I returned this week from a two week trip to Texas, and waiting for me in the mail was a book I had pre-ordered from Amazon.  The title of the book is James Lovelock: In Search of Gaia, and it was written by John Gribbin & Mary Gribbin.  Here’s what the book is about:

In 1972, when James Lovelock first proposed the Gaia hypothesis–the idea that the Earth is a living organism that maintains conditions suitable for life–he was ridiculed by the scientific establishment. Today Lovelock’s revolutionary insight, though still extremely controversial, is recognized as one of the most creative, provocative, and captivating scientific ideas of our time. James Lovelock tells for the first time the whole story of this maverick scientist’s life and how it served as a unique preparation for the idea of Gaia.

I am going to use the book as the basis for a series of posts that will explore the theory of Gaia, and not only for its implication for science teaching, but how the theory is essential for our understanding of what has happened on the Earth for the last 3.8 billion years, and what will happen in the near future.

My own experience with the theory of Gaia began in the 1980s when I first started working cross-culturally with colleagues in the United States and the U.S.S.R.  Through a series of exchanges among American and Soviet educators and pyschologists, a project emerged that became known as the Global Thinking Project.  The theory of Gaia became the underlying framework for the development of curriculum materials.  In our first publication, Global Thinking: A Cross-Cultural and Interdisiciplinary Problem Solving Curriculum and Telecommunication System we wrote this in the introduction:

A whole-earth agenda of global concerns faces the people of planet Earth, and students, as future citizens, need to be empowered to deal with them.  The Earth is a single entity—a global cell, if you will—that is unified by important biophysical cycles involving Earth’s oceans, atmosphere, continents and biosphere.  The serious problems facing the planet involve at least four interdependent global systems: ecological, economic, political, and technological.  Understanding these systems, and how they interface with each other will contribute to a sustainable planet.  Dealing with these systems requires a manner of thought that we refer to as global thinking.

In the coming days, I’ll explore the Gaia theory, and the concept of Earth Systems Education, which is a highly related, yet different concept.  Both, however, are important to science teachers, and I’ll explore each.