Cybernetics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cybernetics is a transdisciplinary^[1] approach for exploring regulatory systems, their structures, constraints, and possibilities. Cybernetics is relevant to the study of systems, such as mechanical, physical, biological, cognitive, and social systems. Cybernetics is applicable when a system being analyzed incorporates a closed signaling loop; that is, where action by the system generates some change in its environment and that change is reflected in that system in some manner (feedback) that triggers a system change, originally referred to as a "circular causal" relationship. Some say this is necessary to a cybernetic perspective. System dynamics, a related field, originated with applications of electrical engineering control theory to other kinds of simulation models (especially business systems) by Jay Forrester at MIT in the 1950s.

Concepts studied by cyberneticists (or, as some prefer, cyberneticians) include, but are not limited to: learning, cognition, adaptation, social control, emergence, communication, efficiency, efficacy, and connectivity. These concepts are studied by other subjects such as engineering and biology, but in cybernetics these are abstracted from the context of the individual organism or device.

Norbert Wiener defined cybernetics in 1948 as "the scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine."^[2] The word cybernetics comes Greek κυβερνητική (kybernetike), meaning "governance", i.e., all that are pertinent to κυβερνάω (kybernao), the latter meaning "to steer, navigate or govern", hence κυβέρνησις (kybernesis), meaning "government", is the government while κυβερνήτης (kybernetes) is the governor or the captain. Contemporary cybernetics began as an interdisciplinary study connecting the fields of control systems, electrical network theory, mechanical engineering, logic modeling, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, anthropology, and psychology in the 1940s, often attributed to the Macy Conferences. During the second half of the 20th century cybernetics evolved in ways that distinguish first-order cybernetics (about observed systems) from second-order cybernetics (about observing systems).^[3] More recently there is talk about a third-order cybernetics (doing in ways that embraces first and second-order).^[4]

Fields of study which have influenced or been influenced by cybernetics include game theory, system theory (a mathematical counterpart to cybernetics), perceptual control theory, sociology, psychology (especially neuropsychology, behavioral psychology, cognitive psychology), philosophy, architecture, and organizational theory.^[5]

Definitions

Cybernetics has been defined in a variety of ways, by a variety of people, from a variety of disciplines. The Larry Richards Reader includes a listing by Stuart Umpleby of notable definitions:^[6]

• "Science concerned with the study of systems of any nature which are capable of receiving, storing and processing information so as to use it for control." — A. N. Kolmogorov
• "The art of securing efficient operation." — Louis Couffignal^[7]
• "'The art of steersmanship': deals with all forms of behavior in so far as they are regular, or determinate, or reproducible: stands to the real machine -- electronic, mechanical, neural, or economic -- much as geometry stands to real object in our terrestrial space; offers a method for the scientific treatment of the system in which complexity is outstanding and too important to be ignored." — W. Ross Ashby
• "A branch of mathematics dealing with problems of control, recursiveness, and information, focuses on forms and the patterns that connect." — Gregory Bateson
• "The art of effective organization." — Stafford Beer
• "The art and science of manipulating defensible metaphors." — Gordon Pask
• "The art of creating equilibrium in a world of constraints and possibilities." — Ernst von Glasersfeld
• "The science and art of understanding." — Humberto Maturana
• "The ability to cure all temporary truth of eternal triteness." — Herbert Brun

Other notable definitions include:

• "The science and art of the understanding of understanding." — Rodney E. Donaldson, the first president of the American Society for Cybernetics
• "A way of thinking about ways of thinking of which it is one." — Larry Richards
• "The art of interaction in dynamic networks." — Roy Ascott

Etymology

Simple feedback model. AB < 0 for negative feedback.

The term cybernetics stems from κυβερνήτης (kybernētēs) "steersman, governor, pilot, or rudder" (the same root as government). As with the ancient Greek pilot, independence of thought is important in cybernetics.^[8] Cybernetics is a broad field of study, but the essential goal of cybernetics is to understand and define the functions and processes of systems that have goals and that participate in circular, causal chains that move from action to sensing to comparison with desired goal, and again to action. Studies in cybernetics provide a means for examining the design and function of any system, including social systems such as business management and organizational learning, including for the purpose of making them more efficient and effective.

