The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth

by James E. Lovelock

Open the cover and bathe in great draughts of air that excitingly argue the case that the earth is alive - David Bellamy, Observer

In his first book, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, James Lovelock proposed a startling new theory of life. Existing theories held that plants and animals evolve on, but are distinct from, an inanimate planet. James Lovelock's theory, Gaia, showed that Earth, its rocks, oceans, and atmosphere, and all living things are part of one great organism, evolving over the vast span of geological time. Much scientific work has since confirmed Lovelock's theory.

IN this new book, Lovelock elaborates the basis of a new and unified view of the earth and life sciences, discussing recent scientific developments in detail: the greenhouse effect, acid rain, the depletion of the ozone layer and the effects of ultraviolet radiation, the emission of CFCs, and nuclear power. He demonstrates the geophysical interaction of atmosphere, oceans, climate, and the Earth's crust, regulated comfortably for life by living organisms using the energy of the sun.

But Gaia is not always the benign life-force many people have taken her to be: Gaia theory forces a planetary perspective. It is the health of the planet that matters, not that of some individual species of organisms. This is where Gaia and the environmental movements, which are concerned first with the health of people, part company. This hypothesis not only raises profound philosophical questions: it also challenges both conservationists and the scientific establishment to think again.

Cover photograph by Steve Krongard/The Image Bank

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Environment, Nature, Ecology, Philosophy, Biology

252 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

James Ephraim Lovelock, CH, CBE, FRS, is an independent scientist, author, researcher, environmentalist, and futurist who lives in Devon, England. He is known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, in which he postulates that the Earth functions as a self-regulating system.

Reviews

[Adrian G Hilder · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read an earlier edition of this book sometime in the mid 1990s.
A logical, illuminating and sometimes surprising look at how Earth and life on it evolved to what it is today and how it (probably) works as a biosphere.
Gaia knows how to preserve life on Earth, but that's not the same thing as preserving the human race on Earth.
James Lovelock's analyses of life on Earth was born out of his mission to try and detect life on Mars n the 1960s. While others were building cages to trap insects (I know, we can laugh now!) he was busy thinking about the chemistry if the atmosphere.
You can credit, or blame, depending on your perspective, James Lovelock for:
Microwave ovens
Discovering the hole in the ozone layer and what caused it
The link between global temperature and carbon dioxide

Whatever you think of the perhaps sometimes eccentric idea of Gaia - the biosphere - as a living organism in its own right, I find it a fascinating concept and enjoyed reading about it immensely.

[Saski · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book to be a very mixed bag for me. In places funny, in others extremely dry and confusing. Some chapters flow beautifully, while others one has to drag oneself through. Overall, I guess one could think of planet earth as the entity he describes, and if looking at the our planet in this way would help some people to act, vote, talk, behave differently, I am all for it. But otherwise, what's the point?

I also wonder about the sources he used, the scientists whose work he references. Some of them I could find no mention of them in all of Google search other than in other works of Lovelock. That lack in addition to no bibliography to speak of (eight 'references', three of them Lovelock's) makes me suspicious of his scientific method, to say the least.

However, to Lovelock's credit, I did learn a lot reading/slogging through his book: oxygen, other than in precise measures, is toxic; "homeostasis is a colligative property of life"; the number of bombardments by small planets the earth has suffered; how Earth's origin is connected with a supernova exploding; the effects of radioactive decay on the earth's core; the Archean period; the number of nuclear reactors that ran for millions of years during the Proteronzoic era; why warming a near-frozen animal from the outside kills it; that a certain amount of acid rain occurs naturally; among other things.

Something I still don't get: thermodynamics, especially its second law;

And finally something I still don't agree with: "As for what seems to be the greatest concern, nuclear radiation, fearful though it is to individual humans is to Gaia a minor affair." (xvi – a minor affair it might be, but it still would be a sin to inflict this particular 'minor' event upon her.)

Quotes that caught my eye
Scientists are also constrained by the tribal rules of the discipline to which they belong. A physicist would find it hard to do chemistry and a biologist would find physics well-nigh impossible to do. (xiii – I would say it is not only, or even mostly, the tribal rules that causes this separation of the disciplines, but rather the vast knowledge in each, requiring more than a lifetime to acquire fully. The age of the Renaissance man is over, at least until our life spans is hugely increased.)

Of all the prizes that come from surviving more than fifty years the best is the freedom to be eccentric. (3 – Oh, we absolutely agree here, Lovelock!)

The all-too-common deafness of English speakers to any other language kept from our common knowledge the everyday science of the Russian-speaking world. (11 – so true, at least as much today as it was then.)

