Sacred Gaia

Holistic Theology and Earth System Science

Anne Primavesi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN:
  9780415188333
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136933035
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Gaia, the scientific theory founded by James Lovelock in 1979, embraces the earth as a whole, dynamic entity whose sum is always larger than its parts. While science and theology are often seen as contraries, which negate or dilute one another, Gaia theory harmonizes both systems of thought. Sacred Gaia cogently describes Gaia theory's analysis of human and earthly evolution. Anne Primavesi's remarkable, effortlessly coherent book helps us to recognize the sacredness of our origins and our responsibility for the future.

1 A single evolutionary process

Hearing the rising tide, I think how it is pressing also against other shores I know. … On all these shores there are echoes of past and future: of the flow of time, obliterating yet containing all that has gone before; of the stream of life, flowing as inexorably as any ocean current from past to unknown future

(Rachel Carson 1955: 215)

‘Are we made of organs, or metabolic systems, or cells, or atoms, or memories, or passions, or all of the above?’ This question allows for many different answers as to what, on earth, it means for us to be living beings. The biologist Tyler Volk raises it because of the dilemma we face when, as Gregory Bateson observed, the division of the perceived universe into parts and wholes becomes convenient and/or necessary, even though no necessity determines how it shall be done. Indeed, with living systems, the number of simultaneous levels at which they are discerned compounds the problem. We deal with it, as Bateson implies, by dividing the universe we perceive, or indeed ourselves, into certain parts and wholes and not others. The choice of which wholes, or which parts, depends on our overriding perspective; on the way in which we grasp the disjointed parts as a comprehensive whole. This grasp of the whole enables us to partition multilevelled biological and physical processes according to some interactions and not others (Volk 1995: 132; Primavesi 1998a: 74).

Volk’s answer is implicit in his question, offering as he does various ways of describing ourselves that are comprehensible to him and to others, both scientists and non-scientists. Two other scientists, Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, spent many years attempting to answer two questions which at first sight appear to be different to his, but in fact address the same problem. They asked: ‘What is the organization of the living?’ and ‘What takes place in the phenomenon of perception?’ Bringing the questions together enabled them to concentrate on the root problem: ‘How do we, as living beings, perceive anything?’ Including ourselves.

Autopoiesis, metabolism, boundaries

Their answer was an abstract description of the systemic organization of single cells common to all living systems. It is this which makes perception, in the broad sense of a living individual’s response to an environment, possible. It is this which creates, literally and figuratively, the single evolutionary process in which organisms and the material earth evolve together.

Maturana and his colleague coined the term autopoiesis (self-making) for their abstract description of systemic organization in living beings. The term refers to the dynamic, self-producing and self-maintaining network of production processes within live organisms. Whatever their components, an indispensable aspect of living beings is that the function of each component is to participate in the production or transformation of other components in the network. In this way the entire network can be said to continually ‘make itself’, even though its surroundings may change unpredictably. The living being maintains its structural integrity and organization by using solar energy, either directly or at one or several removes, to remake and interchange its parts. Metabolism is the name given to the chemical activities of living systems, to the incessant buildup and breakdown of subvisible components which include solid, gas and liquid exchanges in activities such as breathing, eating and excreting.

This metabolic activity refers us back to one of Tyler Volk’s possible choices for self-description. We may view ourselves as metabolic systems, and are, from this perspective, networks of chemical and energetic transformations. Our cell metabolism produces components which make up the network of transformations that produced them. Some of these components form a boundary, sometimes a visible one, which sets a limit to this network of transformations. But the boundary remains a part of the network. A membranous boundary (for example skin, bark, etc.) participates in the transformation network that produced its own components. The interaction between boundary and metabolism constitutes the discrete entity we call a cell. (See Maturana and Varela 1998: 43–52; Capra 1997: 98; Margulis 1997: 267f.; Maturana 1971, quoted in Luhmann 1990: 3. I shall be using the work of Margulis 1997; Margulis and Sagan 1995; Capra 1997, and Luhmann to comment on Maturana’s own formulations.)