French physicist and mathematician André-Marie Ampère first coined the word "cybernetique" in his 1834 essay Essai sur la philosophie des sciences to describe the science of civil government.^[9]

Cybernetics was borrowed by Norbert Wiener, in his book "Cybernetics", to define the study of control and communication in the animal and the machine.^[10] Stafford Beer called it the science of effective organization and Gordon Pask called it "the art of defensible metaphors" (emphasizing its constructivist epistemology) though he later extended it to include information flows "in all media" from stars to brains. It includes the study of feedback, black boxes and derived concepts such as communication and control in living organisms, machines and organizations including self-organization. Its focus is how anything (digital, mechanical or biological) processes information, reacts to information, and changes or can be changed to better accomplish the first two tasks.^[11] A more philosophical definition, suggested in 1956 by Louis Couffignal, one of the pioneers of cybernetics, characterizes cybernetics as "the art of ensuring the efficacy of action."^[12] The most recent definition has been proposed by Louis Kauffman, President of the American Society for Cybernetics, "Cybernetics is the study of systems and processes that interact with themselves and produce themselves from themselves."^[13]

History

The roots of cybernetic theory

The word cybernetics was first used in the context of "the study of self-governance" by Plato in The Alcibiades to signify the governance of people.^[14] The word 'cybernétique' was also used in 1834 by the physicist André-Marie 
Ampère (1775–1836) to denote the sciences of government in his classification system of human knowledge.

James Watt

The first artificial automatic regulatory system, a water clock, was invented by the mechanician Ktesibios. In his water clocks, water flowed from a source such as a holding tank into a reservoir, then from the reservoir to the mechanisms of the clock. Ktesibios's device used a cone-shaped float to monitor the level of the water in its reservoir and adjust the rate of flow of the water accordingly to maintain a constant level of water in the reservoir, so that it neither overflowed nor was allowed to run dry. This was the first artificial truly automatic self-regulatory device that required no outside intervention between the feedback and the controls of the mechanism. Although they did not refer to this concept by the name of Cybernetics (they considered it a field of engineering), Ktesibios and others such as Heron and Su Song are considered to be some of the first to study cybernetic principles.

The study of teleological mechanisms (from the Greek τέλος or telos for end, goal, or purpose) in machines with corrective feedback dates from as far back as the late 18th century when James Watt's steam engine was equipped with a governor, a centrifugal feedback valve for controlling the speed of the engine. Alfred Russel Wallace identified this as the principle of evolution in his famous 1858 paper. In 1868 James Clerk Maxwell published a theoretical article on governors, one of the first to discuss and refine the principles of self-regulating devices. Jakob von Uexküll applied the feedback mechanism via his model of functional cycle (Funktionskreis) in order to explain animal behaviour and the origins of meaning in general.

The early 20th century

Contemporary cybernetics began as an interdisciplinary study connecting the fields of control systems, electrical network theory, mechanical engineering, logic modeling, evolutionary biology and neuroscience in the 1940s.
Electronic control systems originated with the 1927 work of Bell Telephone Laboratories engineer Harold S. Black on using negative feedback to control amplifiers. The ideas are also related to the biological work of Ludwig von Bertalanffy in General Systems Theory.

Early applications of negative feedback in electronic circuits included the control of gun mounts and radar antenna during World War II. Jay Forrester, a graduate student at the Servomechanisms Laboratory at MIT during WWII working with Gordon S. Brown to develop electronic control systems for the U.S. Navy, later applied these ideas to social organizations such as corporations and cities as an original organizer of the MIT School of Industrial Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Forrester is known as the founder of System Dynamics.

W. Edwards Deming, the Total Quality Management guru for whom Japan named its top post-WWII industrial prize, was an intern at Bell Telephone Labs in 1927 and may have been influenced by network theory. Deming made "Understanding Systems" one of the four pillars of what he described as "Profound Knowledge" in his book "The New Economics."

Numerous papers spearheaded the coalescing of the field. In 1935 Russian physiologist P.K. Anokhin published a book in which the concept of feedback ("back afferentation") was studied. The study and mathematical modelling of regulatory processes became a continuing research effort and two key articles were published in 1943. These papers were "Behavior, Purpose and Teleology" by Arturo Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener, and Julian Bigelow; and the paper "A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity" by Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts.

Cybernetics as a discipline was firmly established by Norbert Wiener, McCulloch and others, such as W. Ross Ashby, mathematician Alan Turing, and W. Grey Walter. Walter was one of the first to build autonomous robots as an aid to the study of animal behaviour. Together with the US and UK, an important geographical locus of early cybernetics was France.

