Word: gaia
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Though such ancient goddesses as Isis or Astarte are often invoked, most worship occurs in the name of a vague generic "Goddess," often depicted as Mother Earth or Gaia in line with environmental awareness. "The Goddess is not just the female version of God. She represents a different concept," says Merlin Stone, author of When God Was a Woman. While the Judeo-Christian God is transcendent, the Goddess is located "within each individual and all things in nature," she says...
...most controversial aspect of the SimEarth model may be its reliance on the so-called Gaia hypothesis, a theory of evolution that views the earth as a single organism with various feedback mechanisms to maintain conditions suitable for life. In SimEarth this means that as the heat from the sun increases 25%, as it has during the past few billion years, changes will automatically occur in factors like the rate of cloud formation to keep the surface temperature relatively stable. The feedback loops appear most valuable when they are turned off, as they were when I played in the "hard...
...view from space also offers support for a scientific theory that is becoming the paradigm of the new environmentalism. First proposed by British inventor and chemist James Lovelock, this theory, called the Gaia hypothesis, argues that the earth functions as an organism and that life processes regulate the planet to maintain its habitability. According to Gaia, no single species, not even humanity, is necessary to the functioning of the biosphere...
More than a dozen books explore aspects of the Gaia hypothesis. Lovelock's most recent thinking is available in The Ages of Gaia (Bantam Books; $10.95). The scientist has an attractively wry style, but his discussions of biochemistry and other abstruse fields can run ahead of general readers, who might prefer to turn to one of the more popular books about the theory. Among the most balanced and accessible is Lawrence Joseph's Gaia, the Growth of an Idea (St. Martin's Press; $19.95). Joseph goes to great lengths to characterize the importance of Gaia, but where necessary he holds...
...those who would like to explore more deeply the context for Gaia and the new environmentalism, Bantam Books will soon publish The Rebirth of Nature: The Greening of Science and God ($21.95) by Rupert Sheldrake. The British biochemist and philosopher delves into classical thought and the Reformation to describe the events that led to the desecration of nature in Western science and religion, and then argues that a new animism is bridging the gap between science and religion...