The minimal autopoietic entity is a bacterial cell. (The largest, according to Margulis and Capra, is probably the system Lovelock calls Gaia. See Margulis 1997: 267. See also Volk 1998: 114f., for what he calls the geometries of global metabolism in Gaia. More of this later.) All autopoietic entities metabolize continuously, that is, they perpetuate themselves through chemical activity, through energy expenditure and, in Margulis’ colourful phrase, the ‘making of messes’. Autopoiesis is, she says, detectable by that incessant life chemistry and energy flow which is metabolism. In order to qualify as an autopoietic entity, that is, as an individual organism, any such material-metabolizing entities must be bounded by membranes made by their own metabolism – plasma membranes, skin, exoskeletons or bark. The breaching of the boundary signals disintegration or loss of autopoietic status. Maintaining the boundary maintains the entity, maintains ‘the self’ or ‘sense of self’ or ‘live individual’ (Margulis and Sagan 1995: 23f.; 1997: 65f.). This way of describing what it is to be alive also gives us, of course, another way of describing death: dissolution of the boundary.

Organism, environment, and structural coupling

Autopoietic entities have a tendency to interact with other recognizable autopoietic entities, and with their environment. Maturana and Varela define the latter as the medium that constitutes the ambience in which the entity emerges. The entity interacts with this medium from within it, as well as with other autopoietic entities, and by extension, with their media/environments also. The interactions occur at and through the membranous boundary, which is always, to a certain extent, permeable. One sort of interaction is what we call perception, that is, sensory response to the local environment or to another autopoietic entity.

The environment, in its relationship with an autopoietic entity, has structural dynamics of its own, operationally distinct from those of the living being. This distinction between organism and environment, and the paradoxical nature of that distinction, is of crucial importance for Maturana and Varela’s theory. As observers, we distinguish two structures that can be considered operationally independent of each other: living being and environment. But between them there is, at the same time, a necessary structural congruence in which the evolution of organism and environment merges. This independence/coincidence of living entity and environment is integral to coevolutionary description. The distinction between organism and environment made by an observer serves to underline the fact that in their interactions, perturbations from the environment trigger an effect in the living entity. But those effects, or changes, will be determined by the structure of the entity. The same holds true for the environment: the living being is a source of perturbations to it and not of instructions. As long as this congruence between them continues, as long as there is mutual triggering bringing about changes of state, we have an ongoing process called ‘structural coupling’ (Maturana and Varela 1998: 94–105).

This, in Gaia theory, is called ‘tight coupling’: the close relationship between the evolution of living organisms and the evolution of their physical and chemical environment which constitutes a single evolutionary process. Through this process, there are changes in both organism and environment which take place in each one as an expression of its own structural dynamics and because of its selective interactions with the other. Whenever the term ‘coevolutionary’ is used in the following chapters, it always refers to this single process. The prefix serves as a reminder of the two interactive components which coevolve within the process, although it is often necessary to describe them separately (Lovelock 1991:25).

Similarly in autopoietic theory there is deliberate stress laid on the structural integrity of both living being and environment within their mutual transformation, thus safeguarding their relative autonomy while positing transformative interactions between them. (This methodological move is especially important, as I shall show, when discussing notions of freedom.) A cell membrane continually incorporates substances from its environment into the cell’s metabolic processes. An organism’s nervous system changes its connectivity with every sense perception. These living systems are, however, autonomous. (This simply underlines the ‘auto’ element in ‘autopoiesis’.) The environment only triggers the structural changes; it does not specify or direct them. The central characteristic of an autopoietic system is that it undergoes continual changes while preserving its web-like pattern of organization. Margulis sums up: ‘It changes in order to stay the same.’

The components of an autopoietic system continually produce and transform one another in two distinct ways. One type of structural change is that of self-renewal. Every living organism continually renews itself, with cells breaking down and building up structures, tissues and organs to replace themselves in continual cycles. Many of these cyclical changes occur much faster than one would imagine. Our pancreas replaces most of its cells every twenty-four hours, our stomach lining self-renews every three days. Our skin replaces its cells at the amazing rate of 100,000 cells per minute. In spite of this ongoing change, we as organisms maintain our overall identity, our identifiable pattern of organization (Capra 1997: 213f.).

