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Title: Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth
ISBN: 0192862189
Author:
James Lovelock
Publicate Date: 2000-11-23
Publish: 2000-11-23
List Price: $15.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $7.86
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $6.31
Amazon Merchant Price: $10.85
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| Customer Review: |
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1: We need to be good stewards of our planet!
I read this book sometime ago and is impacted me significantly as it has with many others. I enjoyed the explanation of the huge organism (Earth) that is self- regulating. I also enjoyed that Lovelock points out that we humans are part of the environment and belong here. We will produce waste.
Having said that, any system can overload. Thus, we need to be good stewards of our planet.
As the astronauts left the earth in the 1960's and headed towards the moon they looked back at our planet and did not see borders or countries. They saw the earth as a single unit...beautiful and fragile. It rotated on an invisible string in the blackness of night. It affected many of the astronauts profoundly.
The book has already helped many more people see the earth as a single unit. If it can continue to do that, hopefully we will find a way to live more harmoniously with the environment on our planet.
Gaia is a great read and a way of looking at things that is both fascination and enlightening!
The Re-Discovery of Common Sense: A Guide to: The Lost Art of Critical Thinking
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2: Other Books
A really interesting book, and hypothesis. I first noticed this theory, funnily enough, after watching the excellent miniseries 'Edge of Darkness' and some of the writing involved with talking about that show. Well worth a look. The Earth as 'living' in the sense of a being a system, where life and the planet exist in a relationship. This is definitely a thought provoking piece of work.
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3: Earth as an Organism
Lovelock is certainly an out-of-the-box thinker. The main point Lovelock drives home is that Earth behaves as an organism. The aim is to get the reader thinking that Earth is alive, and does have the same functions an organism. For example, the chemistry of the atmosphere and the ocean are controlled by life for the purposes maintaining the planet as a haven for life's continuance.
Life does appear to drive the planet away from the expected chemical equilibria. To this I give Lovelock credit for drawing a brilliant parallel that makes the book worth reading. There is a sort of alternate equilibrium under life's influence that hasn't been studied enough. The book really can change the way one looks at Earth. I'm not perfectly convinced with the precision here, but this is far better than picturing random life trying to survive on a otherwise dead world.
However, there were some chapters in the second half that were weak, and seemingly off-the-point. The role of mankind isn't supported as claimed. I'd give this 3 and a half stars if I could.
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4: Not even good science
I ordered this book hoping for some scientific evidence supporting what I already knew from personal experience; that there is a gestalt emerging from all of the beings in the universe. An emergent property that some call `the spirit that moves through all things' and some call `god' and I was hoping that this book would call it Gaia. Bah! The author totally ignores the metaphysical evidence and misrepresents the impact of civilization on the natural world. He also misrepresents the relationship tribal aka primitive cultures had with the natural world. Furthermore, this isn't even good science. Typically I pass books on to friends or trade them at a used bookstore. The best thing about this book was how easily the pages tore out to become kindling for my fire. If I could I would give it a negative rating -- don't pollute your mind with this trash.
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5: Brilliant hypothesis, poorly presented
In essence, Lovelock says that since evolution started eons ago, all forms of life evolved together resulting not only in balance among themselves and their surroundings, but also in such a way that they regulate the environment, controlling the atmosphere, the salinity of the seas and the temperature. This complex eco-system is presumably an inevitable consequence of the algorithm of evolution running successfully. Want to know if there is life on another planet? Easy, look at the atmosphere.
This comes out in the book, but it is a bit bizarre. Lovelock seems to go from anthropomorphism (the world learning to breath and making decisions) to using scientific terms that the average non-science reader will have to look up. He presents a table on page 63 that I think is incomprehensible unless you understood the work that went into it, which is not presented. He finishes with a plea not to hunt whales, which seems like a strange non-sequester to the book as whole.
As a consequence of this he seems to have appealed to crystal-swinging, horoscope-reading new age wo-wos rather than hard scientists. This is a shame, because the idea is brilliant (thus 4-stars), and could result in decades of research, added to which Gaia is a great name. It seems self-evident that we are part of and completely dependent upon the environment around us. Lovelock has such faith in the self-regulating mechanisms, he rather pooh poohs our ability to mess with it too much. However, it seems to me that evolution and balance takes time - we do things incredibly fast - our ability to warm the globe has only been for a couple of hundred years. We could easily give Gaia a fever, by overcoming her ability to make gentle regulations. If this happens, we do not know what the results will be, but we almost certainly will not benefit from them. As they say; "nature bats last".
Everyone should read this book and, despite its faults, it is readable.
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