Homage to Gaia (67 page)

We are still evolving animals, tribal carnivores. Detached thought and imagination are superficial; what drives us are feelings of hunger, love, hate, fear, and the messages of our senses most often have priority. It may not be as bad as Bertrand Russell’s comment, ‘The average man would rather face death or torture than think’, but feelings come first. Because we are tribal animals, we respect hierarchy and follow leaders. We have an instinctive, perhaps genetic, need for a tribal leader: someone to fear, worship, and adore, to follow without question, and if need be to die for. Small wonder that the tribal chief and God formed a resonance and that religion is usually a part of tribal conflict. We seem to need to codify our political, religious, and even
scientific beliefs in a legend. The legend soon becomes for us the truth about our leader, and the tribe. What makes the legend of science special is its capacity to self-correct: all other legends slowly lose touch with reality until violent change overthrows them.

I see us as so limited in understanding, so full of hubris about the wisdom of our discoveries, that we can never imagine the enormity of what we do not know. Among the few scientists who saw this was JBS Haldane, who wrote, ‘My suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.’ Consider a dog or a cat. These animals are conscious and in their way know the world. In some details, such as the world of smell, they know it better than we do; but we know far more about life and the universe than they will ever know. Now try to imagine an animal much more intelligent and wiser than we are. How would such an animal view our attempts at cosmology and theology? Although we may praise God as we pass the ammunition, we do not hesitate to demand that the scientist play his part in making better guns and shells. The power of science to win wars has helped it to displace religion but, strangely, science recognizes no tribal or national frontiers. It talks in a single language to all peoples of the Earth and is our trusted oracle. Yet, science is cold and bereft of feeling, and is not yet something that we can worship; by embracing science we have lost the comfort that religious faith brings. But, this could be a false view: it could be that modern science has yet to evolve a capacity to comfort as well as inform. The weakness of present-day science is in its love affair with reductionism, but it was not always like this. James Hutton, who lived in the 18
^th
century, and is rightly called the father of geology, was the first to see that the Earth was far older than human history, and he glimpsed the possibility that it was like a living organism and should be studied by physiology. James Hutton’s science was both reductionist and holistic and, in spite of Descartes, the top-down and bottom-up views coexisted in the minds of many scientists then.

I hope that the coming century will bring back balance to science. The frigid and unemotional face of science is that of reductionism, the taking apart of everything to find out how it works. It reached its nadir in biological vivisection, so prevalent until recent years. Vivisection, I feel, is something that we should do only when the need is paramount, and then done with that respect for life shown by a good countryman when reluctantly he cuts down a tree. Animal experiments, as we do them now on a massive routine scale, are not only
amoral, they are a foolishly inefficient way of doing things. If I want to understand how the computer sitting before me works, the most idiotic thing for me to do would be to take it to pieces and analyse chemically the composition of its parts. That is reduction. Better by far to interrogate it through its keyboard and read the answers on its screen: that is the holistic approach. The same is true of an animal. Just imagine an intelligent robot that wished to know how you worked. You would prefer that it questioned you and recorded your answers, not cut you into pieces for analysis. Of course, we still need reductionist science, but we must not let it dominate.

The philosopher, Mary Midgley, has recently reminded us that Gaia has influence well beyond science. She said:

One of these costs is our alienation from the physical world. She went on to say:

Mary Midgley did not exclude science from her vision of our alienation from the material world. We now know enough about living organisms and the Earth System to see that we cannot explain them by reductionist science alone. The deepest error of modern biology is the entrenched belief that organisms interact only with other organisms and merely adapt to their material environment. This is as wrong as believing that the people of a village interact with their neighbours but merely adapt to the material conditions of their cottages. In real life, both organisms and people change their environment as well as
adapting to it. What matters are the consequences: if the change is for the better then those who made it will prosper; if it is for the worse then the changers risk extinction. Reductionist science grew from the clockwork logic of Descartes. It can only partially explain anything alive. Living things also use the circular logic of systems, where cause and effect merge, and where there is the miracle of emergence.

