Gaia is what our senses perceive and what our reason understands. Gaia does not play favorites.

The only chapter that put me to sleep was the one about god and Gaia. Maybe you'll find it interesting. I tried twice to read it but to no avail.

James Lovelock's The Ages of Gaia, a Biography of the Living Earth, fleshes out his idea that all of life on Earth--including the rocks--is in fact one living self-regulating organism.
Is this even possible? To illustrate how it might work, Lovelock postulates a simple model of light and dark colored daisies, called Daisyworld, where populations of daisies increase and decrease according to how much sunlight the planet receives. His argument moves back to the Archean age approximately 3.6 billion years ago where the first bacteria-like rudiments of life appeared. In an explanation which is heavy on the chemistry, and somewhat beyond me, Lovelock explains how our present self-sustaining world balancing oxygen and carbon dioxide used and expelled by plants and animals could develop and adapt to changes in the sun's intensity.
The Ages of Gaia contains a subtle but firm warning that we humans are changing the fabric of life on our planet, and setting the stage for what may well be (for humans and animals of our ilk) a stark uninhabitable world.

Outside of some rudimentary internet research, this is the first I've read of Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis. Despite the name (which I initially thought sounded like some kind of pop eco-philosophy a neohippy type might come up with), I was surprised at the professional, technical nature of his writing.

Lovelock hypothesizes that the planet Earth is essentially a living being, whose complex biosphere regulates such things as the chemical makeup of the atmosphere (affecting, in turn, the global climate). He compares the Earth -- with its atmosphere largely comprised of nitrogen and oxygen -- to the carbon-heavy atmospheres of "dead" Venus and at least mostly "dead" Mars.

Since Darwin's time, we've known that the environment causes organisms to evolve. Lovelock argues that the opposite is also true, and he cites many examples to support this idea. Previous mass extinctions, he says, have been the result of calamities (such as asteroids and meteorites) that temporarily threw the biosphere out of control. The current mass extinction event is an anomaly -- an individual species run amok. (Homo sapiens, therefore, are something akin to cancer cells on this giant creature.)

Lovelock's background in chemistry gives him an interesting perspective for the author of a book about ecology. He goes beyond the "this is the food chain" level and delves into the chemical nature of the biosphere and the regulatory effects these chemical changes have on the planet as a whole. Furthermore, Lovelock labels himself a "planetary physician," and urges others to become the same.

If nothing else, the analogy of the Earth as a living thing could easily serve as an excellent tool for managing the environment in the same way an automobile enthusiast may think of his car as a living thing, or -- ironically -- an athlete may think of his body as a machine. "First, do no harm" is a great first step in solving many environmental issues, and the world could certainly use more "planetary physicians."

Great book-Lays out the importance of Gaia, the living earth and the complementary efforts of all the living plants and animals on the planet in exercising chemical feed back loops which keep the atmosphere compatible with life. Only the "intelligent species", human beings, have the ability, through our collective stupidity and short term greed to destroy the feed back loops and the atmosphere. Life and Gaia will survive, hopefully without humans.

A fabulous look at why the planet Earth is alive and how she helps sustain life. Without Life existing on Earth Gaia would not exist, and if Gaia did not present the proper conditions, nothing on planet earth would be alive. Mr Lovelock does a great job of presenting the information to us and gives us a great deal about which to comtemplate!

Everyone should be enlightened about the idea of Gaia, the earth and the life on it are all part of one greater living organism. Pretty cool.

Lovelock's adventure into the theory of Gaia is an interesting experience that is worth the read. I found his ideas to be well constructed and factually backed up. It definently helps in providing a new way of looking at not only the earth, but also science in general. The only drawback was that sometimes he seemed to be more concerned with trying to denounce his critics than actually providing interesting and constructive opinions.