The arbitrariness of even a chronological division is underlined by the persistence of the Archean boita; their world has never ended, but lives on in our guts. Those bacteria have been with Gaia for nearly four thousand million years, and they still live all over the Earth in muds, sediments, and intestines—wherever they can keep away from that deadly poison, oxygen....In Gaia we are just another species, neither the owners nor the stewards of this planet. Our future depends much more upon a right relationship with Gaia than with the never-ending drama of human interest. (14)

This is why we all know intuitively what life is. It is edible, lovable, or lethal. (16)

Life is social. It exists in communities and collectives. There is a useful word in physics to describe the properties of collections: colligative. It is needed because there is no way to express or measure the temperature or the pressure of a single molecule. Temperature and pressure, say the physicists, are the colligative properties of a sensible collection of molecules. All collections of living things show properties unexpected from a knowledge of a single one of them. We, and some other animals, keep a constant temperature whatever the temperature of our surroundings. This fact could never have been deduced from the observations of a single cell from a human being....called it homeostasis or the wisdom of the body. Homeostasis is a colligative property of life. (18)

Specifically, the Gaia hypothesis said that the temperature, oxidation state, acidity, and certain aspects of the rocks and waters are at any time kept constant, and that this homeostasis is maintained by active feedback processes operated automatically and unconsciously by the biota. ...Life and its environment are so closely coupled that evolution concerns Gaia, not the organisms or the environment taken separately. (19)

Ideas are in continuous use as currency in the exchanges between scientists and, like money, can be used to buy many different things. (24)

Information, in thermodynamic terms, is a measure of the absence of ignorance.... The less the ignorance, the lower the entropy. (25)

Good criticism is like bathing in an ice-cold sea. The sudden chill of immersion in what seems at first a hostile medium soon stirs the blood and sharpens the senses. (31 – Hahahaha, I still dislike both, especially cold water.)

From their world of microscopes, how could the 'selfish' interests of living cells be expressed at the distance of a planet? For these competent and dedicated biologist, positing the regulation of the atmosphere by microbial life seemed as absurd as expecting the legislation of some human government to affect the orbit of Jupiter. (32)

To many scientists Gaia was a teleological concept, one that required foresight and planning by the biota. [They asked]...How could organisms keep oxygen at 21 percent and the mean temperature at 20 degrees C? (33 -- to which I ask, how does it happen now? Why do bacteria, trees etc, have to have a conference to decide such things? It works because it works? Do your cells in your body conference to keep you at 98.6? I don't think so!)

But most would disagree that the biota in any way control the composition of the atmosphere of any of the important variables, such as global temperature and oxygen concentration, which depend on the atmosphere. (34; I still don't see the problem. What if instead of 'control' we used the word 'influence' or 'effect'?)

We have been hit by close to thirty small planets, up to 10 miles in diameter and traveling as fast as sixty times the speed of sound. These impacts release about a thousand times as much energy as would be released if all the nuclear powers exploded all the present weapon stocks. Such events do more than make 200-mile craters, they can destroy up to 90 percent of all living organisms from the microscopic to the macroscopic. 'The impacts make the Earth ring like a bell, and the reverberations of the event resonate, metaphorically, throughout the systems of the Earth for maybe a million years or more. (43-44)

But disentangling the record is rather like trying to find traces of the identity of a terrorist from the rubble of the building his bomb destroyed. (45)

No models drawn from theoretical ecology can account in mathematical terms for the manifest stability of these vast natural system. (51; I wonder, almost 30 years later, if this is still true, with the computers we have now.)

This statement doesn't ring true to me either:
When these kinds of studies are made, a wide variety of mathematical models suggest that a as a system becomes more complex, in the sense of more species and a more rich structure of interdependence, it becomes more dynamically fragile...Thus, as a mathematical generality, increasing complexity makes for dynamical fragility rather than robustness.
An important general conclusion is that large and unprecedented perturbations imposed by man are likely to be more traumatic for complex ecosystems than for simple ones. (51; and those perturbations not imposed by man, i.e., natural ones?)

Daisyworld does not have any clearly established goal like a set point; it just settles down, like a cat, to a comfortable position and resists attempts to dislodge it. (61)

Just imagine how large a signal would be needed to transmit information about the beginning of the Universe 15 eons ago. This may be why the Big Bang theory that the Universe began by the explosion of a primeval particle in inevitable....
All that now lingers is the faint rumble of the cosmic microwave background radiation. But all other theories of the origin are without evidence. (67)

Even exploding an H-bomb would make your point only for a few hundred miles. (67; uh, I don't think so. In 1962 Starfish Prime was exploded and caused an electromagnetic pulse which cause damage in Hawaii, 898 miles away. Hmmm, I suppose '9' could be consider 'few' but not in my book.)

How can we be so sure that the Earth's origin was connected with the explosion of a supernova? We are sure because, even today, the Earth is radioactive, and also because the Earth is made of elements like iron and silicon and oxygen that cannot be made in the normal processes of stellar evolution. (68)

Powering a star by fusing iron to make uranium is like trying to burn ice in a furnace. (69 – I love this analogy!)

