The notion of a living Earth is hardly a "new" perspective; ancient
             human history and archeological evidence suggests that most primitive
             incorporated at least some general beliefs in a conscious "Mother Earth".
             paying homage to or praying to this entity is a theme central to many
             Both the ancient Greeks and early Christians believed in a conscious
             St. Thomas Aquinas, to a lesser degree (Sagan). In fact, the etiology of
             based on the word Ge (or Gaia), the name of the Earth goddess of the
             (OceansOn-line). Likewise, interpreting weather phenomena as a purported
             communication between man and his gods and the practice of sacrificial
             triggered by weather or seasonal changes is evident, in myriad variations,
             early theistic philosophical perspectives.
             Even the more modern or scientific notion that the Earth is, in many
             living organism rather than an inanimate biosphere merely supporting
             biological life is not entirely new. Renowned eighteenth century geologist
             considered the Earth to be a super organism of some sort almost two hundred
             before James Lovejoy and the biologist Lynn Margulis reintroduced the
             more scientific form in the 1960's and 70's. Writing shortly before James
             description of a living planet, Lewis Thomas, a physician and contemporary
             wrote The Lives of a Cell, a series of essays in which he expressed the
             "Viewed from the distance of the moon, the astonishing thing
             the earth, catching the breath, is that it is alive. The photographs
             the dry, pounded surface of the moon in the foreground, dry as an old
             bone. Aloft, floating free beneath the moist, gleaming, membrane of
             blue sky, is the rising earth, the only exuberant thing in this part
             cosmos. If you could look long enough, you would see the swirling of
             great drifts of white cloud, covering and uncovering the half-hidden
             masses of land. If you had b...