Commentary on the Philosophy of Nature, Chapter 29
Gaia, Ecosystems, Viruses — the Borderline Cases
The determination of the Earth as a “geological organism” (§§ 337–342) is the point at which the philosophy of nature reaches furthest into the present — and at the same time the point where the transfer is most likely to be overextended.
James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis holds that the Earth is a self-regulating system that maintains its own conditions for life. Hegel anticipated this insofar as he treats the Earth not as an aggregate but as a nexus of processes that condition one another. He calls the sea a “living process, always on the point of breaking out into life.”
Testing with the three moments (developed in [[kleine-logik:20]], optional) yields a clear finding: self-preservation is uncontroversial — the system regulates itself. Self-sublation is present in the long run, through coevolution. Self-differentiation into a center is absent.
Whoever takes Gaia to be an organism thereby exceeds the criterion; whoever takes it to be a mere aggregate of physical processes falls short of it. Hegel’s own determination captures it more precisely than his choice of words suggests: it is the ground and the general form of life, not alive in the sense of a subject.
A borderline case from the other side: viruses. They have self-sublation — they reproduce and evolve — but no self-preservation, since they lack metabolism. They are incomplete life, life only through other life. Where Gaia lacks self-differentiation, viruses lack self-preservation; both are borderline cases, but at different moments.
This is what the three processes yield: they let us say not merely that something is a borderline case, but at which point it is one. [KF]
The same holds for ecosystems. The example of the wolves reintroduced to Yellowstone in 1995 — fewer deer, more vegetation, more beavers, altered river courses — shows clear self-preservation, but only weak self-differentiation: there are trophic levels and niches, but no center. An ecosystem is a borderline case, more than an aggregate and less than an organism.
This is what the doctrine of stages yields for the present: not the answer to whether the Earth is alive, but the distinction by which the question can be decided. [KF]
A second distinction, for the borderline case bordering on technology. Hegel determines the life-process through felt lack: the organism suffers hunger, it does not register a deviation. A thermostat-controlled heating system knows that it is too cold and heats accordingly — but it does not feel the cold. It has a self-model, not a self-feeling.
This does not settle the question but sharpens it: the three processes capture the form of life. Whether a self-feeling belongs to this form, or whether it is a further dimension that the logic does not reach, remains open. Cf. [[kleine-logik:20]] (optional). [KF]