Gaia

Posted on 2003/07/20 23:39:06 (July 2003) by john.

Life, the universe and everything.

Tonight I went out drinking with a load of people who had done biology doctorates.

These are truly fascinating people to talk to. Science is all about trying to understand how life works, and who better to explain it than biologists. Towards the end of the evening, when we were on our way home, we had a conversation about Gaia.

Gaia is James Lovelock's theory that the world behaves as a sort of "super organism", that the world itself is a kind of living being of sorts. We were talking tonight in part about how this theory has sparked a lot of controversy.

To me, the controversy over it seems rediculous. Gaia both seems and feels like utter common sense. In an attempt to explain my conviction about Gaia tonight I came up with a statement that I am actually very proud of, despite my slightly drunken state. Here it is:

Behaviour propogates upwards.

That's it. Very simple, very basic, but very powerful. In science, these sort of simple premises often work wonders. Most great theories are based on a very non-complex preposition. It's down to that sort of fractal behaviour that a simple rule applied recursively can produce a very complex pattern.

Look at an ant. The behaviour of an ant is part of the behaviour of its whole colony. That colony plays a very important role in its local area. That small area, say a woodland, will contribute towards the overall characteristics of a wider region, perhaps a national park. Continue onwards and you see that, in part, that original ant we were talking about is defining (a very small part of) the way the whole world behaves.

In an abstract way, if a single creature is an organism, why shoudn't a group of creatures also be considered an organism? In which case, why should a collection of groups of different species not also be considered an organism?

To be honest, I'm not sure what my central point is in this. But today, whether it is a concpetual breakthrough, or just the beer, I feel like I have come across what is, to me at least, a very satisfying concept.

Behaviour propogates upwards.

..and shit rolls downhill.

Posted by tom at 2003/07/22 14:26:21.

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