Gaia Theory and it's connection to SMAC

[Tai Mai Shu]

I never realized that people were considering the idea of a planetary conciousness long before SMAC or the new film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, but here's a little tidbit from one of the other message boards that I frequent (final fantasy online)

::from Douglas Rushkoff's book :: 'Cyberia' (1994)
The people you are about to meet interpret the development of the datasphere as the hardwiring of a global brain. This is to be the final stage in the development of "Gaia," the living being that is the Earth, for which humans serve as the neurons. As computer programmers and psychedelic warriors together realize that "all is one,'' a common belief emerges that the evolution of humanity has been a willful progression toward the construction of the next dimensional home for consciousness...

Evolution is seen more as a groping toward than a random series of natural selections. Gaia is becoming conscious. Radzik and others have inferred that human beings serve as Gaia's brain cells. Each human being is an individual neuron, but unaware of his connection to the global organism as a whole. Evolution, then, depends on humanity's ability to link up to one another and become a global consciousness. ::

Totally freaks me out how what we think is just a bedtime story could actually be real

[Wiglaf]

Each human being is an individual neuron, but unaware of his connection to the global organism as a whole

That just screams The Matrix..

If you're willing to believe that, there's lots of other things I could dupe you into. That stuff's to get you thinking out of the box - not to mention buying that guy's book. Hey, we could all be from some alien planet, brought here, brainwashed, and left for humor.

Anything's possible

[Ken Hinds]

The Idea is old in Science Fiction. Read Asimov's Foundations Edge or Mutiny on the Enterprise in the orginal Star Trek series to name just two.

Ken

[Avenoct]

"The Gaia hypothesis says that the temperature, oxidation state, acidity, and certain aspects of the rocks and waters are kept constant, and that this homeostasis is maintained by active feedback processes operated automatically and unconsciously by the biota."
- James Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia ('76)

Lovelock's original work in the 70's, along with Margulis (a personal hero), brought these old theories to scientific light. While they do not propose a sentience, they point the the ablity of systems to self-regulate. This, IMO put the idea in the public consciousness, where it was avidly consumed by the psyche's of the green movement to give new spiritual / consciousness directions to that movement. A movement is much stronger if it is moving 'toward' something, rather than just 'away' from something else (ie pollution, industry, etc.).

Further, this theory was misinterpreted by at least the unconscious of the people, if not the consciousness: many began to express sentiments of sentience or a master plan around the word 'Gaia'. That's no coincidence, since it's originally a name of a Greek Goddess, obviously the Earth. The religious concept that the Earth is holy and/or conscious and or a deity in it's own right, is a very old one, pandemic in fact, until the rise of monotheism (read the Ishmael series (Daniel Quinn) for an interesting if fantastic theory about that). Is it surprising then, that we humans find ourselves largely turning back to a belief in the Goddess of all Godesses? Universal consciousness, a sense of belonging to the will of the Earth, the gods (Fate) are all OLD concepts, and I think attractive ones given the current world picture. I think the ideas of 'Fate' and belonging to the will of the Gods become ever more lucrative as the world around us becomes seemingly more chaotic, anonomous, despairing of faith.

A nifty site about the Greek Gaia: Gaia in Greek Myth

With the apparent confusion around the question of whether the earth is conscious or just appears to be conscious b/c it is self-regulating came a whole new series of sci-fi possibilities. While the scientific evidence doesn't support the idea, the spiritual/emotional 'evidence' does, so it is an easy idea to exploit.

Enough ranting for one post.

-Smack

[Kassiopeia]

Originally posted by Ken Hinds
The Idea is old in Science Fiction. Read Asimov's Foundations Edge or Mutiny on the Enterprise in the orginal Star Trek series to name just two.

Ken

Frigging Ken! That was my line!
'ave you read the Edge? In that the humans on that planet Gaia have already transcended and there's this woman called Bliss (
HONEST!) who is always telepathically in touch with the whole planet.
Even the smallest pebbles of rock and microscopic organisms have a part, but it is nonexistant because they aren't truly sentient. My memory is hazy Ken, how did the planet Gaia become like that?
PS. In the end of the novel, it is decided that the WHOLE GALAXY will be united telepathically like planet Gaia, to fight against some aliens coming from other galaxies in far future.

[Ken Hinds]

Smack,

The concept of Gaia as it's implemented in SMAC is older than the work that you cited. See Green Patches a short story by Asimov (1950) and Robert Heinlein's novel Methuselah's Children (1941). Both of which postulate a planet wide symbiosis with all the various spieces in harmony with each other on the planet and functioning as a planet wide intellegence. The entry of humans upon the planets evokes a reaction very similar to the reaction that occurs in SMAC with the exception that Mankind is driven off the planets and those individuals left behind either before or after the "problems" are discovered are assimulated into the mind and ecology of the particular planets.

