Gaia, seen as a total spatio-temporal process, is the unit of evolution

"The family (in China) from its first ancestors to its latest generations was a unit."
  Ralph Linton

"To Freud the unconscious is chiefly a receptacle for things repressed. He looks at it from the corner of the nursery. To me it is a vast historical storehouse."
  Carl Jung

"It is doubtful whether life can be significantly lived without conscious relation to some tradition. Those who do live without it live as a kind of moral proletariat, without roots and without loyalties."
  Dorothy Emmett

In terms of the neo-Darwinian thesis the individual organism is seen as the basic unit of evolution. But what is so special about the individual organism? Is there a fundamental difference between its adaptive strategies and those of other natural systems that it can be viewed as totally distinct from them? The answer is, unquestionably, no.

Life processes at all levels of organization including the evolutionary process itself are designed according to the same plan, being purposeful, dynamic, creative and intelligent. What is more, their adaptive strategies are all geared to maintaining the stability or homeostasis of the entire Gaian hierarchy - a sine qua non for the maintenance of their own homeostasis.

In addition, the larger systems control and co-ordinate the behaviour of their constituent parts; Gaia herself co-ordinating the behaviour of all the constituent members of the hierarchy and further assuring in this way that their behaviour remains that which will assure its overall homeostasis, a process I refer to as homearchy. For these reasons, the individual cannot conceivably be regarded as the unit of evolution. It can only be Gaia herself and we can best refer to evolution as the Gaian process.

A process, however, is an abstraction unless it has a spatial aspect, just as any entity is an abstraction if seen atemporally. The temporal or spatial abstractions in terms of which we are accustomed to think about Gaia, are in fact but different aspects of the same reality, the spatio-temporal system that is Gaia. It follows that there must be a perfect correspondence between the temporal Gaian abstraction and the spatial Gaian abstraction, just as there must be a perfect correspondence between our digestive process and our digestive system seen as a physical entity.

The neo-Darwinian thesis involves, on the other hand, radically isolating the structure of the ecosphere, viewed spatially, from that of the ecosphere seen as a process - the former being seen in all its complexity and sophistication, the latter being reduced to the crude interplay between two machines - a generator of randomness and a sorting machine. This alone makes nonsense of the Darwinian thesis.

In terms of the world-view of ecology the main features of Gaia, seen as a spatial abstraction, must also be its main features when seen as a temporal abstraction and also its main features when seen as a spatio-temporal system. Let us look at a few of its particularly significant features. The first is that Gaia, seen as a spatial abstraction, is hierarchical, being made up of larger systems that are divided into smaller and still smaller systems. The same must also be true of Gaia seen as a temporal abstraction, or as a spatio-temporal process, which is a hierarchy made up of long-lived life processes that are divided up into ever shorter-lived life processes..

Thus there are tens of thousands of generations of cells within the lifespan of a single individual organism. Individuals also have very much shorter lifespans than do the families of which they are the temporal, as well as the spatial, constituents. Beyond families stretch communities; beyond communities, societies and ethnic groups; beyond these, the human species, which in turn is unlikely to survive for longer than a fraction of the history of the ecosphere itself.

Another essential feature of the ecosphere, seen as a spatial abstraction, is that it displays order. As we shall see, order in a spatial abstraction corresponds to purpose in a temporal abstraction. In a hierarchical spatio-temporal system this means that the parts must behave homeotelically to the Gaian hierarchy as a whole, in order to maintain its stability and thus their own stability. James Lovelock sees the development of Gaia and the maintenance of its stability over hundreds of millions of years as the result of the co-ordinated action of living things, in particular bacteria..

Thus the evolution of species, as opposed to the overall Gaian evolutionary process, can only manifest itself in terms of changes occurring to a succession of ontogenies. These ontogenies cannot be understood as separate, individual processes. They are the differentiated parts of phylogeny, which in turn is closely integrated with the myriad other phylogenies that make up the Gaian process.

What, then, is the role of ontogenies and their constituent sub-processes - morphology, physiology and behaviour? The answer can only be to provide the evolutionary process as a whole with the localised and short-term information required to ensure that it remain adaptive to the changing circumstances in which it occurs. In modern language, they provide the feedback without which no cybernetic process is possible.

This was implicit at least to the evolutionary theory of Lamarck, but it is hotly denied by mainstream science which sees evolutionary change as exclusively the result of changes affecting the genes of individual living things. As neither morphogenesis nor the development of a child into an adult, nor its physiological or behavioural experience is considered to affect the genetic material in any way, these processes are seen as totally isolated from the evolutionary process.

Another relevant feature of the Gaian hierarchy, seen as a spatial, or perhaps more realistically, as a contemporaneous entity, is that the smaller constituent entities are controlled and co-ordinated by the larger ones - Gaia herself controlling in this way the whole hierarchy that it constitutes. It can be shown that this must also be true of the Gaian process or evolution, and this means that the past and the future must control the present.

In evolution, as in all natural processes, the whole precedes the part. in other words, the more general the features of a natural system, the earlier they must have been established. Thus the decision that a particular organism was to be a bird rather than a reptile or mammal was taken many millions of years ago. Those required to determine what family, genus, species or variety it would belong to, were taken correspondingly later and in that order. The more trivial or specific the characteristics that distinguish an individual from the other members of its variety or species, the later its period of development.

