9 October

A plug, and background to the climate change debates. James (Jim) Lovelock and Lynn Margulis are arguably the most important scientists since Galileo. Together they formulated the Gaia idea, which some interpret as meaning 'the Earth is alive' (it doesn't mean that) or that the Earth is a 'self-regulating system' (it doesn't mean that either). What Lovelock and Margulis (RIP) did was to take Darwin's idea, that organisms exist in an 'environment', and updated it to show that organisms actually *create* their own environments. The implications are HUGE. What Gaia means is that the planet isn't an environment. Organisms shape the habitable zone, and that then shapes the organisms, at the same time. It's a symbiosis. And ultimately it means, there is no matter, and no spirit or soul. No God, no grand design. But not blind chance either, all those false dichotomies disappear. There are just trillions and trillions of organisms, constantly entering into symbiotic relationships with the planet.