No Place for Man in Gaia

Abstract

Biacentrism (reduction of human behaviour to the resultant of biological models) has recently gained increasing interest and approval, since it is regarded as the only scientific and hence wholly rational way of under-standing man and his relationships with the environment, and founding an ethics not based on myth. There is thus an assumed or stated need to reduce ethics, aesthetics, politics and religions to paradigms of reference for history (evolution) and the interactions that maintain the equilibrium of the bio-sphere (ecology and ethology). Ethics and bioethics share a common identity. The Gaia paradigm and the Neo-Darwinian paradigm, the two biological paradigms currently most in favour, lend themselves equally well to the justification of biocentrism.The Gaia paradigm regards the Earth as a complex living system capable of self-adjustment, yet exposed to the risk of collapse or profound changes mainly due to man's impact on the environment. It gives preference to the synchronic ecological approach and introduces the concepts of non-linear response, regularity, order and finalism (the system maintains its equilibrium and repairs the damage it sustains). There can thus be no hierarchical differences between organisms, man included, as all are indispensable to this equilibrium.The Neo-Darwinian paradigm accords preference to the dia- chronic approach to evolution and introduces as its causes chance and selection of new forms through the struggle for existence. Finalism is abolished, but a hierachy is retained, since the most evolved forms are heading in the “direction” of evolution, whereas the least fit are eliminated by competition.The two paradigms are in conflict, though united by their insufficiency as the basis of an ethic. Both, in fact, can with equally logical consistency be used in support of widely differing and conflicting religious, ethical and political and socioeconomic models. In other words, the biocentric paradigms, despite the great confidence reposed in them, do not allow a rational choice to be made between the ethical and sociopolitical models proposed by the so-called human sciences, nor do they provide a base for the construction of new models.