Gaia Hypothesis - Criticism

Criticism

After initially being largely ignored by most scientists, (from 1969 until 1977), thereafter for a period, the initial Gaia hypothesis was criticized by a number of scientists, such as Ford Doolittle, Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould. Lovelock has said that by naming his theory after a Greek goddess, championed by many non scientists, the Gaia hypothesis was interpreted as a neo-Pagan New Age religion. Many scientists in particular also criticised the approach taken in his popular book "Gaia, a New look at Life on Earth" for being teleological; a belief that all things have a predetermined purpose. Responding to this statement in 1990, Lovelock stated "Nowhere in our writings do we express the idea that planetary self-regulation is purposeful, or involves foresight or planning by the biota".

Stephen Jay Gould criticised Gaia as merely a metaphorical description of Earth processes. He wanted to know the actual mechanisms by which self-regulating homeostasis was regulated. David Abram argued that Gould was unaware that mechanism was itself only metaphorical. Lovelock argues that no one mechanism is responsible, that the connections between the various known mechanisms may never be known, that this is accepted in other fields of biology and ecology as a matter of course, and that specific hostility is reserved for his own theory for other reasons.

Aside from clarifying his language and understanding of what is meant by a life form, Lovelock himself ascribes most of the criticism to a lack of understanding of non-linear mathematics by his critics, and a linearizing form of greedy reductionism in which all events have to be immediately ascribed to specific causes before the fact. He also states that most of his critics are biologists but that his theory includes experiments in fields outside biology, and that some self-regulating phenomena may not be mathematically explainable.