Dreaming of Gaia… how interconnected are we?…
The surface of the planet ‘Solaris’New Worlders who’ve scanned some of my previous posts will know that I profess atheism, at least in any Biblical sense… but we’ve also discussed the phenomena of ‘emergence’ and ‘complexity’, some basic understanding of which have only emerged (if you will) in the past few decades… Also intriguing to me are discoveries in the so-called ‘hive behaviours’ of bees, ants and related species, of ‘flocking’ and ‘schooling’ in birds and fish… all surely amazing examples of emergent properties…
In the 1970′s, James Lovelock, formerly a NASA researcher tasked with studying ways of detecting life on Mars, first put forward an idea merging concepts arising from ecological studies and his own intimations of emergence and interaction… an idea he first called ‘Earth Feedback’. Fortunately for us all, his neighbour happened to be the Nobel Prize winning novelist William Golding (‘Lord of The Flies’), who suggested the ancient Greek Earth goddess ‘Gaia’ as a better descriptor… Thus, the ‘Gaia Hypothesis’ was born…
There are really two ways of looking at the ‘Gaia’ idea; what I’ll call the ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ Gaia Hypotheses. I think most educated people would accept the ‘weak’ version, stipulating that an extremely complex ‘web of life’ exists on this planet, and acknowledging that ‘pulling’ on or damaging any one part, even a small one, can have far-reaching and unintended consequences to this ‘web’ as a whole.
But the ‘strong’ form of ‘Gaia’ is downright spooky in its implications! It suggests that there is actually some kind of a ‘field of consciousness’ that somehow permeates our planet (or at least the near-surface) as a WHOLE. That the Earth might actually be able to ‘think’ or ‘feel’ is a step (or several) too far for most researchers, and any so-called ‘proof’ of such a view is extremely tenuous at best! On its face, it sounds like so much ‘New Age’ wishful claptrap! The whole PLANET as a living, conscious organism? Absurd!… Or is it?
Like many denizens of this New Worlds ‘microverse’ ;-}, I’ve read Science Fiction since childhood. My own Dad was an early fan of Asimov and Clarke and Van Vogt… and Stanislaw Lem. And I devoured those books! (Arthur C. Clarke’s “Childhood’s End” went a long way toward defining my (anti) religious outlook)… So no, not so much the shoot-’em-up, giant hideous alien attacking the fetching female stuff (although that can be fun too ;-}), but the stories that put forth real IDEAS. I needn’t list the authors, I trust we all know what we’re talking about here… CONCEPTS!
(I’ll just mention that several of the modern writers’ names start with a ‘B’ ;-})
One novel that predates the ‘Gaia Hypothesis’ but brilliantly foreshadows the relevant concepts is ‘Solaris’ (1961) by Polish writer Stanislaw Lem (1921-2006). ‘Solaris’ was made into an outstanding Soviet film in 1972 (‘Солярис’) and more recently into an rather bad one (which totally misses the point!) in 2002 (starring George Clooney)… See the Russian film, skip the American one! PLEASE! ;-}
But as cinema is wont to do, even Tarkovsky’s film tends to focus on human relationships and feelings (ie: guilt as is perhaps to be expected from the Russians anyway;-}) and they somewhat soft-pedal the hard science and philosophy… So I strongly recommend reading (or re-reading) Lem’s original book. It’s only about 200 pages long…. And dig that original Polish>French>English translation (1970) paperback cover! Psychedelic!:
Without (I hope) giving too much away, central to story is the fact that the entire fictitious planet of ‘Solaris’ is sentient… and, being aware, it curiously tries to probe the minds of its Earthly visitors… to amazing and horrifying result! Thus, well before science had admitted the mere glint of possibility, Comrade Lem was onto the basic ‘Gaia’ concept!
So, just for a moment, I invite you to suspend disbelief and entertain a few wild possibilities:
What If… Bees or Ants, as a collective, were somehow able to achieve actual consciousness? A sort of ‘hive mind’ if you will. We have an inter-communicating mass of thousands or even millions of ‘functional units’… in other words, a very complex NETWORK… is it possible?
What If… the ‘strong’ Gaia Hypothesis is true? What if the Earth somehow ‘knows’ when something is ‘wrong’ and could actually ACT to counter the problem… and What If the ‘problem’ turns out to be US? Homo sapiens?… oops!
And finally, to take the BIG leap, What If… these hypothetical ‘networks’ are not constrained or limited to just our provincial Earth? What If… INTERSTELLAR networks of life, and (since I’m ‘blue skying’ here) even CONSCIOUSNESS actually exist?… What If… beyond our psychological fear of death… there really IS something to that feeling that we (well, some of us) sometimes get that EVERYTHING is interconnected? What If… there is MORE than what we can currently perceive and measure… maybe even a LOT MORE??