In the spring of 1947, Wiener was invited to a congress on harmonic analysis, held in Nancy, France. The event was organized by the Bourbaki, a French scientific society, and mathematician Szolem Mandelbrojt (1899–1983), uncle of the world-famous mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot.

John von Neumann

During this stay in France, Wiener received the offer to write a manuscript on the unifying character of this part of applied mathematics, which is found in the study of Brownian motion and in telecommunication engineering. The following summer, back in the United States, Wiener decided to introduce the neologism cybernetics into his scientific theory. The name cybernetics was coined to denote the study of "teleological mechanisms" and was popularized through his book Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (MIT Press/John Wiley and Sons, NY, 1948). In the UK this became the focus for the Ratio Club.

In the early 1940s John von Neumann, although better known for his work in mathematics and computer science, did contribute a unique and unusual addition to the world of cybernetics: von Neumann cellular automata, and their logical follow up the von Neumann Universal Constructor. The result of these deceptively simple thought-experiments was the concept of self replication which cybernetics adopted as a core concept. The concept that the same properties of genetic reproduction applied to social memes, living cells, and even computer viruses is further proof of the somewhat surprising universality of cybernetic study.

Wiener popularized the social implications of cybernetics, drawing analogies between automatic systems (such as a regulated steam engine) and human institutions in his best-selling The Human Use of Human Beings : Cybernetics and Society (Houghton-Mifflin, 1950).

While not the only instance of a research organization focused on cybernetics, the Biological Computer Lab at the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign, under the direction of Heinz von Foerster, was a major center of cybernetic research for almost 20 years, beginning in 1958.

Split from artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) was founded as a distinct discipline at a 1956 conference. After some uneasy coexistence, AI gained funding and prominence. Consequently, cybernetic sciences such as the study of neural networks were downplayed; the discipline shifted into the world of social sciences and therapy.^[15]

Prominent cyberneticians during this period include:

• Gregory Bateson
• Aksel Berg

New cybernetics

In the 1970s, new cyberneticians emerged in multiple fields, but especially in biology. The ideas of Maturana, Varela and Atlan, according to Jean-Pierre Dupuy (1986) "realized that the cybernetic metaphors of the program upon which molecular biology had been based rendered a conception of the autonomy of the living being impossible. Consequently, these thinkers were led to invent a new cybernetics, one more suited to the organizations which mankind discovers in nature - organizations he has not himself invented".^[16] However, during the 1980s the question of whether the features of this new cybernetics could be applied to social forms of organization remained open to debate.^[16]

In political science, Project Cybersyn attempted to introduce a cybernetically controlled economy during the early 1970s. In the 1980s, according to Harries-Jones (1988) "unlike its predecessor, the new cybernetics concerns itself with the interaction of autonomous political actors and subgroups, and the practical and reflexive consciousness of the subjects who produce and reproduce the structure of a political community. A dominant consideration is that of recursiveness, or self-reference of political action both with regards to the expression of political consciousness and with the ways in which systems build upon themselves".^[17]

One characteristic of the emerging new cybernetics considered in that time by Felix Geyer and Hans van der Zouwen, according to Bailey (1994),^[18] was "that it views information as constructed and reconstructed by an individual interacting with the environment. This provides an epistemological foundation of science, by viewing it as observer-dependent. Another characteristic of the new cybernetics is its contribution towards bridging the micro-macro gap. That is, it links the individual with the society".^[18] Another characteristic noted was the "transition from classical cybernetics to the new cybernetics [that] involves a transition from classical problems to new problems. These shifts in thinking involve, among others, (a) a change from emphasis on the system being steered to the system doing the steering, and the factor which guides the steering decisions.; and (b) new emphasis on communication between several systems which are trying to steer each other".^[18]

Recent endeavors into the true focus of cybernetics, systems of control and emergent behavior, by such related fields as game theory (the analysis of group interaction), systems of feedback in evolution, and metamaterials (the study of materials with properties beyond the Newtonian properties of their constituent atoms), have led to a revived interest in this increasingly relevant field.^[11]

Cybernetics and economic systems

The design of self-regulating control systems for a real-time planned economy was explored by Viktor Glushkov in the former Soviet Union during the 1960s. By the time information technology was developed enough to enable feasible economic planning based on computers, the Soviet Union and eastern bloc countries began moving away from planning^[19] and eventually collapsed.

