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Gaian Science
Our science and technology is still very primitive, when compared to the 'technology' employed by life forms we share this planet with. We are only at the dawn of comprehension of the levels of sophistication and complexity which are the very stuff of the biosphere we emerge from. The dynamics and engineering we are discovering in nature boggles the mind in its inventiveness, subtlety and effectiveness. Whether we are dealing with strategies and designs on the molecular level, the cellular level, engineering and materials at all levels, etc... this 'technology' is way beyond our own.
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A change is happening now: we are beginning to grasp these things through our newly reframed investigative sciences; we have begun to pay close attention, and are beginning to be able to witness and model something of what is going on. Here we will find the provocative challenges and functioning models of engineering wizardry for the next era of human science. Here we will find the revolutionizing of our sciences of materials, chemistry, cybernetics, control and communications, information management and storage, homeostasis, medecine, artificial intelligence, complex adaptive systems, social and psychosocial modularities, and a host of others, including the potentially huge area of nanotechnology. |
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The stunning thing is, that this library, waiting for us to grow smart enough to read it, will never run out! As we get better at reading it, the more we will learn. This is due to the age of this 'science': It is billions of years in the making. Without this fantastic resource we may be stuck in a science of decreasing potential and diminishing returns; clearly a further great expansion of the reductionist, industrial-extractive based technology will be more and more difficult to reconcile with the preservation of the biosphere we require for life. Think of this biosphere as nature's dowry to scientific humanity. Will we in our relative ignorance destroy it before the enormity of its true value dawns on us?
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Everywhere in the universe where intelligent life evolves there will be the same situation, the matrix from which the intelligent life forms emerged is the dowry which awaits them as they go beyond reductionist industrial-extractive sciences, and graduate to bio-models. If we succeed in making this transition, will we pity those alien civilisations which mangled and destroyed their biospheres, and who are condemned to inferior science? Will they be ostracized from the galactic community?
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Again: If we lose this self maintaining, self evolving reservoir of nature's 'science', our future science will be tragically stunted. So will our creative-adaptive powers as en evolving species.
How much time do we have to make this step?
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New Scientist Magazine Dec 2 1995: "Tiny sea creatures create intricate, microscopic structures which have long been the envy of materials scientists. Marine organisms such as radiolarians, diatoms, coccolithophores make themselves delicate shells out of silica or calcium carbonate with exquisite, infinitely varied designs. Now scientists believe they have discovered some of nature's architectural secrets and are using them to make a range of revolutionary new materials."
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In Scientific American's Questions and Answers: DNA Computing: Carter Bancroft, a professor in the department of physiology and biophysics at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, offers some additional insights: "Workers in the field of DNA-based computation (of which I am one) hope that, at least for some applications, DNA-based computers will be far more powerful and efficient than silicon-based electronic computers. This hope is based mainly on the following properties of DNA: "First, it is the major information storage molecule in living cells, and billions of years of evolution have tested and refined both this wonderful informational molecule and highly specific enzymes that can either duplicate the information in DNA molecules or transmit this information to other DNA molecules. "Second, each molecule of DNA is roughly equivalent to a little computer chip. But DNA molecules are much smaller than computer chips, so you can get lots of them into a little space--roughly 10 trillion of them would fit in a space the size of a marble. "And third, all these molecules can work together at once, so you could theoretically have 10 trillion calculations going on at the same time in this little space (or the number of simultaneous operations could be far greater still if your computer were a lot larger than a marble). |
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"Humanity is exalted not because we are so far above other living creatures, but because knowing them well elevates the very concept of life." - Edward Wilson
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| gaia gates | gaia hypothesis | gaia web | gaia sporing | |||||
| morphogenetic fields | biophilia | aquatic ape | animalia | |||||