What does the word Gaia mean to you? Until a few days ago,
when I came across the word “Gaia” I thought “earth” and “Mother Earth” and then
attached to the word the connotations of Greek mythology[i], environmentalists,
far-Left idealists, planetary activists, and—because of a BBC drama I once watched
—visions of environmental terrorist intrigue. It’s funny how certain words
carry with them connotations that may, or may not, be appropriate.
And then a few days ago I started reading A Walk Through Time: From Stardust to Us by
Sidney Liebes, Elisabet Sahhtouris and Brian Swimme. I’d come across several
references to author and cosmologist Brian Swimme, and when I checked the data
base at the local library, this was the only book available with Swimme listed
as an author, so I put in an interlibrary request for it. As it turned out, Swimme
only wrote the 12-page prologue, the bulk of the book being written by
Sahhtouris. (The first listed author, Sidney Liebes, under whose name the book
is filed in the library, only wrote the 3-page preface!)
Anyway, the book is about the formation of the earth and the
development of life upon it, and at first I didn’t intend to read it all. But
it has turned out to be such a fascinating book—apparently written as a
companion for the world exhibition Walk
Through Time—that I kept on reading long after Swimme’s prologue.
And what does this have to do with Gaia? Well, I discovered
that in the 1980’s and 1990’s James Lovelock formulated the hypothesis that
both living and non-living aspects of the earth are integrated into a self-organised,
evolving life system. Called the “Gaia Hypothesis”[ii]
and now sometimes referred to as the Gaia theory or Gaia principle, the concept
has been adopted by many ecologists, environmentalists, and global warming
theorists.
Now I’m very much into the “systems” concept and general try
to see all things within a holistic framework. Still, having grown up with a
fairly clear delineation in my head between organic and inorganic forms, the
idea that rocks, for example, are part of an ecological evolving life system
(except, obviously, as homes, tools and building materials for organic life
forms) made me pause.
Looking at the relationship between organic and inorganic material
through the lens of [very ancient] history and a powerful microscope, was
enlightening. The first bacteria, it turns out, were of course created from
primary earth elements hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, sulphur, oxygen, and phosphorus—none
of that “organic” in a contemporary sense. In death, large colonies of bacteria
left behind deposits of concentrated minerals which created the variety of metal
ores we mine today—also not “organic” in a contemporary sense. Yet the catalyst
required for the transformation: organic.
Certainly, on an atomic and molecular level, the atoms of
oxygen you breathe in may have once been part of a molecule of rust on a screwdriver,
a raindrop, or a buttercup. At a
molecular level, there is no organic/inorganic, and we are all part of the same
great Gaia system. Organic is made of inorganic, and dissolves back into
inorganic in an ongoing cycle. That the earth and its inhabitants change with
time is a clear sign of evolution in this process, and the interdependence
between the earth and living things is very evident.
The word “Gaia” took on a slightly new meaning for me today.
My understanding of the primary relationship we share with the inorganic
elements of our world solidified a little, and my appreciation for the amazing
interactions that go on around us at a sub-visible level has increased
many-fold, because it has moved into my awareness. To quote Marcel Proust:
The real voyage of
discovery does not consist of seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
[i]
Gaia was the Greek Goddess of the earth and mother of many lesser gods as well
as all earthly creatures
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