"The first question that Lovelock set out to answer was Dawkins' question about how Gaia "could evolve her global adaptations by the ordinary processes of Darwinian selection acting within one planet." … Lovelock was determined to prove him wrong. … A drastic simplification was required—a scientific model, a set of equations, which could be used to highlight one aspect of how the world works. … Lovelock's experience in systems design helped him. … Lovelock needed a mathematician who could write a paper in language that mathematicians could accept, and Watson is a wizz at math. … The beauty of Daisyworld as a system lies in a combination of positive and negative feedback. … But the crucial point is that at every stage every single daisy is acting in accordance with Dawkins' doctrine of the selfish gene. … The temperature on Daisyworld is regulated without any need for foresight or planning by the daisies. No wonder Lovelock calls Daisyworld "my proudest scientific achievement.""
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John R. Gribbin & Mary Gribbin, James Lovelock: In Search of Gaia (2009)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Lovelock
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James Lovelock
Dr James Ephraim Lovelock CH CBE FRS (26 July 1919 – 26 July 2022) was a British independent scientist, author, researcher, environmentalist and futurologist. He is most famous for proposing and popularizing the Gaia hypothesis, in which he postulates that the Earth functions as a kind of superorganism (a term coined by Lynn Margulis).
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