But the outer layers of the star cannot escape the pull of gravitation and, when the fuel runs out, it collapses. It is then that the heavy elements are synthesized. Some proportion of them is violently ejected as the outer and still unburnt layers of the star explode. (69)

It is the heat generated by the decay of these radioactive elements that keeps the Earth's interior hot and drives the movements of the crust. (70)

The Archean, when the environment was full of molecules that donated electrons (that is, reducing agents), did not so much as end as become encapsulated as a separate region that exist whenever oxygen is absent. The submission of the anoxic ecosystems to domination by the oxic was somewhat like the Norman conquest with the Archean Saxons driven to a subservient underground position—the lower classes—from which, it is often said, they have never escaped. (100)

The difference between the Archean air and the Proterozoic air was not a simple matter of the presence of absence of oxygen, it was in the net tendency. In the Proterozoic, a discarded bicycle left in shallow water would have rusted away to form insoluble ferric oxide which settled on the sea floor; in the Archean, it would have slowly dissolved as water-soluble ferrous iron, and left no trace. (101)

They [salt-tolerant bacteria] are limited to their remote and rare niche, and depend upon the rest of life to keep the Earth comfortable for them. They are like those eccentrics of our own society whose survival depends upon the sustenance that we can spare but who could barely survive alone. (108)

...the vast mass of the oceans, some ten thousand times larger [than the atmosphere] (109 – So hard to imagine)

Before these lagoons can form, barriers are needed at their seaward boundary. Could this activity be part of the tightly coupled evolution of life and the rocks, or is it just the result of chance? (110 – uh, chance?)

At first the reef building would have only a local effect, but over time the sheer mass of the limestone would begin to affect the plastic crust of the Earth's surface, depressing it and so extending the size of the lagoon. (111)

Is all this a grand, unplanned civil engineering enterprise by Gaia? The steps, from the individual lowering of calcium ions within the cells of a living organism to the movement of the plates, are all those that tend to improve the environment for the organisms responsible. (113)

The results of warfare, however, are rarely genocide; instead war can lead to a peaceful coexistence mutually beneficial to the victim and the aggressor. (114 – What!?!)

Quite literally, it [water] is frozen out; and the upper atmosphere contains only a few parts per million of water vapor. The present rate of escape of hydrogen to space is limited by the dryness of the upper air and is only 300,000 tons a year. This is equivalent to just under 3 million tons of water, and would leave behind an excess of 2.5 million tons of oxygen. It sounds a lot, but a loss of water of that rate would have removed less than one percent of the oceans in the age of the Earth. (116)

For the Cambrian there are just catalogs of species and rocks. They give some insight into the life of the Earth, but only in the abbreviated way that a telephone book does about the private lives and the economy of a town. (127)

From the beginning the producers, the photosynthesizers, have had a love-hate relationship with the consumers. Producers do not care to be eaten, but the presence of the consumers is essential for their health and that of the larger organism they constitute. When plants and animals appeared, the fine details of this constructive aggression became visible. The plants were seen to possess poisons, spines, and stings; and the animals and microorganisms were obliged to develop mew techniques for grazing. A balance is always struck because, without the consumers, the survival of the plants and algae would be threatened. There is only a few years' supply of carbon dioxide in the air. The removal of consumers from the scene would be disastrous for plants, and within a short time span. Not only would there be too little carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, but there would be major climate changes as the gases of the atmosphere and the albedo of the Earth responded to the demise of the plants. Not least, the intricate recycling of nutrients and gardening of the soil would cease. On a human scale the coexistence of consumers and producers could be compared with the long peace that has reigned between the hostile yet mutually dependent superpowers. (128)

A smaller animal, the mouse , can survive the complete saturation of its blood with carbon monoxide. It survives the poison because enough oxygen can diffuse to its tissues from the skin and from the surface of the lungs. (129)

We are so accustomed to think of oxygen as life-saving and essential that we ignore its potent toxicity. (129)

However it happened, the reactions of this free oxygen with other elements such as carbon and sulfur would release acids into the air, and these would increase the weathering of crustal rocks so that more nutrients were released, leading to a greater abundance of living organisms. The positive feedback on the growth of oxygen would continue until the disadvantages of its presence overcame the benefits. Rather like the growth of car populations in come cities, it continues until movement is choked by its presence. (131)

This [exposure to radiation] is frightening stuff, but we can keep our cool by remembering that these carcinogenic consequences are no different from those of breathing oxygen, which is also a carcinogen. Breathing oxygen may be what sets a limit to the life span of most animals, but not breathing it is even more rapidly lethal. There is a right level of oxygen, namely 21 percent; more of less than this can be harmful. To set a level of zero for oxygen in the interests of preventing cancer would be most unwise. (168)

Let's look at his proposition: "Suppose that the biological effects of exposure to nuclear radiation are no different from those of breathing oxygen."
...This is now conventional scientific wisdom; the novel insight from Dr. Thomas was to remind us that these same destructive chemicals are being made all the time, in the absence of radiation, by small inefficiencies in the normal process of oxidative metabolism. In other words, so far as our cells are concerned, damage by nuclear radiation and damage by breathing oxygen are almost indistinguishable. (175)

...it seems likely that the life span of most animals is set by a fixed upper limit of the quantity of oxygen that their cells can use before suffering irreversible damage. Small animals such as mice have a specific rate of metabolism much greater than we do; that is why they live only a year or so even if protected from predation and disease. Oxygen kills just as nuclear radiation does, by destroying the instructions within our cells about reproduction and repair. Oxygen is thus a mutagen and a carcinogen, and breathing is sets the limit of our life span. (176)

