Soil, for example, is a product of growing, dying, and decomposing life forms, mixing with geological minerals, some of which are separated from rock by other life forms, another example of how life creates the conditions for more advanced life. Nevertheless, life’s concentration and distribution of compounds did create conditions for new life forms to arise. Some critics objected to Lovelock’s statement that life “manages” its environment, as a mechanistic metaphor that implied some sort of collective intention. Others pointed out that many of life’s evolutionary pathways may occur by chance (asteroids, radiation effects on mutation, and so forth) or in chaotic fashion (landslides, eruptions) and that life’s influence did not really “control” the environment. Not all biologists agreed with the premise. They proposed that, “early after life began it acquired control of the planetary environment and that this homeostasis by and for the biosphere has persisted ever since.” Together, in 1974, Lovelock and Margulis published “Atmospheric homeostasis by and for the biosphere: The Gaia hypothesis”. ![]() Lovelock also pointed out in the 1970s that humanity was changing Earth’s atmosphere, with dangerous implications. He focused on the fact that living organisms naturally change a planet’s atmosphere, described how life changed Earth’s atmosphere, and developed the idea that Earth’s sulfur cycle provided an example of how biological life could create the conditions for more life. In the 1970s, while working with the US space program, Lovelock developed methods for determining whether a planet supported life. In 1978, Robert Schwartz and Margaret Dayhoff demonstrated that mitochondria descended from bacteria and chloroplasts from cyanobacteria, providing experimental evidence for Margulis’ theory. Margulis had studied symbiosis in early organisms and formulated the proposal that eukaryotic cells (cells with nuclei) had evolved as a symbiotic union of primitive cells without nuclei – an example of how life creates conditions for more advanced life. Living organisms concentrate useful elements, compounds, and nutrients, and redistribute them into the water, soil, and atmosphere where they stabilize climate, feed other life forms, and influence the environment in which they evolved. The book proposed a hypothesis developed by Lovelock and biologist Lynn Margulis, that life on Earth self-regulates its environment to create optimum conditions for the additional advancement of life. His seminal book, Gaia, published 40 years ago, helped shift popular perceptions about the Earth. James Lovelock, the British independent scientist, died in 2022 on his 103rd birthday. Gaia was the Greek goddess of Earth, mother of all life, similar to the Roman Terra Mater (mother Earth) reclining with a cornucopia, or the Andean Pachamama, the Hindu, Prithvi, “the Vast One,” or the Hopi Kokyangwuti, Spider Grandmother, who with Sun god Tawa created Earth and its creatures. In Greek mythology only Chaos precedes Gaia.
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