The Earth is a Sentient Living Organism
By Liz Bentley, via The Mind Unleashed
Throughout history, the concept of Mother Earth has been a part of human culture in one form or another. Everybody has heard of Mother Earth, but have you ever stopped to think who (or what) Mother Earth is? Contrary to the common belief that the Earth is simply a dense planet whose only function is a resource for its inhabitants, our planet is in fact a breathing, living organism. When we think of the Earth holistically, as one living entity of its own, instead of the sum of its parts, it takes on a new meaning. Our planet functions as a single organism that maintains conditions necessary for its survival.
In 1979, James Lovelock defined Gaia as “…a complex entity involving the Earth’s biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet.”
Oskar Pernefeldt’s Proposal
In May 2015 a Swedish artist, Oskar Pernefeldt, formally proposed the International Flag of the Planet Earth. It was conceived to be used in space expeditions and it has two main purposes:
- To be used while representing planet Earth.
- To remind the people of Earth that we share this planet, no matter of national boundaries. That we should take care of each other and the planet we live on.
The creators predict that it will be eventually used in Mars landing in 2025 or in a future colony on that planet. The design of the flag consists of seven rings intersecting each other and a deep-blue-sea in the background. The rings are centered on the flag forming a flower in the middle, representing life on Earth. The intersection of the rings represent that all things on Earth are linked directly or indirectly. The rings are organized in a Borromean rings–like fashion, representing how no part of Earth can be removed without the whole structure collapsing. Finally, the deep-blue represents the ocean and the importance of water for life on Earth.
Through Gaia, the Earth sustains a kind of homeostasis, the maintenance of relatively constant conditions. The truly startling component of the Gaia hypothesis is the idea that the Earth is a single living entity. This idea is certainly not new. James Hutton (1726-1797), the father of geology, once described the Earth as a kind of superorganism. And right before Lovelock, Lewis Thomas, a medical doctor and skilled writer, penned these words in his famous collection of essays, The Lives of a Cell:
Viewed from the distance of the moon, the astonishing thing about the earth, catching the breath, is that it is alive. The photographs show the dry, pounded surface of the moon in the foreground, dry as an old bone. Aloft, floating free beneath the moist, gleaming, membrane of bright blue sky, is the rising earth, the only exuberant thing in this part of the cosmos. If you could look long enough, you would see the swirling of the great drifts of white cloud, covering and uncovering the half-hidden masses of land. If you had been looking for a very long, geologic time, you could have seen the continents themselves in motion, drifting apart on their crustal plates, held afloat by the fire beneath. It has the organized, self-contained look of a live creature, full of information, marvelously skilled in handling the sun.
John Nelson illustrated the “Breathing Earth,” (below) which are two animated GIFs he designed to visualize what a year’s worth of Earth’s seasonal transformations look like from outer space. Nelson–a data visualizer, stitched together from NASA’s website 12 cloud-free satellite photographs taken each month over the course of a year. Once the images were put together in a sequence, the mesmerizing animations showed what Nelson describes as “the annual pulse of vegetation and land ice.”
As the climate changes, the planet comes alive. Earth appears to breathe when ice cover grows and melts–in and out, in and out.
White frost radiates out from the top of the globe and creeps south in all directions. It travels through Siberia, Canada, and northern Europe, heading towards the equator located around the circle’s edge, but ends before the top of Africa. The Mediterranean Sea is the visible body of water on the top left hand side, and the Great Lakes make up a small network of dark blue shapes on the land mass to the right.
The Earth acts as a single system – it is a coherent, self-regulated, assemblage of physical, chemical, geological, and biological forces that interact to maintain a unified whole balanced between the input of energy from the sun and the thermal sink of energy into space.
In its most basic configuration, the Earth acts to regulate flows of energy and recycling of materials. The input of energy from the sun occurs at a constant rate and for all practical purposes is unlimited. This energy is captured by the Earth as heat or photosynthetic processes, and returned to space as long-wave radiation. On the other hand, the mass of the Earth, its material possessions, are limited (except for the occasional input of mass provided as meteors strike the planet). Thus, while energy flows through the Earth (sun to Earth to space), matter cycles within the Earth.
The idea of the Earth acting as a single system as put forth in the Gaia hypothesis has stimulated a new awareness of the connectedness of all things on our planet and the impact that man has on global processes. No longer can we think of separate components or parts of the Earth as distinct. No longer can we think of man’s actions in one part of the planet as independent. Everything that happens on the planet – the deforestation/reforestation of trees, the increase/decrease of emissions of carbon dioxide, the removal or planting of croplands – all have an affect on our planet. The most difficult part of this idea is how to qualify these effects, i.e. to determine whether these effects are positive or negative. If the Earth is indeed self-regulating, then it will adjust to the impacts of man. However, as we will see, these adjustments may act to exclude man, much as the introduction of oxygen into the atmosphere by photosynthetic bacteria acted to exclude anaerobic bacteria. This is the crux of the Gaia hypothesis.
