Professor Tyrrell will be giving a talk about his evaluation of the Gaia Hypothesis and signing copies of his book on Thursday 4 July at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.
The talk starts at 6.30pm and is open to the public.
听A new book presents the first detailed and comprehensive analysis of the famous Gaia Hypothesis, and finds it to be inconsistent with modern evidence.
听In the 1970s James Lovelock鈥檚 Gaia Hypothesis proposed that life has played a critical role in shaping the planetary environment and climate for around three bil颅lion years. Life has not been merely a passive pas颅senger on a fortuitously habitable Earth, Lovelock claimed, but rather has shaped the environment and helped to keep it stable and comfortable for life.
听In the 30 years or so since it was first proposed, the Gaia Hypothesis has intrigued a whole generation of those interested in natural history and planet Earth. Today it is widely but by no means universally credited by scientists. It remains controversial.
听In his book, 鈥�On Gaia: A Critical Investigation of the Relationship between Life and Earth鈥�, Toby Tyrrell, Professor of Earth system science at the University of Southampton, concludes that the Gaia Hypothesis is not consistent with modern scientific evidence and understanding and should therefore be rejected.
听Professor Tyrrell鈥檚 book submits the Gaia Hypothesis to detailed scrutiny, subjecting each of three main arguments put forward in support of Gaia to close analysis, and comparing them to evidence collected in the more than 30 years since the Gaia Hypothesis was first proposed. It is the first book containing a hard-nosed and thorough examination of the Gaia Hypothesis.
听Professor Tyrrell, who is based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, says: 鈥淢y aim was to determine whether the Gaia Hypothesis is a credible explanation of how life and environment interact on Earth – I found it is not.
听鈥淔irstly, because there are no facts or phenomena that can be explained only by Gaia (no 鈥榮moking gun鈥�). Secondly, because there is no proven mechanism for Gaia (no accepted reason for why it should emerge out of natural selection). And thirdly, because the key lines of argument that Lovelock and others advanced in support of Gaia either give equally strong support to alternative hypotheses or else are mistaken.鈥�
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