We need a bit more clarification. I have been doing some more reading on this topic, and have disovered that many claims Anthere has been making in the Gaia articles are incorrect. Anthere has saying that we must refer to certain ancient religious and mystical views of the Earth and/or cosmos as "Gaia theory". In point of fact, the people who developed those ideas never referred to those ideas with this terminology! More to the point, these ideas have no relation Gaia thoery. Even today most English speakers do not use this terminology for those ideas. Anther is mistaken on this point.
More problematic is her curious claim that Dr James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis is based upon these earlier mystic and religious beliefs. In point of fact, Dr. Lovelock says no such thing. Lovelock is an atmospheric scientists, and his Gaia hypothesis grew out of his study of atmospheric gases. He did *not* use science to build upon earlier mystical beliefs; he created his own hypothesis by applying ideas from Biology to findings from atmospheric science. Anthere's claims that all these religious and mystical views must be viewed as precursor's to Lovelock's hypothesis are incorrect; they seem to part of her own belief system, and they have no basis in historical fact. Having watched a detailed interview with Lovelock on how he developed his hypothesis, and having read two different accounts by him on the same topic, I can say with some certainty that Anthere's beliefs about the origins of the Gaia hypothesis are totally off-base.
Now, it may be true that a tiny number of radical left-wing ecology activists (for example, Gaiains) have developed certain religious and/or political beliefs based on Lovelock's ideas. They may even have mistakenly come to believe that Lovelock didn't originate the Gaia hypothesis, but merely added science to previous mystical belief systems. But so what? We can certainly mention this set of beliefs in the article on Gaians, but it would be grossly inapprorpiate to jam it into an article on atmospheric science and biology, i.e. the [[Gaia theory]] article.
Finally, Anthere keeps demanding that since some people mix together science, radical politics, and these new-age belief systems, we are somehow obligated to cram all of this into the science articles. She is plainly wrong. We in Wikipedia already have a convention for dealing with this; we already have a clear and working precedent. Consider the topics of Biological evolution and [[Quantum Mechanics]]: As many of you know, these are modern scientific theories, and our articles on these topics reflect this fact. Yet many new-age writers have come to believe that Quantum mechanics and/or evolution somehow are related to ancient mystical and religious belief systems.
As many of you know, many new-age folks try to connect Quantum Mechanics with Daoist or Buddhist philosophy, and claim that it is "proof" of the validity of these religions. I have also seen Orthodox Jews try to fuse Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) with Quantum mechanics. But so what? Frankly, there are many individuals and groops that insist that Quantum menchanics or evolution has some mystical or political significance. Do we then rewrite encycloepdias to make them in lin with the religious or political demands of these groups or individuals? No. That would be a violationf our NPOV policy.
What we have always done for these issues is to create new articles on these poltical or religious groups, and explain their viewpoints. We have always done this in the past, it makes it easy to stay NPOV, and provides useful disambiguation.
Can you imagine how misleading it would to start pushing mystical, religious topics, and political topics, into our articles on Biological evolution, and on Quantum Mechanics? Why then should we do the same for the Gaia hypothesis? (Also called the Gaia theory.) Answer - we shouldn't. It would confusing and a violation of NPOV.
Again, from discussions on this list and on the Talk pages, it is looking like the following disambiguation scheme should be implemented:
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Gaia: This is a [[disambiguation]] page. The term Gaia may refer to
[[Gaia (mythology)]] - Discussion of the Greek and Roman goddeess.
[[Gaia theory]] - A group of scientific theories about how life on Earth may regulate the planet's biosphere to make it more hospitable to life. This discusses all scientific views on the subject in general, including the views of Drs. James Lovelock, Lynn Margulis, Richard Dawkins, Carl Sagan, etc.
[[Gaia hypothesis]]- A subset of the above article; this is a discussion of Dr. James Lovelock's ideas on Gaia theory.
[[Gaia theory analogs]] - A discussion of proto-scientific, mystical and religious views that some people believe are related to Gaia theory.
[[Gaians]] - A discussion of the small left-wing radical political and environmentalist group.
(Of course, other articles could be made as well, if needed.)
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We must not push mystical, political or religious ideology into our science articles on Gaia theory, Biological evolution, or Quantum Mechanics, etc. All I am asking is that we continue to follow the same disambiguation and NPOV policy that we also have followed. Is this clear?
Robert (RK)
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