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WAS Charles Darwin the first Gaian scientist? The hostility of many modern Darwinists to James Lovelock’s science of how life regulates the environment on Earth makes the question almost sacrilegious. But in one of the 31 essays in this splendid volume, Eileen Crist argues that Darwin’s exploration, late in life, of the ecological importance of the humble earthworm reached unmistakeably Gaian conclusions.

Gaia, stripped of its mystical associations with the eponymous Greek goddess and relabelled Earth system science, has in 40 years moved from heresy to mainstream. In this less spectacular guise, the notion of a “living Earth” is reduced to the “emergent properties of coupled subsystems”. But as Lovelock neatly argues in his own essay, even in her finery Gaia was never any more fanciful than her arch foe, the selfish gene.

This volume amply shows how she has earned her place in conventional science. Gaia is, as Lovelock puts it, “a new way of organising the facts about life on Earth”. As such, she generates great and testable ideas: about rock weathering and plate tectonics; about the planet’s ancient atmosphere and cloud formation; and about the function of biodiversity. She pays her dues.

It seems odd now that conventional science had such difficulty coping with the Gaian idea. After all, however selfish our genes may be, natural selection is bound to ensure that a species that mucks up its environment is less likely to survive than one that improves its living conditions.

And as biologists, geologists, systems analysts, physicists and even economists gather round the Gaian flame in this book they cannot help but consider how that last thought impacts on how humans should conduct their affairs. No wonder some would like to turn Gaian science into a religion.