Gaia
Language: English
Part of speech: name
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈɡaɪə/
ipa: /ˈɡeɪə/
rhymes: -aɪə
rhymes: -eɪə
Etymology: Borrowed from Ancient Greek Γαῖᾰ (Gaîă, “Gaea, the Earth personified as a goddess”), from γαῖᾰ (gaîă, “the Earth”), probably related to γῆ (gê, “earth, land; country”).
Sense 1 was coined by the British scientist, environmentalist, and futurist James Lovelock (1919–2022) in his book Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (1979), at the suggestion of the British novelist, playwright, and poet William Golding (1911–1993): see the quotation.
Senses: examples: text: [page 1] As I write, two Viking spacecraft are circling our fellow planet Mars, awaiting landfall instructions from the Earth. Their mission is to search for life, or evidence of life, now or long ago. This book is also about a search for life, and the quest for Gaia is an attempt to find the largest living creature on Earth. […] [I]f Gaia does exist, then we may find ourselves and all other living things to be parts and partners of a vast being who in her entirety has the power to maintain our planet as a fit and comfortable habitat for life. […] [page 11] We have since defined Gaia as a complex entity involving the Earth's biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet.
ref: 1979, J[ames] E[phraim] Lovelock, “Introductory”, in Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, Oxford: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, pages 1 and 11:
text: If we are all—from the lowliest microorganism to the largest whale—a part of Gaia, then we are all potentially important to its well-being. Therefore, the ecologists who deplore the elimination of a species are not merely appealing to our sentiment. They are warning us, often without knowing it, about a blind and dangerous tinkering with the mechanism of the world. It is not enough just to regret the extinction of a whale, or even of the smallpox virus. When we delete one of these from Gaia's catalog, we may have destroyed part of ourselves. We are also a part of Gaia.
ref: 1980 July, James E. Lovelock, “Living Planet Earth”, in Omni, volume 2, number 10, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 124, column 3:
text: In fact Planet Earth can be seen as an active participant in the creation of its own story, a living being now given the name Gaia, a name from Greek mythology for the goddess of earth. […] The very ability to perceive of the earth as living, as Gaia, is an indication of the expansion of consciousness that humanity as a whole is experiencing.
ref: 1983, David Hoffmann, “The Holistic Approach”, in The Holistic Herbal: A Herbal Celebrating the Wholeness of Life, Findhorn, Moray, Scotland: Findhorn, →ISBN; Holistic Herbal: A Safe and Practical Guide to Making and Using Herbal Remedies, 3rd edition, London: Thorsons, HarperCollins Publishers, 2002, →ISBN, page 13:
text: Having recognised the Gaian phenomenon I would like to explain where I think Gaia comes from and ask for how long this Gaia phenomenon has persisted on the surface of the Earth. And then I would like to raise some of the objections to the Gaia hypothesis. To my knowledge the Gaia hypothesis has never been discussed in polite scientific society by sympathetic scientists; this is an all time first.
ref: 1988, Lynn Margulis, “Jim Lovelock’s Gaia”, in Peter Bunyard, Edward Goldsmith, editors, Gaia, the Thesis, the Mechanisms and the Implications: Proceedings of the First Annual Camelford Conference on the Implications of the Gaia Hypothesis, held on 21–24th October 1987 in Cornwall, Camelford, Cornwall: Wadebridge Ecological Centre, →ISBN, page 50:
text: Meanwhile, mankind is getting on with the business of turning the Earth barren; sooner or later, but more likely sooner, Gaia will shrug us off and the Earth will carry on as if we had never been.
ref: 2003 September 13, Nicholas Lezard, “The importance of being wrong”, in The Guardian, retrieved 19 May 2021:
text: At first, Lovelock didn’t view global warming as an urgent threat to the planet. “Gaia is a tough bitch,” he often said[…] But a few years ago[…] Lovelock became convinced that Gaia’s autopilot system[…]is seriously out of whack, derailed by pollution and deforestation.
ref: 2007 November 1, Jeff Goodell, “James Lovelock, the Prophet”, in Rolling Stone:
topics: biology
ecology
natural-sciences
glosses: The ecosystem of the Earth regarded as a self-regulating superorganism.
examples: text: While investigating the Greek mythology, we have found reason to suppose that Juno, Ceres, and Gaia are but three different forms of the same original tradition of a divine feminine: of whom Ceres is the Pelasgian copy, Juno the vivid and powerful Hellenic development, and Gaia the original skeleton, retaining nothing of the old character, but having acquired the function of gaol-keeper for perjurors when sent to the other world.
ref: 1858, W[illiam] E[wart] Gladstone, “Ilios. The Trojans Compared and Contrasted with the Greeks.”, in Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age. … In Three Volumes, volume III, Oxford: At the University Press, →OCLC, page 153:
topics: human-sciences
mysticism
mythology
philosophy
sciences
glosses: A Greek goddess, the personification of the earth, and one of the primordial deities from whom all the others descend.
Derived terms: Gaia-Enceladus
Gaia hypothesis
Gaian
Gaianism
Gaia Sausage