The maladies of Gaia do not last long in terms of her life span. Anything that makes the world uncomfortable to live in tends to induce the evolution of those species that can achieve a new and more comfortable environment. It follows that, if the world is made unfit by what we do, there is the probability of a change in regime to one that will be better for life but not necessarily better for us. In the past, changes of this kind, like the jump from a glaciation to an interglacial, have tended to revolutionary punctuations rather than gradual evolutions. (178)

We want to be free to drive into the country or the wilderness without polluting it in so doing: to have our cake and eat it. Human and understandable such striving may be, but it is illogical. Our humanist concerns about the poor of the inner cities or the Third World, and our near-obscene obsession with death, suffering, and pain as if these were evil in themselves—these thoughts divert the mind from our gross and excessive domination of the natural world. Poverty and suffering are not sent; they are the consequences of what we do. Pain and death are normal and natural; we could not long survive without them. Science, it is true, assisted at the birth of technology. But when we drive our cars and listen to the radio bringing news of acid rain, we need to remind ourselves that we, personally, are the polluters. We, not some white-coated devil figure, buy the cars, drive them, and foul the air. We are therefore accountable, personally, for the destruction of the trees by photochemical smog and acid rain. We are responsible for the silent spring that Rachel Carson predicted.
There are many ways to keep in touch with Gaia. Individual humans are densely populated cellular and endosymbiont collectives, but clearly also identities. Individuals interact with Gaia in the cycling of the elements and in the control of the climate, just like a cell does in the body. You also interact individually in a spiritual manner through a sense of wonder about the natural world and from feeling a part of it. In some ways this interaction in not unlike the tight coupling between the state of the mind and the body. Another connection is through the powerful infrastructures of human communication and mass transfer. We as a species now move a greater mass of some materials around the Earth than did all the biota of Gaia before we appeared. Our chattering is so loud that it can be heard to the depths of the Universe. Always, as with other and earlier species within Gaia, the entire development arises from the activity of a few individuals. The urban nests, the agricultural ecosystems, good and bad, are all the consequences of rapid positive feedback starting from the action of an inspired individual.
….Gaia, as I see her, is no doting mother tolerant of misdemeanors, nor is she some fragile and delicate damsel in danger from brutal mankind. She is stern and tough, always keeping the world warm and
comfortable for those who obey the rules, but ruthless in her destruction of those who transgress. Her unconscious goal is a planet fit for life. If humans stand in the way of this, we shall be eliminated with as little pit as would be shown by the micro-brain of an intercontinental ballistic nuclear missile in full flight to its target.
….I have tried to show that God and Gaia, theology and science, even physics and biology are not separate but a single way of thought.

[John Weibull · Rating 3 out of 5]

The classic work by James Lovelock introduces us to the Gaia hypothesis that our planet earth is a coherent system of life, self-regulating and shifting, an almost independent living organism.

[Marko Savić · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovelock claims that his Gaia theory, as a theory of the Earth, is neither holistic nor reductionist. He responded with this book to the two directions of Gaia's theory criticism, or principal objection as he refers to them, the teleological and the partial biological regulation. To the former, Lovelock responded also by changing his language, and in responding to the latter line of objections, he wrote this book. The teleological explanation in academe is namely, so is Lovelocks' typical realization, "a sin against the holy spirit of scientific rationality". At the same time, Lovelock warns us that warns that anything as significant as life should not be "the sole property" neither of a single discipline and neither of science itself for that matter. In the book, Lovelock acknowledges three equally powerful approaches to the quest to understand life, molecular biology, physiology, and of thermodynamics.

Lovelock stated with his Gaia hypothesis that the temperature, oxidation state, acidity, and certain aspects of the rocks and waters are at any time kept constant and that this homeostasis is maintained by the organisms at the Earth's surface. He soon recognized that his hypothesis so stated is wrong. As the biologists, Ford Doolittle and Richard Dawkins reminded him, organisms cannot regulate anything beyond their phenotypes. Through Gaia theory, Lovelock now sees the system of the material Earth and the living organisms on it, evolving so that self-regulation is an emergent property.

The second edition of this book, with a new preface, has eleven chapters, including an Epilog. In the first two chapters, Lovelock introduces us to the Gaia theory. Then in the third chapter, stimulated by the criticism, Lovelock introduces the Daisyworld model. It's a model with three species of daisies. Although it's a simple model, it is not constrained by the narrow limits of a single scientific discipline. Namely, Lovelock realized that theoretical ecologists have modeled the evolution of ecosystems while ignoring the physical environment, and biogeochemists have modeled the cycles of the elements without including the organism. In the next three chapters, Lovelocks makes a historical review of his theory in the periods of the Archean, and the Middle Ages, and its position in Modern Times.

In one separate chapter Lovelock explains what is the connection of his theory with the planet Mars. He worked for Nasa in the 1960s and in the 1970s. With analysis made through the telescope observation, he was able to conclude that the atmosphere on Mars is dominated by carbon dioxide and not far from the state of chemical equilibrium and therefore that Mars is lifeless. Lovelock was confident of his conclusion also because the Earth's atmosphere is on the other hand in a persistent state of disequilibrium. Lovelock and the philosopher Dian Hitchcock's conclusion was not popular with their Nasa sponsors as they were planning, and later realized, the mission to Mars. All this has helped Lovelock to develop an intuition that life could not exist sparsely on a planet. As Gaia theory developed, Lovelock began to view it as a fact. In this separate chapter on Mars, The Second Home, Lovelock reveals another story of how he wrote, with the coauthor and his friend Michael Allaby, a fictional book, the Greening of Mars.

