Gaia’s Living Systems.
Improving understanding of Gaia’s Ecosystems.
Theory of Gaia (formulated by James Lovelock)
Proposes that living organisms interact with and co-evolve with their environment forming a synergistic and self-regulating complex system that helps maintain and perpetuate conditions for life on Earth.
My research and work focusses on small group ideations and how to introduce new technology and processes, Cooperating co-adapting structures central to my thinking, Understanding how people work together my bread and butter.
Improving My Understanding of Gaia.
Humans compose world’s most influential ecosystem driving global warming, Stretching intuition, Why not re-interpret Miller’s living systems in Gaia’s context? You can see result, So far seems to work.
Each Gaian level is an open complex system that maintains its state through continuous interactions between its constituents and with its local surroundings.
Gaian levels are complex emergents from interactions within immediate lower level.
New behaviors emerge at higher levels, Social behaviors emerge at level of ecological niche, Bees and ants for example.
Gaia surrounds and embraces all levels with earth air water and energy, Facilitating interactions and applying causality between and within levels.
Gaia’s Levels.
Some levels are distinct and obvious, Others may overlap depending upon appropriate definition, Most Gaian projects would only need subset of levels and related interactions.
My purpose in devising Gaian framework is to help clarify relationship and causality analysis across and between levels and surroundings.
Cell is basic structural and functional unit of all forms of life, Every cell enclosed within membrane, Contains proteins DNA and RNA, Cells are capable of specialization.
Organ is collection of tissues joined as structural functional unit, Tissues are formed from same type of cells to act together, Tissues of different types combine to form the organ.
Organism is any living system that is a minimal functional unit of life, Cannot be divided without losing functionality, Holds genetic uniqueness, Maintains quality of being an open-system.
Ecological niche is match of species to specific environmental condition, Describes how organism or population responds to distribution of resources and competitors.
Local environment is immediate surroundings of organism or community, Includes factors which directly influence organism or community and interactions within specific locality.
Ecosystem is composed of all organisms and physical environment with which they interact, Everything is linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows.
Geographic Environment is environment with well defined geographical boundaries such as oceans or mountain ranges, Encompasses all living and non-living things occurring within boundaries, Composed of natural and built features and structures, Interactions cover all living species climate weather and resources within boundary.
Gaia our Living Earth is complex emergent from all living organisms interacting with their surrounding inorganic environment to form synergetic and self-regulating system that created and now maintains the climate and biochemical conditions that make life on Earth possible, Gaia — our living Earth.
