Gaia

[Alex Trotter <uburoi@xxxxxxxxx>]

Lisa R. stated in a recent post on the Yanomamo that the notion of
hunter/forager societies being in ecological harmony with nature is a
myth. In light of that, what do you (Lisa) think about the "Gaia
hypothesis" of Margulis and Lovelock? There was an article in the Sunday
magazine of the New York Times last week profiling Margulis. The sense I
got from the article was that M. is a great iconoclast in the scientific
world whose theory has been generally regarded with suspicion, although
it is gaining ground. Many have come to associate the idea of Gaia with
New Agy types and goddess worshipers, because people of those tendencies
were in fact attracted to its personification of the Earth (Lovelock's
idea), although Margulis didn't want to deify Mother Earth.
        Gould says of Gaia that it is "a metaphor, not a mechanism." He
seems to lump it together with various warm and fuzzy theories about the
benevolence of nature--mutuality, synergism, harmony, etc. This is the
aspect of Kropotkin's "mutual aid" that he was critical of. And Richard
Dawkins, a "nature red in tooth and claw" Darwinist known for his "selfish
gene" theory, dismisses Gaia completely. He says that it is a philosophy,
and not science at all.
        So, is the concept of the earth as a self-regulating (i.e.,
'harmonious') system a crackpot idea? Does God play dice with the
universe? And how does the working class figure in it?


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