Natural Ecosystems and Earth’s Habitability: Attempting a Cross-Disciplinary Synthesis

Makarieva, Anastassia M.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-74458-8_9

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…More recent models have corroborated and extended these findings. Using standard methodology from quantitative genetics, it has been shown that the self-regulating dynamics are explainable purely in terms of the low-level evolutionary dynamics of competition between the daisies: no higher level principle (such as teleology) need be invoked (Wood and Coe, 2007 ; Makarieva, 2022 ; Bourrat, 2023 ), at least at certain timescales (Weaver and Dyke, 2012 ). The implications have also been corroborated by models of different properties of organic systems: for instance, the metabolically abstract microorganism system (METAMIC) model simulates nutrient recycling (rather than temperature regulation) given appropriate thermodynamic constraints, and largely recapitulates the relevant behaviour of Daisyworld (Downing, 2002 , 2003 ).…”

Section: The Gaia Hypothesismentioning

confidence: 99%

Resurrecting Gaia: harnessing the Free Energy Principle to preserve life as we know it

Montgomery

Hipólito

2023

Front. Psychol.

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This paper applies the Free Energy Principle (FEP) to propose that the lack of action in response to the global ecological crisis should be considered a maladaptive symptom of human activity that we refer to as biophilia deficiency syndrome. The paper is organised into four parts: the characterisation of the natural world under the Gaia Hypothesis, the employment of the FEP as a description of the behavior of self-organising systems, the application of the FEP to Gaia to understand coupling dynamics between living systems and purportedly non-living planetary processes, and the offering of positive interventions for addressing the current state of ecological crisis under this framework. For the latter, we emphasize the importance of perturbing stuck states for healthy development, and the necessary appreciation of life existing as nested systems at multiple levels in a hierarchy. We propose the development of human biophilia virtue in accordance with the FEP as a practical intervention for treating biophilia deficiency syndrome and helping to safeguard the balance of planetary processes and the integrity of living systems that depend on them, offering some examples of what this might look like in practice. Overall, this paper provides novel insights into how to catalyse meaningful ecological change, proposing a deliberate and disruptive approach to addressing the dysfunctional relationship between humans and the rest of the natural world.

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