How principles of system theory apply to the earth as a living system?

Answer 1

The Earth is much more than a "Ball of Rock". Of James Grier Miller's Living Systems Criteria of 21 essential functions of a Living System, the Earth as a complex system of Geologic, Geographic, Meteorologic and Eco-Systemic subsystems qualifies as a living system.

In the same manner, one could call a City a big pile of concrete and steel. If you quantified it just by weight, those would be its largest components. But a big pile of concrete is not sufficient to be a city.

Systems are embedded in other systems and can be considered sub-systems, or components of larger systems. Buckminster Fuller considered all systems to be sub-systems of larger systems, with the ultimate system being 'Universe'.

The Earth can be considered just a collection of living things that live in it and upon it, doing what they do. But then again, each of us human organisms are a collection of living cells, most of which (by numbers) aren't even human (they're bacterial cells). Are we living systems, or are we just a collection of eukaryotic and procaryotic cells 'doing what they do'? The human being is more than that collection of cells. It has emergent properties that aren't predicted by the nature of their individual cells.

The Earth is the same. As a whole it exhibits qualities that aren't predicted by any of its constituent parts, be they living or non-living systems.

The very nature of life on earth has transformed the non-living components of it. Before there were oxygen generating bacteria, the Earth's atmosphere was Methane based. During that time free iron existed in its non-oxidized state. As the Earth switched from largely anaerobic to aerobic generated atmosphere any free iron was oxidized into ferrous iron compounds. This evolution of the living ocean and atmosphere changed the very nature of the geology of the Earth.

A living system is not just the substrate that it is composed of. In this regard living systems are special cases of 'dispersive structures'. The classic dispersive structure is the whirlpool. A whirlpool is not water. Water can be a substrate that carries energy (volume and velocity) through the whirlpool. In any instant the particular water molecules are being replaced by other water molecules. The Whirlpool exists between two energy thresholds - a minimum energy threshold and a maximum energy threshold. Too little water moving too slowly or too much water moving too fast will destroy the whirlpool.

The Earth as a single living system, or GAIA to use the old greek word for it, or as an eco-system of independent lifeforms co-evolving together, is in some ways relative to the position of the observer. This was the epiphany that the first lunar astronauts had when they looked back on the Earth. On the Earth within its biosphere, the Earth looks like an Eco-system. while away from the Earth, on the Moon, it looked like a single jewel.

If explorers could be shrunk to microbial size and injected into a living human, as was the plot of the movie Fantastic Voyage person's body would look like some sort of exotic extra-terrestrial world rather than just the inside of a single organism.

So, the best answer is that the Earth is both a collection of co-evolving species as well as a coherent single living system.

Answer 2

4. Explain how principles of system theory apply to the Earth as a living system

Answer 3

It applied to the earth as a living, because scientists built on to the idea of the heliocentric theory