The homeostasis regulated by the Earth is much like the internal maintenance of our own bodies; processes within our body insure a constant temperature, blood pH, electrochemical balance, etc. The inner workings of Gaia, therefore, can be viewed as a study of the physiology of the Earth, where the oceans and rivers are the Earth’s blood, the atmosphere is the Earth’s lungs, the land is the Earth’s bones, and the living organisms are the Earth’s senses. Lovelock calls this the science of geophysiology – the physiology of the Earth (or any other planet).
To understand how the Earth is living, let’s take a look at what defines life. Physicists define life as a system of locally reduced entropy (life is the battle against entropy). Molecular biologists view life as replicating strands of DNA that compete for survival and evolve to optimize their survival in changing surroundings. Physiologists might view life as a biochemical system that us able to use energy from external sources to grow and reproduce. According to Lovelock, the geophysiologist sees life as a system open to the flux of matter and energy but that maintains an internal steady-state.
Beyond the scientific importance of what we have discussed here, we might do well to consider some of the more poetical thoughts of the originator of the theory:
If Gaia exists, the relationship between her and man, a dominant animal species in the complex living system, and the possibly shifting balance of power between them, are questions of obvious importance… The Gaia hypothesis is for those who like to walk or simply stand and stare, to wonder about the Earth and the life it bears, and to speculate about the consequences of our own presence here. It is an alternative to that pessimistic view which sees nature as a primitive force to be subdued and conquered. It is also an alternative to that equally depressing picture of our planet as a demented spaceship, forever traveling, driverless and purposeless, around an inner circle of the sun.
The strong Gaia hypothesis states that life creates conditions on Earth to suit itself. Life created the planet Earth, not the other way around. As we explore the solar system and galaxies beyond, it may one day be possible to design an experiment to test whether life indeed manipulates planetary processes for its own purposes or whether life is just an evolutionary processes that occurs in response to changes in the non-living world.
Liz Bentley is a graduate in geology, professional photographer and freelance journalist with an acute insight into fossil records and climatology.
It is wonderful to see how this realization is beginning to dawn. This is the true beginning of a New Age.
I am always happy to read about the living Earth. However, I suggest that this article leaves out subject material that does not fit into a materialistic picture of Life. The statements in quotes are from the article and my comments occur below each extract.
“(life is the battle against entropy)”
I suggest that life is not a battle. Life is a cooperative venture. Our health, for instance, depends on gut bacteria, cells and organisms working in harmony.
“Following the second law of thermodynamics, entropy of an isolated system always increases.” Entropy – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Living organisms such as Earthlings and the living Earth cannot be categorized as isolated systems. There is no battle being fought. The materialistic worldview, which wrongly dictates the beliefs of most humans, still looks to Darwin who saw life as a battle rather than a gift. This is an outdated belief and no longer serves us.
“The Earth acts as a single system – it is a coherent, self-regulated, assemblage of physical, chemical, geological, and biological forces that interact to maintain a unified whole balanced between the input of energy from the sun and the thermal sink of energy into space.”
This paragraph leaves out the animating force of life, consciousness.
“Molecular biologists view life as replicating strands of DNA that compete for survival and evolve to optimize their survival in changing surroundings. Physiologists might view life as a biochemical system that is (sic) able to use energy from external sources to grow and reproduce.”
Donald Hoffman, cognitive scientist, has been published in the Journal of Molecular Biology. However, he is one of only a handful who examine consciousness. Life is more than a biochemical system. I suggest that this article slices the core from “life” and thus misrepresents the meaning of “holistic.” One might think of this situation as follows: If a materialist completely disassembles a computer, laying all the pieces on a table and analyses each one, volumes of description could be written. However, all this would not move even one step toward understanding how it works. The same applies to a radio or television. The current flow state of the millions of circuits in a computer and the frequency or amplitude modulation of information gathered by the radio or TV antennae are analogous to conscious; that which forms the animating force of life.
“As we explore the solar system and galaxies beyond, it may one day be possible to design an experiment to test whether life indeed manipulates planetary processes for its own purposes or whether life is just an evolutionary processes that occurs in response to changes in the non-living world.”
James Lovelock accomplished and published a suitable experiment with:
Biological homeostasis of the global environment: the parable of Daisyworld
I suggest the kind of experiment you suggest would use instruments designed to measure data from a materialist world view. Thus, as I have mentioned above, they would miss the foundation of “Life” which is consciousness.
The planet feeds on us we are here as it’s food
James Lovelock did not develop this theory by himself. Lynn Margulis was a co-developer of this theory. I saw her speak at Arizona State University back in the 80’s when she presented on it. I privately spoke with her about how some diseases seem to act like earth’s anitbodies. She was a fascinating woman.
Hi Paige,did Lynn Margulis mentioned any of her works involving this self regulate mechanism of pathogens acting as earth antibodies? Although it may sound like someone had a bit too much cannabis when came out with this idea, let s not forget that a few centuries ago we were very sure that the earth was flat, and now we are very sure it’s a round rock, what are we going to be very sure of next? Thank you for sharing this information and I’m looking forward to hearing from you again. Regards.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the earth lately, and that led me here.