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Topic: Gaia hypothesis


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  Gaia Hypothesis
Gaia, as we shall see, has continuity with the past back to the origins of life, and in the future as long as life persists.
Gaia, as a total planetary being, has properties that are not necesarily discernable by just knowing individual species or populations of organisms living together...
Is the idea of Gaia only a romantic and dramatized description of the terrestrial biosphere and its effects, or is there a planetary being, whose life cycle must be counted in the billions of years, which spawns these evolving life forms to suit the purpose of its being.
erg.ucd.ie /arupa/references/gaia.html   (1374 words)

  
 The Gaia Hypothesis   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
Gaia is theorized to be a living entity that is greater than the sum of all the living and non-living aspects of the Earth.
Gaia makes modifications to itself as necessary in order to keep itself "running smoothly" for as many of it's "aspects" as possible (be them specific organisms such as humans or entire ecosystems such as the oceans).
Gaia does not have an "anthrocentric" (centered on humans) perspective and we are only one small part of the overall entity that Gaia is theorized to represent.
www.soest.hawaii.edu /GG/ASK/gaia.html   (386 words)

  
 The Gaia Hypothesis
Gaia, as a total planetary being, has properties that are not necessarily discernible by just knowing individual species or populations of organisms living together.
The Gaia hypothesis...suppose(s) that the atmosphere, the oceans, the climate, and the crust of the Earth are regulated at a state comfortable for life because of the behavior of living organisms.
Specifically, the Gaia hypothesis said that the temperature, oxidation state, acidity and certain aspects of the rocks and waters are at any time kept constant, and that this homeostasis is maintained by active feedback processes operated automatically and unconsciously the biota.
www.kheper.net /topics/Gaia/Gaia_Hypothesis.htm   (1086 words)

  
 THE GAIA HYPOTHESIS: IMPLICATIONS FOR A CHRISTIAN POLITICAL THEOLOGY OF THE ENVIRONMENT
Gaia is significant because it fuses scientific insight and religious imagination in a potentially energizing and transformative way, challenging persons across a broad spectrum of disciplines to deal in an integrative fashion with the ecological crisis.
Though a scientific theory, the Gaia hypothesis has, since its initial articulation in 1969, sparked a swirl of religious, New Age, and philosophical reflection, and challenged certain long-held assumptions about evolution, the importance of the human in determining environmental change, and the relationship between life and the environment.
For Thomas Berry, a Passionist priest and "geologian," the wellsprings of the Gaia theory are part of a continuum through which a new sense of the sacredness of the cosmos is emanating from modern science.
www.crosscurrents.org /Gaia.htm   (5505 words)

  
 Gaia - Crystalinks
Gaia theory is a class of scientific models of the biosphere in which life fosters and maintains suitable conditions for itself by affecting Earth's environment.
Gaia theory is about the evolution of a tightly coupled systems whose constituents are the biota and their material environment, which comprises the atmosphere, the oceans, and the surface rocks.
To me the energies of Gaia - represent the heart chakra - the feminine - the higher frequencies - the blue ray - blue frequency - that which is shifting us into higher conscious awareness at this time in her history.
www.crystalinks.com /gaia.html   (1707 words)

  
 GAIA Hypothesis   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
Lovelock defines Gaia "as a complex entity involving the Earth's biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet." Through Gaia, the Earth sustains a kind of homeostasis, the maintenance of relatively constant conditions.
The key point here is the hypothesis that the Earth acts as a single system - it is a coherent, self-regulated, assemblage of physical, chemical, geological, and biological forces that interact to maintain a unified whole balanced between the input of energy from the sun and the thermal sink of energy into space.
This is the crux of the Gaia hypothesis.
www.cbv.ns.ca /sarty/ocean11/gaia.html   (3072 words)

  
 Gaia hypothesis Skeptical Inquirer - Find Articles
Massimo Pigliucci may be right to criticize the way the Gaia hypothesis is taught in a few schools and universities, but the piece was decades out of date as a criticism of Gaia theory, or as it is usually known in the U.S.A., earth system science.
The hypothesis as it first appeared in the early 1970s was tentative and full of fruitful errors, but it has evolved and now forms the background of research in sciences ranging from climatology to ecology.
I have, for years, been using the Gaia hypothesis to explain precisely that it is not "Intelligent Design" by a god or a goddess but that it is a planetary system that produces and sustains the conditions necessary for living organisms to exist.
www.findarticles.com /p/articles/mi_m2843/is_5_29/ai_n15343224   (901 words)

