This article is a follow-up to Planetary Consciousness. And note: my time writing documents while working at AWS has altered my approach to writing. It's a little drier and matter-of-fact. I'll try to regress with time, hoping that my writing DNA has not mutated.
What Does it Mean to Say That the Earth is Conscious?
The concept that the earth is alive is an idea that has been debated by philosophers, scientists, and spiritualists for centuries. Some argue that the earth is not only alive but that it also has a consciousness, much like a living organism, with a level of awareness, sentience, and perception beyond its physical components.
It is hard for us humans to think of consciousness apart from the nervous system of a living organism. It’s like proximity bias, where we give greater weight or importance to things that are closer or more familiar to us; or confirmation bias, where we seek out information that confirms our existing beliefs (and ignore or reject alternatives). That makes sense: we have to start with what we know.
So let’s start with the idea that the earth is a living organism.
Arguments against the earth being a living organism begin with its makeup: at its core, it is just rock, minerals, and metals. The Earth's systems such as weather, geology, and ecosystems are the result of physical and chemical processes that follow the laws of nature and are not guided by any kind of consciousness or intent. From this dead sort of mechanical perspective, life on its surface is the result of natural physical and chemical processes.
The perspective continues with the “definition” of life to require essential characteristics such as growth, reproduction, and the ability to respond to stimuli. Some people also hedge the definition by including “intentionality” as a characteristic. The argument asserts that the earth, at its core, is not living, so it can’t do any of these things, not even unconsciously. What is happening on its surface is merely the bubbling of chemical processes.
Yet we consider human organisms to be living, and the stuff of our beings comes from nowhere else but this planet (granting that some of this planet is from other celestial bodies). And in fact, human bodies are not totally “living” — we have non-living parts. Hair, bones, nails, teeth, tendons, and even the outer layer of skin (stratum corneum) and scar tissue are all made up of non-living tissues and do not perform any metabolic or life processes.
And “intent” is not necessarily part of a conscious organism’s functioning. The autonomic nervous system regulates the body's unconscious functions such as breathing, digestion, heart rate, and other functions and is responsible for maintaining the body's internal environment, even when the individual is not consciously aware of it. However, the conscious mind can interact with these systems to affect their autonomic and conscious functions. For a body without limbs, this can thus be seen, without a huge leap in logic, as a “response to stimuli.”
Defining what is truly living is complex. Not quite as simple as it’s made out to be. I am trying to avoid committing a fallacy of division, where one assumes what is true of the parts is true for the whole. Instead, I am trying to consider alternatives to what we allow in our definitions of what it means to be living or conscious.
To that end, when thinking of life, we can start by looking at it as a holistic organized pattern or system that includes not only smaller organizations of living tissue (like cells, tissues, and organs) and organisms, but also non-living elements and the way those things work together in a coordinated way. This Gestalt view of life allows us to consider a larger paradigm for what we recognize as life by evaluating all the complex processes and interactions that occur within living organisms and their environments.
Emergent fabric of life
In an interview with Lynn Margulis with David Abram in 1996, Margulis discusses her work on the theory of endosymbiosis, which is the theory that the organelles in eukaryotic cells, such as mitochondria and chloroplasts, are descended from bacteria that were once free-living.
In the interview, she says:
The carbon dioxide we exhale as a waste product becomes the life-giving force for a plant; in turn, the oxygen waste of a plant gives us life. This exchange of gas is what the word spirit means. Spirituality is essentially the act of breathing. But the connection doesn’t stop at the exchange of gases in the atmosphere. We are also physically connected, and you can see evidence of this everywhere you look. Think of the protists that live in the hind-gut of the termite, or the fungi that live in the rootstock of trees and plants. The birds that flitter from tree to tree transport fungi spores throughout the environment. Their droppings host a community of insects and microorganisms. When rain falls on the droppings, spores are splashed back up on the tree, creating pockets for life to begin to grow again. This interdependence is an inexorable fact of life.
