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Introduction:

The Gaia theory is more than just an image of the Earth as a living organism. In fact James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, the originators and promoters of the Gaia theory, have distanced themselves from this simplified view and from the use of Gaia as a religious Mother Earth deity.

They state instead that all organisms and their inorganic surroundings on Earth are closely integrated to form a single and self-regulating complex system, maintaining the conditions for life on the planet.

The question is, of course, which organisms are the ones for which conditions are maintained.

One thing is sure, human beings is not necessarily one of them. Life on Earth will survive, even though human beings are doing their best to destroy Gaia. There will always be insects, bacteria and fungi and many other organisms that will survive in spite of the destruction made by man. Microorganisms are in fact the ones who have ruled the Earth for nearly all of its history, and they are the ones who have played the greatest role in changing (for example by adding oxygen to the atmosphere) and maintaining the balances (for example by now maintaining the oxygen level at a very constant level).

The Gaia theory was met with complete resistance and ridiculed as non-science. In the files you will see the contrary, that it is deeply based on sound science. The problem is that the issues are very complex - they deal with whole earth systems, and involve many different scientific areas. This needs a complete change in thinking - from the reductionist conventional thinking to a holistic view that is ready to cross the borders between the scientific disciplines and conventional wisdom.

More and more scientists are now accepting this, and continuously find and describe Gaia mechanisms - although most of them still prefer not to use the Gaia term (in order to get funding and be able to publish their results). So, instead they call it geophysiology or Earth system science.
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