Considering the important events of 2022, I think of James Lovelock and his predictions about climate change -- as well as much else, including whether there is life on Mars. An outsider, but he is a true scientific giant of our times. I will repost below a section on James Lovelock from my third book.
James Lovelock, has died at the age of 103
Washington Post, July 31, 2022, page C9, "Scientist behind 'living' Earth theory was provocateur of climate activism."
I started my third book with the story of one of his major discoveries.
Lovelock Excerpts
From Seeing What Others Cannot See (2017) by Thomas G West
Chapter One -- Seeing the Whole
“What this analysis showed was that Mars had almost nothing but carbon dioxide. Just bare traces of other gases were present. And I knew immediately that this meant that Mars was probably lifeless. And at that moment, suddenly a thought came into my mind. But why is the Earth’s atmosphere so amazingly different.” --
James Lovelock
Looking for Life on Mars -- Understanding Life on Earth
In September 1965, the British scientist James Lovelock was asked by NASA to help with the design of ways to see if there was life on Mars. He met with other scientists, mostly biologists, to discuss the design of instruments and detectors that could be transported to Mars -- which was then thought to be somewhat similar to the Mojave Desert.
So they talked of soil types and landing craft. One scientist even built a tiny metal cage for the fleas that might be found on the animals that might be living in the Mars desert. Lovelock said this approach made no sense to him since we could not know if life on Mars would be in any way similar to life on Earth. The director of the scientific group was not happy and challenged Lovelock to come up with a better idea -- “by Friday.”
Under time pressure, Lovelock had a “Eureka moment” -- an idea that had not occurred to him before. He thought one had to only analyze the gases in the atmosphere of Mars (from a distance) to see whether life was there.
He thought that, if life were there, the organisms would have to use gases from the atmosphere to help build their bodies and they would have to give off their waste gases to the atmosphere as well.
He happened to be working in the group with the astronomer Carl Sagan -- who, with an associate, used data from a special telescope to analyze the Mars gases from the Earth. They found that almost the whole Mars atmosphere was nothing but carbon dioxide -- with only a few traces of other gases.
Accordingly, Lovelock considered that there was probably no life on Mars, after all.[1]
However, in rapid fashion, Lovelock started to ask himself -- if this is true for Mars, how does this work on Earth? Initially, Sagan did not like Lovelock’s idea. But then Sagan noted a long-standing scientific puzzle: Over billions of years, our Sun has increased in power by 30 percent -- yet the Earth has remained habitable for life.
If it was warm enough for life long ago, how come “we are not boiling now?” Lovelock asked himself. How was this possible? How could the Earth continue to be cool enough for life even when the Sun was growing so hot? How was Earth different from Mars?
Could it be that living things on Earth were somehow regulating the gases on Earth -- and this, in turn, was regulating the temperature of the Earth as well? In this way the idea of a self-regulating Earth was born -- now known as Lovelock’s “Gaia Hypothesis” or later “Gaia Theory.”
As other scientists have noted, this leap required an unusual kind of mind -- one capable of seeing the Earth from the “top down” as a whole, not just from the perspective of one scientific discipline or another. Because of a rather unconventional career, Lovelock was famous for having knowledge and experience in many different disciples and well as hands-on instrument invention. He was perhaps more able than most to integrate the various parts of the puzzle.
In the BBC documentary “Beautiful Mind: James Lovelock” where he tells this story, Lovelock also says “it so happens that I am dyslexic, but not seriously.” He says the dyslexia slows him down on exams and causes confusion in handling certain mathematical equations.
We may well wonder to what extent Lovelock’s dyslexia (and the kinds of thinking that seem often to go along with it) would have helped him to see the really big-picture and, as a consequence, see what others could not see, forever altering the way we all see our whole planet. [2]
* * * * *
Looking at the life story of James Lovelock, one can hardly imagine anyone who fits better the kind of pattern that we are focusing on in this book. Over and over again he has seen what others could not see or would not see.
As one scientist observed: “[Lovelock’s] mind is able to make intuitive leaps or connections in things that the rest of us would always keep separate in our heads and it is these connections that he has been able to see that he has gifted us.” [3]
Lovelock has always independent and unorthodox, certainly not a specialist. And he was clearly, by his own account, dyslexic, although as we noted, “not seriously.” He has described his father’s reading problems. Like James, his father was also an inventor, tinkerer and had a great knowledge of the world of nature. We see that that we have some evidence for at least two generations of these traits.
Lovelock is the author of a number of books, but mostly not about himself. However, fortunately, we have now access to a number of interviews and some very well done documentaries on his life and on his distinctive approach to science. Indeed, one documentary by the BBC in the series of “Great Minds” (quoted above) is so well put together, with material so well selected, that one could write a small essay on almost every one of Lovelock’s assertions and stories. It is quite remarkable.Lovelock has had recognition for many inventions and discoveries. Chief among these are the electron capture detector and the Gaia Hypothesis.
The electron capture detector is extremely sensitive. Some say that the sensitivity of this detector allowed the careful measurements of small amounts of chemicals in the atmosphere. The detector is thus credited with helping to start the green movement with the concern about the CFCs in the atmosphere and the well-known “ozone hole.”