She called it a "web" of living and non-living elements in the same way Vladimir Vernadsky, a Russian scientist in the early 1900s, called it a "biosphere": the global ecosystem that encompasses all living things and their nonliving environment. He argued that life is a geological force that has shaped the Earth's atmosphere, oceans, and climate.
According to the article, “Primitive Asgard Cells Show Life on the Brink of Complexity,” in 2015, scientists discovered a type of cell that they believe may be the ancestor of all complex life on Earth. The cells, called Asgard archaea, were found in the deep sea near a hydrothermal vent called Loki’s Castle. The Loki organisms have a number of features that are similar to those of eukaryotic cells, which are the cells that make up all plants, animals, and fungi. (A eukaryotic cell is the most complex type of cell, containing a nucleus and other membrane-bound organelles.) Genetic sequences similar to that of the Loki organism were also found in hot springs, aquifers, and both saltwater and freshwater sediments around the world.
The finding of this ancestor implies a continuum of life that, driven by the imperative for survival and reproduction in changing environments, encompasses a vast range of organisms from these ancient cells to the diversity we observe today, including humans.
It also provides compelling evidence for a shared foundation of complex life. That foundation is like a fabric, where the combination of threads of an element (like eukaryotic cells and Asgard archaea) create a coherent, cohesive, and functional whole.
According to Kent A. Peacock in his paper, “Symbiosis in Ecology and Evolution”:
A much tougher question is to [ask], what constitutes a replicator? Dawkins thinks that it does not make sense to say that Gaia has a genome. But of course Gaia has a genome; the genome of Gaia and any other sort of symbiotic complex is comprised of the combined DNA and RNA of all of the myriad organisms of which it is composed. ... The genome of virtually all metazoan cell lines consists not only of nuclear genes but of the genetic heritage of an often bewilderingly complex suite of endosymbiotes. The genome of an organism does not have to be concentrated in one spot within the organism, and it rarely is.
...
Dawkins is right that any chunk of genetic code that in effect says “make more of me” can be a replicator and will succeed in being replicated if it says this in just the right way to resonate with the demands of its environment. However, networks of cooperative behaviors can and often are sufficiently successful that they are amplified by natural selection into a coherent, reproducing whole.
Symbiosis (syn = together; biosis = living) refers to a mutually beneficial relationship between two or more organisms, where they depend on each other for survival. Symbiosis is not just “living together”, but "dependent upon." Dependency is like threads woven together to form a fabric — the fabric of life — made of different organisms that come together to create a cohesive and functioning system. We have bacteria in our guts without which we cannot live. The relationships are not just parasitic (harmful) or commensalist (benefited or unharmed), they are part of a system that together allows life to happen. They are mutualist.
The word "network" can be decomposed this way:
- Net: It refers to a mesh-like structure, often made of threads, wires, or other interconnected elements, that forms a pattern of openings or interstices. (Fabric!) It can also refer to a web-like arrangement or a system of connections.
- Work: It signifies an activity involving effort, labor, or purposeful action. It can also imply the result or outcome of such efforts.
Therefore, a "network" can be understood as a system or structure composed of interconnected elements or threads that work together to form a pattern, facilitate communication, or achieve a specific purpose.
Networks of cooperative behaviors are groups of organisms that work together to achieve a common goal. For example, a colony of ants is a network of cooperative behaviors. The ants work together to build a nest, gather food, and care for their young. This cooperation allows the ants to survive and reproduce in their environment. The discovery of Asgard archaea, the concept of replicators, and networks of cooperative behaviors provide us with new insights into the composition and evolution of life.
In the article, “What is life? Why cells and atoms haven’t answered the question,” we read about how Erwin Schrödinger wrote a book in 1944 book entitled "What Is Life?" that revolutionized how physicists thought about the 'laws of life' by anticipating how DNA would hold life's blueprints. He didn't know about DNA, but he hypothesized that something like what we know now existed because life was the opposite of entropy as living entities constrained the normal cosmic chaos. It required a mechanism immune from entropy. He called it an “aperiodic crystal.” (Entropy is a measure of disorder or randomness of a system.)
