Geophysiology

Geophysiology (Geo, earth + physiology, the study of living bodies) is the study of interaction among living organisms on the Earth operating under the hypothesis that the Earth itself acts as a single living organism.

The term "geophysiology" was popularized by James Lovelock in his writings on the Gaia hypothesis. The term was in fact foreshadowed by many others. James Hutton (1726-1797), the "Father of Geology" in 1789, in a lecture presented on his behalf by Dr. Black, wrote "I consider the Earth to be a super-organism and that its proper study should be by physiology." This view that the Earth in some ways could be viewed as a superorganism was widely held in the early 19th century, and was supported even by such early biologists as Huxley (1825-1895), but is disputed today. An analogous alternative geophysiology which views the Earth as a single cell was developed by Lewis Thomas in his The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher (1974).