The Gaia Hypothesis
The Gaia Hypothesis is a hypothesis that was developed by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in the late 1970's. James Lovelock is a British scientist, an atmospheric chemist, and also an inventor with an education in human physiology. Lynn Margulis was a microbiologist during the 1970's at Boston University. She also originated the theory of the eukaryotic cell arising as a result of endosymbiotic cell capture. This theory is the one that gave her the credibility to advance the Gaia Hypothesis.
Since every hypothesis takes the form of an if/then statement, the Gaia Hypothesis namely is an if/then statement. Summarized the Gaia Hypothesis is "If life regulates the physical and chemical environment of the planet so as to maintain suitable planetary conditions for the good of life itself, then the planet can be thought of as a single integrated, living entity with self-regulating abilities." (University, p.2). The hypothesis interweaves various explanations of the Earth's functions as they relate to various philosophical evaluations and scientific rationale.
The hypothesis can be defined through metaphors, religious beliefs, and scientific rationale. The most common metaphor is "The Earth is a single living entity." (Oceans, p. 1). Lovelock recognizes that this metaphor is a convenient way to organize and explain the facts of the Earth. Plato, a famous philosopher, rationalizes this metaphor by saying " ' We shall affirm that the cosmos, more than anything else, resembles most closely that living creature of which all other living creatures, severally or genetically, are portion; a living creature which is fairest of all and in ways most perfect.' " (Charlton, p.3). There are many metaphor...
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Everybody knows that to have a good social life one needs to have good ethics, but what about using those ethics in the natural environment. Many people tend to say that they are well-educated, with a high use of ethics, but it seems useless in the real world. Society needs to start to worry about the environment and not only about what one wants or need. Aldo Leopold describe how ethics in an ecological and philosophical view today needs to changed to have a good use of them. Leopold was one of the founders of the Wilderness society. At the same time, he initiated the first Forest Wilderness Area in the United States. This two are just some of the societies and jobs in which he was involved that have to do with the natural environment. During
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731‒732). Besides that, until the 17th century, most Europeans thought that a Biblical Flood played a major role in shaping the Earth's surface (Kious & Tilling, 1996). This way of thinking was known as ‘catastrophism’, and geology ‒ from the Greek γῆ (gê) meaning ‘the Earth’ and λόγος (lógos) meaning ‘knowledge’ ‒ was based on the belief that all changes on Earth were sudden and caused by a series of catastrophes. However, by the mid-19th century, catastrophism gave way to ‘uniformitarianism’, a new way of thinking centred around the ‘Uniformitarian Principle’, sometimes also referred to as the ‘Principle of Uniformity’, proposed in 1785 by James Hutton (1726‒1797), a Scottish farmer, chemist, and naturalist. This principle is nowadays well known among geologist and often expressed as ‘The present is the key to the past’. Hutton published his ideas in Theory of the Earth (Hutton, 1788), among other publications. Hutton’s work ‒ notoriously difficult to read ‒ did not become widely known until it was published by John Playfair (1748‒1819), a Scottish scientist and mathematician, in his book Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth (Playfair,
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Analyzing human obligation pertaining to all that is not man made, apart from humans, we discover an assortment of concerns, some of which have been voiced by philosophers such as Tom Regan, Peter Singer and Aldo Leopold. Environmentally ethical ideals hold a broad spectrum of perspectives that, not only attempt to identify a problem, but also focus on how that problem is addressed through determining what is right and wrong.
The book draws its name from the first essay, "The Lives of a Cell," in which Thomas offers his observations on ecology and the role of cellular activity. He writes that the "uniformity of the earth's life, more astonishing then its diversity, is accountable by the high probability that we derived, originally, from some single cell, fertilized in a bolt of lightning as the earth cooled" (3).
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