concept

Daisyworld

A mathematical model published by Andrew Watson and James Lovelock in 1983 to show a planet can regulate its own temperature with no purpose and no mind. An imaginary world grows only two things: black daisies (which absorb sunlight and warm their patch) and white daisies (which reflect it and cool their patch). As the sun brightens, black daisies dominate the cold early world and warm it; white daisies take over the hot later world and cool it. The result: surface temperature stays nearly flat across a huge range of solar brightness. No daisy "tries" to regulate anything - the global regulation is an emergent byproduct of selfish local competition coupled to albedo physics. The decisive answer to the teleology objection against Gaia.