Sunday April 18, 2004, 8pm
the Rose Studio, Rose Building, Lincoln Center
Gaian Variations panel discussion

Speakers:

Tyler Volk
Dr. Volk is Professor of Biology, Earth Sciences division, at New York University and the Author of Gaia’s Body: Toward a Physiology of the Earth. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the Geophysiological Society. For many years he has been one of NASA’s principal investigators into controlled ecological life support systems. A paper he co-authored with David Schwartzman in 1989 about the influence of microorganisms on rock weathering has been considered of great importance in the development of Gaia theory, and he has since become one of the most important figures in the United States involved with research into Gaian feedback mechanisms. The New York Times Science Section published a profile of Volk and his approach to Gaian research in 1998.

Paul S. Mankiewicz
Dr. Mankiewicz is Executive Director of The Gaia Institute of New York City. Beyond nearly twenty years of teaching and research experience at the City University of New York, Columbia University, the New School for Social Research and the Pratt Institute, Dr. Mankiewicz has developed a number of fluid purification and measurement technologies, including inexpensive tensiometers for field and laboratory measurement of low pressure hydrostatic forces in soils, peats, and communities of small plants. Dr. Mankiewicz has served as a consultant for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, the New York City Council on the Environment, and the New York City Department of Sanitation on issues of heavy metal and hydrocarbon contaminants in urban soils, streams and estuaries, and on the remediation and restoration of impacted ecological systems. He has served as president of the Torrey Botanical Society, the oldest such organization in the United States.

Axel Kleidon
Dr. Kleidon is a geoscientist from the Max Planck Institut fur Meteorologie in Hamburg, and is currently a Professor at the University at Maryland in the department of Geography. His most recent papers include Beyond Gaia: Thermodynamics of life and Earth system functioning, to be published in the coming edition Climate Change, and recent talks include "Life and the evolution of the Earth system: processes and theories," given along with Stephen Schneider, for the American Geophysical Union.

Mitchell Thomashow
Dr. Mitchell Thomashow is the founder and Director of the Antioch New England Doctoral Program in Environmental Studies. He is the author of Bringing the Biosphere Home and Ecological Identity: Becoming a Reflective Environmentalist (both with MIT Press). A major environmental educator, Thomashow consults with organizations such as The Atlantic Center for the Environment, the Jewish Theological Seminary,  the Orion Society, Coalition for the Environment and Jewish Life, the Appalachian Mountain Club, and others in setting up environmental education programs and curricula with a focus on ecological identity.

Earth Systems Science, Education, and Gaia Theory: The Common Ground

This engaging panel discussion will aim to highlight and celebrate what is agreed upon by everyone surrounding the controversial idea of Gaia. A good portion of the contentious debate involving Gaia hypothesis has been about defining Gaia - for example, whether the totality of life on our planet, along with the oceans, atmosphere, and surface rocks, could rightfully be considered together as a kind of 'superorganism.' But life has unquestionably been deeply involved in the development of the physical characteristics of the Earth. As ecologist Lee Klinger has said, "A cell is a cell, an organism is an organism, and Gaia is Gaia." And so, if we eliminate - or at least momentarily suspend - the arguments over a name, a classification, and even over a precise definition, there emerges a body of material which is indisputable,  in which life has had a profound impact on the physical nature of Earth, and in which life and its environment interact as  a single coupled  system,  in a discipline now frequently called Earth Systems Science by non-believers in Gaia, or  Geophysiology by others more in sympathy with the gaian viewpoint.  The panel will underscore the shared territory of these different perspectives, including their importance for environmental education.  Panelists will bring their own approaches to discussing life's impact on a global scale.