NMR ISSUE 3

Astrological Forecast 3
Autumnal Equinox
Closer Look at the Tarot: Threes
Editorial
Interview with Raven Wolf
Letters 3
Magick That Fails
Music and Mantras
Oh Gods Above
Prenatal Solar Eclipse
Quartz
Seeking the Goddess in Your Home
Solitary Samhain Ritual
Tarot Images
The Oldest Magick
The Other Editorial
The Return of Gaia

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The Return of Gaia

Scot Rhoads

The Gaia Hypo- thesis is a model of the interrelationship of earth's organisms. It is one of the most dramatic of the many `reconstitutive' scientific insights. Until recently, science made progress by reducing things to the smallest form. Classification is a good example: living things are reduced from Kingdom, to Phylum, to Class, to Order, to Family, to Genus, to Species, to Subspecies—all to make them easier to study. But in doing so, scientists lost the big picture—the interrelationship of these elements with one another in a system that has its own characteristics. Now scientists are putting things back together again with socio-biology, astro-physics, biochemistry, biophysics, geo-physics, etc. In reconstituting the pieces, they are coming up with completely new knowledge. Reconstituting all the various things on the earth has lead to the Gaia hypothesis.

Nonscientists occasionally claim that the earth is like an organism. Anyone who understands the chaos of nature's interrelationships would probably find this na vet amusing. This is like attributing a Will to osmosis.

Osmosis is the property of water to pass through semipermiable membranes to areas of higher concentration of dissolved solids. Your fingers wrinkle up (the skin expands) in the tub because water passes from the tap water into your skin. The fluid in your body has a significantly higher concentration of solutes. More water molecules

randomly contact and pass through the skin surface from the outside than from the inside. That's because the molecules of dissolved solutes (salts, proteins, etc. which cannot pass through) take up some of the skin surface area that, on the outside, is available for water molecules. As an illustration, suppose you have a grating that will admit BBs, but not marbles. The more marbles you have, the fewer holes will be open for BBs to pass through. If you have a mixture of BBs and marbles on either side of this grating (and you agitate the mixture so that the spheres are bouncing all over the place—otherwise things will just get clogged up), there will be a difference in the rate that BBs pass from one side to the other. This difference is proportionate to the difference of the concentrations on either side. BBs will randomly pass from the side with higher concentration to the side with lower concentration—until both sides have equal concentration. In principle, if you were to stay in the tub or in the ocean for several days, your body fluids would eventually have the same concentration of solutes as the water around you. (Kids, don't try this at home!) The driving force behind osmosis is random motion (which we experience as temperature). To assign a will to this property is entirely anthropomorphic Similarly, it is anthropomorphic to attribute to the earth some kind of high level organization. To call the earth a living being is to invoke the chuckles of the scientific world.

However, single cells, in an organism or alone, function through mechanisms driven solely by random processes such as osmosis. The concentrations of various molecules is constantly changing. Salts, proteins, and nucleic acids dance through various membranes and encounter various receptors. They activate processes that change other concentrations one way or the other. This is the process of life on a cellular scale. This is the kind of relationship that "Gaia" hypothesizes for the earth. Cells have a collection of mechanisms and functions, from simple ones to Rube Goldberg machines. While they are working, the cell does something amazing—it exists. A dead cell dissipates quickly. Solid structures may endure, but the chemicals and concentrations one finds in a living cell rapidly disappear. Negative feedback loops keep a cell in an unstable state—a dynamic equilibrium. An example of a negative feedback loop is a child turning up the stereo until his mother turns it down, followed by the child turning it back up, followed by the mother turning it back down, ad infinitum. Scientists thought (and most still do) that if you took all the life off the earth, you'd essentially have the same thing you have now without the life. For the most part, they would expect the same temperatures, gas concentrations in the air, solute concentrations in the water, etc. Basically, life is something that's just kind of stuck on the earth like paint on a house. As naturalists and ecologists studied this life in detail, vast interrelationships became apparent. Now, with the Gaia hypothesis, some scientists recognize an all-inclusive relationship on a global scale. Not only do living things relate with one another, but also they have a dynamic relationship with their inorganic environment. The various concentrations of molecules swirling around the earth are highly unstable—left on their own, they would rapidly change. Gaia was originally developed to explain why there could be no life on Mars—the Martian atmosphere is stable. It is life that keeps our environment in dynamic equilibrium. These concentrations are essential for life. A change in one aspect of the environment will produce a compensating change—negative feedback. Of course, a massive change would produce corresponding changes in the composition of earth's life, so Gaia is no excuse to ignore environmental problems—humans might not be included in the solution.

