Use your illusion?

The effortless illusion that the Earth exists for the benefit of living creatures like ourselves is one of the most natural, and therefore one of the most powerful and enduring, illusions produced by the human mind, which is itself a product of nature. It is to be found at the heart of most cultural mythologies in one form or another, even those lacking a creator figure or any overt sense of the spiritual. Even James Lovelock, whose hugely influential Gaia hypothesis gave shape to the emerging ecological consciousness of our age, was not above suggesting that human beings, with their superlative gifts of intelligence and skill in communication, may ultimately be "desirable to the planet" in the same way that the emergence of plants, with their photosynthetic ability, was similarly "desirable" for the development and continuing evolution of the Earth system in the past.  

Of course, saying that certain traits are "desirable" for living systems in general is not the same thing as saying that a living system exists for the benefit of any particular organisms who happen to possess those traits - at first glance the two ideas might seem almost diametrically opposed - but upon closer examination one finds the two perspectives rather more complementary than exclusive. At the very least, Lovelock's suggestion, much like the sentiment typically embedded within traditional systems of belief, implies that human beings have a special or possibly central role to play in the unfolding drama of terrestrial life. (For the record, I am not aware that any convincing evidence could be put forward to suggest that such a conviction is actually true, no matter the species in question. Surely the dinosaurs, if they had had our brains, would have said the same about themselves).      

The trouble begins when one starts to ask - as the question inevitably must arise - desirable to whom? or to what? 

Certainly not to any individual human being, who cannot desire what she possesses already, and whose assured fate is to be consumed by our planet after a lifetime of painful and often humiliating struggle. Nor indeed to the entire species taken together, whose fate is obviously no different than that of its individual members. It would be even more preposterous to suggest that our intellectual gifts are coveted by some other species, since we seem to be doing a pretty good job of laying waste to probably the majority of them these days. And so... what then? Well, the answer, for Lovelock anyway, is that if it's not God (it's not - at least we're in agreement on that), it's something called "Gaia". And if that's a bit too vague or nebulous for you (it is - for me anyway), then the desire is on the part of an as-yet unknown future species, somewhat like ours but which has yet to emerge from the primordial soup of the present epoch, all things being relative.    

There is no doubt that it's a fascinating idea. I'm just not sure I believe a word of it.    

I will not attempt to explore here in any great detail the dubious idea that intelligence can properly be considered a "bio-product" in the same sense that oxygen is a physical, biological product of plants. One suspects that this type of category error can at least partially be blamed on a quirk of language that often treats of objects on the one hand, and processes or qualities on the other, as grammatically interchangeable, thus falsely implying a kind of logical equivalency. But that's for another day. 

Perhaps more importantly, there are now reams of evidence that intelligence is not an exclusively human trait. Even plants, though they lack nervous systems, still grow in the direction of a light source. And while it's probably fair to say that humans have evolved a capacity for language far beyond that of many other species, one must be careful not to forget that no matter how impressive an evolved trait may appear to us, its actual survival value is never fixed or absolute. Evolution does not have a preferred direction. There are only ever degrees of adaptation, per the organism, relative to changing environmental conditions. Therefore, intelligence, considered as an end in itself, is precisely moot. Some species, like sharks, have found a niche that has remained practically unaltered for many millions of years, no special intelligence required! Considering that humans have brought themselves to the brink of global meltdown in a little over ONE million years - an eyeblink on the geological time scale - it's entirely plausible some will outlive our own species. There is undoubtedly a point, either as a matter of degree or as a function of time, past which intelligence is no longer useful to its possessor; in fact it may become actively harmful.               

This doesn't seem to have been the case for James Lovelock, who led one of the most successful and celebrated scientific careers of his time. After all, there is always the possibility that certain illusions may remain useful even if their content is not, strictly speaking, to be believed. 

James Lovelock died on 26 July 2022, his 103rd birthday. He will be badly missed by many professional and citizen scientists, philosophers and inquiring minds of all sorts who, despite not always agreeing with his ideas or taking his concepts at face value, nevertheless found his unconventional and iconoclastic approach as an independent scientist profoundly inspiring. I know I have!