Gaia Theory: Earth as an Organism

When you were in school, you were probably told that the Earth is nothing more than a large, pretty much boring, chunk of rock on which thousands of species of fascinating organisms live, and that the most fascinating and worthwhile of all those organisms were human beings, because we have managed to invent nuclear bombs and color television sets. A man named James Lovelock begs to differ. Instead, he says the Earth is something called a superorganism, which means that it has the same self-regulating systems as a dog or a gerbil or a blade of grass.

Or you and me, for that matter.

Lovelock, an independent scientist who has been around for a very long time, has actually been saying this since the 1960s, but not a whole lot of people besides scientists and science-fiction writers and other types who are unreasonably curious about this sort of thing, have taken notice.

Lovelock's theory means you and I could be part of a very, very old organism, in the same way that a couple of your blood cells are part of, well, you.

Now, to the sort of person who absolutely has to be at the center of the universe, who has to believe a thing simply because that's what he has always believed, that little tidbit may not be welcome news. The idea that the Earth itself is an actual living, breathing organism carries with it all sorts of implications that a lot of people would really rather not think about. Like the fact that rugged American individualism may not, after all, be the natural order of things.

(Throw in the phrase "natural order of things" and it will send some people straight into a panic and make others too giddy for words.)

Also, the idea of a living, breathing Earth may suggest that there is some form of consciousness there and that consciousness may in the future begin to take a hand in all the things that are going on. Things it doesn't agree with. It may even attempt to stop certain activities. Such things are the stuff of disaster movies.

Those ideas aren't actually part of Lovelock's theory, although they are fun to think about. (The title "Gaia Gets Her Groove Back" comes to mind.) What Lovelock actually seems to be saying is this: Since oceanic algae seems to be regulating the atmosphere over the ocean, then it may just prove disastrous to we creatures who desperately need our atmosphere regulated, if we, say, wipe out that algae by dumping noxious chemicals into that ocean.

"Self-regulating" is one of those terms that people who write about the Gaia Theory love to use. It means that the amount of salt in the sea isn't something that happens randomly. Earth's life forms themselves decide--not by committee, mind you, which would be a very inefficient, if somewhat entertaining, way to go about things, as anyone who has ever written about governmental bodies knows--but in the same way your body decides how warm or cool it should be.

The Earth's temperatures have remained in that nice, comfy region in which life can thrive for the past several million years, even though the sun's luminosity has increased by 30 percent over that time. According to Lovelock's theory, this happens in much the same way your own body works to heat or cool itself so that the temperature of its environment doesn't cause too much of a change and you won't have to go lounge on a hot rock like an iguana.

The idea that oceanic algae is at least partially responsible for keeping things nice and comfy for you and me suggests that all life on Earth is somehow communicating with all other life, coming to agreement about the desired chemical composition of the atmosphere, temperature and a whole host of other important things. This, of course, happens on a less-than-conscious level. It's somewhat like the way a group of women living in the same house or working in the same office will "come to an agreement" about what week to have their periods, a fascinating thing to experience if you've never been in that situation.

The implications of Lovelock's ideas are staggering, and they bear thinking about. If we are indeed part of an entire and very ancient organism, then our fate may be more inextricably tied to the fates of all other life forms on the planet than we had originally thought. There may be more hope for keeping things going for the human race on this planet than we had originally thought as well.