In the Gaia hypothesis, the earth is like a cell. Every aspect is dynamically and holistically related. This may seem insultingly obvious, but it signals a dramatic change in attitudes from Man as user to Man as participant. With quantum physics, the morphogenetic field hypothesis (I'll try to get to that next issue), synchronisity and the embarrassing (even if unrecognized) failure of the "soft" sciences to become "hard," scientists are producing an increasing number of results and hypotheses that conform more to metaphysical philosophies than to the objective universe that underlies modern science. Scientists are loath to admit this, however. Their goal is to be as objective as possible. They demand results that are devoid of any interpretation other than analytical. This is an impossible ideal. But though scientists cannot eliminate the subjective observer, they have achieved much in the attempt. While this has been helpful in the research side of science, it has also characterized the application side as well. Ignoring the subjective application of scientific results and theories can be as big a mistake as ignoring subjective influences in the original research.

When science comes into people's lives, they develop feelings about it. They feel that computers think. They feel that malfunctioning machines have evil intent. Newtonian physics still defines the way many feel about the universe. Nuclear anything seems to have an influence separate from those responsible for it. Freudian hypotheses can define the way even nonscientists feel about the mind. Recombinant DNA is facing a "Frankenstein complex." When these objective products of science become part of society, they shape people's feelings.

And feelings shape their lives. Scientific objectivism has alienated Man from the Earth. Science has thus lead us to a condition dangerously out of balance with our environment. Now that science has discovered this, it is finally leading us back. In doing so, it happens to lead us away from objectivism.

The aptly named Gaia hypothesis is a good example of this. But objective scientists repudiate any subjective form this hypothesis might take. Even a scientist who supported it would recoil at the idea that the earth is a living being. That is not scientific. Compare this with the attitude that it is "unscientific" to attribute feelings (as distinct from reactions) to nonhumans (since they can't tell us about them). A response might be called a pain reaction, but never pain. It makes sense to deny that an ameba experiences pain or pleasure, but any nonhuman? Any feeling? Maybe. It's not important here; the significance is in the application. In trying to be "objective" one estranges oneself from the situation, losing all awareness of the nonobjective results of one's actions. Thus, one can excuse any cruelty to animals. Such acts may not reflect very directly on the perpetrator in this case, but we now have a high price to pay for Man's cruelty to the Earth. Though to a scientist it may be "fallacious" to think of the earth in subjective terms, in practical terms it might be a mistake not to.

From a scientific point of view, it is not objective to think of the earth as a living being. It is certainly "wrong" to ascribe any feelings to it. From a human perspective, we have demonstrated by destroying the Earth that it might be better to consider the Earth's feelings. True, science could easily show that "acts of cruelty to the Earth" are a mistake. In fact, it is objective research that compels our society to be more in tune with the Earth in order to survive. But, when it comes to application, such objective concepts are as out of tune with the individual as the Bauhaus movement. It is not the sterile contemplation of scientific results that inspires change, but their emotional significance.

We may have the capacity for thought, but we are emotional beings. Just compare how much easier it is to change your thoughts than your feelings. When you need food, you could think, "my blood sugar is low, I must consume carbohydrates to raise it"; but it's more compelling to feel, "I'm hungry, I want an Abbazabba bar." Similarly, a developer might think, "If I build here, it will back up that stream and then there will be hoards of obnoxious mosquitoes making this an unpleasant place"; but it would be much more compelling if he felt, "If I build here it will hurt Mother Earth." Regardless of how objective its genesis, people interpret a thing emotionally to the degree that it is a part of their lives. Scientists may hate it, but it's unavoidable. The Gaia hypothesis is especially prone to an emotional interpretation. In this way, it is a new kind of theory. It demands a participatory role and it encompasses all life we know. This is as emotional a topic as you can have. Here art and science begin to merge. Feelings become valid, for objectivity is lost in the inclusiveness of Gaia. You are as much a part of the Earth as a mitochondrion is a part of a cell.

If you accept Gaia, you recognize a complete physical relationship with the earth. Since we are emotional beings, it is exceptionally easy to proceed to an emotional relationship with the Earth. (And it seems that all humanity concurs that this is as the relationship with a mother.) If this becomes as much a part of our lives as Newtonian physics, it will change societal attitudes completely. People will see this as an entirely valid way of looking at the world. The Gaia hypothesis could be the first major step toward a paradigm shift. In this scientifically founded society, science is the most likely birthplace for such a change. Despite scientists' protests, Gaia is a very encouraging step back to the Goddess.