Lovelock has devoted a special chapter to the relationship between God and Gaia. Although he rejected that Gaia's theory is teleological, he proudly and with satisfaction states that Gaia itself can be both spiritual and scientific. He doesn't see Gaia as some "doting mother tolerant of misdemeanors," nor as some fragile and delicate girl that is in danger from brutal mankind. Rather, Lovelock sees Gaia as "stern and tough, always keeping the world warm and comfortable for those who obey the rules, but ruthless in her destruction of those who transgress." If that sounds like some rather scary vision, well, it is.

In the last two chapters, Gaia since 1988 and the Epilog, Lovelock summarizes new development directions since the Gaia theory developed in the 1970s. Here, some of his best writings came out. He states what we should all realize, that organisms, and I would add that artifacts too, always do change their environment, as well as adapt to it. He stated that chemical evidence showed that Earth's atmosphere far departed from the equilibrium of a lifeless planet. In the following statements, he uses the plural in stating that they, and not him alone, knew that "this disequilibrium comes from the presence of life. We also knew that living organisms affect all of the gases of the air, other than the inert noble gases. Some, like oxygen, are direct biological products, and organisms modify the abundance of others, like carbon dioxide." Lovelock further in plural explains why the first Gaia hypothesis was wrongly worded and how it should be worded. He explains further that it took ten years and a mathematical model, "Daisysworld," to define Gaia, the superorganism, as he calls it.

In this concluding part of the book, Lovelock once again states that nature "is nonlinear and unpredictable and never more so than in a period of change." He also rejects the popular metaphor of Earth as a spaceship and humans as its stewards. Although it sounds rather patronizing, I couldn't agree more with Lovelock's statement that in practice few of us can take care of our own bodies. And then he literally exaggerates even further by saying that he "would sooner expect a goat to succeed as a gardener than expect humans to become stewards of Earth."

Nevertheless, Lovelocks concluding chapter is a bit more optimistic but stays on his insights. He is convinced, though, that if we don't stop the ecocide soon, Rachel Carson's "gloomy prediction of a silent spring will come true but not because we have poisoned the birds with pesticides, but because we have destroyed their habitats and they have no longer anywhere to live." The direction to be taken comes at the end of this important book, where Lovelock again states that we are part of a superorganism, I would add, following Latour, that we are all human and non-human parts of the superorganism, but that we are not the owner, nor the tenant, and not even the passenger in and of the superorganism. With this acknowledgment we could have a long time ahead of us and "our species might survive for its "allotted span.".

To me, it was really important that the book was written in an understandable and easy-to-read manner. I could use more description and explanation of how did he develop the Daisyworld model. Although Lovelock describes and defines himself as a proud independent scientist and researcher, he is an innovator by heart, in my opinion. That is why in the book he sometimes wanders quite away from the main topic of the book. Which gives us readers additional reading pleasure. Only one such example is when Lovelock explaings that he often has a nightmare vision of a nuclear power source. It is worth citing it as a whole:

"It would be a small box, about the size of a telephone directory, with four ordinary electricity outlets embedded in its surface. The box would breathe in air and extract, from its content of moisture, hydrogen that would fuel a miniature nuclear fusion power source rated to supply a maximum of 100 kilowatts. it would be cheap, reliable, manufactured in Japan, and available everywhere. It would be the perfect, clean, safe power source; no nuclear waste no radiation would escape from it, and it could never fail dangerously." Isn't that a great idea still?

The only thing I was missing in this book is an abstract of book chapters or a summary of the whole book on a few pages. Although Lovelock doesn't make any recipes on how to get out of the mess that we are in, this book should be taken seriously not only by scientists and policymakers but by all of us if we wish to lead prosperous lives both today and in the future.

[Isen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Twenty years after Lovelock's odd yet fascinating pamphlet that hinted, but did not say outright, that Earth might be alive, he came back with Ages of Gaia, a much more detailed look at the Gaia Hypothesis, restated with the confidence stemming from two decades of research.

It's still an odd book. This time Lovelock doesn't hesitate to state outright that Earth is alive, though he doesn't really clarify what that means. But not that it matters much, because the book opens strongly indeed, with a fascinating look at theoretical biological self-regulating systems in Daisyworld, followed by a reconstruction of what Earth might have looked like in its early stages and how it co-evolved with life. Lots of matter to ponder over in these chapters, much of it sounding very convincing, and some of it not at all -- the proposed mechanisms for the regulation of salt, for example, did not get any better since the first book.

