Xeno's Paradox: A Really Crazy, Wacked-Out, Totally Loony Theory. Plus Some Science, And Speculation.

OK.

Ever heard of the "Gaia Hypothesis?"

First proposed by a Dr. Black, the discoverer of carbon dioxide, in 1789, at its simplest expression the Gaia Hypothesis states that the planet itself is one living organism, with self-regulatory control over its own biosystems.(1.)

Right. Ignore that. The guys who dream this stuff up imagine that even the soil itself is part of this massive organism, and that's...

...Well...

Nuts.

HOWEVER, the idea that our entire biocycle is a single organism, or at least interconnected in ways we're only now beginning to understand? Far more likely.

Let me advance to you several facts, followed by a whole lot of really crazy theorizing and mumbling-while-contemplating-of-the-navel, and I will conclude with some reference material. (It disrupts my flow of thought too much if I keep linking in the middle.)

First, every form of life on earth, from the most massive to the most submicroscopic, is formed from carbon, and uses DNA.

Alternative life cycles have been hypothesized, using for example silicon, phosphorus, nitrogen, and even arsenic, but despite the fact that our planet in particular is silicon-rich and carbon-poor, ALL terrestrial life is fundamentally based on carbon. (2.)

At least in that sense, we are all related.

Now, the Gaia Hypothesis indicates that the planet - or the biosphere, the Gaia organism - self-regulates the environment to control conditions in such a way that they are optimal for the forms of life needed; there is, believe it or not, evidence for this. For example, the fact that despite the sun's heat output having increased nearly 25% over the last few million years, the planet's global temperature average has remained relatively constant - thanks in no small part to the carbon dioxide output of ocean algae. (3.)

Again, the scientists actively pursuing this hypothesis seem unable to resist the temptation to ascribe to the very soil of the planet itself some kind of low-grade sentience, and I think that's bunk.

But I don't think the whole idea should be tossed so casually aside.

Ever notice that life is expendable?

Shocking statement, that; I will explain.

When one species dies out, life adapts to fill the niche, so that the necessary functions are still performed. Often, even when human technology obliterates an entire species, there's already a replacement ready to go, as may be the case with bees. See, regular honeybees are dying off in mass quantities, and the cause is thought to be radiation from cellphones and cellular towers interfering with their navigation - they go out in search of food for the hive, but then can't find their way back, and die like tiny apian Mary Celestes. (4.) What's interesting is that so-called "killer" bees, thus far, remain totally unaffected.

All your hives are belong to us.

Right.

These types of evolutionary transitions, under normal, Darwinian rules of evolution, are accidental; they happen simply because they are possible, and the new traits are retained because they are beneficial. But under the Gaia Hypothesis, these changes are directed; the Gaia organism creates the species necessary to perform a necessary function within the extant environment, using the building blocks of extant species and their DNA.

Now, I am about to wander off the beaten path here into the realms of "what if," so bear with me.

There are two schools of thought prevalent in the scientific community about the Gaia Hypothesis. The first is that it is utter bunk, because for organisms to regulate the biosphere - as it is evident they are (5.) - they must be able to plan and coordinate, which, it is argued, is clearly impossible.

The second hypothesis involves feedback loops and is quite plausible, as far as it goes, although the people who support it tend to wander off into ranting about stewardship of the environment (6,) which is the corner at which I am about to take a sharp and sudden turn.

See, here's the first divergence I hold from the second group of theorists: they assume stewardship inheres in us as though we are somehow alien to this biosphere. We are not. All evidence shows that we evolved here, that we are directly related to this giant organism, because we are PART of it; we are a part of the animal kingdom as well, and thus despite having individual free will, are also part of something greater.

And as such, we have a purpose to serve, as well.

Here is my second point of divergence, this from both groups of scientists. They both ridicule the idea of the Gaia organism having any sort of consciousness, and I don't. I don't believe - I stress that word, believe - that the super-organism is sentient in any fashion we can understand, but there's plenty of evidence that it learns; evolution takes profound, unexpected leaps, as demonstrated in the fossil record (7,) and those leaps are almost always positive. Despite the fact that the laws of probability dictate that organisms suddenly evolving new features would die off far more often than they succeed, this is not in fact the case in practice.

