III. Ecosmos: A Revolutionary Fertile, Habitable, Solar-Bioplanet, Incubator Lifescape

3. Earth Alive: An Ovular GaiaSphere Sustains Her/His Own Viability

Harding, Stephen. Animate Earth. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2006. An ecologist at Schumacher College attempts to correct centuries of misconception about the nature of our abiding biosphere. Rather than an inorganic spheroid to which life vicariously clings, the mainstream view, we ought to revive and avail ourselves of an ancient and indigenous wisdom to rightly perceive its living essence. Our human role in service to this Gaia would be to intentionally, mindfully sustain its physiology and well being. Lynn Margulis strongly endorses in a foreword statement.

Hermida, Margarida. Life on Earth is an Individual. Theory in Biosciences. Online February, 2016. An Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research of Madeira biologist considers several definitions of what constitutes an organism and a specie,s such as by David Hull and Ernst Mayr, namely a spatio-temporally localized, cohesive, and continuous entity to the fullness of biospheric being and becoming. By this 21st century vista, Earth life appears as a single individual organic entity. As an update, in 2022 at the University of Bristol, see Natural Selection of Independently Originated Life Clades in Philosophy of Science (89/3. 2022) and second quote below.

Life is a self-maintaining process based on metabolism. Something is said to be alive when it exhibits organization and is actively involved in its own continued existence through carrying out metabolic processes. A life is a spatio-temporally restricted event, which continues while the life processes are occurring in a particular chunk of matter (or, arguably, when they are temporally suspended, but can be restarted at any moment), even though there is continuous replacement of parts. Life is organized in discrete packages, particular cells and multicellular organisms with differing degrees of individuality. Biological species, too, have been shown to be individuals, and not classes, as these collections of organisms are spatio-temporally localized, restricted, continuous, and somewhat cohesive entities, with a definite beginning and end. Assuming that all life on Earth has a common origin, all living organisms, cells, and tissues descending from this origin exhibit continuity of the life processes at the cellular level, as well as many of the features that define the individual character of species: spatio-temporal localization and restriction, continuity, historicity, and cohesiveness. Therefore, life on Earth is an ontological individual. (2016 Abstract)

Life on Earth descends from a common ancestor. However, it is likely that there are other instances of life in the universe. If so, each abiogenesis event will have given rise to an independently originated life clade (IOLC), of which Earth-life is an example. In this paper, I argue that the set of all IOLCs in the universe forms a Darwinian population subject to natural selection, with more widely dispersed IOLCs being less likely to face extinction. As a result, we should expect that, over time, more planets will become inhabited by fewer, more successful IOLCs. (2022 Abstract)

Herrmann-Pillath, Carsten. Revisiting the Gaia Hypothesis: Maximum Entropy, Kauffman’s ‘Fourth Law’ and Physiosemeiosis. http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.3338. In this extensive 2011 paper and bibliography, a senior Frankfurt School of Finance & Management specialist in evolutionary economics proposes that the main driver of earth’s viable lifesphere is an “accumulation of semantic information” as contained in biostructures. This “physiosemeiotic” view is braced by a Peircean philosophy and Kauffman’s self-organizing order. We excerpt the long Abstract for its argument. Please note an affinity with Freeman Dyson’s 2011 comment, search herein.

Recently, (Axel) Kleidon suggested a restatement of the Gaia hypothesis based on Maximum Entropy approaches to the Earth system. Refuting conceptions of Gaia as a homeostatic system, Gaia is seen as a non-equilibrium thermodynamic system which continuously moves away from equilibrium, driven by maximum entropy production which materializes in hierarchically coupled mechanisms of energetic flows via dissipation and physical work. I propose to relate this view with Kauffman’s ‘Fourth Law of Thermodynamics’, which I interpret as a proposition about the accumulation of information in evolutionary processes. I offer a twofold specification of Kauffman’s concept of an ‘autonomous agent’, one as a ‘self-referential heat engine’, and the other in terms of physiosemeiosis, which is a naturalized application of Peirce’s theory of signs emerging from recent biosemiotic research. I argue that the conjunction of these three theoretical sources, Maximum Entropy, Kauffman’s Fourth Law, and physiosemeiosis, allows to show that the Kleidon restatement of the Gaia hypothesis is equivalent to the proposition that the biosphere is a system of generating, processing and storing information, thus directly treating information as a physical phenomenon. In this view, there is a fundamental ontological continuity between the biological processes and the human economy, as both are seen as information processing and entropy producing systems. As with other previous transitions in evolution, the human economy leverages the mechanisms by which Gaia moves further away from equilibrium. This implies that information and natural resources or energy are not substitutes, i.e. the knowledge economy continues to build on the same physical principles as the biosphere, with energy and information being two aspects of the same underlying physical process.

