In the name of Gaia The most gracious, The most merciful
Since its first formulation by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in the 1970s, the Gaia hypothesis has profoundly reshaped debates across the natural sciences, philosophy, and environmental humanities. Initially proposed as an account of how living organisms collectively regulate the Earth's habitability, the hypothesis challenged the conventional image of nature as a passive and static background against which life unfolds. Instead, Gaia describes the Earth as a dynamic system in which biological, geological, atmospheric, and chemical processes continuously interact to maintain conditions conducive to life. In this sense, Gaia is neither a stable object nor a mere environment, but an ongoing process of planetary organization grounded in the reciprocal relations between living and nonliving processes.
This relational understanding of the Earth also demands a reconsideration of humanity's place within it. Rather than conceiving nature as an inert resource available for technical manipulation, Gaia theory emphasizes the mutual constitution of organisms and their environments. Human actions do not occur outside Gaia but participate in the same planetary dynamics that they increasingly transform. The contemporary ecological crisis therefore cannot be understood simply as the degradation of an external environment. It is the consequence of interventions within a complex web of relations whose capacities for self-organization simultaneously enable and resist anthropogenic transformation. Gaia thus appears less as a harmonious equilibrium than as a metastable process of continuous adaptation.
Introduction: Being or Relation
The philosophical significance of this shift is captured in Michel Serres' celebrated formulation, "Being or relation—that is the whole question." Concluding his discussion of quasi-objects in The Parasite, Serres argues that relations should no longer be understood as secondary connections between already constituted entities. Rather, relations are themselves productive realities that generate the beings they connect. His formulation invites a fundamental ontological question on earth that extends well beyond his own philosophy: What is Gaia? Is Gaia a scientific hypothesis, a political concept, a mythological figure, or a new way of conceptualizing the Earth? More fundamentally, should Gaia be understood as a being or as a relation?
These alternatives, however, prove insufficient. As Isabelle Stengers argues, Gaia is neither simply an object nor merely the sum of ecological interactions. Rather, Gaia names a new mode of existence through which the Earth intrudes into political, scientific, and ethical life. Climate change, atmospheric instability, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, and other planetary processes reveal that the Earth cannot be reduced to a passive stage upon which human history unfolds. Gaia is simultaneously an entity and a network of relations, a planetary process that acquires coherence precisely through the continual interaction of heterogeneous systems.
This understanding resonates closely with Gilbert Simondon's ontology of individuation. Like Serres, Simondon challenges the Aristotelian assumption that relations are secondary predicates attached to independently existing substances. Classical metaphysics treats relation (pros ti) as dependent upon already individuated beings. Simondon reverses this hierarchy. Relations do not merely connect pre-existing individuals; they actively participate in the production of individuals themselves. Being is therefore not an original substance that subsequently enters into relations, but an ongoing process of individuation constituted through relational dynamics. Individuals emerge from metastable fields of tensions, and these fields remain constitutive of their continued existence.
From this perspective, Gaia cannot be understood as either a global organism or a superordinate entity governing the Earth. Nor should it be reduced to a collection of interacting ecological systems. Instead, Gaia is better conceived as an ongoing process of planetary individuation. The Earth is continually constituted through transductive relations linking biological, geological, technological, atmospheric, and social processes. Gaia is therefore simultaneously a product of these relations and the condition through which new relations become possible. It is both individuated and continually individuating.
This interpretation also reframes the political and ethical implications of Gaia. As Muriel Combes argues, Simondon replaces the Kantian question, "What is the human being?" with a more relational inquiry: What can a human being do insofar as they are never alone? The human is no longer conceived as an autonomous subject confronting an external nature but as one participant within broader processes of collective individuation. Miriam Tola has shown how this shift undermines anthropocentric conceptions of agency by situating human existence within heterogeneous assemblages of human and nonhuman actors. Human action is therefore always co-action, emerging through relations that exceed the individual.
The conceptual framework that best captures this relational ontology is what Simondon calls the "epistemological postulate": the relation between two relations is itself a relation. This principle extends relationality beyond the connection of discrete entities to the very constitution of reality. Relations are themselves capable of entering into new relations, generating increasingly complex processes of individuation across multiple scales. Gaia can therefore be understood not simply as a relation but as a relation of relations—a metastable field in which living and nonliving processes continually co-individuate. Such an interpretation moves beyond viewing Gaia as either a holistic organism or a scientific model and instead situates it within a transductive ontology in which the Earth itself remains an unfinished process of becoming.