The second type of structural change in a living system is that in which new structures are created – new connections emerge in the autopoietic network. These changes – developmental rather than cyclical – also take place continually, either as a consequence of environmental influences, or as a result of the system’s internal dynamics or its interactions with another autopoietic system. An example of the latter would be sexual interaction and the consequent emergence of a new autopoietic entity. Such necessary transformations and/or changes of state from conception to death characterize each of our life histories. But in each case, the environment of that life history has also played a decisive role (Maturana 1987: 74–82).

The double-sided character of coevolutionary interaction is evident in the inherent association between differences and similarities in conservation of organization and structural change. It is evident also in tendencies toward cohesion and radiation, autonomy and bonding. This inherent association makes coevolutionary interaction highly complex and resistant to simple description. Therefore, in this and the following chapters, the constant elements of organism, environment and their recurrent interactions will be described in as many ways as possible. Some conclusions can then be drawn as to what it means to be aware of the planet and ourselves as autopoietic entities, and what it means to accept that our perspective on the world is formed by evolutionary processes.

Gaia as autopoietic entity

At the large end of the scale, James Lovelock’s Gaia theory presupposes that the planet itself is an autopoietic entity, that is, one which possesses features of organization analogous to (not identical with) the physiological processes of individual organisms. Margulis, one of his closest collaborators, describes the Earth as symbiosis viewable from space: a very complex living system of interacting living and non-living components that has cycled the elements through 3.5 billion years of evolution, during which symbiogenesis generated different arrangements within that symbiosis (Margulis and Sagan 1995: 156). Lovelock takes a similarly long view of the Earth as a tightly coupled, bounded system where its constituent organisms and their environment evolve together (Lovelock 1995: 37–39). Tyler Volk discusses the interconnected dynamics of Gaia under the rubric of four primary pools, or substances – life, soil, air and water – overlaid with biogeochemical cycles such as that of sulphur. Having analyzed their interactions, he distinguishes life as something special, with air, ocean and soil as matrices which surround life, harbour life, nourish life and, not least, serve as dump sites for the wastes of life. (This correlates with Margulis’ definition of autopoietic entities, including Gaia.) Furthermore, he says, because the matrices are themselves products of life, he calls them biogenic matrices. Again we have the ‘self-making’ organizational pattern (Volk 1998: 114–24).

All the scientists quoted see each life form today, including ourselves, as a product of those billions of years of interaction between chemical-based systems and their environments. Our ancestors were not brought into this terrestrial environment from outside it. Rather, they, and we, have coevolved with it into the living beings they were then and we are today. The different components of our planetary physical environment and their systems of interaction, broadly categorized as cosmosphere, atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere, have, over billions of years, continuously recycled and reorganized the elements which eventually generated the homosphere, that particular arrangement within which human life became possible and sustainable (Galtung 1982: 13–19).

From this perspective, the surface of the planet itself is seen as alive with a connective metabolism of temperature and chemical modulation systems (Margulis 1997: 93–99). Within this biosphere almost every living organism, including the human, exists today. I say ‘almost’, since the organisms which live around the geothermal vents deep in the ocean subsist in a different atmosphere, and because artificial homospheres which operate beyond the Gaian system have been created for and used by astronauts for some years now. One result of calculating the cost of creating artificial homospheres has been that economists are able to compute the benefits to us, without apparent cost to us, of the naturally occurring biosphere we inhabit. It also gives them a way of computing the cost of its destruction through, for example, our overuse of fossil fuels and the release of ozone-depleting gases.

