On Tue, 3 Jun 2003, Ed Weick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> Robert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>>> Don't know about Gaia being 'new-agey.' I was thinking more in terms
>>> of James Lovelock's notion that 'earth, in all its interactions and
>>> transformations, added up to a single giant living system.'
>>
>> arthur
>>
>> I would make one change. An additional word. Random.
>
>I agree with Arthur. I read the Gaia stuff years ago and felt that the
>notion that the Earth and all it's living systems were somehow
>directional or purposeful is nonsense. The beauty of Gaia is that it is
>essentially chaotic and you never know where it is going next. Picture a
>very clever and very cerebral dinosaur. Could it have contemplated a
>world without it but with us?
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.
A living system is a special case of a CL system, where the
feedback is developed by the actions of organisms, which
behave actively to contribute to th feedback mechanisms,
allowing for much more and more rapid opportunities for
feedback subsystems to arise than in passive, inanimate
natural environments, where such systems can arise, but are
rare and of limited range and flexibility. Once a living
system is established, the requirements of the living components
tend to enhance and embellish the feedback aspects through
natural selection operating on a macrosopic scale on populations.
You have to distinguish the "hardnosed" core Gaia Hypothesis from
the froth whipped up around it by the soft-of-thinking.
-Pete Vincent
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