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| HYPOTHESES | SPECIFICATION | STATUS |
|---|---|---|
| INFLUENTIAL | The biota has a substantial influence over certain aspects of the abiotic world. | Supported |
| CO-EVOLU- TIONARY | The biota influences the abiotic environment, and the latter influences the evolution of the biota by Darwinian processes. | Debated |
| HOMEO- STATIC | The interplay between biota and environment is characterized by stabilizing negative feedback loops. | Debated |
| TELEO- LOGICAL (misnomer) | The atmosphere is kept in homeo- stasis not just by the biosphere, but in some sense for the biosphere. | Daisy- world |
| OPTIMIZING | Biota manipulates its environment for the purpose of creating favorable bio-conditions for itself. | Skeptical |
The title "Teleological" is a misnomer because there are shown to be certain "selfish" feedbacks that tend to optimize the environment (as, in human terms, "altruism" is ultimately selfish.) Tele... is verboten in science.
Lovelock: "Even in the short time since I wrote my own words about Gaia being an unconventional topic, less eccentric scientists than I have declared Gaia more conventional, meaning that Gaia theory is now recognized as a legitimate and fruitful basis for scientific investigation and is thus being brought into the scientific fold. In our first account of Gaia as a system, neither Lynn Margulis nor I fully understood what it was we were describing. Our language tended to be anthropomorphic and, especially in my first book, Gaia, poetic. Not surprisingly, some scientists misunderstood our intentions and accused us of saying that organisms acted from some in-built purpose to regulate the planet's climate and chemical composition. The notion of purpose in natural systems is of course a scientific taboo, a sin of heresy. That heresy is avoided in the clearer modern version, which is Gaia theory. This theory sees the evolution of the material environment and the evolution of organisms as tightly coupled into a single and indivisible process or domain. Gaia, with its capacity for homeostasis, is an emergent property of this domain. There is no more need to invoke notions of purpose or foresight in the evolution of this domain than there is in the evolution of our own bodies within Gaia."
The unfolding of complexity arises not from adaptation of organisms to a given environment, but rather from the coevolution of organism and environment at all systems levels.