The theory of organology, relating biological (organised organic), technical (organised inorganic) and cybernetic (organising inorganic) beings, leads to a more general methodological question: how can these different levels of organisation be combined with each other? How can we imagine and explain their interactions on a planetary scale? Gaia theory is one of the attempts to reconcile different kinds of organological development into a consistent whole. However, the Gaia theory itself was developing and changing in trying to explain these planetary interactions either in terms of a superorganism, or as a cybernetic machine. In this chapter I will discuss the development of the Gaia hypothesis as it was defined by James Lovelock in the 1970s and later elaborated in his collaboration with biologist Lynn Margulis. Margulis’s research in symbiogenesis and her interest in Maturana and Varela’s theory of autopoiesis helped to reshape Gaia theory from first-order systems theory to second-order systems theory. In contrast to a first-order systems theory which is concerned with the processes of homeostasis, second-order systems incorporate emergence, complexity and contingency.

The recent discontent with the conceptualisation of the Anthropocene has forced many contemporary philosophers and theorists to return to the notion of Gaia. In recent years many thinkers, such as Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers and Donna J. Haraway, have addressed Gaia theory in one or another respect. In this chapter I want to compare the original Gaia theory with these new interpretations, which come from different backgrounds and employ different methodologies. Gaia is interpreted either as an autopoietic or sympoietic system, or, by contrast, as an ‘outlaw’, an anti-system. Despite these different interpretations, the recent theoretical interventions can be read as various versions of second-order systems theory. In this respect, even Latour’s and Stengers’s takes on Gaia, defining it as an ‘outlaw’ or an anti-system, can be interpreted as a specific kind of systems thinking.

The Gaia Hypothesis

The Gaia hypothesis was formulated by the chemist James Lovelock in the 1970s and was later significantly remodelled through Lovelock’s collaboration with biologist Lynn Margulis. The first insights of the Gaia hypothesis emerged during the 1960s in a NASA laboratory, where Lovelock was assigned to examine the physical and chemical properties of Mars and determine the planet’s suitability for life.