Science seems to be continuing slowly to move toward an accommodation with panpsychism (everything is conscious). Ideas that would mainly have been mocked a couple of decades ago are slowly being mainstreamed. The other day, for example, we looked at a claim, made in a respectable venue, that consciousness preceded life. Granted, the authors, Hameroff et al., propose a materialist explanation for that — but it’s certainly not our grandmas’ materialism.

The drift is easier to understand if we keep in mind the alternative proposal: nothing is conscious (eliminative materialism), so science will one day explain consciousness away. Fidelity to materialism cannot indefinitely excuse that degree of philosophical absurdity, even among strong materialists. Thus it is no wonder that many today would rather think that everything is conscious than that nothing is. Within that perspective, it becomes easier to see Earth as a giant living organism. Which brings us to a new book which seems destined for the Top Ten lists.

Earth as a “giant living creature“

Science writer Ferris Jabr’s new book, Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life (Random House June 2024), revives the Gaia hypothesis, pioneered by James Lovelock (1919–2022) and Lynn Margulis (1938–2011), that “Earth is a giant living organism.”

As fellow science writer Brian Resnick tells it, introducing an interview with Jabr at Vox, the hypothesis was once “much-ridiculed” but, he says, “It’s time to take it seriously.”

In the interview, Jabr offers four reasons for thinking of Earth as a living organism, including,

”Every single living organism is literally made of Earth. All of its constituent elements and components are parts of the planet. We all come from the planet. We all return to the planet. It’s just a big cycle. And so life, the biological matter on the planet, is literally the matter of the planet, animated. It is living matter.

“Imagine a vast beach and sandcastles and other sculptures spontaneously emerge from the sand. They are still made of sand, right? They’re not suddenly divorced from the beach just because they’ve arisen from the beach. Those castles and sculptures are still literally the beach. And I think it’s the same with life and Earth.

Brian Resnick, “Is the Earth itself a giant living creature?,” Vox, Apr 22, 2024

“Earth is alive.” An analogy or a hypothesis?

So does that make Earth literally alive? Jabr seems to go back and forth on that one. On the one hand, he thinks that life is a product of Darwinian evolution but Earth isn’t. And when Resnick then asks if his characterization of Earth as alive is simply an analogy, he says, “Absolutely.”

But then he says…

When we’re looking at the planet, we see life-like qualities, things that resemble the characteristics of the organism, which is the most familiar life form to us. But it is not exactly the same. It is still genuinely alive, in my opinion, but is not exactly an organism…

Resnick, “Living creature?”

Hmm. That’s stretching the idea of an analogy. This is more of a hypothesis. In any event, it serves a larger cause:

There’s a massive difference between thinking of ourselves as living creatures that simply reside on a planet, that simply inhabit a planet, versus being a component of a much larger living entity. When we properly understand our role within the living Earth system, I think the moral urgency of the climate crisis really comes into focus.

Resnick, “Living creature?”

Jabr’s book, like most, was several years in the making. A 2022 profile from several years ago at Knight School of Journalism where Jabr is a Fellow, highlights the book project but makes no mention of Earth as a living being. His focus back then was “the understanding that life is intimately involved in the geological and meteorological processes that shape our planet.”

Through it all, Jabr’s love for life in all its messy, interconnected forms burns strong. And he sees the value in his book being able to offer a much-needed perspective on climate change. “We’re in the midst of what will hopefully be a revolution in how we live on this planet and how we understand our relationship to the planet,” he said. “It’s the most important story of our time.

Shafaq Zia, “KSJ Fellow Ferris Jabr Is Reexamining Our Relationship With Earth,” KSJ–MIT, February 25, 2022

Whether “Earth as a living entity” was a later idea for Jabr or one that he simply did not choose to introduce in the 2022 interview, it is likely to catch on. Many people are looking for something to believe in that demands no further commitment than trendy environmentalism — but also features an unmistakably religious aura. Thus we read at Kirkus Reviews, “Jabr’s survey of current Earth science is a masterwork of journalism—exhaustively researched, wide-ranging, simultaneously intricate in detail and accessible to general readers. The theme is profound: Life does not simply exist on Earth; it is Earth.”

Two issues that are bound to arise

If Earth is considered to be alive, disagreements over the direction that stewardship of our planet should take will likely prove as bitter and violence-prone as religious warfare. It’s no longer just housekeeping any more; it’s family. Second, what becomes of human rights or, for that matter, animal rights, when we must logically share them with rocks and trees and skies and seas? The mainstreaming of this and other ideas along the panpsychism spectrum will surely feature many surprising — and some unwelcome — breaks with older traditions.