The quality of the book takes a severe hit in the second half. Chapter 6, "Modern Times", abandons the historical approach to Earth's evolution and instead looks at several processes Lovelock feels to be important. No doubt that they are, but the presentation feels disjoint and haphazard, and the line of argument is often lost. Sometimes it feels like a paragraph or two is simply missing from the exposition, because there is no matter how often I reread a section, I can't see where he is coming from. Chapter 7 is about the environmental movement, and culminates in a love letter to chlorofluorocarbons so bizarre, that one is left feeling that Lovelock did nothing but seethe about the CFC ban those twenty years. Did he sink his life savings into an aerosol factory or something? I suppose I can't judge too harshly, given that I double down on Gazprom in early '22, but I didn't write a book about it.

The last two chapters deal with Lovelock's view of religion and his home in Devon. I can only presume that after calming down after his CFC crusade he forgot what the book was about, and just sort of improvised the rest.

Read the first five chapters, then return it to the library.

[Brett · Rating 4 out of 5]

A couple of years I ago I read James Lovelock's first book on Gaia (originally published in the late 1970s), and this is the follow up, coming about a decade later. I would say Ages of Gaia is a stronger book the the original by a considerable margin.

The concept behind Gaia as imagined by Lovelock is that the earth's biosphere can collectively function in such a way as to preserve more favorable conditions for the flourishing of life. My main take away after the first book was extreme confusion and general skepticism. It was hard for me understand how Lovelock could avoid giving teleological motivations to microscopic organisms, plants, and animals under his scheme. The language he uses in the first book blurred these lines in ways I didn't like.

He clarifies a lot in Ages of Gaia, and brings me a lot closer to finding his hypothesis plausible. His model of "Daisy World" is very simple but very useful in terms of helping a layperson understand what he's talking about. The model demonstrates how, without any intentional efforts, a planet consisting only of daisies could regulate variable temperatures from a nearby star to help preserve conditions that allow for their life on the planet. I won't go into the details here, but you can read about it in the book if it interests you. I found it quite illuminating.

Be forewarned that there is a fair amount of jargon in the book, so be prepared to wade through some level of difficulty. But if Lovelock is correct, and our biosphere can function as essentially one enormous organism that is able to regulate environmental factors, it would be a big change in our understanding of how life on our planet works. It's an exciting idea and I look forward to reading further from Lovelock on the topic.

[R.Z. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was introduced to Lovelock's Gaia theory many years ago, and although I went on to thinking about many other theories of life on earth, I never forgot Gaia. So, when doing research for writing my next novel, I went back to studying further the writings of James Lovelock's many books. Beginning with The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of our Living Earth, I felt that this would be the place to begin. I was not disappointed. Lovelock tells us what is known and what is not known, and why we need not concern ourselves with the origin of life on earth. Although scientists can determine some facts about the earliest times of our planet, much is speculation based on mathematical and other models of what might have happened. As a reader of Scientific American and other such publications, I know that much has been discovered since 1988 when The Ages of Gaia was published, Nevertheless since James Lovelock does not hesitate to separate speculation from modeling from facts, this is an excellent primer for those readers just beginning their quest to discover whether the earth may, itself, be a living organism capable of changing and evolving to keep itself alive. Clearly, this planet has gone through massive changes during its lifetime, and in spite of the current over-population of humans, the destruction of natural habitats, and the rise of agriculture, the depletion of fresh water sources, and so much more, the earth may be adjusting itself once again.

[David Drum · Rating 4 out of 5]

James Lovelock’s The Ages of Gaia, a Biography of the Living Earth, fleshes out his idea that all of life on Earth—including the rocks--is in fact one living self-regulating organism.
Is this even possible? To illustrate how it might work, Lovelock postulates a simple model of light and dark colored daisies, called Daisyworld, where populations of daisies increase and decrease according to how much sunlight the planet receives. His argument moves back to the Archean age approximately 3.6 billion years ago where the first bacteria-like rudiments of life appeared. In an explanation which is heavy on the chemistry, and somewhat beyond me, he explains how our present self-sustaining world balancing oxygen and carbon dioxide used and expelled by plants and animals could develop.
The Ages of Gaia contains a subtle but firm warning that we humans are changing the fabric of life on our planet, and setting the stage for what may well be (for humans and animals of our ilk) a stark uninhabitable world.

[John Szalasny · Rating 3 out of 5]

My daughter had this as a secondary reading source for an environmental science class. But for the most part, there is no environmentalist agenda in the book, and the lack of footnotes makes even the science suspect.
I agree with many of the previous reviews of this classic book. It is very hard to read for most of the book. Some sections flow for the common reader, but the limited reference list makes it unsuitable as a rigidly scientific text. This edition is an update from the original text. Maybe this is why it seems so uneven, almost like the author was trying to dumb it down after criticism (which he acknowledges) from his scientific peers.
The theory is interesting, but the author doesn't make a compelling argument for a "living" earth beyond the interconnectivity between life sources (plant, animal, microbial) that have been made by other scientists without the need for the planet to have a life force of its own.

[Mark Yashar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lovelock tries to make a stronger case for the Earth as a living system (Gaia Hypothesis) with the use of the, e.g., computer
'Daisy' model. Also includes an interesting chapter near the end of the book on how one might seed or tera-form Mars.

[Logan Streondj · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a beautiful heartfelt book about the relationship of humans and Gaia, with views of the evolution of Earth through his sciency lens. While I don't agree with all of it, it's still an excellent book worth archiving.