Huggett, R. J. Ecosphere, Biosphere, or Gaia? Global Ecology and Biogeography. 8/425, 1999. The University of Manchester geographer compares the views of Teilhard whose biosphere is the totality of organic life, and Vernadsky to whom the biosphere was the whole animate zone from substrata to stratosphere. After noting a later Gaian sense of a living, self-regulating planet, the term of ecosphere is proposed, closer to Teilhard, as the most workable option.

Hystad, Grethe, et al. Statistical Analysis of Mineral Diversity and Distribution: Earth’s Mineralogy is Unique. Earth and Planetary Science Letters. 426/154, 2015. Coauthor Robert Hazen, a Carnegie Institution of Washington geophysicist, has been the leading discoverer that earthly life and mineral forms coevolve (search). Here, with Hystad and Robert Downs, University of Arizona, and Edward Grew, University of Maine, this finding is expanded to exoplanet dimensions. In recognition of nature’s interplay of chemical determinisms and contingencies, Earth’s own mineralogy, while attuned to our human presence, is unlikely to be repeated on another bioworld. A companion article by these authors is Mineral Ecology: Chance and Necessity in the Mineral Diversity of Terrestrial Planets in the Canadian Mineralogist (53/295, 2015). See also On the Origin of Sequence by Peter van der Gulik (search, 2015).

Earth's mineralogical diversity arises from both deterministic processes and frozen accidents. We apply statistical methods and comprehensive mineralogical databases to investigate chance versus necessity in mineral diversity-distribution relationships. Hundreds of mineral species, including most common rock-forming minerals, distinguish an “Earth-like” planet from other terrestrial bodies. However, most of Earth's ∼5000 mineral species are rare, known from only a few localities. We demonstrate that, in spite of deterministic physical, chemical, and biological factors that control most of our planet's mineral diversity, Earth's mineralogy is unique in the cosmos. (Abstract)

Irrgang, Christopher, et al. Towards Neural Earth System Modelling by Integrating Artificial Intelligence. Nature Machine Intelligence. August, 2021. Seven senior researchers posted in Germany, the UK, and the USA including Niklas Boers and Elizabeth Barnes scope out this meld and upgrade of Earth system science with deep learning frontier methods. By this union, might this Gaia bioworld be able attain a global brain facility which cam proceed to take over and sustain itself?

Earth system models (ESMs) can help quantify the physical, geologic state of our planet and predict how it might change under ongoing anthropogenic forcing. In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has been used to augment or even replace classical ESM tasks, raising hopes that AI could solve grand challenges of climate science. In this Perspective we survey the recent achievements and limitations of both process-based models and AI methods. We then propose a new approach in which deep neural networks and ESMs are integrated as learning, self-validating ESM–network hybrids. (Abstract excerpt)

Jabr, Ferris. The Earth is just as Alive as You Are. New York Times. April 21, 2019. On Easter Sunday, a science writer makes a vibrant case, braced by new findings such as how even microbes can have an effect on plate tectonics, that the Gaia theory of a self-maintaining biosphere ought to be fully revived. As readers know, the view that living systems have long acted together to maintain a conducive world has had both advocates and detractors (see Michael Ruse). As so many stresses beset planet and person, maybe it is time to realize that our rarest abode is in actual fact a living organism.

In his early writing, Dr. Lovelock occasionally granted Gaia too much agency, which encouraged the misperception that the living Earth was yearning for some optimal state. But the essence of his hypothesis — the idea that life transforms and in many cases regulates the planet — proved prescient and profoundly true. We and all living creatures are not just inhabitants of Earth, we are Earth — an outgrowth of its physical structure and an engine of its global cycles. Although some scientists still recoil at the mention of Gaia, these truths have become part of mainstream science.

Like many living creatures, Earth has a highly organized structure, a membrane and daily rhythms; it consumes, stores and transforms energy; and if asteroid-hitching microbes or space-faring humans colonize other worlds, who is to say that planets are not capable of procreation? If Earth breathes, sweats and quakes — if it births zillions of organisms that devour, transfigure and replenish its air, water and rock — and if those creatures and their physical environments evolve in tandem, then why shouldn’t we think of our planet as alive?