Just sayin’… ;-}
What do YOU think?
Oh, this is all just wild speculation. Why, I was having a chat with Andromeda yesterday, and it was saying that M366 was saying that superclusters were obviously not intelligent, since they can’t even talk, not to mention the idea that the universe and all those other universes are chatting it up, get your feet back on the ground, man, only galaxies are human.
milky way whirly
eyes bright and pearly
s’got an itch right chere
curls a arm to scratchit
n’we fell out
Comment on July 19, 2010 @ 9:46 am
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Yes… I guess what bothers me is that some of our scientists still cling to the belief that the HUMANS on Earth are somehow ‘aware’… This is transparently absurd on its face!
If the species in question (‘Homo sapiens sapiens’… “man who THINKS he knows”… REALLY, the very name says it!) had actually achieved real consciousness, they would most certainly NOT be destroying their OWN planet which such gleeful abandon! Such a waste! Clearly, if there were any actual intelligence there, they would not be rushing like earth-lemmings to the figurative “cliff” edge in an apparent suicide mania!…
We’ve seen this sort of thing in the galaxy before… A species reaches just a tiny glimmering of awareness, and within only a few thousand orbital periods they blow themselves up in violent paroxysms of self-destruction!
I know we scold our younger offspring for ‘buzzing’ (as the ‘teeners’ like to say) these benighted creatures in their runabouts on weekends, but secretly… I must admit that it IS pretty humorous!… and what’s UP with these idiot creatures always demanding that we insert something they call a ‘probe’ into their excretory orifice? Such incomprehensibility!
Oh well, Earth is one problem that we can be confident will ‘take care’ of itself!
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Comment on July 19, 2010 @ 5:06 pm
Back in the ’80s I was taken with the idea of Gaia adapting itself and doing what was needed to survive and keep itself healthy. Even then, there was concern about the health of the planet due mostly to pollution (acid rain, etc.) and he said, well, then we won’t have to worry about the environment, the earth will take care of it for us. I looked at him with amazement. “I said Gaia will take care of itself, I didn’t say it would take care of us humans.”
Comment on July 20, 2010 @ 9:15 am
If only we were all as wise as Stan Lee. I believe it is wrong to understand the species of our world as humble constituents of a greater entity, each plant or creature happy to play its part in maintaining the balance. All struggle to survive. All strive to flourish. Given suitable circumstances, any species will invade a new habitat or overpopulate its existing home. This was true long before the first hominid walked the Earth, and it remains true today.
What makes humanity different is the power of ideas. We can bring fire to lands without warmth. We can raise crops, even herd animals, where indigenous life would otherwise provide much less food. We can synthesize medicines to extend our lives. For many generations, we have increased the density of our populations and invaded new habitats. This is, after all, what animals do.
Most recently, we naked apes have even made some small start at distinguishing between ecologically sustainable and unsustainable behaviors. All that we need to find harmony with our environment is to achieve consensus around the application of a particular bit of wisdom with our own ways of life. The wisdom at issue — “with great power comes great responsibility.”
Comment on July 20, 2010 @ 10:42 am
Pondering Sherry’s concluding quote and DW’s together, the question becomes, how much of Gaia our we as humans? If humans are a disproportionately powerful component of Gaia and humans are not wise and responsible, how much then is Gaia? Maybe if a blundering fool of a species is leading the direction taken by the greater Gaia, she cannot be assumed to automatically do the wise and nurturing thing for our species or any other.
OTOH, maybe it’s just a question of time frame. In the long run, human’s involvement may be a case of Gaia going on a weekend bender and waking up with a wicked hangover and a few brain cells (us and a few thousand or so other species) killed off in the process. Hopefully she’ll learn something from the mistake.
Comment on July 20, 2010 @ 11:16 am
Well, I should probably emphasise that I don’t necessarily buy the ‘strong’ Gaia idea… I was engaging in a ‘what if’ exercise. But it surely is an intriguing concept… and true or not, I find it a useful perspective that should inform our relationship with our planet…
We ARE a part of the Earth, as are all other flora and fauna, and so to that extent we ARE Gaia! But WE (well some of us anyway) are REASONING critters, and so bear a greater responsibility. So I completely concur with Demonweed’s Spidey credo!
Comment on July 20, 2010 @ 12:03 pm
[...] I pointed out in my “Dreaming of Gaia…” post, Lem prefigured the concept of the “Gaia [...]
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[...] previous posts that touch on these fascinating topics: “dreaming of becoming human” and “Dreaming of Gaia… how interconnected are we?…” (it seems I must spend a lot of time ‘dreaming’ [...]
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