More recent proposals for socialism involve "New Socialism", outlined by the computer scientists Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell, where computers determine and manage the flows and allocation of resources among socially-owned enterprises.^[20]

Subdivisions of the field

Cybernetics is sometimes used as a generic term, which serves as an umbrella for many systems-related scientific fields.

Basic cybernetics

Cybernetics studies systems of control as a concept, attempting to discover the basic principles underlying such things as

ASIMO uses sensors and sophisticated algorithms to avoid obstacles and navigate stairs.

• Artificial intelligence
• Robotics
• Computer Vision
• Control systems
• Emergence
• Learning organization
• New Cybernetics
• Second-order cybernetics
• Interactions of Actors Theory
• Conversation Theory
• Self-organization in cybernetics

In biology

Cybernetics in biology is the study of cybernetic systems present in biological organisms, primarily focusing on how animals adapt to their environment, and how information in the form of genes is passed from generation to generation.^[21] There is also a secondary focus on combining artificial systems with biological systems.^{[citation needed]}

• Bioengineering
• Biocybernetics
• Bionics
• Homeostasis
• Heterostasis
• Medical cybernetics
• Practopoiesis
• Synthetic Biology
• Systems Biology
• Autopoiesis
• Neuroscience

In computer science

Computer science directly applies the concepts of cybernetics to the control of devices and the analysis of information.

• Design Patterns
• Robotics
• Decision support system
• Cellular automaton
• Simulation

In engineering

Cybernetics in engineering is used to analyze cascading failures and System Accidents, in which the small errors and imperfections in a system can generate disasters. Other topics studied include:

An artificial heart, a product of biomedical engineering.

• Adaptive systems
• Engineering cybernetics
• Ergonomics
• Biomedical engineering
• Systems engineering

In management

• Entrepreneurial cybernetics
• Management cybernetics
• Organizational cybernetics
• Operations research
• Systems engineering

In mathematics

Mathematical Cybernetics focuses on the factors of information, interaction of parts in systems, and the structure of systems.

• Dynamical system
• Control theory
• Information theory
• Systems theory

In psychology

• Homunculus
• Psycho-Cybernetics
• Cybercognition
• Systems psychology
• Perceptual Control Theory
• Psychovector Analysis
• Attachment Theory
• Human-robot interaction
• Consciousness
• Embodied cognition
• Cognitive psychology
• Mind-body problem
• Behavioral cybernetics
• Teorias de la conducta

In sociology

By examining group behavior through the lens of cybernetics, sociologists can seek the reasons for such spontaneous events as smart mobs and riots, as well as how communities develop rules such as etiquette by consensus without formal discussion^{[citation needed]}. Affect Control Theory explains role behavior, emotions, and labeling theory in terms of homeostatic maintenance of sentiments associated with cultural categories. The most comprehensive attempt ever made in the social sciences to increase cybernetics in a generalized theory of society was made by Talcott Parsons. In this way, cybernetics establishes the basic hierarchy in Parsons' AGIL paradigm, which is the ordering system-dimension of his action theory. These and other cybernetic models in sociology are reviewed in a book edited by McClelland and Fararo.^[22]

• Affect Control Theory
• Memetics
• Sociocybernetics

In education

A model of cybernetics in Education was introduced by Gihan Sami Soliman; an educational consultant, as a project idea to be implemented with the help of two team members in Sinai. The Sinai Sustainability Cybernetics Center announced as a semi-finalist project by MIT annual competition 2013.^{[23][24][25][26]} The project idea proposed relating education to sustainable development through an IMS project that applies a multiple educational program related to the original natural self-healing system of life on earth. Education, sustainable development, social justice disciplines interact in a causal circular relationship that education would contribute to the development of the local community in Sinai village, on both sustainability and social responsibility levels while the community itself provides a unique learning environment that will contribute to the development of the educational program in a closed signaling loop.

In art

Nicolas Schöffer's CYSP I (1956) was perhaps the first artwork to explicitly employ cybernetic principles (CYSP is an acronym that joins the first two letters of the words "CYbernetic" and "SPatiodynamic").^[27] The artist Roy Ascott elaborated an extensive theory of cybernetic art in "Behaviourist Art and the Cybernetic Vision" (Cybernetica, Journal of the International Association for Cybernetics (Namur), Volume IX, No.4, 1966; Volume X No.1, 1967) and in "The Cybernetic Stance: My Process and Purpose" (Leonardo Vol 1, No 2, 1968). Art historian Edward A. Shanken has written about the history of art and cybernetics in essays including "Cybernetics and Art: Cultural Convergence in the 1960s"^[28] and "From Cybernetics to Telematics: The Art, Pedagogy, and Theory of Roy Ascott"(2003),^[29] which traces the trajectory of Ascott's work from cybernetic art to telematic art (art using computer networking as its medium, a precursor to net.art.)

