On Wednesday 26 February,聽, , will give the talk ‘Is the Earth alive? A planetary odyssey’.
Abstract:
鈥淚t seems somewhat eccentric if not a little absurd to suggest that a planet is a living thing. Earth has life聽on聽it, but it鈥檚 not a biological organism. Any theory or argument which concludes that the Earth is alive could be safely filed under ‘not even wrong’.聽So when James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis聽first proposed the Gaia Hypothesis in the early 1970s,聽some seized on the possible implication that the Earth is a form of biological organism. The Earth is alive? Nonsense! In the decades since, the Gaia Hypothesis has significantly developed and been instrumental in the creation of the new discipline of Earth Systems Science which seeks to understand both the living and non-living components of the Earth in a holistic manner.
In this talk, I will give an overview of some of the developments of the mathematical and conceptual theories that underpin Gaia Theory and argue why such approaches are important in a global change context. Humans are currently affecting the Earth via a spectrum of effects. While there is no danger of us destroying the Earth鈥檚 biosphere, we are at risk of nudging it into states that would be聽deleterious to聽us.鈥�
More information:
Date: Wednesday 26 February
Location: 聽Room 4025, Highfield Campus
Time: 4pm.
No registration is required, all welcome. Refreshments served after the talk.
For videos of previous talks and details of future talks please visit:
CS4 is the seminar series for the Institute for Complex Systems Simulation which聽brings together world-class simulation modelling research activities from across the University of Southampton and hosts Southampton’s Doctoral Training Center (DTC) in Complex Systems Simulation. .