Thanks, Steven and Pete. I guess it was Lovelock I read a very long time ago and I was then quite taken by the concept of Gaia. The one sentence in Stephen's posting that exemplifies what continues to bother me is the following:
"The Gaia Hypothesis proposes that our planet functions as a single organism that maintains conditions necessary for its survival." This does seem to imply both purpose and direction, the purpose being survival and the direction being the maintenance of the necessary conditions for this. I don't know if this implies some form of overarching intelligence or something that is random but within parameters held in place by some intentionallity, but it could suggest that. However, I'm now well beyond my depth, so I'll leave Gaia to do whatever it's doing. Ed Weick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stephen Straker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: "Ed Weick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "pete" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2003 7:07 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Gaia Hypothesis > Ed Weick wrote: > > > > Thanks, Pete, ... but doesn't Gaia > > imply some form of direction and purposefulness? > > When I first read Lovelock (long ago) it seemed to me he was > making a kind of *homeostasis* argument about the earth as a > whole - which is, of course, not particularly religious nor > even directional. (I take it "tightly coupled evolution" > means nothing more than that changes in one system or part > of a system affects the rest.) In other words, what Pete V > wrote seems right to me. > > pete wrote: > > Not directional or purposeful, in the sense of consciously goal > > oriented, simply persistent and self-correcting, by negative > > feedback, as a closed loop system in the systems engineering sense. > ... > > ... circumscribed like a yeast colony in sugar syrup whose > > population is self limiting because the alcohol it excretes > > pervades its environment and is toxic above a threshhold > > concentration... > > An on-line Oceanography course I had at hand puts the matter > this way: > > "The Gaia Hypothesis proposes that our planet functions as a > single organism that maintains conditions necessary for its > survival. Formulated by James Lovelock in the mid-1960s and > published in a book in 1979, this controversial idea has > spawned several interesting ideas and many new areas of > research. While this hypothesis is by no means > substantiated, it provides many useful lessons about the > interaction of physical, chemical, geological, and > biological processes on Earth." > Overview > http://www.oceansonline.com/gaia.htm > > I also remembered a pre-Lovelock essay by Lewis Thomas in > which he speculated about the earth as an organism, and sure > enough I found the pertinent passage right away on the web: > > "I have been trying to think of the earth as a kind of > organism, but it is no go. I cannot think of it this way. > It is too big, too complex, with too many working parts > lacking visible connections. The other night, driving > through a hilly, wooded part of southern New England, I > wondered about this. If not like an organism, what is it > like, what is it most like? Then, satisfactorily for that > moment, it came to me: it is most like a single cell." > - Lewis Thomas in The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology > Watcher > > BTW - There is a lovely *illustrated* version of the essay > on-line at: > "The World's Biggest Membrane" > http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~phys203/lewisthomas/membrane.html > > As for design - > > > The concept as a whole seems to come pretty close to the intelligent design > > movement in current Christianity, the major difference being, I suppose, > > that man is the center in the ID movement, but may be unnecessary in Gaia. > > - I can't see at all why "an intelligence" needs to be > invoked to explain how it could be that there are organisms > with feedback loops such that they don't get knocked around > everytime something in their environment jiggles, nor to > explain how the earth could be that a system with a number > of meta-stable equilibrium states. > > Stephen Straker > > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Vancouver, B.C. > [Outgoing mail scanned by Norton AntiVirus] > > > _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
