Natural Theology
To me, the Gaia hypothesis, or theory as some would have it, owes its origin to a dual set of sources: the immense success of the international space program that began with the launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union in 1957 and the lively but lonely scientific imagination, inspiration, and persistence of Jim Lovelock. Part of the contentiousness and ambiguity attendant on most current descriptions of the Gaia hypothesis stems from confused definitions, incompatible belief systems of the sci- entific authors, and inconsistent terminology across the many a¤ected disciplines (for example, atmospheric chemistry, environmental studies, geology, microbiology, planetary astronomy, space science, zoology).
Anger, dismissive attitude, and miscomprehension also come from the tendency of the human mind toward dichotomization. In this limited summary whose purpose is to draw attention to several recent, excellent books on Gaia science and correlated research trends, I list the major postulates of the original Gaia statement and point to recent avenues of in- vestigation into the verification and extension of Lovelock’s original ideas. I try to minimize emotionally charged rhetoric aptly indulged in and recently reviewed by Kirchner (2002) and to maximize the proximity of the entries on my list to directly observable, rather than computable, natural phenomena. I self-consciously align this contribution to a field ignored by most of today’s scientific establishment and their funding agencies, one considered obsolete, anachronistic, dispensable, and atavistic.
To me this field in its original form, ‘‘natural theology’’ that became ‘‘natural history,’’ should be revived with the same enthusiasm with which it thrived in the 18th and early 19th centuries. That age of exploration of the seas and lands generated natural history in the same way that satellite technology and the penetration of space brought forth Gaia theory. In fact when Lovelock said, ‘‘People untrained … do not revere … Geosphere Bio-sphere System, but they can … see the word Gaia embracing both the intuitive side of science and the wholly rational understanding that comes from Earth System Science’’ he makes a modern plan for the return to the respected natural history, the enterprise from which biology, geology, atmospheric science, and meteorology had not yet irreversibly divorced themselves. Is he not explicit when he writes, ‘‘We have some distance still to travel because a proper understanding of the Earth requires the abolition of disciplinary boundaries’’? For the science itself, although precluded today by administrative and budgetary constraints, the advisable action would be a return to natural history, the status quo ante, before those disciplines were even established.
Sexualité et commerce génétique planétaire
Les hommes exploitent l’énergie des combustibles fossiles vieux de millions
d’années comme le charbon, le pétrole et le gaz naturel, ils n’ont pas encore
puisé dans des gisements d’information vieux de plusieurs milliards
d’années. La micro-électronique de la photosynthèse, le génie génétique, le
développement de l’embryon et d’autres technologies naturelles sont là qui les
attendent. L’accès à de tels stocks d’informations, la maîtrise de leur
mystère les conduiront à des changements bien au-delà de ce qu’ils peuvent
imaginer aujourd’hui.
Sex and reproduction
Reproduction is the increase in number of cells or organisms, whether unicellular or multicellular. Growth is increase in size. All species of organisms grow and reproduce, although the details of how they do it vary. Even though fusion of parental gametes accompanies reproduction in humans and in the animals we best know, biologically, sex is entirely distinguishable from reproduction. Sex is defined as the formation of an organism whose genes come from more than a single individual. Sex, the recombining of genes from two or more individuals, does occur in prokaryotes, but prokaryotic sex is not directly required for reproduction.
Prokaryotic cells do not open their membranes and fuse their contents. Rather, genes from the fluid medium, from other prokaryotes, from viruses, or from elsewhere unidirectionally enter prokaryotic cells. A prokaryote that carries some of its original genes and some new genes is called a recom- binant. This propensity for gene uptake, along with the lack of a nucleus and the other features listed in Table I-2, defines one of the two highest taxa, or superkingdoms: Prokarya, organisms composed of bacterial cells. All other organisms are Eukarya, organisms composed of nucleated cells, that evolved by symbiogenesis (Table I-2).
Eukaryotic cells reproduce by mitosis. They form chromosomes—tightly coiled gene packages bound together by proteins and attached to the inner membrane of the nucleus. At least two chromosomes are located in the nucleus of every eukaryotic cell; some protoctists have more than 16,000 chromosomes in a single nucleus at certain stages. Although all cells and species of organisms made of cells must either reproduce or die, the way that eukaryotes make more eukaryotic cells or organisms made of cells is highly peculiar to each of the eukaryotic kingdoms and forms the basis of our classification system.