Strangely, a statesman led me to think similar thoughts to those of Mary Midgley. That noble and brave man, Václav Havel, stirred me to see that science could evolve from its self-imposed reductionist imprisonment. His courage against adversity gave his words authority. When Havel was awarded the Freedom Medal of the United States he took as the title of his acceptance speech, ‘We are not alone nor for ourselves alone’. He reminded us that science had replaced religion as the source of knowledge but that modern science offers no moral guidance. He went on to say that recent holistic science did offer something to fill this moral void. He cited the anthropic principle as explaining why we are here, and Gaia as something to which we could be accountable. If we could respect and revere our planet it would be to our, as well as the Earth’s, benefit. Perhaps those who have faith might see this as God’s will also.

I do not think that President Havel was proposing an alternative Earth-based religion. I take his suggestion as offering something quite different. I think he offered a way of life for agnostics.

Gaia has ethical implications that come from its two strong rules. The first rule states that stability and resilience in ecosystems and on the Earth requires the presence of the environment that sets firm bounds or constraints. The second rule states that those who live well with their environment favour the selection of their progeny. Imagine sermons based on these rules. Consider, first, the guiding hand of constraint. I can see the nods of approval from the congregation. Their own experience of the need for a firm hand in the evolution of their families and in society concurs with the evolutionary experience of the Earth itself. The second rule, the need to take care of the environment, brings to mind a sermon on the abominable transgression of terraforming—the conversion by technology of another planet into a human habitat. What is so bad about terraforming is its objective to make a second home for us when we have destroyed our own planet by the greedy misapplication of science and technology. It is madness to think of converting with bulldozers and agribusiness the desert planet Mars into some pale semblance of the Earth, when we
should be improving our way of living with the Earth. The second rule also warns of the consequences of unbridled humanism. Early in the history of civilization, we realized that overreaching self-worship turns self-esteem into narcissism. It has taken almost until now to recognize that the exclusive love for our tribe or nation turns patriotism into xenophobic nationalism. We are just glimpsing the possibility that the worship of humankind can also become a bleak philosophy, which excludes all other living things, our partners in life upon the Earth. The bee is not complete without its hive; all living things need the material Earth. Together with the Earth, we are one in Gaia.

Our planet is one of exquisite beauty: it is made of the breath, the blood, and the bones of our ancestors. We need to recall our ancient sense of the Earth as an organism and revere it again. Gaia has been the guardian of life for all of its existence; and we reject her care at our peril. If we put our trust in Gaia, it can be a strong and joyful commitment, like that of a good marriage where the partners put their trust in each other. The fact that, like us, she is mortal makes that trust even more precious. Gaia should never become a religion, for then it would need a church and a hierarchy. Religions are all too human and fallible and in danger of sinking under the weight of their dogma; a Gaian religion would not be exempt. Gaia is part of science and is therefore always provisional, but the Earth, which is its embodiment, is something real for us to respect and revere. It is something much larger than we are and, unlike imaginary goddesses, can truly reward or punish us. What she does offer is an evolving world view for agnostics and this would require an interactive trust in Gaia, not blind faith; a trust that accepts that, like us, Gaia has a finite life span and is provisional. Gaia is not an alternative to religion but a complement. The great religions have already given us their prescriptions for living with each other in their parables. Gaia’s parables, like Daisyworld, are for the Earth. Daisyworld illustrates the mortality of Gaia and that, for every change we make to our environment, there are consequences.

Now that my eightieth birthday has passed, I share some of the feelings that must afflict someone young that has just heard that he is HIV-positive. Our probable life span is about ten years—we may have as little as three but twenty is possible. What we both know is that the decline is under way, and it is odd but comforting to know that Gaia, were she sentient, would share our feeling that time was shortening. Like many females, Gaia is reluctant to reveal her age, but we know
that it must be close to four billion years. We think that she has at most a billion years to go. The ineluctable increase of the Sun’s heat as it moves to its feverish dotage sets a time limit for all life on Earth. If we change the scale by dividing Gaia’s age by fifty million it gives eighty as the answer. In human terms, Gaia, like me, is eighty years old.

It may seem perverse, since I have no belief in a hereafter, that I do not share Philip Larkin’s sadness about approaching death, so poignantly expressed in his poem ‘Aubade’. Neither do I share Ludovic Kennedy’s view from his eightieth year, where he sees himself in a departure lounge awaiting a flight to nowhere. He professes atheism, and perhaps this is why passing time bothers him. I regard the notion of personal life after death as wholly improbable, but I am not an atheist. The scientific evidence is now strong enough for me to take a chance and put my trust in Gaia. It is comforting to think that I am a part of her, and to know that my destiny is to merge with the chemistry of our living planet.