The second law states that the evolution of any physical system always tends toward states of maximum disorder (i.e., maximum entropy). But at the local level of an organism’s body, life manages to create and maintain staggering degrees of order. It beats back chaos, for a while at least. Thus, somehow, life manifested what Schrödinger called “negentropy” or negative entropy.
Enter DNA, a system of organization. But DNA was still just about the nuts and bolts of living things.
We’d been trying for so long to find the “laws” for the building blocks (like cells) of life and the physical properties of life, and we failed. Then physicists tried reducing life to atoms and energy. That also didn’t work. They added a new element to the mix that recognizes that the interactions between laws and ingredients give rise to the possibility of life: information flow.
Emergent properties are properties that arise from the interactions of individual components, but that are not present in any of the individual components themselves. For example, the property of wetness is an emergent property of water molecules. Water molecules are not wet, but when they interact with each other, they form a liquid that has the property of wetness.
Similarly, the laws of physics govern the behavior of individual atoms and molecules, but they do not govern the behavior of living things. The behavior of living things arises from the interactions of individual atoms and molecules. The article argues that this is because life is a process of information exchange. Living things are able to store, transmit, and use information in order to survive and reproduce; and this process of information exchange is not governed by the laws of physics. The focus on networks of information flows means that life's “laws” may be emergent, even indeterminate at a quantum level. (See Illusion of free will: same conclusion, different means.)
We know that life is not present on planets that do not have the right conditions, such as liquid water and a source of energy. This suggests that life is not a fundamental property of the universe, but rather that it arises from the interactions of just the right components with just the right environments and conditions. So life is emergent.
Challenging traditional measures
But we're still concerned at this point with what qualifies as life and living based on traditional measures. Since we're also aiming at what qualifies as consciousness, let's blend the challenges.
Is there only one combination and organization of ingredients that lend themselves to consciousness?
From an iflscience.com article, ("Highly Intelligent People Are Slower To Answer Complex Problems"), researchers believe that the reason for this difference is that highly intelligent people are more likely to consider a wider range of possible solutions to a problem before they give an answer. This process of considering multiple possibilities, or "brain synchronization," takes time. "As the complexity increased, their big advantage was to have the patience to wait until all areas of the brain had done the processing required, rather than leaping in when only some of it was solved."
Wait for it...
According to a Science.org study, "A neural correlate of sensory consciousness in a corvid bird":
Humans have tended to believe that we are the only species to possess certain traits, behaviors, or abilities, especially with regard to cognition. Occasionally, we extend such traits to primates or other mammals—species with which we share fundamental brain similarities. Over time, more and more of these supposed pillars of human exceptionalism have fallen. Nieder et al. now argue that the relationship between consciousness and a standard cerebral cortex is another fallen pillar (see the Perspective by Herculano-Houzel). Specifically, carrion crows show a neuronal response in the palliative end brain during the performance of a task that correlates with their perception of a stimulus. Such activity might be a broad marker for consciousness.
An article on BigThink ("Crows are self-aware just like us, says new study (2020)"), highlights an important point for this post:
It’s long been assumed that higher intellectual functioning is strictly the product of a layered [human] cerebral cortex. But bird brains are different. The authors of the study found crows’ unlayered but neuron-dense pallium may play a similar role for the avians. Supporting this possibility, another study published last week in Science finds that the neuroanatomy of pigeons and barn owls may also support higher intelligence.
In other words, self-aware consciousness is constructed in a different way from humans. They also found that bird contemplation works the same way as it does in highly intelligent humans, mentioned above, where they consider the situational parameters and then arrive at a decision.
So, consciousness and contemplation are demonstrated to be achievable through different biological constructs.
Another feature common among us eukaryotes — breathing, or aerobic respiration — isn't absolute! According to an article published in Science, entitled “This is the only known animal that doesn't need oxygen to survive,” Henneguya salminicola, an 8-millimeter white parasite that infects the flesh of Chinook salmon, is the first known animal that doesn’t breath.
Multicellular organisms use oxygen to produce energy, a process that happens in the mitochondria. This organelle has its own genes for this process, but when scientists looked for them in the parasite, they were completely absent, New Scientist reports.
