The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth (Commonwealth Fund Book Program (Series).) - Softcover

Lovelock, James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393312399 ISBN 13: 9780393312393

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995

Synopsis

Proposes that all living species are components of a single organism and theorizes that the biological processes of the Earth naturally change environmental conditions to enable survival. Lib of Science. Natural Science Bk Club.

About this title

Review:

This book describes a set of observations about the life of our planet which may, one day, be recognized as one of the major discontinuities in human thought. If Lovelock turns out to be as right in his view of things as I believe he is, we will be viewing the Earth as a coherent system of life, self-regulating and self-changing, a sort of immense living organism.--Lewis Thomas

From the Back Cover:

The Earth, James Lovelock proposes, behaves as if it were a superorganism, made up from all the living things and from their material environment. When he first sketched out his brilliant Gaia theory in the 1970s, people around the world embraced it; within a short time Gaia has moved from the margins of scientific research to the mainstream. James Lovelock argues that such things as the level of oxygen, the formation of clouds, and the saltiness of the oceans may all be controlled by interacting physical, chemical, and biological processes. He believes that "the self-regulation of climate and chemical composition is a process that emerges from the tightly coupled evolution of rocks, air, and ocean - in addition to that of organisms. Such interlocking self-regulation, while rarely optimal - consider the cold and hot places of the earth, the wet and the dry - nevertheless keeps the Earth a fit place for life". The New York Times Book Review has called his arguments in favor of Gaia "plausible and above all illuminating". Now, in an updated paperback edition, fully revised, the author amplifies his account of how Gaia works with descriptions of new fields of research that have been opened by this pathbreaking concept.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0393312399
• ISBN 13: 9780393312393
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 282