• Telematic art
• Interactive Art
• Systems art

In Earth system science

Geocybernetics aims to study and control the complex co-evolution of ecosphere and anthroposphere,^[30] for example, for dealing with planetary problems such as anthropogenic global warming.^[31] Geocybernetics applies a dynamical systems perspective to Earth system analysis. It provides a theoretical framework for studying the implications of following different sustainability paradigms on co-evolutionary trajectories of the planetary socio-ecological system to reveal attractors in this system, their stability, resilience and reachability. Concepts such as tipping elements and tipping points in the climate system, planetary boundaries, the safe operating space for humanity and proposals for manipulating Earth system dynamics on a global scale such as geoengineering have been framed in the language of geocybernetic Earth system analysis.

Related fields

Complexity science

Complexity science attempts to understand the nature of complex systems.

• Complex Adaptive System
• Complex systems
• Complexity theory

Biomechatronics

Biomechatronics relates to linking mechatronics to biological organisms, leading to systems that conform to A. N.
Kolmogorov's definition of Cybernetics, i.e. "Science concerned with the study of systems of any nature which are capable of receiving, storing and processing information so as to use it for control".^{[citation needed]} From this perspective mechatronics are considered technical cybernetics or engineering cybernetics.

Superorganism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A termite mound made by the cathedral termite

A coral colony

A superorganism is an organism consisting of many organisms. The term is used most often to describe a social unit of eusocial animals, where division of labour is highly specialised and where individuals are not able to survive by themselves for extended periods. Ants are the best-known example of such a superorganism, while the naked mole-rat is a famous example of the eusocial mammal. The technical definition of a superorganism is "a collection of agents which can act in concert to produce phenomena governed by the collective,"^[1] phenomena being any activity "the hive wants" such as ants collecting food or bees choosing a new nest site. Superorganisms tend to exhibit the behaviours of homeostasis, power law scaling, persistent disequilibrium and emergent behaviours ^[2]

The term was coined in 1789 by James Hutton, the "Father of Geology", to refer to Earth in the context of geophysiology. The Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock,^[3] and Lynn Margulis as well as the work of Hutton, Vladimir Vernadsky and Guy Murchie, have suggested that the biosphere can be considered a superorganism, although this has been disputed strongly.^[4] This view relates to Systems Theory and the dynamics of a complex system.

Superorganisms are important in cybernetics, particularly biocybernetics. They exhibit a form of "distributed intelligence," a system in which many individual agents with limited intelligence and information are able to pool resources to accomplish a goal beyond the capabilities of the individuals. Existence of such behavior in organisms has many implications for military and management applications, and is being actively researched.^[5]

§Superorganic in social theory

Nineteenth century thinker Herbert Spencer coined the term super-organic to focus on social organization (the first chapter of his Principles of Sociology is entitled "Super-organic Evolution"^[6]), though this was apparently a distinction between the organic and the social, not an identity: Sencer explored the holistic nature of society as a social organism while distinguishing the ways in which society did not behave like an organism.^[7] For Spencer, the super-organic was an emergent property of interacting organisms, that is, human beings. And, as has been argued by D. C. Phillips, there is a "difference between emergence and reductionism."^[8]

Similarly, economist Carl Menger expanded upon the evolutionary nature of much social growth, but without ever abandoning methodological individualism. Many social institutions arose, Menger argued, not as "the result of socially teleological causes, but the unintended result of innumerable efforts of economic subjects pursuing 'individual' interests."^[9]

Spencer and Menger both argued that because it is individuals who choose and act, any social whole should be considered less than an organism, though Menger emphasized this more emphatically. Spencer used the organistic idea to engage in extended analysis of social structure, conceding that it was primarily an analogy. So, for Spencer, the idea of the super-organic best designated a distinct level of social reality above that of biology and psychology, and not a one-to-one identity with an organism.