The German philosopher and naturalist Ernest Haeckel very significantly showed that the embryos of different vertebrates such as chickens, tortoises and humans were, at particular stages in their respective developments, so similar that they could not be told apart. However, as they developed, so did they grow correspondingly different. This led him to formulate his 'biogenetic law' according to which, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, which, though it has been reconsidered and reformulated by Sir Gavin de Beer, remains, in its essence, fundamentally true. [1]

The similarity in the form of these different embryos at the specific stages of their respective developments reflects their common early history. This early history is largely indelible. The reason is that the information that is transmitted from one generation to the next reflects the total experience of the species, not just its short-term experience.

This is essential since the short-term experience could be non-representative, indeed aberrant. Life processes based on it would then be heterotelic, serving to satisfy the short-term needs of individuals of a particular generation without, at the same time, serving those of the hierarchy of spatio-temporal systems of which they are part; the Gaian process losing its continuity or stability as a result.

If life processes are to be based on information that reflects the total experience of a species, then this information must be non-plastic, which we know to be the case. It is only the shortest and most recent experience that is plastic and hence modifiable and that can thereby change for the sake of preventing bigger and more destructive changes affecting the system's generalities.

The information transmitted from one generation to the next must reflect the total experience of the species for another associated reason. It is that evolution is cumulative and incremental. During the evolutionary process, new information does not replace the old - it merely supplements it. Significantly, the nervous system has evolved by a process of successive accretions, the second and later the third nervous systems being added without displacing the older ones.

Paul MacLean and Arthur Koestler lament the fact that the neo-cortex does not completely dominate the older brains - which would be necessary, if human beings were, as both of them feel they should be, truly 'rational'. As MacLean writes, "the reptilian brain is filled with ancestral lore and ancestral memories and is faithful in doing what its ancestors say, but it is not a very good brain for facing up to new situations." [2]

Neither of them realises that rationality by itself (if there is such a thing) could only lead to chaos and that it is a prerequisite for the continuity of our species and hence for its survival that our 'rationality' be controlled precisely by the "ancestral lore and ancestral memories" that they see as but an undesirable relic of an animal past.

Social behaviour must also be based on information that reflects the society's total experience. How this is achieved is well known. Vernacular and, particularly, chthonic societies, lacking formal political institutions, are effectively governed by a council of elders. These are the living custodians of the society's cultural wisdom which, in effect, reflects its total experience. For this reason, a chthonic society has often been referred to as a gerontocracy or government by the old.

However, the ultimate custodians of the traditional wisdom are the ancestral spirits who formulated it. For this reason, such a society is best seen as a necrocracy, or government by the dead. Ancestor worship (or rather "communion with the ancestors" as Kenyatta refers to it) is an essential feature of the religion of such societies, as it is the influence of the values of which the ancestors are the custodians that is determinant.

Lafcadio Hearn notes how this is true of traditional Japanese society. "In all matters", he notes, "the dead, rather than the living, have been the rulers of the nation and the shapers of its destiny" [3] - as indeed they have ruled and shaped the destinies of all chthonic societies. No voices from the grave have spoken with greater authority than the mythical ancestors - the "Dawn Beings" as Radcliffe-Brown [4] refers to them, who lived in that sacred period known by certain Australian tribes as the "World Dawn", Mircea Eliade's in illo tempore. [5]

In that sacred period they enacted the traditional law that was to govern for all time their society, the natural world and the cosmos itself. The traditional law was sacred on all these counts and the non-plasticity of the traditional information that reflected the total experience of the society and that was passed down from one generation to the next, was thus assured. Adaptation to new environmental changes in such conditions, involved only the imperceptible changes that the shaman and the Council of Elders could reconcile with the society's mythology and the traditional law that it served to rationalise.

Such a society can thus be seen as governed by the total spatio-temporal hierarchical entity of which it is part, going back to the 'Dawn Period' when it first arose. In this way, the principles governing the transmission of cultural information are precisely those governing the transmission of genetic information which ensures the stability of natural systems at a biological level of organization.

But it is not just the past, but also the future that controls the present; for the shorter processes serve the purpose of the larger processes that encompass and outlive them. Indeed, within the Gaian process, individual life processes are designed in such a way as to maintain the critical order of the Gaian process indefinitely - that is until such time as massive geophysical change gives rise to conditions that lie outside its 'tolerance range'.

Nothing is undertaken by the Gaian process in the interests of satisfying short-term requirements that can possibly interfere with its continuity or stability and hence with its perpetuation. In the case of economic development, or progress, the opposite is true. It is exclusively concerned with immediate political and economic benefits and its promoters show absolutely no interest in the consequences of such behaviour for future generations; for the latter are not players in today's political and economic games: they neither vote, nor save, nor invest, nor produce, nor consume. Why then should they be consulted?

It must follow that if evolution is the Gaian process, it cannot be understood by examining the behaviour of that contemporaneous cross-section of the ecosphere of which we are part and that is normally taken to be evolving. For such a cross-section does not evolve in order to maintain its stability but rather the stability of that vast spatio-temporal process-entity that stretches back to the beginning of life on Earth and whose experience is reflected in the information on the basis of which it evolves. It is the latter, in fact, that is evolving, not the former, which by itself is not capable of evolution.

From the cybernetic point of view, the total Gaian experience going back into the mists of time exists as does the present and as does its future experience, for together they constitute the Gaian process - the unit of evolution. A tribal society is said to be made up of the dead, the living and the yet to be born. That is precisely how Gaia must be seen.

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