A Good Four-Letter Word

Abstract

The Gaia view ranges from the dubious poetic conception of a reproducing Earth to the later, more modest, and therefore more scientifically acceptable, formulations of Margulis and Lovelock. We have no wish to homogenize religious and scientific views of what Gaia might mean. Nevertheless, it has become clear that no simple scientific or even well-intended metascientific statement will encompass Gaia in its richness or define it in its fullness. A rigorous scientific definition of Gaia is a first step. But Gaia, a way of knowing, is not simply one worldview among others (an interdisciplinary scientific approach combining astronomy, atmospheric chemistry, biology, biochemistry, remote-sensing technology, and thermodynamics). Gaia has been appropriated and is now finding social support outside the realm of science proper. A cursory sociological study would reveal that it has been attacked not only for being unscientific and “untestable,” but as antihuman polemics, green politics, industrial apologetics, and even as non-Christian ecological “satanism.” Such a diversity of enemies indicates that the power of Gaia goes beyond science; it vindicates Lovelock’s intuition that his idea was so important he needed to give it a “good four-letter word.” Lovelock, before calling it Gaia, referred to the concept as “life as seen through the atmosphere,” or “a cybernetic planetary system with homeostatic tendencies.” The name “Gaia” was gladly offered by Lovelock’s English country neighbor, the novelist William Golding.