The Importance Of The Gaia Hypothesis

The Gaia hypothesis was expressed by James Lovelock in mid 1960s and published in a book in 1979.（Sean Chamberlin) The ancient Greek called their Earth goddess Gaia, James Lovelock had taken the idea of ancient Greek and named his hypothesis Gaia. The central theme for Gaia Hypothesis is that organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a self-regulating. Most simply expressed as “The Earth is Alive.”(Virtual Fossil Museum) If there are some inherent factors harmful to Earth, “Gaia” system itself has an anti-feedback function, can those to get rid of harmful factors.

Gaia hypothesis contains at least five levels of meaning: first, that a variety of life on Earth to effectively regulate the temperature and chemical composition of the atmosphere; secondly, the impact of variety of biological organisms on Earth environment, and in turn affect the environment Darwin’s biological evolution, the two co-evolution; Thirdly, mainly between the various organisms and nature are connected by a negative feedback loop, so as to maintain the stability of the Earth’s ecological state; Fourth, consider the atmosphere can be maintained at a steady depends not only on the biosphere, and in a ceratin sense, to the biosphere; Finally is considered a variety of biological regulation of its physical environment in order to create various types of biological optimization of living conditions. The first two layers are called weak Gaia theory, after three for strong Gaia theory.

Earth does seem to be a “Mega-life System”. Of course, there is the so-called “life” and never refers only to metabolism and reproduction in the usual sense, but rather an exchange of energy and matter can be allowed to maintain a stable internal s...

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... the first step, we have indeed achieved the expected results; but in the second and third step, there is a completely different, unexpected effects, often the first result and canceled.” mending their ways humans can begin to recognize their protection of the earth, protect the environment responsibility? Or the Earth had to take stringent measures to punish humanity? Notice the Earth has experienced 4.6 billion years, and from there to humans disappeared, perhaps in the history of the earth, but the moment is fleeting.

All in all, Gaia hypothesis has become an important theoretical basis for the Western environmental movement and the Greens action. The Gaia hypothesis and controversial scientific connotation, the new Earth observation systems and the Gaia hypothesis caused by the Gaia hypothesis inspiration to people in areas such as elaboration and discussion.