Popper’s Test: The Gaia theory

Popper’s Test Author's Name: Institutional Affiliation: Popper’s Test Karl Popper is a philosopher who designed the basic requirements used to test all scientific theories. Some of Popper’s test requirements include falsifiability, refutability, risks taking, and testability. Moreover, he maintains that repeated experiments and observations are essential facets in science to help to test the scientific aspects of a hypothesis and conjectures. This paper seeks to determine whether the Gaia theory might fail Popper’s experimental test. Gaia hypothesis proposes that an automatic state-tolerant biota controls the chemical and climatic composition of the planet's environmental surface. It further postulates that both inorganic and organic forms of the earth are intimately assimilated into a single complex system which is self-regulated to maintain the stable conditions that support life on the planet (Entrepreneurial Earth LLC, 2018). The scientific analysis of this hypothesis seeks to determine the actual effects of both living and inorganic organisms on the stability of oxygen in the atmosphere, ocean salinity, and global temperature. Gaia theory is also about the evolution of a firmly compact system, which consists of the living organisms and their surrounding environments such as the surface rocks, the oceans, and the atmosphere. According to Popper’s test, a functional scientific theory must be such that it is easy to obtain their verification or confirmation in so far as we seek for evidence (POPPER, 1963). It is, however, not easy to confirm whether the interaction between the biota and the non-living organisms leads to a stable state, which supports life on the planet as the Gaia theory claims. Secondly, Popper’s test states that scientific theories must be refutable by different conceivable means. Instead, Gaia theory states that the chemical and climatic composition of the surface environment of the earth is tightly integrated into a single complex system which is self-regulated to maintain the stable conditions which support life on the planet. This is an irrefutable concept because it is easily verifiable (POPPER, 1963). For instance, the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and cutting down of trees cause greenhouse effects, which leads to global warming. In effect, global warming causes melting of ice on maintains and poles which increases ocean currents. Besides, cutting of trees tampers with water-catchment areas, which, in effect, affects the amount of rainfall. The lack of or a reduction of moisture causes drought, which leads to health-related diseases that...