The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive? | Date: 28 April 2011, 07:19
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The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive? (Science Essentials)
By Peter Ward
* Publisher: Princeton University Press
* Number Of Pages: 208
* Publication Date: 2009-04-20
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0691130752
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780691130750
Product Description:
In The Medea Hypothesis, renowned paleontologist Peter Ward proposes a revolutionary and provocative vision of life's relationship with the Earth's biosphere--one that has frightening implications for our future, yet also offers hope. Using the latest discoveries from the geological record, he argues that life might be its own worst enemy. This stands in stark contrast to James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis--the idea that life sustains habitable conditions on Earth. In answer to Gaia, which draws on the idea of the "good mother" who nurtures life, Ward invokes Medea, the mythical mother who killed her own children. Could life by its very nature threaten its own existence?
According to the Medea hypothesis, it does. Ward demonstrates that all but one of the mass extinctions that have struck Earth were caused by life itself. He looks at our planet's history in a new way, revealing an Earth that is witnessing an alarming decline of diversity and biomass--a decline brought on by life's own "biocidal" tendencies. And the Medea hypothesis applies not just to our planet--its dire prognosis extends to all potential life in the universe. Yet life on Earth doesn't have to be lethal. Ward shows why, but warns that our time is running out.
Breathtaking in scope, The Medea Hypothesis is certain to arouse fierce debate and radically transform our worldview. It serves as an urgent challenge to all of us to think in new ways if we hope to save ourselves from ourselves.
Review
Ward holds the Gaia Hypothesis, and the thinking behind it, responsible for encouraging a set of fairy-tale assumptions about the earth, and he'd like his new book, due out this spring, to help puncture them. He hopes not only to shake the philosophical underpinnings of environmentalism, but to reshape our understanding of our relationship with nature, and of life's ultimate sustainability on this planet and beyond.
(Drake Bennett Boston Globe )
Author and Earth Sciences professor Ward has authored numerous books for non-specialists; this latest is a critical response to James Lovelock's Gaia concept, which argues that homeostatic physical and chemical interactions work to maintain Earth's habitability. Ward argue, passionately, that the opposite is true--that living organisms decrease Earth's habitability, hastening its end by perhaps a billion years.
(PublishersWeekly.com )
The point of The Medea Hypothesis is that life, rather than helping to regulate the Earth 'System' by negative feedbacks, does all it can to consume the resources available--sowing the seeds of its own extinction.
(Dr. Henry Gee BBC Focus Magazine )
When avid science readers browse the shelves for new titles, the books that grab their attention are best described by a single adjective: thought-provoking. And no scientist/author is more provocative in his approach and innovative in his thinking than University of Washington astrobiologist Peter Ward . . . . [R]eaders looking for solace will not find it in Ward's latest effort, The Medea Hypothesis. This time Ward goes after motherhood itself--or at least the central idea of the Gaia ('good mother') hypothesis that has evolved to describe the relationship between life and the planet as a whole.
(Fred Bortz Seattle Times )
[Ward] makes his points succinctly and supports them well.
(Rebecca Wigood Vancouver Sun )
[The Medea Hypothesis] is an interesting intellectual exercise on the history of life.
(Choice )
Reading the book will widen your field of vision about life on earth, which is still there after about 4 billion years.
(Dr. Hein van Bohemen Ecological Engineering )
Ward . . . adopts the tone of a planetary mortician gruesomely interested in his subject's decease. Ward is an expert on mass extinctions, and the subject seems to have infected his general outlook. He does not come across a happy camper.
(Roger Gathman Austin American-Statesman )
Review
A provocative look at the history of our living planet. Ward offers a distinct perspective and argues strongly that the only intelligent choice is to manage ourselves and the environment. The Medea Hypothesis will cause anyone who cares about the environment to think differently.
(Thomas E. Lovejoy, president of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment )
Summary: Dark, difficult and somewhat depressing
Rating: 4
Ok I am a big fan of Peter Ward, and I read everything of his. But this book is very different than the others that are decorating the paleontology section of my bookshelf. Most of his books are Saganesque - they celebrate science and I always feel like I'm on an adventure in the life of the mind when I read his stuff.
This book is a polemic, much more so even than Rare Earth was. It is a direct attack on a certain modern myth - the Gaea hypothesis - that has been embraced by the international environmental movement. Evaluating this book therefore transcends simple science appreciation, and enters a very different realm - the world of power politics. While I don't think Peter Ward knows a tremendous amount about that world, certainly he is aware of his myth making role - hence the playful title.
Bobby Seale once told me that the functional definition of power was "the ability to define reality in such a way as to make it act in desired manner". If you accept this political truth, than it is more important to evaluate whether the Gaea hypothesis affects reality in a way you want, than it is to address its accuracy.
And this makes the topic very tricky.
Ward handles it with real skill however - and while this is a somewhat less accessible work than some others it is a lot of fun to read. It started a three day argument with my girlfriend that had us both scouring the internet for information to bolster our arguments. I recommend it - but it requires work on the part of us non-paleontologists...and it ain't pretty
Summary: Gaia vs. Medea: is either necessary?
Rating: 3
Peter Ward attempts to debunk the Gaia Hypothesis by countering it with one of his own: the Medea Hypothesis. According to Ward's interpretation, the Gaia Hypothesis essentially says that life makes the Earth more habitable for life. Ward's Medea Hypothesis says that life makes the Earth less habitable for life. Having read the book, I don't think his hypothesis is any more compelling than the Gaia Hypothesis. There are many examples historically where life of one sort or another has altered the environment in such a way as to make survival either easier or harder for other life forms. One example of both is the evolution of photosynthesis, which is what put oxygen into the atmosphere. Oxygen was deadly to some species, but then, it allowed the evolution of others, including higher animals. It seems unnecessary to posit that life is universally Gaian or Medean, in Ward's senses of the terms. Either theory runs the risk of associating intentionality with processes that can be explained without resorting to that. While naive dependency on the truth of the Gaia Hypothesis may lead some to a complacent attitude about the biosphere's ability to alter itself to adapt successfully to changing circumstances, replacing that theory with one that depends on the same type of thinking but is instead dystopian doesn't seem any better.
One of the most important threads in the book depends on the discovery that as the Sun increases its energy output over the next half billion years or more, more carbon will be removed from the atmosphere than released into it, to the point that eventually photosynthetic plants will not be able to survive. Yet th
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