ABSTRACT
The Gaia hypothesis is the belief that the earth is a personified entity that decides to act to save itself. The hypothesis is not about humans’ saving the earth. It is about the earth’s saving itself. “Gaia” is the ancient Greek name for the earth. In ancient Greece Gaia was an outright god. The present-day hypothesis seeks to restore personality to the earth by attributing to it the capacity to think and to act. The argument is meant to be scrupulously scientific, so that the hypothesis, rather than reintroducing a pre-scientific cause to events in the world, purports to offer an entirely scientific one. The hypothesis thereby brings personality, and so divinity, back to the physical world. Yet the chief advocate of the hypothesis, James Lubbock, comes to qualify his claim so sharply as almost to withdraw it.
