Lynn Margulis, Autopoietic Gaia, and the Novacene

June 9, 2020

In Novacene: the Coming Age of Hyperintelligence, James Lovelock ultimately abandons the biotic constituents of the Gaian system, and with them, any remaining vestiges of connection to the autopoietic Gaia concept that Lynn Margulis independently explored in some speculative writings of her own. Now that Lovelock has pulled Gaia up into the aether of informatic bits, we may see more clearly what drove Margulis’s insistence on an autopoietic description.

Full essay on Alienocene: https://alienocene.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/bc.pdf

Bruce ClarkeBruce Clarke
Bruce Clarke is Paul Whitfield Horn Distinguished Professor of Literature and Science in the Department of English at Texas Tech University, and the 2019 Blumberg/NASA Chair in Astrobiology at the Library of Congress. His research focuses on systems theory, narrative theory, and ecology. Clarke co-edits the book series Meaning Systems, published by Fordham University Press.

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