Homage to Gaia Read online

  The greater part of Gaian research, and all of it before 1982, was unfunded. The first monetary support came from the Leverhulme Foundation. On the advice of Sir Eric Denton, then Director of the Marine Biological Association’s laboratory in Plymouth, they generously funded my Gaia research during 1982, when I was too ill to fund myself. During the eight years until the 1990s, the only funds for research came from my own pocket, excepting only the aid given by the Commonwealth Fund towards the writing of my second book, The Ages of Gaia, and I am most grateful. The Schweisfurth-Stiftung, through their representative Franz-Theo Gottwald, supported the writing of my third book The Practical Science of Planetary Medicine.

  The concept of Gaia is protean and attracts interest among philosophers, theologians, and political leaders, as well as scientists. Along with the interest first shown by William Golding in the early days of the 1960s, I acknowledge the friendship and encouragement I received from Stewart Brand, editor of Co-Evolution Quarterly. The historian William Thompson did me great honour by inviting me to become a member of that select society, the Lindisfarne Fellowship. To him and to the Fellowship, now led by the physicist, Arthur Zajonc, I give my thanks. More recently the distinguished English philosopher, Mary Midgley, has argued for Gaia in the clear and concise way that only the best philosophers can.

  I have never been wholly on the side of environmentalism, feeling that its concern was almost always about people and not about the Earth. Environmentalists seemed to me blind to the fact that if we fail to care for the Earth, people and civilization will be among the first to suffer. But the environmentalists Jonathon Porritt and Teddy Goldsmith have my deep respect and friendship, and we agree on much more than we differ.

  If it should turn out that Gaia is truly important in our lives and our relationship with the Earth then future historians will see Sir Crispin Tickell as a figure like his predecessor TH Huxley, someone who established a new way of thought in the minds of the elite. They will also see that the powerful figure of Hideo Itokawa in Japan fulfilled the same service there. Senior politicians of all parties have been interested in Gaia, none perhaps so positively as Margaret Thatcher during her premiership. I acknowledge the interest and encouragement I have received from the powerful.

  I expected in the beginning that theologians and the churches would be hostile, but have been happily surprised to have their curiosity. I would like especially to acknowledge the long and fulfilling friendship of Hugh Montefiore, who was, when we first met, Bishop of Birmingham. He has been, since 1989, President of the Gaia charity. I have found theologians wonderfully open in their discussion on Gaia, especially Anne Primavesi and Laurent Leduc.

  I would like to thank the journalists, TV and radio interviewers, and producers—all of who gave Gaia a fair hearing at a time when the scientific establishment was disdainful. Among them, I acknowledge especially John Groom for his Horizon programme on BBC in 1985, and Sue Lawley for the BBC programme, Desert Island Discs. The Australian producer, Julian Russell’s programme The Man who named the World and David Jackson’s joint BBC Open University programme on Daisyworld were splendid. Among the articles written on Gaia, none have been so thoughtful and balanced as those by Oliver Morton in The Economist in 1990 and in Discover in 1999. For the warmth of their appreciation, I am most grateful to Fred Pearce’s articles in New Scientist and the understanding of Gaia expressed in the books and articles by Robert Matthews, John Gribbin, and Jonathan Weiner.

  The strongest objection to Gaia came from neo-Darwinist scientists, and I was moved when Stephan Harding, an Oxford biologist, joined me in Gaia research in 1994; he is now a close friend. I had always felt that Gaia needed approval from eminent neo-Darwinists before it would be taken seriously. I am therefore deeply grateful to John Maynard Smith and William Hamilton for having the courage and generosity to discuss Gaia seriously as a scientific topic.

  The Gaia story is a long-running show and provides an opportunity for new leading actors. The most prominent of these today is Tim Lenton, whose quiet competence makes his recent appearance from behind the props so welcome. Tim, as my principal successor, will have to write the plot as well as act the science.

