Gaia Hypothesis

The Gaia hypothesis, a hypothesis put forward to explain a number of paradoxes about life and the earth, was first formulated in the 1960s by the independent research scientist James Lovelock. Until 1975 it was almost totally ignored. An article in the New Scientist of February 15th, 1975, and a popular book length version of the theory, published as The Quest for Gaia, began to attract scientific and critical attention to the hypothesis. Championed by certain environmentalists and scientists, it was vociferously rejected by many others, both within scientific circles and outside of them.

The Gaia hypothesis forms part of what is scientifically referred to as earth system science, and is a class of scientific models of the geo-biosphere in which life as a whole fosters and maintains suitable conditions for itself by helping to create an environment on Earth suitable for its continuity. The first such theory was created by Lovelock, who was working with NASA when he developed his hypotheses in the 1960s. He wrote an article in the science journal Nature, before formally publishing the concept in the 1979 book Gaia: A new look at life on Earth. He hypothesized that the living matter of the planet functioned like a single organism and named this self-regulating living system after the Greek goddess Gaia, using a suggestion from the novelist William Golding