GAIANIZING DARWIN:  NATURAL SELECTION IMPAIRS THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PLANETARY TEMPERATURE SELF-REGULATION

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Authors

Sergio C Rubin, Carlos de Castro

Abstract

Many neo-Darwinists have rejected the Gaia hypothesis, arguing that organisms cannot reach a common good by natural selection and that natural selection cannot act on the whole planet. In response, Watson and Lovelock put forward a model they called Daisyworld (Dw), a hypothetical planet which can regulate its temperature over a wide range of solar luminosities. This is accomplished by ordinary physical processes rather than by natural selection. As Daisyworld refuted the objections, the critics have responded by developing Darwinian Daisyworlds (DDw) involving natural selection in terms of adaptation, competition, cheating and selfishness. Here we show that the more Darwinian characteristics are added to Dw, the less planetary temperature regulation is attained. Rather, to explain the generation of habitable dynamics on Earth, we propose to Gaianize Darwin by: i) showing that symbiotic coordination of daisies is at stake in the planetary temperature regulation, ii) introducing more efffectively self-regulation Worlds without natural selection, such as Butterflyworld (Bw) and Pandoworld (Pw), iii) intoducing a simple altruistic-like Gaia constraint on daisies that results in a much more effective temperature regulation than the original Dw.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31223/X5WS59

Subjects

Life Sciences

Keywords

Gaia hypothesis, Daisyworld, temperature self-regulation, natural selection, symbiotic coordination, Gaia constraint

Dates

Published: 2021-09-11 09:31

License

CC0 1.0 Universal - Public Domain Dedication

Additional Metadata

Conflict of interest statement:
The authors declare no conflicts of interest