Throughout Facing Gaia, Latour traces the significance of Gaia theory for the Anthropocene. Gaia theory holds that the Earth’s biogeochemistry is an active and adaptive control system that self-regulates and therefore creates the perfect conditions for life to flourish. The hypothesis helped to expand evolutionary theory and explain questions such as how the oceans are kept in balance; or why our atmosphere contains high levels of nitrogen and oxygen. Initially ignored and then ridiculed by scientists such as Richard Dawkins, the theory has recently experienced a resurgence as a model for the Anthropocene. Within the humanities, this resurgence has been helped by the science philosophers Isabelle Stengers, Donna Haraway, and Latour, who continuously pollinate each other’s ideas.

The eight lectures are paired. The first two argue that separating the world into the nature/culture binary has been an unhelpful Western practice. The binary falsely attributes active- and passiveness among the world and has led to the deluded idea that humans are the masters of ‘nature’. If we avoid this binary world view, Latour suggests, we understand that our planet is full of ‘agents’, meaning constituents that have the power to act according to their own intention, will, force, desire, need, or function. Seeing the environment’s aliveness and interconnectedness is crucial for envisioning ways out of the exploitations that have led us into the Anthropocene. Interestingly, Latour claims that the role of scientists has always been to populate the world with agents and therefore add to the notion that our environments are everything but passive. Latour’s example is the French microbiologist Louis Pasteur, who discovered yeast as enabling the transformation of sugar into alcohol. Pasteur’s discovery of yeast as a ‘new’ actor was initially met with suspicion, as he was accused of bringing too much spiritualism to the process of fermentation. Pasteur, however, managed to strike a balance between reductionism (‘it’s just chemistry’) and vitalism (‘a ghost is at work’). Similarly, Latour argues that Gaia theory keeps this balance between over- and de-animation.

The reasons for Gaia theory’s importance in our current time – the time in which the Anthropocene is being defined – are the subject of the third and fourth lectures. In these crucial chapters, the nucleus of the book, Latour argues that, with issues like climate change, our Earth can be said to have acquired a behaviour which is aptly captured by the metaphor of Gaia. Latour goes back to the ancient Greek poet Hesiod to understand Gaia’s role as ancestral force: Gaia (or ‘Ge’ from the ancient Greek root for ‘earth’) is hard to pin down. Her performances are ‘multiple, contradictory, hopelessly confused’. She is neither a figure of harmony, nor maternal; she animates her children to castrate their father, her husband Uranus. Importantly, she always makes others act. She is also the first prophetess and advises her family on what to do.

Similarly, Lovelock’s ‘Gaia’ captures the way in which the biosphere gathers countless agents that function in their own way, with their own goals, but together create the ideal climate for life to flourish. Latour is convinced that with the Gaia metaphor Lovelock achieves the same balance between vitalism and reductionism as Pasteur: Gaia is not meant to represent a holistic or hierarchical super-organism, a God creator who makes her congregation act blindly through the laws of nature; rather, she assembles uncountable deities in the earth-system. Latour’s strength lies in connecting multiple disciplines; he is practised at seeing the big picture, which generates insights such as this: science needs to communicate findings through language, and language is metaphysical. Metaphors are crucial for science; they are not just linguistic constructs, but properties of the world. Animating the world – or seeing spirit – is not just an act of whimsy, but scientifically valid, as it retains the agency that organisms already have.

Bruno Latour (Wikimedia Commons)

The last four lectures consider how Gaia and her feedback loops can help us in these dark times: they contemplate the need to remake societies and politics. Especially astute in these chapters is Latour’s discernment of the supposed opposition of science and religion, which he understands as two sides of the same coin. Latour describes Gaia as a terrestrial force, which designates the need for humble, situated solutions that break down the impossibly large dilemma of the Anthropocene. ‘Terrestrial’ also describes the imperative to become less anthropocentric, which could mean extending rights and representation to what he calls ‘earthbound’ entities – other species, rivers, oceans. Religion and science, as Latour holds, both need to come down to Earth.

While Latour’s tone can be anecdotal, playful, and personal, his writing remains highly academic and often out of reach. This is unfortunate: academics should aspire to readability, particularly on a topic of such gravity. I was also concerned by the book’s treatment of Gaia theory’s co-developer, Lynn Margulis, who is only mentioned a couple of times as Lovelock’s ‘side-kick’. While Latour traces the links to established philosophers like Peter Sloterdijk at great length, the reader is given little sense of the history of Gaia theory; consequently, Margulis’s importance remains obscure, an oversight suggesting that Latour pays insufficient notice to female thinkers.

The book is nonetheless valuable, if only for its contribution to the community of scholars who will doubtless make good use of the lectures to critically engage with these same issues. The intended audience is multidisciplinary, so that readers with backgrounds in law, theology, science, politics, linguistics, and more will find inspiration. The chapters are discrete: much can be gleaned from choosing just one lecture.

Facing Gaia stands as a toolbox for many disciplines. It harbours crucial insights: we are witnessing a catastrophe in which we are all implicated. It is as if Gaia has become, as Stengers called it, ‘touchy’, as if she reacts to us, calls us. Latour argues that it matters what each of us thinks and does. It will be written in clouds, spelt in stone, legible in water.