[Jon Hall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disappointing. The length of time taken to completed it says it all.
It just seemed that he dropped in a reference to Gaia from time to time to support his overriding belief.
Otherwise, it was just a book for very technical geek speak.
Not what I was wanting.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

New perspective on Mother Earth -- truly insightful for those who are unfamiliar with Gaia.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant.

[Joseph Gendron · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was a very good introduction to GAIA and how it has changed over the eons. Lots of food for thought sprinkled throughout the book along with a good dose of science.

[Matthew Stolte · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found that the mix of science & literature did not elucidate the hypothesis.

[Howard Frisk · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is not an easy read. In fact, it took a lot of effort to wade through seemingly endless pages elaborating on his Gaia hypothesis and its theoretical foundations. I think the book would have been much more effective if it was considerably less that it's 252 pages.

The main point is that Earth and all life upon it function as a self-regulating, living system. In this follow-up to his earlier work, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, Lovelock delves deeper into the scientific and philosophical implications of viewing our planet as a single, dynamic organism where life and the environment co-evolve to maintain conditions suitable for survival, to the point of overkill.

He introduces readers to the concept of Earth as a "superorganism," using examples like the regulation of atmospheric oxygen and the carbon cycle to illustrate how life stabilizes the planet’s conditions over eons. His writing is accessible yet dense, balancing technical detail with a sense of wonder that invites readers to rethink humanity’s relationship with nature.

Critics might find Lovelock’s anthropomorphic framing of Earth as "alive" more metaphorical than scientific, and his optimism about Gaia’s adaptability can feel at odds with the ecological crises he acknowledges. To be clear, although he believes Gaia is alive, he states in the last chapter that, "In no way do I see Gaia as a sentient being . . ." In other words, he does not see Gaia as having consciousness. This raises the interesting question as to the relationship of "life" to "consciousness".

[Ashutosh Sahu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned a great deal about the origins of life from various classes starting in 1990. It was a hot topic for biology majors, and just in the cultural milieu with the popularity of genetics-themed works such as _The Double Helix_ and SimLife (featuring the notorious OOOHLALA sound effect).

Although this book was written decades prior, and I've just read it multiple decades subsequent, it is the best-written and most readable explanation I've ever read of the big-picture stages of the origins of life.

I'm not surprised the Gaia books attracted this much attention. In 1978 or whenever conceived it would have been truly revolutionary.

This is the book that inspired SimEarth, a game that taught me more earth science than all my teachers put together. This is a wonderful book to read today, because many of the open questions have been answered and additional discoveries just contribute to the picture.

-Theia. The early Earth collided with a Mars-sized planet.
-Miller-Urey experiments. I'm guessing these were done after Lovelock was done writing. Circa 2022 a follow up was done. Borosilicate glass is actually a catalyst for the formation of organic molecules. It is massively abundant in nature.
-Elimination of the Ozone hole
-The giant magnetic field caused by the Moon's formation, time-correlated with the formation of life.

[The Inquisitive Biologist · Rating 3 out of 5]

Continuing my four-part dive into the Gaia hypothesis, I next review The Ages of Gaia which sees James Lovelock expand and refine his ideas. Will he convince me now? Read my full review at https://inquisitivebiologist.com/2023...

[Julian Sanchez · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good reference for who wants to research an interesting theory about the life of the planet and to learn Her history and the differents way whose makes possible the life.

[Belle Meade School]

575.01

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

The "science" of gods and how they can treat humanity if their whims are not obeyed. Strangely this all powerful gods need mouthpieces like Lovelock to threaten the humans.

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seminal text

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite interesting. I liked the early chapters more. The concepts seemed to have withstood the test of time. I read the 1995 addition. In places rather technical and heavy going.

[Skye Mc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gaia is beautiful

[Rowan Webb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Earth is soooo a living system both scientifically and holistically. Wish I was smart enough to absorb this properly.

[Tom Elliot · Rating 4 out of 5]

A popular introduction to the theory of Gaia geophysiology from its late architect and chief proponent.

The book guides the reader, in broard strokes, through the history of life on Earth and how it has influenced and been influenced by its environment in order to create what Lovelock sees as a tightly coupled, self-regulating, non-linear system, itself perceived as living in some sense of the word: the superorganism dubbed Gaia. Contraversial at the time, but now more or less received wisdom, Lovelock's reasoning touches everything from the destruction of stratospheric ozone, to the speculative question of martian terraforming, through to the all to pertinent problem of man-made climate change. He paints a fascinating picture of the still infant science of systems, part reductionism, part holism.
When at its best this book reminds me of James Gleick's Chaos - it provides a glimpse into the order underlying the complex web of interactions that make up our reality; an order that has little respect for the traditional borders of the sciences.
At times the book can be hard going for a layperson, particularly when required to keep track of the complex chains of cause and effect involved in regulating atmospheric chemistry, for example, but the reward is a new and at times breathtaking insight into the intracacies of the global ecosystem.

