Ep. 22 – Ferris Jabr on reviving the Gaia hypothesis

“When you start really trying to pin down the differences between the inanimate and the animate, that line becomes a lot blurrier and it becomes less clear what we mean by that in a non-colloquial sense,” journalist Ferris Jabr says. Photo by Shawn Linehan.

“One of the many obstacles to reckoning with global warming is the stubborn notion that humans are not powerful enough to affect the entire planet,” writes our guest, journalist Ferris Jabr, in a recent New York Times Opinion piece. “In truth,” he continues, “we are far from the only creatures with such power, nor are we the first species to devastate the global ecosystem. The history of life on Earth is the history of life remaking earth.” 

Jabr argues that the time has come to revive an idea in biology known as the Gaia Hypothesis. Coined in the 1970s, the Gaia Hypothesis proposes that Earth is best understood not as a passive substrate or background to life but as a life form in its own right. It challenges us to rethink the definition of life—and with it, the process of evolution. To understand how sentient creatures have evolved on this planet, it suggests, is not only to grasp that animals are offshoots of an evolutionary tree; it’s to see the tree itself as one element of a dynamic, interrelated organism.

Ferris Jabr has written about how fish feel pain, how chickens perceive time, self-consciousness in elephants, the microbiology of winds and clouds, efforts to revive the American Chestnut, Emily Dickinson’s garden, the impact of moonlight on coral, and the history of humanity’s attempts to harness bioluminescence. He is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and Scientific American, and his work has been anthologized by The Best American Science and Nature Writing series. His debut book about the co-evolution of Earth and life, Symphony of Earth, is forthcoming from Random House.

“When you start really trying to pin down the differences between the inanimate and the animate, that line becomes a lot blurrier and it becomes less clear what we mean by that in a non-colloquial sense,” Jabr says. “… Not only is the environment shaping organisms, but organisms in turn are shaping the environment…so we can think of earth as a kind of living entity.” Photo by Salim Jabr.
Jabr on a reporting trip for a New York Times feature story on ethnobotany, “Could Ancient Remedies Hold the Answer to the Looming Antibiotics Crisis?” “I think too much science writing stops at the level of translation, and there’s a great service in translating science into something that’s lucid and understandable, but I think really good science and non-fiction writing has to go beyond that,” he says. Photo by Kate Nelson.

Recommendations:

An Elemental Thing by Eliot Weinberger

Leviathan by Philip Hoare

Koko: A Talking Gorilla directed by Barbet Schroeder

Blackfish directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite

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