CEREGE Major Seminars: Sébastien Dutreuil (Granger Centre)

Title: Gaia: the story of a new concept of the Earth
Summary: The Gaia hypothesis, proposed by Lovelock and Margulis in the 1970s, pointed to the existence of a new entity, made up of all living beings and the global environment with which they interact. For decades, two narratives have singularly obscured the history of the development and reception of Gaia: that of evolutionary biologists, caricaturing Gaia as a pseudo-scientific idea of interest only to the 'New Age movements' and Lovelock as a kind of political ecology guru; and Lovelock's account, presenting Gaia as the fruit of abstract and speculative thinking, developed by an independent scientist withdrawn from the world, in the countryside. I am proposing a new narrative that leads to an understanding of Gaia as an anthropological framework for thinking about global environmental pollution, developed by an entrepreneurial scientist and at the root of transformations in the Earth sciences and widespread cultural appropriation.
The event will start with a coffee served in front of the Pasteur amphitheatre at 13:15.
The presentation will be in French and will be available for streaming (http://streaming-a.osupytheas.fr/embed/live.html).