The author Greg Bear, in the very SF novel "Darwin's Radio," (8,) hypothesized that our species - the only one he dealt with in the book - has a means of communicating at a genetic level with one another, through viruses, and that there is a kind of "bank," if you will, of proposed genome changes that are stored within our DNA, waiting for the right stimulus to trigger a massive, sudden evolutionary shift.

I believe that this is quite close to the truth, but he only directed this idea at HUMAN evolution, not at the evolution of the living biosphere as a whole.

Why stop with just us?

Why not expand that theory across the entire spectrum of life? While different virii affect different species, their function as a means of genetic communication is not a minor one; in fact, we have been for years attempting to co-opt this natural process as a means of creating custom organisms.

So.

You have a gigantic organism, which maintains its genetic database through viral communication, allowing it to self-regulate by actual creation of needed species.

So where do we fit in?

Remember the dinosaurs? Those big honking lizards that were wiped out by a big-assed rock from the sky? Jurassic Park, all that?

It took the biosphere MILLIONS of years to recover from that single traumatic event.

IF - and I stress IF - the Gaia Hypothesis as I have presented my view of it is correct, or at least close, don't you think that even a subsentient intelligence would want to avoid another, similar trauma?

So the question is, why did humans evolve at all? The very features that make us the dominant life form on Earth also make us inherently destructive, inherently dangerous; why evolve higher intelligence for us at all? Why combine territoriality, homesickness, aggressiveness, expansionism, and intelligence? Why the particular series of leaps that produced us? (9.)

Because the organism itself is expansionistic.

It is looking for ways off this ball, ways to expand the greater organism so that it not only won't but can't come that close to total destruction from a single event ever again.

We're one of those ways.

Bacteria are another; many of them are gradually developing traits allowing them to survive in outer space.

But we're the best bet.

Because of two simple things.

First, we need the biosphere itself to survive. Regardless of our forays into outer space, there is no sign of any technology developing which will allow us to make foodstuffs out of things that are not directly related to our terrestrial biology, which means if we colonize another planet, we spread the greater organism with us, simply to have something to eat; terrestrial plants, terrestrial animals, terrestrial insects and bacteria; the LIFE FORM goes with us, if we go at all.

Secondly, we get homesick. Who wants to watch weird red rocks all day? (Well, except these guys.(10.)) Wherever we go, we are going to make it as home-like as possible - a process referred to as terraforming (11, 12) - in which manipulation of the colony planet's environment is used to create conditions as Earth-like as possible, for purposes of supporting life - our kind of life. Specifically, terrestrial carbon-based life.

Which we are inherently required to take with us.

In a very real sense, if the Gaia hypothesis is at all accurate, human beings are Gaia's reproductive organs...

...And our paramount responsibility is to reach the stars.

Stewardship of the environment is a fine and worthy goal, and I support it as much as I can, in the ways that I can. But when we have reached a position in which we deny NASA $3 billion (13) for a manned Mars trip, but want to spend $1 TRILLION on health care, our priorities as a species are badly disturbed.

After all, if a big ol' rock comes by and smacks us, we'll all die too; maybe we won't then care if the Gaia organism dies with us or not, but that'll be because we'll all be dead. Not a great idea.

If we are so worried about replaceable life-forms (the snail darter leaps to mind,) that we ignore our greater responsibility, to ourselves as a species and the the greater organism of which we MAY be a part, we will eventually be scotched as a bad experiment by said greater organism... and we will become yet another species which simply stopped breeding and died out.

Did you notice our birth rates, at least here in the space-technology equipped West, have fallen off tremendously? (14.) Gaia is giving us a second chance, in some places, by increasing the ratio of female births to male (15) - the number of babies being a function of the number of available uteri, not the number of males - but it's long past time we started taking that responsibility seriously.

Maybe the Gaia Hypothesis is wrong, and Western Civilization is just getting too jaded to reproduce. But in that event we STILL owe it to ourselves to get off this rock as fast as we can, simply for our OWN survival - 99942 Apophis is coming awfully close in a few years (16,) and that's just the biggest rock we KNOW about that headed our way. (Apophis, by the way, is a ball of iron the size of the Rose Bowl Stadium.)

The cost to us of complacency might be the continuation of our species; the cost to our world might be...

...Life, itself.

Xeno's Paradox

The Highlight Reel

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

A Really Crazy, Wacked-Out, Totally Loony Theory. Plus Some Science, And Speculation.

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