The abstract of a PNAS study, entitled “A cnidarian parasite of salmon (Myxozoa: Henneguya) lacks a mitochondrial genome,” states:
The myxozoan cells retain structures deemed mitochondrion-related organelles, but have lost genes related to aerobic respiration and mitochondrial genome replication. Our discovery shows that aerobic respiration, one of the most important metabolic pathways, is not ubiquitous among animals [eukaryotes].
Could we imagine, then, an organism or system that doesn't need the characteristics that we expect because that's what we're used to at a smaller scale? Could we imagine a larger organism whose composition was different from that of its micro-constituents?
What is Emergent Consciousness?
Imagine, instead, that the Earth has a body like we organisms have bodies, although not exactly the same configuration with 1:1 expectations. It can’t grow, can’t do full-body spasms, and it can’t eat other things (although it absorbs sunlight). It emits energy, although it doesn’t poop.
Like our bodies, the planet Earth is a complex system of living and non-living components that interact with each other to sustain life. Both are made up of a variety of different parts that work together to maintain a delicate balance, known as homeostasis, to ensure the survival of the parts, the whole, and all the other life forms that live off it (which for us humans include parasites, mites, bacteria, and fungi). In this sense, humans and other living organisms can be seen as "cells" in the larger "body" of the planet, each playing a unique role in maintaining the overall health and balance of the Earth's ecosystems. (Well, maybe we're the parasites! Still, all organisms are part of the full fabric of life.)
In the same way that life is an emergent property, one of the main arguments for the earth's consciousness is based on the idea of emergent properties. To hammer this home: emergent properties are characteristics that arise from the interactions of multiple components, resulting in a new and separate thing. The brain is made up of billions of neurons, and each neuron is capable of processing information. However, consciousness is not present in any individual neuron. It is only present when the neurons interact with each other in a complex way.
Similarly, proponents of the earth's consciousness argue that the collective behavior of all life on earth, combined with the interactions of other elements such as water, air, and soil, results in the emergence of a planetary consciousness. Some scientists have pointed to evidence of the interconnectedness of all life on earth, in particular information exchange, suggesting that it may be possible for the earth to have a collective consciousness. I prefer to think of it as a fabric of consciousness (of course). For example:
- James Ephraim Lovelock proposed the Gaia Hypothesis, which states that the earth is a self-regulating system and therefore has some degree of consciousness.
- Richard Tarnas explored the connection between planetary patterns and human consciousness.
- David Joseph Bohm discussed the idea of a "implicate order," in which everything in the universe, including the earth, is interconnected and enfolded into a larger, conscious whole.
(For a bunch more, see scholarly articles found here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/gaia-hypothesis )
The relationship between life and consciousness on earth
So how might interconnectedness and information exchange give rise to consciousness? Some scientists argue that consciousness emerges from the interactions between living organisms, as well as between living organisms and their environment.
For example, researchers have found that plants communicate with each other using a system of chemical signals, known as volatile organic compounds (VOCs). These VOCs can be used to signal the presence of predators or pests, or to attract beneficial insects for pollination. Studies have shown that these chemical signals can also have a significant impact on the surrounding environment, influencing the behavior and reproduction of other plant species and altering local weather patterns and geological processes.
In a more recent study, scientists have discovered that fungi can communicate with each other using both sound waves and chemicals utilizing patterns very similar to humans’ speech patterns. The discovery of quorum-sensing in fungi is also significant because it provides new insights into how these organisms interact with each other. This suggests that fungi are more complex and sophisticated than we previously thought, and it opens up new possibilities for research into fungal communication and behavior.
Another example is the study of animal communication and how it affects the planet's systems through the study of bird migration. Birds migrate to find food and breeding grounds, and their movements can have a significant impact on the environment. For example, the large flocks of geese that migrate in the fall can cause changes in local weather patterns, as well as affect the distribution of nutrients in the soil through their droppings.
Future research could look into the potential existence of a planetary nervous system, such as the global electromagnetic field, as evidence in support of this hypothesis. Spiritualists have talked about ley lines, or strands of energy, that crisscross the planet and that impact the consciousnesses of humans seeking spiritual connections with the earth.
