James Lovelock will be for ever known for his Gaia theory - a huge
contribution to how we as humans understand and relate to the biosphere.
The news that James Lovelock has died has reverberated around the media.
This is no surprise since the importance of his life’s work has been
compared to that of Charles Darwin’s.
He was an inventor of a number of important scientific instruments, well
summarised in his Wikipedia entry. But his most widely acknowledged
contribution, of course, was revealed in his book Gaia,
A new look at life on earth, published in 1979: he boldly stated that life
on earth is a ‘superorganism’ that creates the very conditions for its own
well-being.
The Gaian view is that cooperation between living organisms and their
environment is the organising principle that created favourable conditions
for life on earth to thrive. Whilst Darwinian competition is acknowledged
in the Gaia hypothesis, it is not the dominant principle.