Gaia

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A personification of Earth as a goddess in various mythologies, often representing nature's life-giving and nurturing aspects
2. An ancient Greek name associated with the Earth itself, embodying the planet's inhabitants and ecosystems
3. A modern ecological term representing the interconnectedness of all living systems and the planet's biosphere

Etymology: Gaia is a name that ancient Greeks used for the Earth itself, long before anyone thought of it as a living system. The Greek "Gaîă" was the personified Earth goddess, and the word traces back to "gaîă", meaning "the Earth", which is probably related to "gê", meaning "earth, land, or country". Greek myth made her the mother of the Titans and a primordial deity from whom much of the cosmos descended. The modern sense is far newer. In 1979, the British scientist James Lovelock published "Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth", proposing that living organisms and their physical surroundings interact to regulate the planet's conditions as a single self-sustaining system. He borrowed the old goddess's name at the suggestion of the novelist and poet William Golding, who saw in the ancient figure a fitting label for the idea. The term has since come to name both Lovelock's hypothesis and the planet-as-organism concept it describes.

Synonyms: gaya, earth mother, mother earth