Doolittle W Ford
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H 4R2.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2025 Aug 7;380(1931):20240089. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2024.0089.
After briefly describing James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, I will argue that Gaia does not reproduce, or rather that it has what Peter Godfrey-Smith would call 'too many parents' to undergo natural selection according to Lewontin's Recipe. So the hypothesis did not and still does not make sense to most Darwinians. If (i)Lewontin's Recipe were extended to include differential persistence as well as differential reproduction, (ii) part/whole relationships were accepted as a form of 'reproduction', or (iii) the 'gene's-eye view' of Richard Dawkins as further extended by David Hull and us were adopted, then the Gaia hypothesis, and lesser claims about some multispecies communities, holobionts and ecosystems, make sense. This last is what the ) theory aimed to do.This article is part of the discussion meeting issue 'Chance and purpose in the evolution of biospheres'.
在简要描述了詹姆斯·洛夫洛克的盖亚假说之后，我将论证盖亚不会繁殖，或者更确切地说，按照列万廷的准则，它有彼得·戈弗雷-史密斯所说的“太多亲代”，因而无法进行自然选择。所以这个假说在大多数达尔文主义者看来过去没有、现在也没有意义。如果（i）列万廷的准则被扩展到包括差异存续以及差异繁殖，（ii）部分/整体关系被接受为一种“繁殖”形式，或者（iii）采用理查德·道金斯的“基因视角”，并经大卫·赫尔和我们进一步扩展，那么盖亚假说以及关于一些多物种群落、共生体和生态系统的较弱主张就说得通了。最后一点正是该理论想要达成的。本文是“生物圈进化中的机遇与目的”讨论会议题的一部分。
