Free Final Fantasy and Philosophy: The Ultimate Walkthrough by William Irwin, Michel S. Beaulieu Page A

present, there is little consensus among practicing environmental and ecological scientists about whether organicist concepts are needed to make effective descriptions of the natural world, or whether organicist concepts can be eliminated in favor of reductionist and mechanistic concepts. 4 In the future, Lovelock and Margulis’s organicist conception of Gaia may or may not be vindicated. But will Dr. Cid’s holistic conception of Gaia ever have a place in the science of our world? No. As we have seen, it contains too many dubious notions that cannot be reconciled with the reductionist and mechanistic features of science. Dr. Cid’s Gaia belongs entirely in the world of Final Fantasy.
    NOTES
    1 For further discussion of the concepts of holism, organicism, mechanism, and reductionism, see David Blitz, Emergent Evolution: Qualitative Novelty and the Levels of Reality (Boston: Kluwer, 1992).
    2 James E. Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979, 1989), p. 11.
    3 Important examples include Eugene P. Odum, Ecology: The Link between the Natural and the Social Sciences , 2nd ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963, 1975); and Richard Levins and Richard C. Lewontin, “Dialectics and Reductionism in Ecology,” in The Dialectical Biologist (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985).
    4 For more on whether a particular conception of nature really matters to environmental ethics, see chapter 5 in this volume, “Gaia and Environmental Ethics in The Spirits Within , ” by Jason P. Blahuta.

5
    GAIA AND ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS IN THE SPIRITS WITHIN
    Jason P. Blahuta
     
     
     
     
    The Spirits Within , the first movie born of the Final Fantasy video game series, presents a bleak vision of humanity’s future. An alien meteor has crashed to Earth, bringing with it Phantoms, an ephemeral ensemble of alien creatures that can kill humans with a single touch. Attempts at fighting the alien invaders have been largely ineffective, and the few human beings who remain are fighting a rearguard action, living in fortified cities, with a shield of bio-etheric energy the only thing standing between them and extinction. Among the survivors, General Hein and Doctors Cid and Aki Ross vie for the ruling council’s blessing to pursue very different ways of dealing with the aliens.
    The general wants to fire the Zeus Cannon—a high-powered laser that allegedly will kill all of the aliens in their nest, the Leonid Meteor. Aki and Dr. Cid want to fight the aliens with a theoretical weapon that Dr. Cid maintains would mirror the bio-etheric energy of the Phantoms, in effect canceling them out. Dr. Cid’s weapon is based on a conception of the world that involves the idea of Gaia—that the world possesses a life force—and thus the weapon must be “Gaia-friendly.” 1
    A Tale of Two Gaias
    The Spirits Within explores a series of debates that are currently raging in our own reality. Most prominent of these is the so-called Gaia hypothesis, advocated by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis. 2 The Gaia hypothesis is closely related to the concept of Gaia in The Spirits Within , but there is a key difference that has to be noted to avoid confusion. Whereas the Gaia of The Spirits Within is a substance, literally “the spirit of the Earth,” Lovelock’s Gaia is more a metaphor that captures the interconnectedness and self-regulating character of Earth: “I call Gaia a physiological system because it appears to have the unconscious goal of regulating the climate and the chemistry at a comfortable state for life. Its goals are not set points but adjustable for whatever is the current environment and adaptable to whatever forms of life it carries,” Lovelock stated. 3 But he was quick to qualify his claim with “do not assume that I am thinking of the Earth as alive in a sentient way, or even alive like an animal or bacterium. I think it is time we enlarged the somewhat dogmatic and limited definition of