Asimov goes even further than Heinlein and has his planet attempt to follow Mankind and work to assimulate Earth as well. As I said before this is not a new concept within Science Fiction and if you look at the sources listed in the manual you will see quite a bit of Older SF listed. Works by Gregg Bear and I believe Siverburg and Sturgeon as well.

Ken

[Ken Hinds]

kassiopeia,

You need to get Robots and Empire and Forward the Foundation. He wrote a lot of "Prequel" to the Second Foundation and the logically following books of which Foundation's Edge is one. I think that I have most of the Series on both ends of the time line From the Earliest "Pebble in the Sky" to latest, but it is quite possible that I'm missing a portion because I didn't keep up with his works toward the end of his life. If you have not read Robots of Dawn or his "Robot Novels" Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun you need those also. These all tie together in the end to answer your question about Gaia and Bliss. I really hate to give you the "Spoiler Answer" because it really would spoil the "Oh, I get it now!" feeling that comes as you piece together the answer. It will come to much clearer if you manage to read them in the correct order, which I did not.

Ken

[Mr. President]

I would have mentioned Lovelock and Asimov if the rest of you hadn't already. The former collaborated with Maxis' Fred Haslam and Will Wright to create a game called SimEarth. Released on the Macintosh and, I presume, on the PC, many years ago, you basically get to play as the planetary consciousness. Players get to introduce new classes of lifeforms, alter climate conditions, raise or lower planetary albedo, even fine-tune the sun's output, as they attempt to nurture the rise of intelligent life on their world. I get on my old computer once every couple of months or so and play it, because it's just really, really good.

Those kinds of holistic ideas have been present in Western philosophy since the beginning of time, but have taken different forms in different periods. You have to wonder if they were on to something when you think about the strange regularity of the ice ages and, global warming/cooling theories aside, the near-consistency of global temperatures over the last hundred years. Even mass extinctions have taken place almost like clockwork every 26 million years!

[Avenoct]

Apologies,

I had meant to say that Lovelock et. al. brought these ideas (again, as Asimov had already done) into the scientific community with some (though not as 'veritas') original research and evidence to support their ideas. What I did say was:

Lovelock's original work in the 70's, along with Margulis (a personal hero), brought these old theories to scientific light.

Oops.
I guess I had hoped that would be understood, or was getting rabid, one of the two.

The papers of Margulis on sub-cellular structures being co-evoloved eukaryotes, etc., as well as a few other sources (I wish I actually owned the book, but it's been awhile), gave their first book a certain validity as a starting point for further researches into the theory. Some scientests called it bunk of course, others accepted it a bit too blindly, but largely, I think this work jumpstarted a move in the fields of evolution and biological systems toward looking at self-regulating systems among other things. I've read Asimov, and Heinlen, and indeed agree with you that the ideas were there in sci-fi. I would hazard a guess that the Gaia idea never really left Western Civ at all, but kept popping up in various 'novel' ideas throughout recorded history. This is of course because it's almost a visceral truth, looking out at the miracle of the world.

I also hoped that I made it clear that:

The concept of Gaia as it's implemented in SMAC is older than the work that you cited

But I guess I didn't.

The point I was trying to make was basically that science doesn't subscribe to the Gaia Hypothesis beyond the point of a self-regulating system, if that! Whether the Earth is a being, a self-regulating system, or a pile of rock and biota, is, being not answerable by science at this point, a spiritual question first and foremost. It is also interesting that this belief is not new.

Tangentially: It is the duty of a rational inquirer I think to question the finding of evidence that supports prejudiced conclusions already held or suspected by the observer. Paralax. Therefore, it is valuable to look inwardly and see that the quest to find meaning and order in the universe is both a spiritual concern and a scientific one.

Anyways! I had meant to address Tai Mai Shu's original post. I'd quote it, but the whole thing is interesting. Really, Tai Mai Shu opens up a pandora's box for the evolutionist or creationist. Trying to be brief, even if the process of natural selection is random, follows it's simple rules to the letter, this does not preclude the possibility that both the subjects of selection and the outcomes are predetermined by some omnipotent power. So yes, if you 'add in' a sort of cyber-creationist purpose to everything, of course it's possible!

On a personal note: Whatever the truth may be, I always found looking at natural selection and evolution as they were originally set forth, to be quite miraculous in themselves. The fact that random chance can, with selective environmental forces, cause evolution of things like wings and hearts and brains, is just amazing. If I had to go looking for more meaning and purpose and miracle than that, I'd look toward human purpose as well. Personally, I don't think it takes 'humans as neurons' to make Gaia alive. I believe the earth, in a spiritual sense has always been alive, with or without us. To figure us as the eyes and ears and even brains! of that Being is egocentric and romantic, and personally I don't subscribe to that very much, though it's a nice sentiment. Daring to go on even more on the 'don't talk about it' subject of religion, for me, this difference boils down to an interpretation of 'There is that of God in X'. Most monotheists (Christian, Islam, what have you) put the word 'everyone' there. I believe it to be 'everything'.

-Smack, who really should probably just keep it shut.