Leading scientists bring the controversy over Gaia up to date by exploring a broad range of recent thinking on Gaia theory.

Scientists on Gaia is a multidisciplinary exploration of the controversial Gaia hypothesis which was first phrased by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in the early 1970s. Forty-four contributions detail the philosophical, empirical, and theoretical foundations of Gaia, mechanisms through which planetwide homeostasis could occur, applicability of the hypothesis to planets other than Earth, possible destabilization by outside forces and public policy implications.

Gaia, in which James Lovelock puts forward his inspirational and controversial idea that the Earth functions as a single organism, with life influencing planetary processes to form a self-regulating system aiding its own survival, is now a classic work that continues to provoke heated scientific debate.

This classic work is reissued with a new preface by the author. Written for non-scientists the idea is put forward that life on Earth functions as a single organism.

A critical examination of James Lovelock's controversial Gaia hypothesis One of the enduring questions about our planet is how it has remained continuously habitable over vast stretches of geological time despite the fact that its atmosphere and climate are potentially unstable. James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis posits that life itself has intervened in the regulation of the planetary environment in order to keep it stable and favorable for life. First proposed in the 1970s, Lovelock's hypothesis remains highly controversial and continues to provoke fierce debate. On Gaia undertakes the first in-depth investigation of the arguments put forward by Lovelock and others—and concludes that the evidence doesn't stack up in support of Gaia. Toby Tyrrell draws on the latest findings in fields as diverse as climate science, oceanography, atmospheric science, geology, ecology, and evolutionary biology. He takes readers to obscure corners of the natural world, from southern Africa where ancient rocks reveal that icebergs were once present near the equator, to mimics of cleaner fish on Indonesian reefs, to blind fish deep in Mexican caves. Tyrrell weaves these and many other intriguing observations into a comprehensive analysis of the major assertions and lines of argument underpinning Gaia, and finds that it is not a credible picture of how life and Earth interact. On Gaia reflects on the scientific evidence indicating that life and environment mutually affect each other, and proposes that feedbacks on Earth do not provide robust protection against the environment becoming uninhabitable—or against poor stewardship by us.

Essays link Gaian science to such global environmental quandaries as climate change and biodiversity destruction, providing perspectives from science, philosophy, politics, and technology.

Naming his theory after the ancient Greek earth goddess, Lovelock's "Gaia hypothesis" argued that everything on the planet--air, water, soil, and organisms--somehow act together in a global, self-organizing system to maintain conditions suitable to sustaining and perpetuating life. Telling the story of this maverick pioneer, Lovelock and Gaia explains how Lovelock's remarkable hypothesis is gradually ushering in a scientific revolution.