But what if the system is not interacting and closed looped? What if each species (or family) looks after itself and promotes itself without enhancing or embellishing the others, but really crowding them out and getting rid of them to make room for itself? Gaia may not be primordially cooperative, but primordially inherently viciously competitive. My cerebral, intelligent dinosaur would never have thought that it (he or she) would ever be eclipsed, but there wase a little proto-mammal lurking near by, avoiding being eaten. Then along came a rock from outer space, landing in the Gulf of Mexico. Random? Absolutely.
Ed Weick ----- Original Message ----- From: "pete" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2003 6:20 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Gaia Hypothesis... > > 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 > > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
