The living heart of things

摘要

Some four decades ago, when James Lovelock first suggested that Earth was akin to a living organism, regulating its temperature and chemistry to keep conditions suitable for life, he could not have envisaged an easy ride. But even he was taken aback by the level of vitriol his theory provoked. Biologists in particular took umbrage. John Maynard Smith called the Gaia hypothesis "an evil religion". Stephen Jay Gould dismissed it as "a metaphor, not a mechanism". Richard Dawkins argued it contradicted Darwinian evolution. Paul Ehrlich described Lovelock himself as "radical and dangerous", while Robert May called him a "holy fool".