[WikiEN-l] Gaia theory article disambiguation

Wed Jul 2 22:46:30 UTC 2003

We need a bit more clarification.  I have been doing some
more reading on this topic, and have disovered that many
claims Anthere has been making in the Gaia articles are
incorrect.  Anthere has saying that we must refer to
certain ancient religious and mystical views of the Earth
and/or cosmos as "Gaia theory". In point of fact, the
people who developed those ideas never referred to those
ideas with this terminology!  More to the point, these
ideas have no relation Gaia thoery.  Even today most
English speakers do not use this terminology for those
ideas. Anther is mistaken on this point.

More problematic is her curious claim that Dr James
Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis is based upon these earlier
mystic and religious beliefs. In point of fact, Dr.
Lovelock says no such thing. Lovelock is an atmospheric
scientists, and his Gaia hypothesis grew out of his study
of atmospheric gases. He did *not* use science to build
upon earlier mystical beliefs; he created his own
hypothesis by applying ideas from Biology to findings from
atmospheric science.  Anthere's claims that all these
religious and mystical views must be viewed as precursor's
to Lovelock's hypothesis are incorrect; they seem to part
of her own belief system, and they have no basis in
historical fact. Having watched a detailed interview with
Lovelock on how he developed his hypothesis, and having
read two different accounts by him on the same topic, I can
say with some certainty that Anthere's beliefs about the
origins of the Gaia hypothesis are totally off-base.

Now, it may be true that a tiny number of radical left-wing
ecology activists (for example, Gaiains) have developed
certain religious and/or political beliefs based on
Lovelock's ideas. They may even have mistakenly come to
believe that Lovelock didn't originate the Gaia hypothesis,
but merely added science to previous mystical belief
systems.  But so what?  We can certainly mention this set
of beliefs in the article on Gaians, but it would be
grossly inapprorpiate to jam it into an article on
atmospheric science and biology, i.e. the [[Gaia theory]]
article.

Finally, Anthere keeps demanding that since some people mix
together science, radical politics, and these new-age
belief systems, we are somehow obligated to cram all of
this into the science articles.  She is plainly wrong. We
in Wikipedia already have a convention for dealing with
this; we already have a clear and working precedent.
Consider the topics of Biological evolution and [[Quantum
Mechanics]]: As many of you know, these are modern
scientific theories, and our articles on these topics
reflect this fact.  Yet many new-age writers have come to
believe that Quantum mechanics and/or evolution somehow are
related to ancient mystical and religious belief systems.

As many of you know, many new-age folks try to connect
Quantum Mechanics with Daoist or Buddhist philosophy, and
claim that it is "proof" of the validity of these
religions. I have also seen Orthodox Jews try to fuse
Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) with Quantum mechanics. But so
what? Frankly, there are many individuals and groops that
insist that Quantum menchanics or evolution has some
mystical or political significance.  Do we then rewrite
encycloepdias to make them in lin with the religious or
political demands of these groups or individuals?  No. 
That would be a violationf our NPOV policy.

What we have always done for these issues is to create new
articles on these poltical or religious groups, and explain
their viewpoints.  We have always done this in the past, it
makes it easy to stay NPOV, and provides useful
disambiguation.

Can you imagine how misleading it would to start pushing
mystical, religious topics, and political topics, into our
articles on Biological evolution, and on Quantum Mechanics?
 Why then should we do the same for the Gaia hypothesis?
(Also called the Gaia theory.)  Answer - we shouldn't. It
would confusing and a violation of NPOV.

Again, from discussions on this list and on the Talk pages,
it is looking like the following disambiguation scheme
should be implemented:

*****

Gaia: This is a [[disambiguation]] page. The term Gaia may
refer to 

[[Gaia (mythology)]] - Discussion of the Greek and Roman
goddeess. 

[[Gaia theory]] - A group of scientific theories about how
life on Earth may regulate the planet's biosphere to make
it more hospitable to life. This discusses all scientific
views on the subject in general, including the views of
Drs. James Lovelock, Lynn Margulis, Richard Dawkins, Carl
Sagan, etc. 

[[Gaia hypothesis]]- A subset of the above article; this is
a discussion of Dr. James Lovelock's ideas on Gaia theory. 

[[Gaia theory analogs]] - A discussion of proto-scientific,
mystical and religious views that some people believe are
related to Gaia theory. 

[[Gaians]] - A discussion of the small left-wing radical
political and environmentalist group. 

(Of course, other articles could be made as well, if
needed.)

*****

We must not push mystical, political or religious ideology
into our science articles on Gaia theory, Biological
evolution, or Quantum Mechanics, etc. All I am asking is
that we continue to follow the same disambiguation and NPOV
policy that we also have followed.  Is this clear?

Robert (RK)

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