A Great Jump to Disaster?

he idea that Earth is a living thing goes back at least as far as Plato, who according to Francis Bacon believed that the planet "was one entire, perfect, living creature." But it was James Lovelock and his colleague Lynn Margulis who, in the early 1970s, developed a testable scientific hypothesis aimed at investigating Earth's lifelike properties. Known as the Gaia hypothesis, it states that life on Earth works to keep conditions at the planet's surface favorable to life itself. In 2006 this led to Lovelock joining the likes of Louis Agassiz and Charles Darwin in receiving geology's most prestigious prize—the Geological Society's Wollaston Medal. In presenting the award the society's president acknowledged that the Gaia hypothesis had "opened up a whole new field of Earth Science study.

A Review by Tim Flannery

Read on | A Great Jump to Disaster? - The New York Review of Books

Interview by Nature.com with James Lovelock.

Labels: Climate Change, James Lovelock

- posted by DD @ 2:46 p.m. Perma Link/Print  

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