Humans as autopoietic entities

At the smaller end of the scale of autopoietic entities, we humans evolved and continue to reproduce from nucleated cells which themselves (according to the scientists quoted) evolved from bacterial interactions. As with different classes of organism (bacteria, protoctists, animals, fungi and plants) we come into being from a special single cell and grow through a process of structural coupling marked by class identity. Our lives depend on the evolution of other communities of cells, of food webs and other aggregations held in balance by the stability of their environments; by the constancy of atmospheric conditions favourable for life. Though constant in that they remain stable within a certain temperature range, they are dynamic too, hovering between equilibrium and disequilibrium, and as a consequence we too hover between vulnerability and impermeability, between death and life (Lenton 1998: 439).

This dynamism holds within species as well as between species, where the death of some organisms sustains the life of others. Our own physical sustenance is largely maintained by the ceaseless labour of living and dying organisms, notably through the activity of plants which photosynthesize the sun’s energy for us, something we cannot do for ourselves. Our survival in extreme climatic conditions depends to a great extent on organisms long dead retrieved as fossil fuels, and in the future perhaps, if the technology can develop fast enough, it may depend on those living in the geothermal vents. Such facts about ourselves prove the truth of Vernadsky’s dictum, quoted by Margulis, that ‘human independence is a political, not a biological concept’.

Nested as we are within material environments which range from the planet to the home, from the Gaian to the personal metabolic system, their differentiation is difficult to describe when the English language uses one term, environment, for all of them. In fact, there are as many dimensions of environments spoken of and described as there are those who may or may not be aware of them. Usually we differentiate between our spatially near (personal) environment, in which our basic needs are met, and the larger one (regional, continental or global) within which it is set, and go on then, through a variety of media, to examine our relationships with these. But completely isolating one environment from another in any fundamental sense is untenable from a Gaian scientific perspective. Similarly, isolating one type of relationship with our environment from another in any complete sense is not sustainable in autopoietic terms because our interactions with our personal environments are simultaneous and continuous rather than occurring at isolated intervals.

However, it is often convenient, and in this book necessary, to divide that all-encompassing experience of environment into parts and wholes, or more accurately, into more or less comprehensive wholes. This is especially the case when we want to discern and understand the nature of our environmental interactions and communicate those perceptions to others. The choice of which wholes I choose to describe in this book follows from an autopoietic understanding of relationships between organisms and their environments. From this perspective our personal bodily boundary can be seen as itself delineating our environment while our perception of it is shaped and constituted by manifold interactions across that boundary which couple us to our environment’s social, physical, chemical, cultural, religious and poetic dimensions.

The manifold nature of these interactions can easily be lost sight of since, as I said above, the English language uses the one term ‘environment’ inclusively for all of them: while at the same time scientific and popular usage limits its meaning to our external physical and chemical environs. This has in turn limited our perception of the complexity of interactions between organism and environment posited by autopoietic theory. To counteract this I shall differentiate quite sharply between certain dimensions of those interactions, while at the same time insisting on their interrelatedness through various metabolic exchanges. The scientifically recorded rise in atmospheric pollutants has led to a general if inchoate perception of the complex biogeochemical cycles described by Volk which couple us with the material, earthly dimension of our environs. But there are other dimensions – social, linguistic, religious, political, imaginative and emotional – which also help make us what we are and allow us to develop through time. It will become clear that they too influence our ‘making’ our physical landscapes what they are.

In this chapter I shall delineate four of these dimensions which roughly correspond to our individual, social, biophysical and expressive experience of structural coupling, while aware that the interactions between the individual and the social, for example, are such as to make distinctions between them hard to sustain. But here the value of the distinctions outweighs the difficulty of maintaining them, since they allow me to highlight one of the crucial characteristics of an autopoietic entity: its individual autonomy. This is crucial for its structural integrity and for its freedom to act in accordance...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 A single evolutionary process
• 2 Coevolutionary organisms
• 3 Description and distinction
• 4 Contemporary theological circuits
• 5 Evolutionary description
• 6 Poietic process
• 7 Justice and judgment
• 8 Justice North and South
• 9 Freedom for theology
• 10 Freedom from competition
• 11 Women and the ordering of Nature
• 12 The ordering of God
• 13 Life as gift event
• 14 Sacred gift
• Bibliography
• Index