  The Gaia meetings in Oxford in 1994 and 1996 were supported by the Department of the Environment through Mr. Derek Osborn, by the Ecological Foundation through Mr. Teddy Goldsmith and by Shell Research Limited through Mr. Frank Briffa. The larger part of the funding came from a Norwegian gentleman, Knut Kloster. Soon after we met him in 1991, he gave Gaia a major opportunity for decent development as a unifying theory. Therefore, my acknowledgement to him is a story in itself but it concludes my cast of characters.

  As we were preparing to return home from a visit to New York, the World City Corporation, a shipping company whose chairman was Knut Kloster, invited me to travel to Port Canaveral in Florida to give a short speech to send off a Viking ship called Gaia. The ship had already sailed the Atlantic from Norway, following the route taken by Eric the Red, the Norseman who had pioneered Atlantic travel when they settled Greenland, and perhaps North America. Gaia was a traditional Viking ship with a single square sail. The ship’s name and voyage had the blessing of two Scandinavian leaders: the President of Iceland, Vigdis Finnbogadottir, and the Prime Minister of Norway, Gro Brundtland.

  The ship was en route to Rio de Janeiro for the United Nations environmental conference of 1991. The World City Corporation did us proud. Sandy and I were booked into a hotel in Orlando, where we renewed acquaintance with John Rogers and Stephanie Gallagher of the Corporation. We were given time to recover from our journey and we arranged to meet for breakfast. Here, to our delight, we met the astronaut Jim Lovell and his wife. We were to be the two speakers at the launch. At Port Canaveral we wandered over to the quay where Gaia was berthed, went aboard, and talked with the crew. It was a small ship and, knowing how rough is the North Atlantic, I marvelled at her seaworthiness. The captain told us how easy it was to use the single, large square sail. How apposite it was to speak for this small ship Gaia on its journey from Cape Canaveral. Across the marshes from the port, the huge launch towers of the space vehicles were visible. A proud nostalgia filled my mind as I prepared to speak. Sixteen years back, those towers had held the giant launch vehicles which lifted the Viking mission to Mars. That mission confirmed the Gaian prediction—made long before the journey—that Mars was lifeless. The spacecraft of that mission carried the two Viking landers to Mars and left them there on the corrosive regolith of that most inhospitable planet. In the landers were essential components. These I had designed when working at the Jet Propulsion Labs.

  My speech, and that of my companion on the platform, Jim Lovell, was brief, and then we watched the small vessel set sail for Rio, taking with it its message of a living Earth. Afterwards, it was fulfilling to talk with Jim Lovell about his almost ill-fated expedition, Apollo 13, the spacecraft that suffered a fuel-cell explosion on its way to the moon, a disaster that left them with barely enough power to bring it home. They had no heating, so that the interior temperature sunk at times to –40° C. Their ordeal was the subject of a recent film, but no film could have equalled Jim Lovell’s personal account. He confirmed that he and other astronauts shared a common feeling about the Earth. Their view of it from space led them to see the planet itself as their home. Home was not the nation, or the town, or the street, or their house. Home was the whole planet. He expressed it graphically by holding out his thumb at arm’s length and saying, ‘That small area of my thumbnail covered the Earth completely when we were in the moon’s orbit; I knew then that home was that small blue ball.’ I felt a deep sense of gratitude to Knut Kloster for having brought us here to this historic place and for this important event.

  Next morning we had breakfast with him. He was what my mental model of a Viking told me he should be. He thanked me for my part and said, ‘Now what can I do for you?’ I have never been much good at fund-raising and, although we run a charity, Gaia, much of the money that goes int
o it we put in from our own pockets. Whenever I meet a wealthy organization or person there never seems to be a proper moment during which to broach the topic of support, but here, unexpectedly, Knut asked ‘What can I do for you?’ I said, ‘We have a charity, Gaia.’ Knut broke in at once and said, ‘To me, charity is a dirty word. What can I do for you?’ I replied, ‘Give me a contract to work to make Gaia scientifically acceptable. I can’t promise success but I would guess that a three-year contract at £25,000 per year would go far to achieve this objective.’ And he did.

