Talk:Gaia philosophy/Archive 2

Those were some phenomenal revisions just made by 142.177.85.77. (presumably one of our members who spent so long typing that s/he got logged out :) Great work! Hopefully, we can reach an agreement on what to call the new article. Gaia theory in biology sounds pretty good, but perhaps it would be better to use a more general title such as Modern Gaia theory, as I have suggested at Talk:Gaia Theory. Anyway, awesome work, 142.177.85.77, whoever you are! (who was that masked man?) -- Wapcaplet 21:14 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * Gaia theory (biology) is now ready to be attacked by the biologists, who will hopefully now leave this one alone. I do not log in and am not a "member" of anything.  I saw a suggestion I agreed with and decided to just implement it, it, before there was anything drastic done in the wrong direction.


 * It is wrong to call the general stuff "modern" since it goes back as far as the Goddess Gaia herself and Johannes Kepler, and is still current. There are for instance many real physicists and theologians working together on cosmology problems put forth by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.  The real division is between those who want to build simulations and publish in biology journals, and those who accept that the thing is just "too big to model" at least with "our tiny brains".  This tiny brain is done with this for now.  I do think places to intervene in a system should mention Donella Meadows as another important voices in the evolution of the general Gaia theory.  The "greening of biology" is maybe similar to other projects or fields where ethics are presumed to guide experiment or limit knowledge.  Someone should go through all the comments above and perhaps do a more general survey of current work derived from Teilhard de Chardin which would probably include Lee Smolin's.  His stuff shows that physics can be seen as "part of biology".

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Lee Smolin's discussions are not only not a Gaia theory, they don't even work as a metaphor or analogy. I think that contribution was made by someone unfamiliar with physics. Smolin's view, which is shared by many physicists, is that as a black hole forms, a small amount of space-time is pinched off from the rest of our observable universe. Within the black hole, this small amont of space-time might then undergo inflation (see the works of physicist Alan Guth). This could possibly create an entire new universe, cut off from our own. It has nothing to do in any way with Gaia like theories. RK 12:29 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Removed from main body of article:
 * This concept of a species-wide choice to behave in one way or another means that Gaia theory cannot be contained strictly by the scientific method which does not allow for such choice, and is more of a social science concept to the degree that this choice is explored and accepted. This article is about the general public view. For the stricter view from ecology and biology see Gaia theory in biology which is only briefly explained in context below, to and only to explain why theories in different fields have similar names.


 * The above removed text is no longer needed; these ideas were repeated over and over again in this article, and in others. The article needed a lot of editing to make it readable. RK 12:29 15 Jun 2003 (UTC)

The following was removed from article, as it just contains one contributors POV and opinions. It is very far from what should appear in an impartial encyclopedia.
 * What seems undisputable is that universes contain stars, solar systems, and maybe biosphere, and that those biospheres contain organisms, and that some of those look up at stars, but all of them may be made out of some kind of tissue or cell material, and may thus prefer to think of a universe as also made that way.

The following was removed from article, as it has nothing to do with Gaia theory. Rather, this POV essay is about how non-humans might perceive things differently from humans. And bringing in the anthropic principle is really quite bizarre. It is clear that some people are using this encyclopedia entry as a junk-baskter to ramble on about any topic they find of interest, which they then tangentially try to connect to Gaia theory.


 * There are planet-specific regularities in human cognition of our biosphere and universe. Without a way to consult with non-humans it is difficult to say exactly what they are, but, it is clear that if we grew up on a darker or louder or heavier or more oxygen-poor planet we would have stronger vision or weaker hearing or stronger legs or stronger lungs, and that this would affect our evolution and thus our view of our planet and universe in some unclear way.  The Anthropic Principle in physics is an exploration of the ways in which our history as humans constrains what we see and care about in the universe:  Eugene Wigner, Stephen Hawking and other physicists were prominent in raising these issues as part of the problem of cosmology.