Nevertheless, Spencer also argued that "every organism of appreciable size is a society," which has suggested to some that the issue may be terminological.^[10]

The term superorganic was adopted by anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber in 1917.^[11] Social aspects of the superorganism concept are analysed in Marshall (2002).^[12] Finally, recent work in social psychology has offered the superorganism metaphor as a unifying framework to understand diverse aspects of human sociality, such as religion, comformity, and social identity processes.^[13]

§Problems and criticisms

The question remains "What is to be considered the individual?" In Toby Tyrrell's critique of the Gaia hypothesis he argues that Earth's climate system does not resemble an animal's physiological system. Planetary biospheres are not tightly regulated in the same way that animal bodies are: "planets, unlike animals, are not products of evolution.
Therefore we are entitled to be highly skeptical (or even outright dismissive) about whether to expect something akin to a “superorganism”". He concludes that "the superorganism analogy is unwarranted."^[14]

Some scientists have suggested that individual human beings can be thought of as "superorganisms"; as a typical human digestive system contains 10¹³ to 10¹⁴ microorganisms whose collective genome ("microbiome") contains at least 100 times as many genes as our own ^[15][16] (see also Human microbiome project).

Gaia philosophy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gaia philosophy (named after Gaia, Greek goddess of the Earth) is a broadly inclusive term for related concepts that living organisms on a planet will affect the nature of their environment in order to make the environment more suitable for life. This set of theories holds that all organisms on a life-giving planet regulate the biosphere to the benefit of the whole. Gaia concept draws a connection between the survivability of a species (hence its evolutionary course) and its usefulness to the survival of other species.

While there were a number of precursors to Gaia theory, the first scientific form of this idea was proposed as the Gaia hypothesis by James Lovelock, a UK chemist, in 1970. The Gaia hypothesis deals with the concept of homeostasis, and claims the resident life forms of a host planet coupled with their environment have acted and act as a single, self-regulating system. This system includes the near-surface rocks, the soil, and the atmosphere. Today many scientists consider such ideas to be unsupported by, or at odds with, the available evidence (see recent criticism). These theories are however significant in green politics.

Predecessors to the Gaia theory

There are some mystical, scientific and religious predecessors to the Gaia philosophy, which had a Gaia-like conceptual basis. Many religious mythologies had a view of Earth as being a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts (e.g. some Native American religions and various forms of shamanism).

Lewis Thomas believed that Earth should be viewed as a single cell; he derived this view from Johannes Kepler's view of Earth as a single round organism.

Isaac Newton wrote of the earth, "“Thus this Earth resembles a great animall or rather inanimate vegetable, draws in æthereall breath for its dayly refreshment & vitall ferment & transpires again with gross exhalations, And according to the condition of all other things living ought to have its times of beginning youth old age & perishing.”^[1]

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a paleontologist and geologist, believed that evolution unfolded from cell to organism to planet to solar system and ultimately the whole universe, as we humans see it from our limited perspective. Teilhard later influenced Thomas Berry and many Catholic humanist thinkers of the 20th century.

Buckminster Fuller is generally credited with making the idea respectable in Western scientific circles in the 20th century. Building to some degree on his observations and artifacts, e.g. the Dymaxion map of the Earth he created, others began to ask if there was a way to make the Gaia theory scientifically sound.

Oberon Zell-Ravenheart in 1970 in an article in Green Egg Magazine, independently articulated the Gaia Thesis [1].

None of these ideas are considered scientific hypotheses; by definition a scientific hypothesis must make testable predictions. As the above claims are not testable, they are outside the bounds of current science.

These are conjectures and perhaps can only be considered as social and maybe political philosophy; they may have implications for theology, or thealogy as Zell-Ravenheart and Isaac Bonewits put it.

Range of views

According to James Kirchner there is a spectrum of Gaia hypotheses, ranging from the undeniable to radical. At one end is the undeniable statement that the organisms on the Earth have radically altered its composition. A stronger position is that the Earth's biosphere effectively acts as if it is a self-organizing system which works in such a way as to keep its systems in some kind of equilibrium that is conducive to life. Today many scientists consider that such a view (and any stronger views) are unlikely to be correct.^{[2][3][4][5][6]} An even stronger claim is that all lifeforms are part of a single planetary being, called Gaia. In this view, the atmosphere, the seas, the terrestrial crust would be the result of interventions carried out by Gaia, through the coevolving diversity of living organisms.

The most extreme form of Gaia theory is that the entire Earth is a single unified organism; in this view the Earth's biosphere is consciously manipulating the climate in order to make conditions more conducive to life. Scientists contend that there is no evidence at all to support this last point of view, and it has come about because many people do not understand the concept of homeostasis. Many non-scientists instinctively and incorrectly see homeostasis as a process that requires conscious control^{[dubious – discuss][citation needed]}.