  We might have taken Knut’s gift as a grant of funds for salaries and equipment to do research on Gaia full time. However, it did not work out that way. Somehow, when the first cheque arrived we realized that it was like the gift of talents described in the New Testament. The vineyard owner gives to his servants varying numbers of talents and then comes back a year later to see what they have made of them. It seemed quite inappropriate to use Knut’s gift in the same way as a grant. We were accountable for our use of it, and somehow we must use it to make the concept of Gaia grow. Sandy and I decided that the best way to achieve his, and our, objective of achieving scientific credibility for Gaia was to organize and then hold one or more special kinds of scientific meeting in a recognized scientific venue. And this is how we spent his gift.

  I am indebted to Sir John Cornforth and Mr John Lane for their thoughtful criticisms of the first edition of this book.

  List of Plates and Figure

  1 James Lovelock in 1924

  2 My father, Tom Lovelock, in 1893

  3 The wedding of Tom Lovelock and Nell March, 1914

  4 The March family at Deal, Kent, 1913

  5 The National Institute for Medical Research, Holly Hill, Hampstead

  6 James Lovelock, Owen Lidwell, and R. B. Bourdillon, 1943

  7 A bullock with radio telemetering

  8 HMS Vengeance in Arctic waters

  9 Audrey Smith, James Lovelock, and Leo McKern at the rehearsals of The Critical Point by Lorna Frazer

  10 The experimental biology lab at the Mill Hill Institute

  11 The apparatus for CFC measurements aboard the RV Shackleton

  12 The RV Shackleton

  13 The Electron Capture Detector

  14 Helen Lovelock at Bowerchalke, 1968

  15 Andrew Lovelock at Bowerchalke, 1968

  16 Christine and Jane Lovelock at Harvard Hospital, 1947

  17 John Lovelock at Bowerchalke, 1960

  18 The Bowerchalke laboratory, 1972

  19 The Coombe Mill laboratory, 1985

  20 James Lovelock, Lynn Margulis, and Ricardo Guerrero

  21 Robert Charlson, Jim Lovelock, Andi Andreae, and Steve Warren

  22 James Lovelock and Hideo Itokawa

  23 James Lovelock and Tim Lenton

  24 Robert Garrels and James Lovelock at Coombe Mill

  25 Jim and Sandy at Portland Road, 1988

  26 Sandy at Altarnun, 1999

  Fig. 1 A chromatogram to illustrate the sensitivity of the ECD

  List of Abbreviations

  ALE Atmospheric Long-range Experiments

  CFC chlorofluorocarbon

  CMS Chemical Manufacturers’ Association

  CO carbon monoxide/conscientious objector

  CCN cloud condensation nuclei

  DMS dimethyl sulphide

  ECD Electron Capture Detector

  ECG Electrocardiogram

  FAA Federal Aviation Authority

  GC gas chromatograph

  HP Hewlett Packard

  IMER Institute for Marine Environmental Research

  JPL Jet Propulsion Laboratory

  MBA Marine Biological Association

  MRC Medical Research Council

  NASA National Aeronautical and Space Administration

  NCAR National Centre for Atmospheric Research

  NERC Natural Environment Research Council

  NIH National Institute for Health (US)

  NIMR National Institute for Medical Research

  NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

  PCB polychlorinated biphenyl

  UNU United Nations University

  Introduction

  We were enjoying our tea break in a warm cedar-panelled room with a view down the valley to the next village, Broadchalke. Suddenly and rudely as ever, the telephone rang its strident, insistent call. No one expected Helen, my first wife, to answer it—multiple sclerosis had already disabled her. I hate telephones and always wait for someone else to pick them up. Peggy Coombs—the lady from the village who helped Helen, and who came from the Welsh valleys where they are properly outspoken—burst out, ‘Does no one in this house answer the phone?’ and dashed to still its clamour. ‘Hello. What do you want?’ asked Peggy informatively. ‘I want to speak to Dr Lovelock,’ said the disembodied voice. Peggy replied disdainfully, ‘He’s not a proper doctor but I’ll get him for you.’ The caller was a professor from a distant university who wanted me to lecture on the possibility of life on Mars. For once, thanks to Peggy, I had had time to prepare my mind and say no.