Two scientists, not Lovelock, received the Nobel Prize for their work with CFCs and the ozone hole. But all of their attention was based on data originally collected by Lovelock using his own invention. Originally these data were collected mainly because Lovelock was personally curious about the new haze that he had seen over the woodlands where he used to walk with his father. This was a change. He saw that CFCs were a “people marker.”
He found that they had spread all over the planet and they did not degrade. Fortunately, the problem could be addressed but stopping production by a few companies. Lovelock notes that dealing with “global heating” is not so simple or easy.
As everyone knows, the controversies about climate change and global warning are endless. However, cool minds continue to shed light on this hot topic. Referring to a very recent book (Anthony McMichael, Climate Change and the Health of Nations) reviewer Anita Makri summarizes the author’s position and recommendations: “Scepticism, doubt, and denial don’t escape McMichael’s attention.
He argues that not believing in climate change originates from a human tendency to favor urgent, survival-enhancing reactions over responding to gradual changes. Can the brainpower we evolved in times of climatic stability be channeled toward changing the behavior that undermines this stability? he asks.
McMichael concedes that change is not easy. He focuses on motivating action by speaking to the public about climate change not in the abstract but in terms that are closer to home, akin to everyday experience.
Through education and informed discussion, let’s talk of debilitating heat, not emissions; parched crops, not scenarios; infectious microbes in the water we drink, not targets. This way, he says, there may be a chance to activate the “fight or flight” response that befits this threat to our survival.” [4]
Visual Thinkers and Visual Discoveries
For centuries, those who think visually and those who think differently have struggled at the edge of a world of education and work mostly dominated by those who think in words and numbers instead of images and mental models.
It is not often fully appreciated how much these two groups represent vastly different cultures -- different in ways of working and different in ways of thinking. Visual thinkers and different thinkers like Lovelock have long been, apparently, among the most creative and innovative in the sciences as well as art, design and other fields.
In recent decades, the rapid rise of information-rich computer graphic data and information visualizations -- coupled with new global economic challenges and easy access to massive data sources -- has turned the conventional world of information upside down, although few with conventional “expert” knowledge have yet noticed. (Sociologists and psychologists have just begun to realize that their conventional studies of 20 subject individuals seem as nothing when social media can easily and rapidly survey thousands or millions.)
It seems clear that recent educational reforms (and more recent reforms of the reforms) in the U.S. and elsewhere have merely reinforced the long standing conventional values and methods -- leading to “teaching to the test” along with almost universal boredom and widespread fear -- while the visual and other creative talents (actually the most valuable talents in this new visual-digital world) are misunderstood and ignored.
More recently, as visual thinkers and other different thinkers aided by these new technologies increasingly move toward center stage, it is hoped that their capabilities will come to be recognized and fully valued -- and that these thinkers will be in a better position to formulate actions based on big-picture solutions to big-picture problems.
The growing awareness of the value of visual-spatial talent is a topic I have been dealing with explicitly as a researcher and writer for over 25 years – yet in many ways, I now realize, it has been a topic that I have been thinking about for most of my life.
Coming from a family of artists and engineers, silver smiths and millwrights, and at least one movie stunt pilot, I have always recognized the value of thinking in pictures and the value of precision motion in 3D space. But in the early days, my great puzzle always was how to bring visual talents to bear on conventional school subjects, especially in the early years.
Visual talents are so often not understood or are misunderstood. The usual formal academic approaches did not seem to be appropriate. I finally settled on the notion that what would be most useful to readers would be to describe a more personal story – with a series of examples, as one problem and one discovery led to another series of observations and insights – those that in time resulted in my two earlier books, In the Mind’s Eye and Thinking Like Einstein.
[End of excerpt. Seeing What Other Cannot See, 2017, pages 21-26.]
End Notes for Chapter One________________________________________
[1] As Lovelock tells the story in the BBC documentary: In September 1965, Lovelock met with Carl Sagan and another astronomer, Lou Kaplan. They had sheets and sheets of computer paper showing a complete analysis of the Mars atmosphere. “What this analysis showed was that Mars had almost nothing but carbon dioxide. Just bare traces of other gases were present. And I knew immediately that this meant that Mars was probably lifeless. And at that moment, suddenly a thought came into my mind. But why is the Earth’s atmosphere so amazingly different?” This brief version of the story is supported by a much more detailed version from a long interview with Lovelock provided in “An Oral History of British Science” (in Partnership with The British Library) 2010.\
[2] On YouTube, the BBC documentary titled “Beautiful Minds: James Lovelock.” Total time, 58:40. Lovelock’s non-specialist perspectives on science, the NASA Mars story and related stories begin at time mark 25:50. With Lovelock mostly speaking for himself, this documentary is rich with important details about his early life, his unusual education -- and how his unusual ways of thinking and working have led to major inventions and discoveries. Repeatedly we are told about how his “out of the box” and top down, big-picture thinking led to insights that other over-specialized scientists could not see or were unlikely to see. They are mostly trained and hired to focus on narrow problems -- so they have a hard time seeing the really big picture that requires the integration of knowledge and understanding of many related disciplines.
[3] Prof. Tim Lenton, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, quoted in BBC documentary, “Beautiful Minds: James Lovelock.”
[4] Makri, “Back to the Future,” summarizing, McMichael, Climate Change, 2017, Science, January 27, 2017, p. 355.