The more speculative versions of Gaia, including versions in which it is believed that the Earth is actually conscious, sentient, and highly intelligent, are usually considered outside the bounds of what is usually considered science.

Gaia in biology and science

Buckminster Fuller has been credited as the first to incorporate scientific ideas into a Gaia theory, which he did with his Dymaxion map of the Earth.
The first scientifically rigorous theory was the Gaia hypothesis by James Lovelock, a UK chemist. This view is no longer considered plausible by many scientists.

A variant of this hypothesis was developed by Lynn Margulis, a microbiologist, in 1979. Her version is sometimes called the "Gaia Theory" (note uppercase-T). Her model is more limited in scope than the one that Lovelock proposed.

Whether this sort of system is present on Earth is still open to debate. Some relatively simple homeostatic mechanisms are generally accepted. For example, when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise, plants are able to grow better and thus remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Other biological effects and feedbacks exist,^[7] but the extent to which these mechanisms have stabilized and modified the Earth's overall climate is largely not known.

The Gaia hypothesis is sometimes viewed from significantly different philosophical perspectives. Some environmentalists view it as an almost conscious process, in which the Earth's ecosystem is literally viewed as a single unified organism. Some evolutionary biologists, on the other hand, view it as an undirected emergent property of the ecosystem: as each individual species pursues its own self-interest, their combined actions tend to have counterbalancing effects on environmental change. Proponents of this view sometimes point to examples of life's actions in the past that have resulted in dramatic change rather than stable equilibrium, such as the conversion of the Earth's atmosphere from a reducing environment to an oxygen-rich one.

Depending on how strongly the case is stated, the hypothesis conflicts with mainstream neo-Darwinism. Most biologists would accept Daisyworld-style homeostasis as possible, but would certainly not accept the idea that this equates to the whole biosphere acting as one organism.

A very small number of scientists, and a much larger number of environmental activists, claim that Earth's biosphere is consciously manipulating the climate in order to make conditions more conducive to life. Scientists contend that there is no evidence to support this belief.

Gaia in the social sciences

A social science view of Gaia theory is the role of humans as a keystone species who may be able to accomplish global homeostasis. Whilst a few social scientists who draw inspiration from 'organic' views of society have embraced Gaia philosophy as a way to explain the human-nature interconnections, most professional social scientists are more involved in reflecting upon the way Gaia philosophy is used and engaged with within sub-sections of society. Alan Marshall, in the Department of Social Sciences at Mahidol University, for example, reflects upon the way Gaia philosophy has been used and advocated by environmentalists, spiritualists, managers, economists, and scientists and engineers (see The Unity of Nature, 2002, Imperial College Press: London and Singapore). Social Scientists themselves in the 1960s gave up on systems ideas of society since they were interpreted as supporting conservatism and traditionalism.

Gaia in politics

Some radical political environmentalists who accept some form of the Gaia theory call themselves Gaians. They actively seek to restore the Earth's homeostasis — whenever they see it out of balance, e.g. to prevent manmade climate change, primate extinction, or rainforest loss. In effect, they seek to cooperate to become the "system consciously manipulating to make conditions more conducive to life". Such activity defines the homeostasis, but for leverage it relies on deep investigation of the homeorhetic balances, if only to find places to intervene in a system which is changing in undesirable ways.

Tony Bondhus brings up the point in his book, Society of Conceivia, that if Gaia is alive, then societies are living things as well. This suggests that our understanding of Gaia can be used to create a better society and to design a better political system.

Other intellectuals in the environmental movement, like Edward Goldsmith, have used Gaia in the completely opposite way; to stake a claim about how Gaia's focus on natural balance and resistance and resilience, should be emulated to design a conservative political system (as explored in Alan Marshall's 2002 book The Unity of Nature, (Imperial College Press: London).

Gaians do not passively ask "what is going on", but rather, "what to do next", e.g. in terraforming or climate engineering or even on a small scale, such as gardening. Changes can be planned, agreed upon by many people, being very deliberate, as in urban ecology and especially industrial ecology. See arcology for more on this 'active' view.

Gaians argue that it is a human duty to act as such - committing themselves in particular to the Precautionary Principle. Such views began to influence the Green Parties, Greenpeace, and a few more radical wings of the environmental movement such as the Gaia Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front. These views dominate some such groups, e.g. the Bioneers. Some refer to this political activity as a separate and radical branch of the ecology movement, one that takes the axioms of the science of ecology in general, and Gaia theory in particular, and raises them to a kind of theory of personal conduct or moral code.

