"I see myself as a kind of shop steward for all the rest of the life on the planet apart from people. I always said I feel I have to be because there is nobody else speaks for them. They don't have any representation." James Lovelock
Was
it exciting to be asked to work for NASA?
In the 1960's James Lovelock was invited by NASA to design very sensitive equipment for detecting signs of life on Mars and other planets.
Why
did you disagree with the work that other
scientists
at NASA were doing?
Other biologists at NASA designed methods of looking for specific forms of life, similar to those on earth. These scientists assumed that evidence for life on another planet would be the same as evidence for life on earth. However Lovelock took a different approach and, with a colleague Dian Hitchcock, decided to analyse the atmosphere rather than the rocks. Their results, obtained by observations from Earth, indicated that neither Mars nor Venus supported life.
How
was your approach different to theirs?
Theses findings were not popular with NASA. After all NASA was paying for their work and wanted to go to Mars to search for life. NASA still sent a spacecraft to view the surface of Mars from orbit - but found no signs of life.
How
did you set about proving your ideas?
James Lovelock and Dian Hitchcock were kept busy trying to convince the other scientists that atmospheric analysis was a reasonable method of detecting life on other planets. But, in the early 1970's, Lovelock began to feel that many people in NASA objected to his new ideas because if there was no life to search for then a huge number of scientists could become unemployed!
So, Lovelock left NASA and began to work with Lynn Margulis. They focused on the Earth itself and the Gaia hypothesis was born. They approached their theory from a very different angle to most other scientists. They described the earth as 'alive' - at least in the sense that, like organisms, it can regulate its chemistry and temperature - maintaining them in a state suitable for life. Lovelock's friend and near neighbour, the author William Golding, named their theory Gaia, after the Earth Goddess of Ancient Greek myth.
What made you first think of Gaia?
The Gaia hypothesis asks us to look at the Earth as we might do a human patient. The hypothesis suggests that the Earth has the ability to regulate itself - the atmosphere keeps the surface warm - the rivers and seas are like the circulatory systems - and rocks are like bones, providing support and a reservoir of mineral nutrients.. The way a person looks after their body can determine the health of that body - now and in the future. In the same way the earth can get ill and it can also get better - if treated correctly.
When Lovelock and Margulis tried to publish these theories they met strong opposition for the established scientific community. Many more traditional scientists seemed to see the publication as 'dangerous' - disliking the Earth being described as 'alive' and feeling the theory was 'unscientific'. However, finally, in 1988 a sympathetic climatologist presented the paper at one of his conferences. Still many scientists did not want to accept the Gaia hypothesis and insisted that there were more conventional scientific explanations for why the world is the way it is.
What
evidence did you have for Gaia?
In response to this criticism, James Lovelock invented a simple model which he called 'Daisyworld'. It was and is intended to show that plants and animals can themselves maintain the temperature of the planet on which they live.
Eventually, the scientific community began to listen. A symposium was held to debate Gaia, and a new type of research project was born, studying living systems from a global perspective. Scientists began using the Gaia theory in their research and it is now recognized as a legitimate approach for scientific investigation.