The book is at its weakest in its final chapters where Lovelock, in a manner typical of elderly scientists, begins something of an ill-advised philosophical digression. Most of these remarks are, admittedly, in response to question he has received over the years about the philosophical and ethical implications of the Gaia hypothesis. While I have little objection to the content of most of his replies, they very much expose his bias as an upper-middle class man from a sheltered, priviledged background, and they tend to ramble on in a way that breaks the flow of the text. While it is perhaps interesting to hear the authors thoughts on these matters, it might be better for those interested in a rigorous analysis of the philosophical and ethical aspects of these ideas to find articles written by trained philosophers and ethicists.


Overall the book is well-written, for the most part engaging, and well worth persuing for students of all sciences.

[Dimitris Hall · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me many months to finally finish The Ages of Gaia. I suppose it's because a lot of it was dry in the way scientific writing is dry to people who are not scientists but wish they could understand what scientists say. Daisyworld, for example, is an interesting supposition and thought experiment on how planetary phenomena influence and are influenced by life on a smaller scale --- an idea that today seems typically banal but was novel at the time it was brought forward. I understand it intuitively, but the relevant science flew over my head, along with a great part of what else made this book important, I'm sure.

Where Lovelock's writing was more approachable, I found it profound and enjoyable to read. I particularly enjoy how some of it could easily be divisive among ecologists and could be used to spark discussion, for instance his careful (and in my humble opinion, very balanced) examination of nuclear power, or the suggestion that anything alive is by definition a polluter to its environment, helping some species thrive and others wither away in a delicate eternal dance (or war, if you prefer that analogy). The chapter "The Contemporary Environment" is a must-read for anyone who's interested in big-picture ecology and where it fits today... or where it used to fit 20 years ago and more. Even his early approach to geoengineering, long before it was an unwelcome reality, is enlightening to read: "So that's what the scientists were thinking before the big shots took control of global climatic planning."

Generally speaking, Mr. Lovelock displays great wisdom on a number of different subjects, the discussion of which is seldom characterised by either lucidity or farsightedness (widesightedness?). However, looking at his views today, which show that in his very old age he's somewhere between trying to be pragmatic and being resigned, they are even more difficult to digest. Has he gone off his rocker, is he paid or is he just that big of a visionary? Google him and you'll see why I'm asking these questions in particular.

To end with his hypothesis: will Gaia "do" anything (to the limit of her proactiveness) to preserve life on her surface, much in the same way our body would react to anything which could harm the microscopic (our cells and tissues) as well as the macroscopic life -- us? Are we really a terminal threat to life on Earth, or could it be that:

"Looked at from the time scale of our own brief lives, environmental change must seem haphazard, even malign. From the long Gaian view, the evolution of the environment is characterized by periods of stasis punctuated by abrupt and sudden change. The environment has never been so uncomfortable as to threaten the extinction of life on Earth, but during those abrupt changes the resident species suffered catastrophe whose scale was such as to make a total nuclear war seem, by comparison, as trivial as is a summer breeze to a hurricane. We are ourselves a product of one such catastrophe, the extinction of many species 65 million years ago. Could it be that we are unwittingly precipitating another punctuation that will alter our environment to suit our successors?"

[Faye · Rating 3 out of 5]

Initially Lovelock recounts the story of how he came up with the Gaia principle. He is in his fifties and working on instruments that will study the environments of Venus and Mars. His attention is turned toward the Earth and its ability to promote biological life as we know it. Cyanobacteria were the first producers to use sunlight and replicate themselves. Are we recreating the conditions under which they thrived initially in the shallow waters of Lake Champlain?
He talks about the successful inventions of evolution and then this quote about semiconductors "Consider how the simple semi conducting crystal of those first radio receivers in the 1920s has evolved to become in a grand eutrophication, the ubiquitous silicon devices of today." He works with a very large number of scientists on his theories for how life began on Earth. He points out that Gaia, the cooperation of all biological life to promote conditions supporting life, came about after bacteria evolved. Eventually oxygen became part of the atmosphere and then a giant new niche of organisms that could use oxygen and organic material evolved. Anaerobic ecosystems would have dominated at one point, then aerobic ecosystems took over but anaerobic ecosystems remain but as a minority.
Carbon dioxide is a focus and he covers climate change. "Carbon dioxide for Gaia is like salt for us. We cannot live without it, but too much is a poison." Lovelock promoted nuclear power, he likes to point out that sunlight is produced via nuclear reactions and that some level of nuclear reactions are going on all the time at a certain level in our environment. He ends with a philosophical discussion about whether Gaia is a religious principle or not.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the second book written by Lovelock and the Gaia hypothesis and I enjoyed them both. Even after reading two books on the topic I still have trouble explaining to others just what it is. I do believe that the idea of a living Earth is a extremely beneficial of observing the planet and to me that is what this idea is all about. The books starts with a lot of rather in depth questioning and speculating on how life has effected the Earth, particularity it's atmosphere over geologic time. It was a lot of info. Near the end the book focuses on more on people and Gaia as well as the role of science in society. It made for a great combination and I respect Lovelock efforts to making this a personal and meaningful concern for people of any background.
I not sure if I will read about more an this idea anytime soon, but in no way do i intend to forget it's value.