Gaia in religion

Anne Primavesi is an ecologist and theologian she is the author of two books dealing with the Gaia hypothesis and theology.^[8]

Rosemary Radford Ruether the American feminist scholar and theologian wrote a book called "Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing".

A book edited by Allan Hunt Badiner called Dharma Gaia explores the ground where Buddhism and ecology meet through writings by the Dalai Lama, Gary Snyder, Thich Nhat Hanh, Allen Ginsberg, Joanna Macy, Robert Aitken, and 25 other Buddhists and ecologists.^[9]

Many new age authors have written books which mix New Age teachings with Gaia philosophy this is known as New Age Gaian. Often referred to as Gaianism, or the Gaian Religion, this spiritual aspect of the philosophy is very broad and inclusive, making it adaptable to other religions: Taoism, Neo-Paganism, Pantheism, Judeo-Christian Religions, and many others.

Semantic debate

The question of "what is an organism", and at what scale is it rational to speak about organisms vs. biospheres, gives rise to a semantic debate. We are all ecologies in the sense that our (human) bodies contain gut bacteria, parasite species, etc., and to them our body is not organism but rather more of a microclimate or biome. Applying that thinking to whole planets:

The argument is that these symbiotic organisms, being unable to survive apart from each other and their climate and local conditions, form an organism in their own right, under a wider conception of the term organism than is conventionally used. It is a matter for often heated debate whether this is a valid usage of the term, but ultimately it appears to be a semantic dispute. In this sense of the word organism, it is argued under the theory that the entire biomass of the Earth is a single organism (as Johannes Kepler thought).

Unfortunately, many supporters of the various Gaia theories do not state exactly where they sit on this spectrum; this makes discussion and criticism difficult.

Much effort on behalf of those analyzing the theory currently is an attempt to clarify what these different hypotheses are, and whether they are proposals to 'test' or 'manipulate' outcomes. Both Lovelock's and Margulis's understanding of Gaia are considered scientific hypotheses, and like all scientific theories are constantly put to the test.

More speculative versions of Gaia, including all versions in which it is held that the Earth is actually conscious, are currently held to be outside the bounds of science, and are not supported by either Lovelock or Margulis.

In popular culture

Isaac Asimov in his 1982 novel Foundation's Edge describes a planet known as Gaia, which is a 'superorganism'. All things on Gaia participate in a larger, group consciousness, while still retaining any individual awareness they might have, such as among the Gaian humans. Gaians were important in shaping the future course of Asimov's universe.

At least one work of fiction, the film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, uses Gaia philosophy as a central point to the plot, and may arguably represent a fictional parallel to Sir James Lovelock in the character of Dr. Cid, who is met with skepticism from the scientific and social community when he promotes the idea of a "living Earth". In the film, Dr. Cid attempts to create a "waveform" from the positive energy signature of the Earth's spirit, in order to combat the films antagonists, the negative energy "Phantoms", through use of phase inversion canceling.

In addition, Gaia philosophy is prominent in the video game Final Fantasy VII where The theme of a living planet where all life is one symbolized by the idea of the Lifestream. The Lifestream is not only a philosophical theme present in the game, but it actually acts as a plot device, "erupting" at certain points in the game. In the context of Final Fantasy VII and its various spin-offs (which include three games and a movie), the Lifestream is a collection of all the souls and energy on the earth, and is semi-sentient. In fact, in Dirge of The Cerberus, a spin-off game, it is revealed that the Lifestream can and will transplant itself from a planet when that place becomes too dangerous.

Computer game Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and its expansion Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire are set on the planet Chiron in the Alpha Centauri system where all indigenous life appears to behave in accordance with the Gaia philosophy. The intelligent force behind this behavior is called simply "Planet" and, in the expansion, is revealed to be artificially created by an alien race. At the time the game takes place, Planet is nearing its self-awareness threshold. Normally, the nature of Planet's life causes it never to attain full sentience; however, human presence adds an unknown variable into the equation.

The Gaia philosophy is a guiding principle for terrorists in the Tom Clancy novel Rainbow Six.

The film Avatar depicts a world (Pandora) that functions like a single organism, in which various species of earth and sky cooperate with the humanoid population (the Na'vi) to defend the planet against a corporate-military invasion.