Journal of Sustainability

By George Marinakis, George@JournalofSustainability.com

It has been nearly 30 years since Lovelock first published his book “Gaia: a new look at life on earth.” The “Gaia Hypothesis” gradually gained credibility through testing, and now exists as a spectrum of hypotheses. “Weak Gaia” asserts that biota affect the abiotic world. “Strong Gaia” asserts that biota manipulate their environment to make it favorable to themselves. Some Strong Gaiasts go so far as to assert that the earth is an organism.

There are two good reasons why the earth is not an organism.

1. There is only one earth.

Organisms do not exist in isolation. They exist in numbers. There are numerous cells in a body or a plant, numerous grizzly bears on earth, etc. They compete with each other and some mate. But there is only one earth. Moreover, an organism must occur within a group of competitively acting organisms of the same species, because isolated organisms are too susceptible of take over by new genetic variants or of disintegration due to genetic decay.

2. The earth has no DNA.

Living organisms have DNA to store hereditary material. The earth in contrast has no identifiable analog to the nucleotide or cell nucleus.

Similar objections can be raised regarding the hypothesis of whether ecosystems or ecological communities are organisms or phenotypes. Neither ecosystems nor communities have DNA. Although the living components of ecosystems and communities have DNA, the components as a totality have no joint information storage and process machinery.

If the earth is not an organism, what is it? I suggest ecosystems—such as the earth--are a form of protolife. Consider that the proposed characteristics of the hypothetical precursor to life, the protocell, are the same as ecosystems. They capture and transduce energy, sequester organic matter and ions from the environment, catalyze the synthesis of its components from the captured material, protect organic matter accumulated in its interior from dilution, and self-replicate. The earth may not be alive, but one day it might be, and that raises some very interesting ethical questions--the same ones raised by those who oppose abortion--about our duties to the earth.

What does this mean for those of you who worship Gaia? That is for you to decide. Faith is a different matter than science. Only one religion explicitly holds that religion must not contradict science, but that religion (to remain nameless) has its problems. Perhaps a more interesting question for you believers than whether the earth is alive, is whether the embryonic earth has a soul.

Further reading

Gorshkov, V.G., Makarieva, A.M., Gorshkov, V.V., 2004. “Revising the fundamentals of ecological knowledge: the biota–environment interaction.” Ecological Complexity 1, 17–36.

Marinakis, Y. 2007. “From quasi-organism to protolife.” Ecological Complexity 4(3): 102-112.

copyright Journal of Sustainability 2008 all rights reserved

• Main
• Archives
• Albums
• Links
• Admin

• Social Sustainability & Improved Standard of Living - Is it Achievable? Part 5.
• Social Sustainability & Improved Standard of Living - Is it Achievable? Part 4.
• Social Sustainability & Improved Standard of Living - Is it Achievable? Part 3.
• Social Sustainability & Improved Standard of Living - Is it Achievable? Part 2.
• Social Sustainability & Improved Standard of Living - Is it Achievable? Part 1.
• Is there any potential of increased environmental performance through ISO 14001 in manufacturing companies in Pakistan? Part 3.
• Is there any potential of increased environmental performance through ISO 14001 in manufacturing companies in Pakistan? Part 2.
• Is there any potential of increased environmental performance through ISO 14001 in manufacturing companies in Pakistan? Part 1.
• Nationalization as Privatization in Reverse: Understanding the Nature of the Commons to Identify a Possible Point of Optimal Nationalization, Part 4
• Nationalization as Privatization in Reverse: Understanding the Nature of the Commons to Identify a Possible Point of Optimal Nationalization, Part 3

• Issue 3 Number 1 [14]
• Issue 2 Number 4 [13]
• Issue 1 Number 4 [14]
• Issue 1 Number 1 [5]
• Issue 1 Number 3 [3]
• Issue 2 Number 3 [13]
• Issue 2 Number 2 [9]
• Issue 1 Number 2 [12]
• Issue 2 Number 1 [18]
• General [0]

• RSS 0.90
• RSS 1.0
• RSS 2.0
• Atom