Is Earth nurturing like Gaia, or murderous like Medea?
By Scott LaFee, Union-Tribune Staff Writer July 6, 2009 In Greek mythology, the goddess Gaia emerges from Chaos to, among other things, give rise to all creatures of Earth. She is Mother Nature: powerful and omnipresent, but nurturing, too, the protector and sustainer of life. In the 1960s, James Lovelock, a widely respected English atmospheric scientist, began thinking Earth behaved a lot like Gaia, its various biological components and physical systems interacting to maintain optimum conditions for life. Lovelock eventually imagined the planet as a kind of nurturing, self-regulating superorganism. “The entire range of living matter,” he wrote in 1979, everything from viruses to oaks to whales, “could be regarded as constituting a single living entity capable of maintaining the Earth’s atmosphere to suit its overall needs and endowed with faculties and powers far beyond those of its constituent parts.” At the suggestion of his neighbor, William Golding, the author of “The Lord of the
