Any purposefulness in Gaia in the minds of people, who perhaps haven't yet escaped the fear of the outside dark as they huddle around their fires.
The earth adjusts constantly, using negative feedback to restore equilibrium - rather like the market mechanism, which is also negative feedback.
It doesn't do this so that Man can live here. Rather, Man lives here because it happens to suit his survival. If it didn't, Man would not survive - even though we are particularly well suited for survival, being omnivorous, ubiquitous, and without natural restrictions on our breeding time.
Thus, in the late 70's, after 35 years of surface cooling (during increasing CO2) there was an abrupt change to surface warming. Something happened, conditions changed, and the earth's negative feedback began to adjust.
So, what happened? Perhaps studying this it's more important than studying who was killed this week in the Middle East.
We are well suited to survive, but I fear our built-in weaknesses will probably wipe us out the next time the mighty glaciers come rumbling out of the North.
No matter how much we pray, Gaia has no way of caring what happens to us. Better to get off our knees and think what can be done. I fear, by then, it will probably be too late. We'll be too busy arguing whether the conservatives or liberals will do a better job.
Harry
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Ed wrote:
Thanks, Pete, I believe I understand what you are saying, but doesn't Gaia imply some form of direction and purposefulness? An item on the James Lovelock website puts the matter this way:
"James Lovelock argues that such things as the level of oxygen, the formation of clouds, and the saltiness of the oceans may be controlled by interacting physical, chemical and biological processes. He believes that "the self-regulation of climate and chemical composition is a process that emerges from the rightly coupled evolution of rocks, air and the ocean - in addition to that of organisms. Such interlocking self-regulation, while rarely optimal - consider the cold and hot places of the earth, the wet and the dry - nevertheless keeps the Earth a place fit for life." The New York Times Book Review has called his arguments in favor of Gaia "plausible and above all illuminating." http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/
Note the use of the phrase "rightly coupled evolution" in the foregoing. 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.
Ed Weick
----- Original Message ----- From: "pete" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2003 11:28 PM Subject: Re: [Futurework] Gaia Hypothesis...
> > On Wed, 4 Jun 2003, Ed Weick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >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. > > These things are not mutually exclusive: the system as a whole > is inescapably closed looped, because of the finite size of > the ecology, which is the "sink" for all the actions of the > biota on the earth, but also their "source", so the ecology > is 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. > > 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. > > The Gaia system is a vastly complex netork of interacting feedback > paths, which have evolved to interact within a range of values > for lots of critical variables. The equilibria for the system are > metastable, that is, there are lots of different potential plateaux > of stability within the overall range, and the system is subject > to being knocked from any one such state to another by external > shock or mutation driven internal alteration of constituents of > the biota. The point of the theory is that the long development > time of the global-level selection processes for all the multiple > feedback paths make it likely that the overall system can recover > to one of its equilibria within its comfort zone from any such > perturbation. As far as the Gaia system as a whole is concerned, > mammals or dinosaurs, either work as well as the other their > niche in the system. The system as a whole is only concerned with > keeping its environment within the habitable range for earth brand > (DNA, amino acid, cellular)life in general, not life of any particular > variety of manifestation thereof - in fact, viewed in the time > scale where its operation is most apparent, all individual species > are churned as part of the process. > > Note, by the way, I'm only trying to express the theory as I > understand it. I don't know whether I buy it completely - I can > see how some individual instances of feedback paths can work, but > I don't know that that justifies developing the meta-level of an > overarching theory. That is, I don't know if that offers more > explanatory power than simply taking each case individually > and working out their interactions. It would seem the metatheory > implies a more extensive set of conclusions than you get from > treating its components as autonomous, but I don't know if they've > ever been articulated, let alone demonstrated. > > -Pete Vincent > > ----- 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
**************************************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of Social Science of Los Angeles Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 Tel: (818) 352-4141 -- Fax: (818) 353-2242 http://home.attbi.com/~haledward ****************************************************
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