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An Alaskan river system: easy to imagine Earth as being alive (Image: Paul Andrew Lawrence)

Why did the public love James Lovelock鈥檚 Gaia theory so much while scientists hated it? The Gaia Hypothesis by Michael Ruse gets to the heart of the question

SOME four decades ago, when James Lovelock first suggested that Earth was akin to a living organism, regulating its temperature and chemistry to keep conditions suitable for life, he could not have envisaged an easy ride. But even he was taken aback by the level of vitriol his theory provoked.

Biologists in particular took umbrage. John Maynard Smith called the Gaia hypothesis 鈥渁n evil religion鈥�. Stephen Jay Gould dismissed it as 鈥渁 metaphor, not a mechanism鈥�. Richard Dawkins argued it contradicted Darwinian evolution. Paul Ehrlich described Lovelock himself as 鈥渞adical and dangerous鈥�, while Robert May called him a 鈥渉oly fool鈥�.

Lovelock admitted that the relentless criticism pained him. When a colleague and I interviewed him in 2000, he said that by the end of the 1980s he had begun to feel that his work on Gaia had been 鈥渁 complete dead loss, that I鈥檇 wasted 20 years and wasn鈥檛 getting anywhere鈥�.

Yet he had cause to celebrate. To his astonishment, public reaction to Gaia was overwhelmingly positive. , prompted invitations to write a book from 21 publishers. The result was .

The idea that our planet was somehow alive found favour with philosophers, poets, writers, environmentalists, pagans, churchgoers and many others. Lovelock became a celebrity 鈥� though he would probably have traded that for a little more respect from his fellow academics.

Michael Ruse鈥檚 The Gaia Hypothesis: Science on a pagan planet attempts to understand why Gaia was so warmly embraced by its lay audience and so brutally disparaged (at least at first) by its professional one. His treatment is thought-provoking and original, as you would expect from this perceptive, irrepressible philosopher of biology.

Ruse traces the Gaia metaphor, plotting a concise history of holistic and scientific enquiry, mainstream and maverick. He begins with Plato 鈥� 鈥渢he first real Gaia enthusiast鈥� 鈥� who viewed the cosmos as a living thing endowed with soul and intelligence. And he joins the dots between Plotinus鈥檚 interconnectedness, Thomas Aquinas鈥檚 natural theology, and the scientific revolution and the mechanistic approach it inspired.

He finds roots of Gaia in Darwin鈥檚 theories, in the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Schelling, Herbert Spencer鈥檚 social Darwinism, the impassioned nature-writing of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, and in Rachel Carson鈥檚 Silent Spring and the eco-activism of the late 20th century.

It is an impressive homily on the evolution of scientific thinking, even if it is not always clear where this particular river will hit the sea. Ruse does arrive eventually at a provocative insight: a major reason why the scientific community reacted to Gaia 鈥渁s though a bad smell had been let off at the vicar鈥檚 tea party鈥� was because it was already feeling insecure. Evolutionary biologists were trading invective over punctuated equilibrium, group selection and the like.

聯The scientific community reacted to Gaia as though a bad smell had been let off at the vicar鈥檚 tea party聰

Post-Vietnam and Silent Spring, science had fallen from grace and was having to compete with all manner of pseudo-science and wishful thinking. Gaia may have been rooted in genuine science, and its originator a well-regarded chemist, but when the public lapped it up with the enthusiasm they had shown for mysticism or faith healing, many scientists pulled up the drawbridge.

Ruse quotes Maynard Smith, who summed it up in typically candid style. 鈥淟ook Jim,鈥� he said, 鈥渁ll the trouble with Gaia is that we鈥檝e had such agony with vitalism and group selection, and all these other things, and we thought we had it all worked out, and then you came along. You couldn鈥檛 have chosen a worse moment.鈥�

Ruse鈥檚 judgement is that for most scientists, no moment would have been a good one, and yet for many others Lovelock鈥檚 grand vision marches on.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淭he living heart of things鈥