  Peggy was right. I am not a proper doctor. To her and to most of us, a proper doctor is one qualified in medicine. Someone who treats the sick and who she regards with the respect earlier generations gave to the priest. A DSc was not enough to justify the title ‘Doctor’. More than this, my solitary practice in Bowerchalke spread across the sciences ranging from Astronomy to Zoology. How could anyone so divided be a proper doctor of science? For a moment, my self-doubting nature made me think of other impostor doctors like the Vicar of Unworthy in Devon, the Reverend Fiddle, DD.

  When I set my heart towards independent science, I had no intention whatever of becoming a professional chemist and consultant. That is a good and proper way of life but it was not for me. Science was and is my passion and I wanted to be free to do it unfettered by direction from anyone, not even by the mild constraints of a university department or an institute of science. Any artist or novelist would understand—some of us do not produce their best when directed. We expect the artist, the novelist and the composer to lead solitary lives, often working at home. While a few of these creative individuals exist in institutions or universities, the idea of a majority of established novelists or painters working at the ‘National Institute for Painting and Fine Art’ or a university ‘Department of Creative Composition’ seems mildly amusing. By contrast, alarm greets the idea of a creative scientist working at home. A lone scientist is as unusual as a solitary termite and regarded as irresponsible or worse.

  In the early 1970s, New Scientist published a review of a book on Darwin’s life. The reviewer claimed the book confirmed his view that our most distinguished biologist was insane. He argued that anyone with Darwin’s reputation who chose to bury himself in a country village instead of enjoying the intellectual stimulation Cambridge offered must be mad. As I see it, the reviewer, not Darwin, was the lunatic.

  I want to tell you in this book why I ‘buried myself’ in the country village of Bowerchalke. I worked happily there until 1977, when sadly the agribusiness revolution socially cleansed the village. My escape was to West Devon and to a house surrounded by trees and almost a mile from its nearest neighbour. I want to show that the solitary practice of science in a country village, or even a remote house, is both pleasant and productive.

  Soon after starting work in Bowerchalke, chance favoured me with a view of the Earth from space and I saw it as the stunningly beautiful anomaly of the solar system—a planet that was palpably different from its dead and deserted siblings, Mars and Venus. I saw Earth as much more than just a ball of rock moistened by the oceans, or a spaceship put there by a beneficent God just for the use of humankind. I saw it as a planet that has always, since its origins nearly four billion years ago, kept itself a fit home for the life that happened upon it and I thought that it did so by homeostasis, the wisdom of the body, just as you and I keep our temperature and chemistry constant. In this view the spo
ntaneous evolution of life did more than make Darwin’s world: it started a joint project with the evolving Earth itself. Life does more than adapt to the earth; it changes it, and evolution is a tight-coupled dance with life and the material environment as partners, and from the dance emerges the entity Gaia. This book is as much about Gaia as it is about me. That part which is about me is to set the scene for the birth of what is still a revolutionary theory. I doubt if the scientific establishment would have allowed a proper doctor to work on so unfashionable a topic and one with a name that many scientists regard as politically incorrect.

  The naming of things is important. Our deepest thoughts are unconscious and we need metaphors and similes to translate them into something that we, as well as the rest of humankind, can understand. For reasons that I never understood, many scientists dislike Gaia as a name; prominent among them is the eminent biologist, John Maynard Smith. He made clear when he said of Gaia, ‘What an awful name to call a theory’, that it was the name, the metaphor, more than the science that caused his disapproval. He was, like most scientists, well aware of the power of metaphor. William Hamilton’s metaphors of selfish and spiteful genes have served wonderfully to make his science comprehensible, but let us never forget that the powerful metaphor of Gaia was the gift of a great novelist. I would remind those who criticize the name Gaia that they are doing battle with William Golding, who first coined it. We should not lightly turn aside from the name Gaia because of pedantic objection. Why do scientists, who now accept Gaia as a theory that they can try to falsify, continue to object to the name itself? Surely, it cannot be metaphor envy. Perhaps it is something deeper, a rejection by reductionist scientists of anything that smells of holism, anything that implies that the whole may be more than the sum of its parts. I see the battle between Gaia and the selfish gene as part of an outdated and pointless war between holists and reductionists. In a sensible world, we need them both.