Quote:

[Lovelock, together with Andrew Watson, developed the Daisyworld model - an imaginary planet]

We could say that the self-regulation is an emergent property of the system. There isn't any need for the white and black daisies to get together and agree quotas for each other's populations, and fix growth rates and argue over how much land should be left uncovered. They just do their own thing and the planet takes care of itself.

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Quote:

"Life appears as a great, permanent and continuous infringer on the chemical 'dead-hardness' of our planet's surface ... Life therefore is not an external and accidental development on the terrestrial surface. Rather, it is intimately related to the constitution of the Earth's crust, forms part of its mechanism, and performs in this mechanism functions of paramount importance, without which it would not be able to exist." (1929)

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"Everything, is perfect, the way it is perfect!"
-Unknown :P