Daisy World [andy ford]
Consider the Daisy World parable invented by James Lovelock and Andrew Watson to illustrate the “Gaia Hypothesis.”
The Gaia idea is that the living and nonliving parts of the world interact in a way to be condusive to life on the planet. Laurince Levine writes of the Gaia idea as in effect, the whole earth following the homeostatic principles first put forth by the physiologist Walter Cannon (in his wonderfull book on The Wisdom of the Body) – “according to Gaia, the rocks, grass, birds, oceans and atmosphere all pull together, act like a huge organism to regulate conditions.”
This type of thinking sounded too much like teleology to mainstream biologists who argued that “nature does not think ahead or behave in any kind of purpseful manner” These critics, in turn, were attacked by others as being too narrow minded to see that “life on Earth could create and regulate the conditions for its own existence without being conscious and purposefull.”
Daisy World was invented to sort through these views with a concrete example. It is a make believe planet occupied by only two types of plants – white daisies and black daisies. The white daisies have high albedo and reflect a lot of the incoming solar luminosity; the black daisies absorb much more of the incoming luminosity. The spread of the Daisies across the surface of the world influences the temperature of the planet, and the growth of the daisies is dependent on temperature. The world exhibits a remarkable property of controlling temperature in the face of massive changes in the incoming solar luminosity.
Clearly, we would all agree that there are feedback loops in this system. But, would we agree that there is “purpose” behind the change? After all, the parable of Daisy World was created to counter the view of mainstream biologists who argue that nature does not act in a purposefull manner.
Andy Ford, Professor
Program in Environmental Science
Washington State University
Pullman, WA 99164
The Gaia idea is that the living and nonliving parts of the world interact in a way to be condusive to life on the planet. Laurince Levine writes of the Gaia idea as in effect, the whole earth following the homeostatic principles first put forth by the physiologist Walter Cannon (in his wonderfull book on The Wisdom of the Body) – “according to Gaia, the rocks, grass, birds, oceans and atmosphere all pull together, act like a huge organism to regulate conditions.”
This type of thinking sounded too much like teleology to mainstream biologists who argued that “nature does not think ahead or behave in any kind of purpseful manner” These critics, in turn, were attacked by others as being too narrow minded to see that “life on Earth could create and regulate the conditions for its own existence without being conscious and purposefull.”
Daisy World was invented to sort through these views with a concrete example. It is a make believe planet occupied by only two types of plants – white daisies and black daisies. The white daisies have high albedo and reflect a lot of the incoming solar luminosity; the black daisies absorb much more of the incoming luminosity. The spread of the Daisies across the surface of the world influences the temperature of the planet, and the growth of the daisies is dependent on temperature. The world exhibits a remarkable property of controlling temperature in the face of massive changes in the incoming solar luminosity.
Clearly, we would all agree that there are feedback loops in this system. But, would we agree that there is “purpose” behind the change? After all, the parable of Daisy World was created to counter the view of mainstream biologists who argue that nature does not act in a purposefull manner.
Andy Ford, Professor
Program in Environmental Science
Washington State University
Pullman, WA 99164
posted by Erik Murphy at 2/10/2006
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