During the heyday of “ley line hunters,” one effort investigated the alignment of stone circles and other megalithic structures across Europe and North Africa and found that many of these structures were concentrated along a number of purported ley lines. The authors of the study concluded that the ley lines had provided “cosmic stability” and formed a “potential spiritual network" that may have served as a tool for early human societies to connect with the cosmos and each other.
Ley line studies have been widely discredited as pseudo-science, and the believers in ley lines maintain belief as an act of faith. But the idea has sparked further research in the fields of archaeoastronomy in prehistoric society, leading to a better understanding of the cultural and religious beliefs of ancient civilizations and what they are based on or what they might reveal as having a basis in “reality.”
Not everything that starts off as a spiritual or mystical belief remains a matter of faith. For instance, the belief in the existence of auras, or energy fields surrounding the body, was once considered purely spiritual. However, with modern imaging technology, scientists have been able to detect and study the electrical and magnetic fields surrounding the human body, providing evidence for the existence of auras. And then there is the validation of traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture, and yoga.
Another corporeal analogy, like a nervous system, is the muscular system. In the article “How plate tectonics shook life into existence”, The author argues that tectonic plates provided the necessary conditions for life to evolve, including a source of energy, a source of nutrients, and a stable environment. The author also argues that tectonic plates continue to play a role in the development of life on Earth by creating new habitats and by providing a source of energy for microbes.
Tectonic plates are the large, rigid slabs that make up the Earth's crust. They are constantly moving (like muscle), and this movement is thought to have played a role in the development of life on Earth in a number of ways.
One way that tectonic plates may have given rise to life is by providing a source of energy. The movement of tectonic plates creates hydrothermal vents, which are openings in the Earth's crust that release hot, mineral-rich water. These vents provide a source of energy for microbes, which are the simplest form of life. Microbes — like the Asgard archaea — are thought to have been the first life forms on Earth, and they may have evolved around hydrothermal vents.
Another way that tectonic plates may have given rise to life is by providing a source of nutrients. The movement of tectonic plates also creates areas of high elevation, aka mountains. Mountains are home to a variety of different habitats, including forests, grasslands, and deserts, which provide a variety of different nutrients for life. The author of the article is thinking they may have been a key factor in the development of complex life forms.
Finally, tectonic plates may have given rise to life by providing a stable environment. The movement of tectonic plates creates a cycle of erosion and deposition, which helps to create a stable environment for life. This stability is important for life because it allows life forms to evolve and adapt over time.
Conclusion
All of this suggests a level of interconnectedness and awareness even among non-human life forms. The health and well-being of individual organisms are interrelated with the health and well-being of the entire ecosystem. The functioning of ecosystems is not just a result of the sum of individual parts, but rather is a result of the complex interactions between these parts. The health and well-being of each component, from animals to plants to microbes to the environment, play a crucial role in maintaining the balance and stability of the ecosystem and fabric of life. Innate, instinctual activities as well as intentional activities that maintain the balance of the earth’s life-supporting system suggest that there may be a collective consciousness, or fabric of consciousness, at work.
We first have to accept that what we're used to thinking is not the boundary of understanding. Arguments debunking silicon-based lifeforms still limit the possibilities of life by using ourselves as the measure of all things and by falling into logical traps, like these:
- Hasty generalization: Making broad conclusions about the possibility of, for example, silicon-based life based on limited information and evidence.
- False dichotomy: Considering the possibility of life being only carbon-based or silicon-based as the only two options, ignoring the possibility of other forms of life that might exist.
- Argument from ignorance: Thinking that since there is no evidence of silicon-based or other-based life, it is unlikely to exist.
- Straw man: Arguing against a caricature of other-based life that is easily debunked, instead of considering the possibility of other-based, such as silicon-based, life in a more nuanced and sophisticated way.
I think that the simplest notion is that when we are conscious of the planet as a thing and we are aware of ourselves being part of the planet, that is the planet being conscious of itself.
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