Georges Lemaître Centre for Earth and Climate Research, Earth and Life Institute, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain, Belgium.
The Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, London, UK.
J R Soc Interface. 2020 Nov;17(172):20200503. doi: 10.1098/rsif.2020.0503. Epub 2020 Nov 25.
We formalize the Gaia hypothesis about the Earth climate system using advances in theoretical biology based on the minimization of variational free energy. This amounts to the claim that non-equilibrium steady-state dynamics-that underwrite our climate-depend on the Earth system possessing a Markov blanket. Our formalization rests on how the metabolic rates of the biosphere (understood as Markov blanket's internal states) change with respect to solar radiation at the Earth's surface (i.e. external states), through the changes in greenhouse and albedo effects (i.e. active states) and ocean-driven global temperature changes (i.e. sensory states). Describing the interaction between the metabolic rates and solar radiation as climatic states-in a Markov blanket-amounts to describing the dynamics of the internal states as actively inferring external states. This underwrites climatic non-equilibrium steady-state through free energy minimization and thus a form of planetary autopoiesis.
我们使用基于变分自由能最小化的理论生物学进展，将地球气候系统的盖亚假说形式化。这意味着，非平衡稳态动力学——支撑我们的气候——取决于地球系统具有马克斯韦尔妖。我们的形式化依赖于生物圈的代谢率（理解为马克斯韦尔妖的内部状态）如何随着地球表面的太阳辐射（即外部状态）而变化，通过温室和反照率效应（即主动状态）以及海洋驱动的全球温度变化（即感官状态）的变化。将代谢率和太阳辐射之间的相互作用描述为马克斯韦尔妖中的气候状态，相当于将内部状态的动力学描述为主动推断外部状态。这通过最小化自由能来支撑气候非平衡稳态，从而形成一种行星的自我复制。
