The extinction of one seemingly inconsequential insect species, for instance, could in fact cause major disruptions throughout to the food chain. Theoretically, it is possible to trace a long chain of cause and event interaction between all the organisms of the planet. This ecological view implies that any single human action can cause all sorts of events in the non-human world. In the same way, humans are affected by the actions of other organisms. Ecologically, there seems to be no such thing as a minor event.
Every act ripples along the threads of an ecological web, sometimes resulting in major catastrophes.
In 1972, James Lovelock heightened this ecological view with his proposal called the Gaia Hypothesis. Lovelock's theory is more a model or metaphor or way of thinking rather than an actual scientific theory. Lovelock proposed that the world is a single superorganism in which each individual organism becomes comparable to a single cell or organ within the body. He based his hypothesis on an observation that living organisms produce and maintain an optimum chemical and physical conditions for the continuance of life. Conservative members of the scientific community criticized Lovelock's theory as untestable and therefore not scientific.