  
 Gaia Hypothesis   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
Gaia is an evolving system made up from the rocks, oceans, fields, forests and the atmosphere.
The Gaia hypothesis, when we first introduced it in the 1970's, supposed that the atmosphere, the oceans, the climate, and the crust of the Earth are regulated at a state comfortable for life because of the behavior of living organisms.
Gaia is the name the ancient Greeks used for the Earth Goddess.
usaculture.741.com /Gaia.html   (2310 words)

  
 Gaia hypothesis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lovelock's initial hypothesis, accused of being teleological by his critics, was that the atmosphere is kept in homeostasis by and for the biosphere.
At the conference James Kirchner criticised the Gaia hypothesis for its imprecision.
Ecologists generally consider the biosphere as an ecosystem and the Gaia hypothesis, though a simplification of that original proposed, to be consistent with a modern vision of global ecology, relaying the concepts of biosphere and biodiversity.
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Gaia_theory_(science)   (5467 words)

  
 Gaia Theory, the Noosphere and GaiaMind   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
Gaia Theory was originally proposed as The Gaia Hypothesis by James Lovelock in 1972 in a paper titled, Gaia as seen through the atmosphere, and popularized in the 1979 book, Gaia: a new look at life on earth.
The scientific hypothesis proposes that the whole Earth behaves like one self-regulating organism wherein all of the geologic, hydrologic, and biologic cycles of the planet mutually self-regulate the conditions on the surface of the Earth so as to perpetuate life.
Atmospheric homeostasis by and for the biosphere: the Gaia hypothesis.
www.gaiamind.org /gaianote.html   (254 words)

  
 [No title]
The Gaia hypothesis, if taken seriously, has logical implications that call into question the mechanical model of perception upon which most contemporary scientific discourse is based.
The Gaia hypothesis, as formulated by geochemnist James Lovelock, represents a unique moment in scientific thought: the first glimpse, from within the domain of pure and precise science, that this planet might best be described as a coherent, living entity.
I have suggested that the most radical element of the Gaia hypothesis, as presently formulated, may be the importance that it places on the air, the renewed awareness it brings us of the atmosphere itself as a thick and mysterious phenomenon no less influential for its invisibility.
www.webcom.com /gaia/percept.html   (4683 words)

  
 Gaia Theory: Science of the Living Earth
In a way these photographs were to the Gaia idea what computers were to chaos theory; they allowed one to see what was going on, and therefore brought the subject alive to a great many people.
Daisyworld and the Gaia Hypothesis are controversial because they touch on the definition of what constitutes life.
Gaia theory has already had a huge impact on science, and has changed the way we view our place in the world.
www.gaianet.fsbusiness.co.uk /gaiatheory.html   (2673 words)

  
 97.07.02: The Gaia Hypothesis: an approach to problem solving in the environment.
This teaching unit begins with a conceptual sketch of the Gaia Hypothesis, followed by a way of thinking about teaching found in John Dewey’s philosophy of education that meets the challenge of Gaia in the classroom.
True in ancient Greece, Gaia was worshipped as the Goddess of the earth and pantheistic tribes had comparable deities of the earth that magically controlled their lives.
The levels of Gaia may be represented in powers of 10 from 4.5 billion years ago to the present generation born 45 years ago.
www.yale.edu /ynhti/curriculum/units/1997/7/97.07.02.x.html   (4585 words)

  
 Gaia
James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis coined the phrase the Gaia hypothesis to suggest not only that life has a greater influence on the evolution of the Earth than is typically assumed across most earth science disciplines but also that life serves as an active control system.
Lovelock points out that Gaia, being ancient and resourceful enough to have carried out these successive changes of the planet in spite of asteroid collisions and other setbacks, is herself probably not endangered by the relatively momentary depredations of the human species, as it befouls and cripples the bio-dynamics of its environment.
The Ages of Gaia is easily readable for the educated layperson, but includes plenty of scientific depth.
www.indiana.edu /~e162rb/gaia.html   (1896 words)

  
 GAIA INSTITUTE   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12)
The Gaia Institute derived its name and research focus from a well-known scientific idea known as the "Gaia hypothesis", published by James Lovelock in 1965, and joined by collaborator Lynn Margulis shortly thereafter.
The Gaia hypothesis asserts that Earth’s temperature and atmospheric composition are actively controlled by the activities of organisms.
This planetary hypothesis states that the biogeochemical work of organisms acts to regulate the Earth’s conditions including the composition of the Earth's atmosphere, temperature and oxidation state.
www.gaia-inst.org /gaia.html   (147 words)