Humans are the brain — the consciousness — of the planet. We are Earth made aware of itself. Viewed this way, our ecological responsibility could not be clearer. By fuming greenhouse gases, we have not simply changed the climate; we have critically wounded a global life form and severely disrupted its biological rhythms. No other member of this living assembly has our privileged perspective. No one else can see the sinews and vessels of our planetary body. Only we can choose to help keep Earth alive.

Jankovic, Srdja, et al. Gaia as Solaris: An Alternative Default Evolutionary Trajectory. arXiv:2201.04956. In an entry to appear in Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, SJ, University Children’s Hospital, Belgrade, Ana Katic, University of Belgrade and Milan Cirkovic, Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade (search) provide an imaginative essay as a wider vista by which to view a conducive, biospherical planet upon which living systems can form, evolve and sustain themselves. By so doing they take this self-vitalizing quality which distinguishes our especial Earth to further degrees of organic vitality and sensory implication. With regard to S. Lem’s early vision, this temporal emergence can then be seen to achieve an enveloping cerebral noosphere with a mind of its own. The authors point is that enhanced appreciations can inspire a more fruitful search for intelligent exoplanet civilizations, if they do exist, and are able to survive.

Since Earth-like planets are known to fill the universe, whereof most older than the Earth, it serves to ask what their evolutionary outcomes might be. In order to assess the specialty or mediocrity of biospheric evolution, we need to consider advances in astrobiology such as (i) the history of habitable planet formation in the Galaxy, and (ii) the vital importance of "Gaian" feedback loops and temporal windows for early life within its physical environment. But here we view an alternative macroevolutionary pathway that results in a functional integration of all sub-planetary ecosystems, so to give rise to a true superorganism. In regard, we turn to a prior guide for this scenario by the Polish novelist Stanisław Lem in his 1961 novel Solaris. (Abstract)

Kaltenegger, Lisa. Searching for Earth’s History among Earth-like Worlds. Mercury. 36/1, 2007. The steadily increasing ability to detect earth-size planets orbiting distant suns, along with their atmospheric, geological, and thermal signatures, can provide novel insights into how our home world came to form and evolve.

King, Roger and Ronald Birk. Developing Earth System Science Knowledge to Manage Earth’s Natural Resources. Computing in Science and Engineering. January/February, 2004. A survey article by NASA scientists in a special issue on “Grand Challenges in Earth System Modeling.”

Earth system science, the study of how the Earth works as a system of continents, oceans, atmosphere, ice, and life, is based on our ability to measure key parameters and integrate that knowledge into Earth system models. (47)

Kleidon, Alex and Ralph Lorenz, eds. Non-Equilibrium Thermodynamics and the Production of Entropy. Berlin: Springer, 2005. An exploration of the Maximum Entropy Production concept as the best way to quantify how the earth’s viable biosphere regulates and sustains itself. Following Kleidon and Lorenz’s earlier work, an array of authors such as Eric Chaisson, Roderick Dewar, Robert Ulanowicz, Charles Lineweaver, Hisashi Osawa, David Schwartzman, Timothy Lenton, and others review issues and aspects from thermal gradients to ocean circulation, atmosphere interactions, human impacts, and so on. A good summary of this pertinent work can be found in John Whitfield's article "Order Out of Chaos" in Nature for August 18, 2005.

Kleidon, Axel. Beyond Gaia: Thermodynamics of Life and Earth System Functioning. Climatic Change. 66/3, 2004. A leading researcher in this field proposes that the biosphere regulates and sustains itself by a propensity to reach a state of Maximum Entropy Production (MEP). This state provides the most available potential energy to allow increased “degrees of freedom” so a biological diversity to prosper.

It is concluded that the resulting behavior of a biotic Earth at a state of MEP may well lead to near-homeostatic behavior of the Earth system on long time scales, as stated by the Gaia hypothesis. (271) Besides providing a fundamental perspective on homeostasis, the MEP hypothesis is a result of the application of the MEP hypothesis also provides a framework to understand why photosynthetic life would be a highly probable emergent characteristic of the Earth system and why the diversity of life is an important characteristic of Earth system functioning. (271)

Previous   1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8  Next