Gaia

Gaia PDF Author: James Lovelock
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198784880
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
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.

Gaia

Gaia PDF Author: James Lovelock
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198784880
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
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.

Gaia

Gaia PDF Author: J. E. Lovelock
Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks
ISBN: 0192862189
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
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.

Gaia Emerging

Gaia Emerging PDF Author: Patricia Rose
Publisher: Patricia Rose
ISBN: 0646565729
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description


Facing Gaia

Facing Gaia PDF Author: Bruno Latour
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745684351
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
The emergence of modern sciences in the seventeenth century profoundly renewed our understanding of nature. For the last three centuries new ideas of nature have been continually developed by theology, politics, economics, and science, especially the sciences of the material world. The situation is even more unstable today, now that we have entered an ecological mutation of unprecedented scale. Some call it the Anthropocene, but it is best described as a new climatic regime. And a new regime it certainly is, since the many unexpected connections between human activity and the natural world oblige every one of us to reopen the earlier notions of nature and redistribute what had been packed inside. So the question now arises: what will replace the old ways of looking at nature? This book explores a potential candidate proposed by James Lovelock when he chose the name 'Gaia' for the fragile, complex system through which living phenomena modify the Earth. The fact that he was immediately misunderstood proves simply that his readers have tried to fit this new notion into an older frame, transforming Gaia into a single organism, a kind of giant thermostat, some sort of New Age goddess, or even divine Providence. In this series of lectures on 'natural religion,' Bruno Latour argues that the complex and ambiguous figure of Gaia offers, on the contrary, an ideal way to disentangle the ethical, political, theological, and scientific aspects of the now obsolete notion of nature. He lays the groundwork for a future collaboration among scientists, theologians, activists, and artists as they, and we, begin to adjust to the new climatic regime.

The Vanishing Face of Gaia

The Vanishing Face of Gaia PDF Author: James Lovelock
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141910429
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
James Lovelock described his previous book, The Revenge of Gaia, as 'a wake-up call for humanity'. Stark though it was in many respects, in The Vanishing Face of Gaia Lovelock says that even though the weather seems cooler and pollution lessens as the recession bites, the environmental problems we will face in the twenty-first century are even more terrifying than he previously realised. The Arctic and Antarctic ice-caps are melting very quickly, and water shortages and natural disasters are more common occurrences than at any time in recent history. The civilisations of many countries will be jeopardised and life as we know it severely disrupted. Almost all predictions of the likely rate of climate change have been based on estimates which professional observers in the real worldnow show are consistently underestimating the true rate of change. As a global community we continue to be fixated by conventional 'green' ideas which we believe will help save our world. Lovelock argues that only Gaia theory, which he originated over forty years ago, can really help us understand the crisis fully. The root problem is that there are too many people and animals for the Earth to carry. And there is in fact only one possible procedure which might bring a permanent cure for climate change, but we are unlikely to adopt it. 'Our wish to continue business as usual will probably prevent us from saving ourselves' says Lovelock, so we must adapt as best we can and try to ensure that enough of us survive to allow a more capable species to evolve from us. There could hardly be a more important message for humankind. James Lovelock has been an active and accurate observer of the Earth environment since the 1960s and was the first to find CFCs and other gases accumulating in the air. His Gaia theory provides insight into climate change in the coming century.This is his final warning.

Gaia 2

Gaia 2 PDF Author: William Irwin Thompson
Publisher: SteinerBooks
ISBN: 9780940262409
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Based on a conference held in Perugia, Italy (1988) this collection of papers and symposia confirms Heisenberg's saying that real science is made in the conversation of scientists

On Gaia

On Gaia PDF Author: Toby Tyrrell
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400847915
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
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.

Becoming Gaia

Becoming Gaia PDF Author: Sean Kelly
Publisher: Integral Imprint
ISBN: 9781947544284
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Gaia

Gaia PDF Author: James Lovelock
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191606693
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
In this classic work that continues to inspire many readers, Jim Lovelock puts forward his idea that the Earth functions as a single organism. Written for non-scientists, Gaia is a journey through time and space in search of evidence in support of a radically different model of our planet. In contrast to conventional belief that life is passive in the face of threats to its existence, the book explores the hypothesis that the Earth's living matter influences air, ocean, and rock to form a complex, self-regulating system that has the capacity to keep the Earth a fit place for life. Since Gaia was first published, Jim Lovelock's hypothesis has become a hotly debated topic in scientific circles. In a new Preface to this edition, he outlines his view of the present state of the debate. Oxford Landmark Science books are 'must-read' classics of modern science writing which have crystallized big ideas, and shaped the way we think.

Gaia, an Atlas of Planet Management

Gaia, an Atlas of Planet Management PDF Author: Norman Myers
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
For the first time since its publication in l984, a completely updated and revised edition of this best-selling atlas which brings it into the 1990s, incorporating the new events, issues, and statistics of the past decade.