  
 The Gaia Hypothesis (Section 3) - Dr Lynn Margulis
And very much like the Gaia Hypothesis when it was first formulated, the concept was so new and required such a degree of leading edge specialised information, that it was often completely misunderstood - not only by researchers in unrelated fields, but also by her peers.
As we have found in the preceeding section concerning the formulation of the Gaia Hypothesis by Dr James Lovelock, this question would have been purposefully redirected by the traditional physical sciences to the attention of counterparts in the philosophy departments, possibly the biology department or, dependent upon their cultural beliefs, possibly to the theological offices.
In conclusion of this section of the presentation concerning the current interdisciplinary developments of the Gaia Theory in relation to Dr Lynn Margulis I would have to say I respect of her usage of the word surfing (global oceanic) in such context.
www.mountainman.com.au /gaia_lyn.html   (4605 words)

  
 Kali, caparison, jousting, Gaia, fractal worlds
This hypothesis, known as the Gaia Hypothesis, states that the Earth is alive.
This hypothesis is generally supported by scientists today and, in fact, is probably most responsible for stimulating continued research on Gaia.
This method of falsifying a hypothesis was proposed by the Austrian-born Karl Popper in a 1934 publication called Logik Der Forschung or The Logic of Scientific Discovery.
www.stuartwilde.com /Articles/SW_articles_gaia_hypothesis.htm   (4214 words)

  
 Gaia, Lovelock and HolismGaia & Lovelock
Gaia is not "cosmic" (concerning the universe) in the sense of theories of the origin of the universe such as the Big Bang Theory (Joseph, 1990).
Lovelock extends this stance to claim that the earth is alive, a superorganism on which the living things, the air, the oceans, and the rocks all combine in one as Gaia.
Holism adopts the principles of chaos and complexity - new fields of study in the science of physics - to explain the impact of life upon the environment, so in holism, the earth is not alive as an organism.
www.ecotao.com /holism/gem_lovelock.htm   (9885 words)

  
 Gaia Hypothesis
The version put forward by Lovelock and Margulis is strong in that it depicts terrestrial life as influencing the abiotic world by a series of negative feedback loops in a way that is fundamentally stabilizing.
The Gaia hypothesis says that the temperature, oxidation state, acidity, and certain aspects of the rocks and water are kept constant, and that this homeostasis is maintained by active feedback processes operated automatically and unconsciously by the biota.
Not only that but life, in the original concept of Gaia, is seen as regulating the environment so as to maintain suitable planetary conditions for the good of life itself.
www.daviddarling.info /encyclopedia/G/Gaiahypoth.html   (421 words)

  
 The Gaia Hypothesis
Gaia is compared to a living organism because it is self-regulating and optimizes conditions for itself.
There is a slight different in the exact mechanism, Gaia does not evolve by less fit Gaias dying and thus killing their inferior components (this is how organisms evolve), but rather by the mechanisms outlined above.
The holistic approach of viewing Gaia as one entity and comparing Gaia to a living organism seems to be legitimate and it has a practical use.
web.uvic.ca /~stucraw/Lethbridge/MyArticles/GAIA.HTM   (1530 words)

  
 The Gaia Hypothesis
The essential idea of the Gaia Hypothesis is analogous to the thermostat in your home, or the thermostat in your brain.
Influential Gaia, the weakest of the hypotheses, asserts that biota have a substantial influence over certain aspects of the abiotic world, such as temperature and the composition of the atmosphere.
Kirchner argues that the weak forms of the hypothesis are not new and that the strong forms are not correct or not testable.
www.globalchange.umich.edu /Killeen_archive/paper_to_html/gaia.html   (1809 words)

  
 The Gaia Hypothesis - Philosophy
The Gaia hypothesis was formulated by the British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock in collaboration with Lynn Margulisis, an American microbiologist.
Put simply, the Gaia hypothesis is the idea that the earth, as a whole is a living organism.
Our life is dependent upon the health of this super-organism Gaia and as humans, as conscious, sentient beings we must become aware of Gaia as an extension of our bodies and tend to her as such.
www.bellaonline.com /articles/art33457.asp   (505 words)

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