Concept
Gaia hypothesis
Overview
The Gaia hypothesis (), also known as the Gaia theory, Gaia paradigm, or the Gaia principle, proposes that living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a synergistic and self-regulating complex system that helps to maintain and perpetuate the conditions for life on the planet.
The Gaia hypothesis was formulated by the chemist James Lovelock and co-developed by the microbiologist Lynn Margulis in the 1970s. Following the suggestion by his neighbour, novelist William Golding, Lovelock named the hypothesis after Gaia, the primordial deity who was sometimes personified as the Earth in Greek mythology. In 2006, the Geological Society of London awarded Lovelock the Wollaston Medal in part for his work on the Gaia hypothesis.
Topics related to the Gaia hypothesis include how the biosphere and the evolution of organisms affect the stability of global temperature, salinity of seawater, atmospheric oxygen levels, the maintenance of the hydrosphere, and other environmental variables that affect the habitability of Earth.
The Gaia hypothesis was initially criticized for being teleological – implying the Earth purposefully maintains an atmosphere suitable for life – but this interpretation was rejected by Lovelock. The Gaia hypothesis continues to attract criticism, and today many scientists consider it to be only weakly supported by, or at odds with, the available evidence.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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If what is potential were to transform itself into actualization--which is absurd--its passage into actualization will have to involve at the very least a contemplation of something which is not merely potential, but actualized. Nevertheless, on the hypothesis that what is potential can permanently remain identical, it will of itself pass into actualization, and will be superior to the being which is potential only…
Plotinus, Plotinos
States what Gaia hypothesis is; the author is tied to Gaia hypothesis in the knowledge graph.
In the third place, we shall limit ourselves to the particular consideration of the principle itself. Each principle has reigned for a certain time, and when the whole system of the world has been explained from this special form, it is called a philosophical system. Its whole theory has certainly to be learned, but as long as the principle is abstract it is not sufficient to embrace the forms belonging to our…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy
States what Gaia hypothesis is.
[The theory of] _Pre-established Harmony_ may proceed in two different ways. It regards every organised being as generated by one of like kind, either as an _educt_ or a _product_. The system which regards generations as mere educts is called the theory of _individual preformation_ or the theory of _evolution_: that which regards them as products is entitled the system of _epigenesis_. This latter may also be…
Immanuel Kant, Kant's Critique of Judgement
States what Gaia hypothesis is.
Philosophers who discussed Gaia hypothesis
Related ideas
- Geology
- Homeostasis
- Hydrosphere
- Isaac Newton
- James Lovelock
- Environmental ethics
- Life
- Mediterranean Sea
- Organism
- Atmosphere
- Hypothesis
- Natural selection
- Nobel Prize
- Deep ecology
- Aldo Leopold
- Oxygen
- Planet
- Greek mythology
- Religion
- Richard Dawkins
- Sun
- Autopoiesis
- Stephen Jay Gould
- Nicolaus Copernicus
Place in the tradition
Part of Environmental ethics.